Within the Abhidhamma, consciousness is not treated as a single, enduring entity, but as a rapid succession of discrete moments of awareness called cittas. Each citta is a distinct event of knowing an object and arises together with a constellation of mental factors (cetasikas) such as feeling, perception, volition, and attention. These mental factors shape the quality of the experience, determining whether it is wholesome, unwholesome, or ethically neutral. Because each moment arises dependent on conditions and then passes away, what is ordinarily taken to be a continuous “mind” or “self” is revealed as a conditioned flow of mental and physical phenomena. This analysis underscores impermanence and the absence of any permanent self underlying experience.

The Abhidhamma describes the process of cognition as a structured sequence known as a cognitive series (citta‑vīthi), which can occur through the five physical sense doors or the mind door. When a sense object impinges on a sense base, the previously passive life‑continuum consciousness (bhavaṅga) is disturbed and gives way to an adverting consciousness that turns toward the object. This is followed by a specific sense consciousness (such as eye‑consciousness or ear‑consciousness), which simply registers the bare contact with the object. Subsequent moments then receive the object (sampaṭicchana), investigate it (santīraṇa), and determine it (voṭṭhapana), gradually clarifying what is being experienced.

The sequence reaches its most ethically charged phase in the javana, or impulsion, where a series of cittas actively respond to the object in wholesome, unwholesome, or functional ways, and where kamma is primarily generated. After this, registering consciousness (tadālambana or tadārammaṇa) may occur, “holding” the object briefly before the flow of consciousness subsides again into the life‑continuum. Throughout this entire process, consciousness is always accompanied by mental factors, and each moment arises, endures for an instant, and dissolves, in strict dependence on preceding conditions. In this way, the Abhidhamma offers a finely grained map of cognition and consciousness, revealing experience as a dynamic, conditioned series of events rather than the activity of a fixed inner subject.