1. As Abid stated, it is critical to understand the roles of the gandhabba (our mental body), the physical body, and the brain (which serves as the bridge between the mental body and the physical body).
- The mental body is more important than the physical body in the long term. A human gandhabba born at the cuti-patisandhi moment can live for hundreds to thousands of years. Within a given “human bhava,” there can be many repeated births as a human with a human body; see “Bhava and Jāti – States of Existence and Births Therein.”
- On the other hand, it is important to keep the physical body healthy to understand Buddha’s teachings and to make progress toward Nibbana in this life. Thus, it is critically important to eat healthy and exercise regularly to maintain a healthy physical body.
2. A vital part of the physical body is the brain. The mental body receives sensory information from the external world through the brain. For example, visual information comes into the physical body via the eyes and are processed by the brain before being sent to the mental body (gandhabba).
- We can think of the gandhabba being trapped inside the physical body. It is completely shielded from the external world by the physical body. All information from the external world enters the physical body through the six ‘doors’: eyes, ears, nose, tongue, the nerves of the physical body, and an organ in the brain (unknown to science yet) that receives our memories stored in the vinnana dhatu.
- All those signals are first processed by the brain to convert them to types of signals that the seat of the mind (hadaya vatthu) located in the gandhabba.
- Thus, if the brain does not function properly, the gandhabba would not fully ‘experience the external world.’
- This is why it is critically important to keep the physical body and the brain in good condition!
3. The brain consumes roughly 25% of all the energy we get from food. That should tell you how important the brain is.
- That is why we need to eat well to get the nutrients the body needs to move, and, even more importantly, for the brain to work properly.
- In addition, it is also important to keep the brain active. Many neural connections in the brain will lose their function if not regularly used. Many people these days just watch TV or movies the whole day, sitting on a couch. That is bad for the physical body and the brain. The physical body needs physical exercises, and the brain needs ‘mental exercises.’
- The best mental exercises for the brain are to engage in learning Buddha’s teachings. Abid has confirmed that for himself. Even solving crossword puzzles is better than watching TV/movies.
4. The above ideas are discussed in many posts throughout the website.
- One could start with the posts in the following section: “Brain and the Gandhabba.”
- The following video is from the post “Gandhabba in a Human Body – an Analogy” in that section.
5. Abid wrote: “This must be similar to OBE reports of people who were blind being able to see. It must be the gandhabba.”
- The following account provides a real-left account to confirm that.
- In some cases, people are born with the cakkhu pasāda rūpa in good condition, but the optic nerve (or the physical eye itself) may be damaged. In that case, they cannot see because the brain is not receiving signals from the eyes.
- But if the gandhabba can come out of the body, it can see by itself. The following video clearly illustrates this situation.
P.S. I see that Abid has posted a comment while I was writing mine. I will see whether I can add anything else regarding his following comment:
“The interesting part is that when dementia patients are close to dying at the late stage of dementia, they experience “terminal lucidity” where they suddenly regain the abilities they lost, even after the massive brain damage that has occurred. For example, they can go from previously non-verbal to speaking again and also recollect all the memories they lost briefly.”
