October 28, 2024 at 6:36 am
#52563
Keymaster
I think it is a good idea to start with #4 above.
- To quote the relevant point: “When the gandhabba comes out of a physical body (as in NDE or OBE), a gandhabba can see, hear, etc., on its own. See “Near-Death Experiences (NDE): Brain Is Not the Mind” and “Manomaya Kaya and Out-of-Body Experience (OBE).”
First, look at the evidence in the above two posts that seeing, hearing, etc., can happen while the physical body is “effectively dead” and the brain activity is absent.
- That leads to the conclusion that the Buddha was right. There is a mental body (gandhabba) associated with the physical body. Furthermore, the mental body is primary, and the physical body (born when a gandhabba enters a womb) is secondary. The death of the physical body is not necessarily the end of human existence; in most cases, gandhabba comes out of the dead body and gets into another womb to make another physical body.
- In other words, the physical human body has a maximum lifetime of about 100 years, while the mental body may live for thousands of years.
Once one is convinced of the LOGICAL necessity for a mental body, one would be motivated to take the account of the pure octads (suddhāṭṭhaka) more seriously.