Human Life – A Mental Base (Gandhabba) and a Material Base (Cell)

Johnny asked:”When a zygote is impregnated with a gandhabba, any effort from this point forward to terminate life, is it considered as committing panatipata?”

Yes. Once the gandhabba (or the patisandhi vinnana) descends to the womb and “takes possession” of the zygote, there is another human life in the womb. Any attempt to kill that life (via abortion) is killing a human being; see, “Buddhist Explanations of Conception, Abortion, and Contraception“.

“Another question is, can a gandhabba attain sotāpanna magga and/or phala?”

That is an interesting question. In principle I don’t see why not. But I have not seen a Tipitaka account of a gaandhabba attaining magga phala or the Sotapanna Anugami stage.

“Can I view the gandhabba state akin to a traveller (after acquiring a new patisandhi viññāna) who is inside the airport transit lounge, waiting for the right time to enter the holding area and eventually board the plane that will bring him to the next destination?”

The situation is better described by the case of a human operator inside a totally enclosed military tank. Here the human operator is analogous to gandhabba, and the military tank is like the physical body. The human operator cannot see, hear anything outside the tank, without the help of video and audio equipment mounted on the tank. In the same way, gandhabba cannot see, hear anything without the help of the physical eyes and ears on the physical body; see, “Our Mental Body – Gandhabba“.
– Of course, the gandhabba can see, hear by itself once OUTSIDE the human body. That is what happens in Out-of-Body experiences;see, “Manomaya Kaya and Out-of-Body Experience (OBE)” and “Gandhabba Sensing the World – With and Without a Physical Body“.

Another related point is that manomaya kaya is the more generic name for the “mental body”. All living beings have manomaya kaya. Gandhabba is generally reserved for the mental bodies (manomaya kaya) of humans and animals. That is because, those human and animal manomaya kaya can inhale scents (gandha + abba, or “taking in odors”) and become a bit more dense.
P.S. I have revised the post in question, “Human Life – A Mental Base (Gandhabba) and a Material Base (Cell)” to make this clear.

Plants are alive but not sentient. They do not have a mind. There are people who lovingly or evilly speak to cooked rice. The rice reacts with a certain consistency or just rottenness. How can this be explained in terms of Buddha Dhamma?

Under #9 it is said: “…However, the first cells that appeared in the Earth were created by kammic energy (in javana cittas)…”

Also somewhere on this website Lal said that the evolution theory of Darwin is not correct (evolution through natural selection).

I do not understand how the first dinosaur or the first elephant or the first human appeared on earth. Can someone please explain?

@Tobias G

The first case of talking to plants or rice is that everything is affected by energy that mind generates. If you generate bad intention or killing intention it can affect living organism to the extent of your javana power, same with metta. People with strong metta can actually trigger bliss factor in others people mind.

Tobias wrote: “Plants are alive but not sentient. They do not have a mind. There are people who lovingly or evilly speak to cooked rice. The rice reacts with a certain consistency or just rottenness. How can this be explained in terms of Buddha Dhamma?”

As Christian says, the mind can affect our environment too. I think Tobias may be referring to the following video posted by Eric (we have not heard from him recently!): “The Rice Experiment (Video)“.
– See my comments there.

Regarding the recent post, “Human Life – A Mental Base (Gandhabba) and a Material Base (Cell)“, Tobias asks:
“Under #9 it is said: “…However, the first cells that appeared in the Earth were created by kammic energy (in javana cittas)…”
Also somewhere on this website Lal said that the evolution theory of Darwin is not correct (evolution through natural selection).
I do not understand how the first dinosaur or the first elephant or the first human appeared on earth.”

This is a very good question. But a proper answer requires more background. I am in the process of laying out that background.
– Darwin’s theory of evolution is not correct only for the evolution of a human. Humans were the first to appear on the newly-formed Earth. But those humans had “brahma-like” bodies, and no physical bodies with cells.
– Humans actually evolved “downward”, losing their ability to travel through the air like brahmas, ability to see and hear without eyes and ears, etc. They did not have to eat, just like brahmas.
– But over billions of years, they gradually evolved to have physical bodies, as I mentioned briefly in the last post.
– The rest of the species are likely to have evolved according to Darwin’s theory. First came bacteria and helped to generate oxygen in the atmosphere. Then came plants, and then came the animals who needed plants for their survival. By that time, humans had evolved to have bodies like ours and humans needed food via plants too. That time sequence is also laid out in the Agganna Sutta (without such details).

That is a brief summary. I hope you can get a rough idea. As I said, there are many other factors coming into play. It is wonderful to have the modern scientific knowledge available to clarify those teachings in the Agganna Sutta.

P.S. Nature (driven by laws of kamma), does the minimum necessary to get the “ball rolling”. The first cells were created by kammic energy. Everything is consistent with modern science. It is just that modern science does not yet know the power of mind energy (kammic energy) created by those javana citta.

“But those humans had “brahma-like” bodies, and no physical bodies with cells.”

Is this the same as saying that the first humans on earth were human gandhabbas?

“Is this the same as saying that the first humans on earth were human gandhabbas?”

Not really. Those early humans “came down” from the Abhassara brahma realm and were very similar to those brahmas.
– Brahmas do not need food. Human gandhabbas of the present time do need to inhale aroma (that is how they get a bit more dense bodies).
– At that time, there was nothing on Earth to provide such aroma.
– After long times, Earth became populated with plants, and then animals. At that time they probably started inhaling aroma, and thus began the gradual process towards physical bodies built with cells. It was a gradual process.
– Even today, when a human bhava first starts, that manomaya kaya (of the gandhabba) is close to that of a brahma, but those gadnhabbas start inhaling aroma soon, and get a “bit more dense” than brahmas who have just a few suddhashtaka (hadaya vatthu and a few pasada rupa).
– Those suddhashtaka are much, much smaller than even an electron, which is one of the smaller fundamental particles in physics.

