Alien Devas (hear me out)

[bran]

I’ve been having a thought over the last few months. My claim: every celestial body has trillions of beings on it.

In DN27, we see the origination of the world. I think we can reasonably say that beings descended into earth in search for earthly food. Before then, there were just beings without bodies made of earth / with bodies made of something else.

But, where did those beings come from?

There are two possibilities: either they traveled through space to get here, or they were already here by pure luck.

How do I know they don’t easily float through space? It’s because they are affected by gravity. Evident by people being reborn in a geographically close area even when separated from their culture. They aren’t born in the middle of space, clearly beings are all subject to the force of gravity.

Maybe some of the lighter ones can find their way over, otherwise they’d have to somehow make a heavenly rocketship.

If they were all already on this planet, maybe in the skies or below the surface a little because they are more or less dense as aided by gravity, then doesn’t that mean every other planet should also have luminous beings staying there?

I have found estimates in the range of quintillions of animals on earth. All of which must have previously been luminous.

I assume they will also be gravitated to stars and moons. There are about a trillion planets, half a trillion stars, and many more moons and asteroids in the milky way. There is roughly a trillion galaxies in total. This means there are about hundreds of sextillions (10²¹) of stars and planets. The size of them doesn’t matter because of available space, but because of the probability it gets attracted and lands on that body. Most of these are bigger than earth, but if they all have at least a quintillion beings, there are at least 10⁴¹ beings.

If you picked up on the implication here, it’s intense. Can’t you imagine the trillions of luminous beings on Saturn and distant moons? It means your chance of ending up on earth were unimaginably slim. It means we take this ridiculously for granted. If all the beings don’t concentrate around just this earth, this is high nibbida reflection.

@ngxinzhao

[LucasOliveira]

I think Gods or Devas are Spiritual

and Aliens are from the physical plane

but there are no barriers. Devas can manifest on the human plane and humans and aliens can evolve spiritually.

I talked a little about this here.
https://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?p=613239#p613239

and I share some recent news about aliens here…
https://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?t=45508

About Devas and planes of existence…

It’s important to understand that these realms exist as dimensions of consciousness and not as physical planes. By characterizing the celestial realms as being progressively “higher” and more refined levels of existence, and the ghostly realms as being correspondingly “lower”, the purely spiritual nature of consciousness is erroneously given a material standard. The terms “going up” and “going down” are conventional figures of speech, referring to the movement of physical bodies. These terms have very little in common with the flow of consciousness, whose subtle motion is beyond temporal comparisons. Physically moving up and down requires a deliberate exertion of effort. But when the mind gravitates to higher or lower realms of consciousness, direction is merely a metaphor and involves no effort.

When saying that the heavens and the brahma worlds are arranged vertically in a series of realms, this should not be understood in the literal sense — such as, a house with many stories. These realms exist as dimensions of consciousness, and ascent is accomplished spiritually, by attuning the mind’s conscious flow to a subtler vibration of consciousness. They are ascended in the figurative sense, by a spiritual means: that is, by the heart which has developed this sort of capability through the practices of generosity, moral virtue and meditation. By saying that hell is “down below”, one does not mean going down, physically, into an abyss. Rather, it refers to descent by spiritual means to a spiritual destination. And those who are able to observe the heavens and the realms of hell do so by virtue of their own internal spiritual faculties.

For those skilled in the mysteries of the samādhi, psychic communication is as normal as any other aspect of human experience. Arising from the flow of consciousness, the essential message is transmitted in the language of the heart as fully-formed ideas, which the inquiring individual understands as clearly as if they were words in conventional language. Each thought current emanates directly from the heart, and so conveys the mind’s true feelings, and precise meaning, eliminating the need for further clarification. Verbal conversation is also a medium of the heart; but its nature is such that spoken words often fail to reflect the heart’s true feelings, so mistakes are easily made in communicating its precise intent. This incongruity is eliminated by using direct heart-to-heart communication.

https://www.forestdhamma.org/ebooks/english/pdf/Mae_Chee_Kaew.pdf

Mae Chee Kaew's anagami fruition - #16 by LucasOliveira

[BethL]

Your contemplation reminds me of why I enjoy the blind turtle sutta so much. (This is a stock photo, not AI.)

[bran]

@LucasOliveira

The terms “going up” and “going down” are conventional figures of speech, referring to the movement of physical bodies. These terms have very little in common with the flow of consciousness, whose subtle motion is beyond temporal comparisons.

I wasn’t using that common phrasing as any sort of evidence or part of any thought process, any resemblance to that is coincidental or just two views looking at the same thing. I’m talking about physics rather than something metaphorical in this context. Just because people use those terms doesn’t mean that it does or doesn’t actually work something like that. Which means I believe I have reason to say otherwise:

There’s a cultural origination for our theories and ideas about these things. When people have out of body experiences after dying, they often report floating, as they perceive, physically upwards. People experiencing this and telling stories about it for thousands of years can evolve into a general usage of those terms and even influence religious doctrines. Combine that with the association of high with good, it’s an easily understandable expression to make that originated from an actual potential phenomenon. By physics, it’s reasonable to assume something that’s not visible or touchable, or at least not made of the standard elements, is more likely less dense than air, and therefore floats upwards. Beings onwards to hell could also float upwards, it doesn’t really matter as it’s just gravity.