 Tsongkhapa's rejection of any form of self-referential consciousness (Sk. sva-saṃvitti, sva-saṃvedana) (the fifth point) is in essence a rejection of Śāntarakṣita's position that such self-referential or reflexive awareness is necessary to explain the self-evidential nature of consciousness, and to explain the privileged access the conscious person has to their own consciousness as immediate and veridical (Garfield  2006).[3]  At issue is the status of the knowing subject engaged in the intellectual pursuit of the truly real. Tsongkhapa holds that such a knowing subject has no essential reality at all.