AxelSnaxel wrote above, ““Also when the first desana was to be given in Sri Lanka, the novice accompanying Mahinda used his psychic power to announce it to the whole country with his voice.”
I wrote that it may not be true.
However, I have been thinking about these “mystical phenomena” over the weekend. They may not be mystical at all.
– As I have pointed out in recent posts, some of these phenomena are “beyond our sense perceptions”, but are regular features of some other realms.
In the “Cūḷanikā Sutta (AN 3.80)”, the Buddha explains to Ven. Ananda that he has the ability to “make his voice heard over a billion star systems (each one of them like the Solar system)”.
Here is an English translation: “Lesser (AN 3.80)“.
– In that translation, a cluster of billion world systems is called “a galactic supercluster”. That particular translation is probably not right, because our own galaxy has over 100 billion stars. But you can get the main idea.
I will try to write a post in the future explaining that some of these “mysterious phenomena” described in the Tipitaka may be explained with modern science. For example, this way of “having the voice heard across star systems” is NOT done in the normal way, where sound waves travel through the air.
– So, it is entirely possible that “..the novice accompanying Mahinda used his psychic power to announce it to the whole country with his voice”. It is NOT that he had to announce with a high power source like speakers that we use today; such a strong voice would have damaged ears of those who were closeby. The technique is entirely different.
– And “seeing over long distances” is NOT done with light photons as we are familiar with (which requires eyes to see). Seeing over long distances (dibba cakkhu) is NOT done with physical eyes.
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