‘Yes. Dēva belong to kāma loka, and they engage in sex. However, children are born instantaneously (ōpapātika’
That the jati of beings taking on a bhava there is instantaneous is unequivocal enough. But the children of the devas – are they these same ones who take on a jati there from other realms – pulled in there, as it were, into the ‘lap of the devi’through their intercourse, of whatever nature that may be. I think it must be so.
Since devis do not menstruate (this makes sense) there is no ‘fine material’ zygote that the ‘baby deva’ may enter(also because the deva is already formed) so there would appear to be no equivalent there to the ‘material shell’ provided by parents in the human realm. I wonder,could this be the origin of the term ‘sons of will and yoga’ mentioned in the book of Dzyan for beings ‘born’ through the opapatika method? Getting a bit into it, the ‘will’ would correspond to the ‘gathi’ of the new arrival, and the yoga to the union of the devi with a deva. Just my impression. But that is of course assuming that the terms for both words in the original do mean what I understand by them.
This is one more instance where Dhamma sheds light (as I see, of course) on notions or tenets I had come across before from various sources. I have come to see that many of these are excerpts or fragments, in cases distorted to such an extent that they become unintelligible. In others, as here, a connection may be there. I am reminded of a comment of Lal’s (if others have not come across it yet) that vedic texts( and by extension, other so called esoteric teachings) are remnants of the sasana of the Buddha Kassapa. Something to reflect on.
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