Yogachara extends this notion of unconstructed fundamental awareness into the idea of eight (or nine) levels of consciousness, each a “downward” transformation of foundational luminous awareness (alaya-jnana). The first transformation gives rise to the storehouse consciousness, or the alaya-vijnana (the added “vi” to “jna” means “dualistic, separated, fragmented”—and thus this is the beginning of samsara as illusion, if one is ignorant of the prior all-encompassing alaya-jnana). But this storehouse actually contains, as collective memories, the resultant experiences of all human beings (and according to some, all sentient beings in toto), and the seeds for all future karmic ripening.
