  The Vaibhāṣika answers these questions, again, by appealing to the theory of the trans-temporal existence of dharmas and the  possibility of a temporal separation between an immediately  antecedent condition and its effects: thus, even in the case of  longer (that is, non-momentary) temporal discontinuities in the  mental stream, the causal principle of the immediately antecedent  condition ensures that consciousness arises again from an instance  similar to the one that preceded the attainment of cessation (cf.  Griffiths 1986, 63).