The way I understand this ‘descent into matter’ of those first ‘humans’ is like this:

I must first regress a bit. When the destruction of the planet took place, all living beings found themselves in the Abhassara realm. Being in that realm, they assumed the qualities of those brahmas, ‘physical’ and mental ; or, to put it another way, they ‘levelled out’ to brahmas, all of them: those who had been human, animals, fishes, insects, ALL living beings. Now, when the descent back to the newly-formed Earth took place, they all started out as humans. The human realm is the one that lies in between the ‘good’ (deva and brahma) and the ‘bad’ (apayas) realms. So it makes absolute sense that beings ‘start all over’ from a mid-way point, with a human MINDSET. (There may be the question here of how all those trillions of beings could fit physically AS HUMANS on the surface of the planet – but remember at this earliest of stages they are still brahma-like in ‘form’, i,e. suddhashtakas, practically formless).

This state of affairs continued until the planet evolved air, vegetation, and so on, and could support living physical forms. Depending of the natural conditions, those beings then started to assume physical forms in accordance with their predominant gathi up until that time. And as we know that beings spend most of their time in sansara in the apayas, the gathi of most of them would consign them to the apayas. From the geological standpoint ,the various hells would have formed first. Now if we also keep in mind that a human birth is very rare (certainly the Buddha was not referring to all those ‘humans’ who started out on the newly-formed Earth) there would be only a very few, relatively, who actually take on a human form.

We talk about this event happening ‘in the deep past’. But in fact it is only the one that has happened most recently, because this has been going on from a time without beginning.

So the statement ‘all beings started out as humans’ could be very misleading.

“So the statement ‘all beings started out as humans’ could be very misleading.”

No. That is a correct statement FOR THAT TIME at the beginning of a new maha kappa. By the end of the previous maha kappa all beings in all apayas, human realm, deva realms, and a few lower brahma realms moved up to that brahma realm, which was not affected by the destruction of the other realms. Not a single living being could survive in those realms.

ALL BEINGS gradually move up to that brahma realm, NOT because their gati had changed. All pleasing things the world were gradually being destroyed. So, gradually less and less things the world were appealing to the senses. We could say, they were FORCED to give up cravings.
– Of course, seeing the devastation around (this happened over a long time, over hundreds of millions of years), it is possible that more and more people could have become more “religious” too.
– Since those gati had not changed significantly, those old gati started to take hold gradually in those “early brhama-like humans” (P.S. even better to say that anusaya or “hidden defilements” start to re-surface). That is how those early humans lost their supernormal powers. Of course, those with worse gati were the first to become animals, hell beings, etc. That happened over billions of years.

On the issue of human birth being rare: When the Buddha stated how rare the human birth is, that is regarding “normal times” on Earth, like the present time.

It is good to contemplate on these issues. We also need to think about the time scales involved (millions and billions of years).

Surely, Lal, you are not saying that all the beings had a human form once back on the physical Earth? This is what I find that may be misleading. As you state later: those “early brhama-like humans”.

“So the statement ‘all beings started out as humans’ could be very misleading.”
“No. That is a correct statement FOR THAT TIME at the beginning of a new maha kappa…”
So now people will imagine the whole of the Earth’s land surface literally covered by humans, trillions of them!! This is what I meant by misleading, humans in physical human form as we know it today.

Perhaps we are dealing with two things at the same time here: the state of those beings once they move up to the abhassara realm ,and their appearance or ‘form’ once back ON the Earth. But reading my question and your reply together once again, there are no divergences.

I did not say that those beings moved UP because of their gathi, rather that they moved DOWN because of it, quite in line with what you say.

For the rest, yes, it makes perfect sense.

Thank you cubibobi for putting the question, and Lal for answering that question. The two of you saved my day. I had been going through acute depression since I woke up, totally at a loss. Reading those two posts got me going. At once I was alive, physically and mentally, and am still.

Once again, thank you,

May the Blessings of the Triple Gem be ever with us all.

y not wrote: “Surely, Lal, you are not saying that all the beings had a human form once back on the physical Earth? This is what I find that may be misleading. As you state later: those “early brhama-like humans”.

I know it is hard to deal with our perceptions of a “body” being massive.
– However, the manomaya kaya of a brahma is a billion times smaller than an atom! We cannot even see an atom.
– So, yes, there can be many trillions of “humans with brahma-like bodies” on Earth. They hardly take any space.
– I know it is automatic to immediately visualize the picture of a human with a heavy body. But those early humans were very different, almost like brahmas.

The fact that brahmas have “very fine bodies” was discussed in previous posts. But I know that reading a post is not enough to get the “right perception”. That is why it is good to contemplate on issues like what we are addressing now. It forces one to really think about the details.

Another way to think about this is the following: When one cultivates even anariya jhana to the fourth jhana, one could come out of the physical body with a manomaya kaya that is somewhat similar to the manomaya kaya of a brahma. Then one can travel with that “brahma-like body” even to brahma realms (which is really “space travel”). This is stated in many suttas, for example, Sāmañ­ña­phala­ Sutta (DN 2).

By the way, “anusaya” may be a better word than “gati” in my previous post (of course, they are inter-related).

Just published a post clarifying some of these issues. Please feel free to ask questions if something is not clear. It is important to get things clarified before proceeding any further.

“Clarification of “Mental Body” and “Physical Body” – Different Types of “Kāya”“.