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).