1. When we think about energy, we tend to think in terms of the types of energy we deal with every day. These types of energy can range from the energy needed to heat a house or drive a car to going for a walk or moving the eyes to look at someone.
- Those energies come from burning fuel in the first two cases to “burning/digesting food that we eat” in the last two cases.
- In all those cases, the energies involved are HUGE compared to kammic energies.
2. Kammic energies are created by our thoughts. Most people don’t even realize that thoughts can create energy!
- Furthermore, “the work” done by kammic energies is unimaginably tiny, too. For example, when kammic energy “creates” a human gandhabba (consists of a hadaya vatthu and five pasada rupa), that is such small energy that we cannot quantify. Yet, that energy is enough to sustain that human gandhabba for thousands of years.
- When that human gandhabba enters a womb and merges with the zygote made by the intercourse between a male and female, the growth of the physical human body starts. However, that growth (up to a fully grown human) is via the food eaten by the mother (while in the womb) and the person after coming out of the womb.
3. The energy transfer mechanism between the gandhabba and the brain is also very efficient and managed by the kammic energy embedded in the gandhabba when it was formed.
- Thus, the kammic energy a human gandhabba acquires at the moment of its inception is enough to (i) sustain that gandhabba for many thousands of years and (ii) maintain interactions with the brain while inside a physical human body.
- This is why the Buddha stated that the subject of kamma/kamma vipaka is discernible only to a Buddha: “Kamma vipāko, bhikkhave, acinteyyo, na cintetabbo.” See “Acinteyya Sutta (AN 4.77).”
4. It is not possible to visualize the workings of kamma in terms of the “work/energy” we are used to.
- This is also why we cannot even imagine what a Brahma is like. A Brahma is also made of a hadaya vatthu and a few pasada rupa. Some can live for trillions of years with the kammic energy embedded in that fine “mental body.”
- For example, an electron cannot be seen with our eyes. A hadaya vatthu or a pasada rupa is a billion times smaller than an electron.
Even though we cannot visualize these entities or quantify them, it is good to have an idea of the difference in scales of ENERGY between the “material world” and “mental world.”