To put the matter straightforwardly, for the Sarvāstivādins, wholes and continua are only conventionally real, whereas the atoms and point-instant consciousness are only ultimately real.
Edgar Mitchell, the Apollo 14 Lunar Module Pilot, said that walking on the Moon gives you an instant global consciousness, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it, that international politics look so petty.
I am after the gaps between instants of consciousness".
Dr Appleby said: "Both of these injuries would have caused an almost instant loss of consciousness and death would have followed quickly afterwards.
"Both of these injuries would have caused almost instant loss of consciousness, and death would have followed quickly afterwards," Appleby said.
Much like their spyplane compatriots in Lockheed's faster-than-a-bullet SR-71 Blackbird, the U-2 pilots were flying so high that normal flight suits were not enough; any cockpit decompression would have resulted in almost instant loss of consciousness.
Drawing attention to what is given in an instant of awareness (the smallest conceivable moment of consciousness), he maintains that any knowledge or recognition found in such an instant would have to be characterized by a concept (or "essence" to use Santayana's term).
For if it were possible to imagine fully that instant of passing from consciousness to nonexistence, with all the attendant fear and humiliation of absolute helplessness, it would be very hard to live.
He was fond, to a fault, of the phenomenological idea of "the percept" — the flash point in the mind where perceptions take form, an instant short of full consciousness.
It comes to pass in an instant that 'interrupts' intentional consciousness, in its alone or solipsistic quality.
Boring racist, sexist, and homophobic jokes have been replaced by infinitely mutable and referential memes that pass through our collective consciousness in an instant.
