I just noticed that the root Pali behind the realms in the arupa-loka on Access to Insight is slightly different from your translation:
Neither-perception-nor-non-perception:
Ayatana: nevasaññānāsaññāyatana
Loka: nevasaññanasaññayatanupaga deva
Nothingness:
Ayatana: ākiñcaññāyatana
Loka: akiñcaññayatanupaga deva
Infinite Consciousness:
Ayatana: viññāṇañcāyatana
Loka: viññanañcayatanupaga deva
Infinite Space:
Ayatana: ākāsānañcāyatana
Loka: akasanañcayatanupaga deva
The difference in every case is the addition of “upaga deva” (going-to/becoming + deva) in the lokas. All other lokas above the human realm also end in “deva”, so together “upaga deva” seems to mean “becoming/existing as a higher being”.
Note that the word “ayatana” also never disappears from the names of the arupa lokas.
That helped haha… The forum is a pattern, just like everything else.
I think I’m starting to understand this topic a little better now. I think these ayatana states are both mental and physical.
Just as a person, in the human realm, can psychologically live in the animal realm, the hell realm, or the deva realms based on their virtue and karma, we can also psychologically live in one of the arupa-lokas/higher ayatanas as well. One’s physical location or reincarnation does not matter as much as their psychological location, although both vary.
An astrophysicist at the University of Bologna and a neurosurgeon at the University of Verona have claimed that the brain resembles the universe. The two Italian researchers came up with the galaxy-brain theory that is out of this world: The structures of the perceptible universe, they say, are astonishingly comparable to the neuronal networks of the human brain…
The detailed study was published in the journal Frontiers in Physics showcasing the human brain has roughly 27 orders of magnitude separated in scale, while similarly, the composition of the cosmic web shows comparable levels of complexity and self-organization, according to the researchers.
If “I” can be supported by My Brain, “Siri”, “Alexa”, “Cortana” etc can be supported by the Internet Brain… why can’t “Brahma”, “MahaBrahma” et al be supported by the Galaxy Brain?
In all these cases the realm of experience (human 6 sense sphere, cyberspace, Infinite Conciousness) should be differentiated from the “Beings” that can exist within that realm due to the occurrence of a particular pattern of information processing, thus forming a “Loka” of that realm.
That’s the thing, they are formless/immaterial. I had previously asked @Gabriel something along the lines of “If devas are born there, surely it is a non-physical place,” but I ultimately deleted that point of discussion because the more I thought about it the less sense it made. What would it mean for a non-physical “place” to have “locality?” Usually, when we say something is in a place, it is because it has a physical locality it relation to other physical localities. One formless realm is in relation to another formless realm, but not in terms of physicality. Can something really be truly a place if it lacks physicality? It is like the Western Paradise in Amidism. It is supposedly outside of the three realms. So what is it “west” of? I guess it can be “west of” the kaamadhaatu, but what would it even mean to be “west of” an immaterial place with no location?
I don’t think the formless realms are physical in anyway at all.
Their lifespan surpasses many universe cycles. For Maha Brahma of the form realms, there’s 1 universe cycle of lifespan, so I am here speculating that the higher jhana form brahma realms are of higher level nested multiverses, that’s why their lifespan can be longer than 1 universe cycle.
So if the form realm beings already needs some sort of physical basis to fit in their limited lifespan, the formless realm beings are purely mental beings, without any form, thus cannot have any physical sense bases to interact with the rest of the 27 planes of existence beings. Sutta support: Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta: Setting in Motion the Wheel of Truth notice that the passing of the message from gods to higher level stops at the highest level of the pure abodes. They cannot pass on to those without sense bases (the 4 formless realms) to perceive the message.
Mental states as in current meditative mind for those who attained them, yes, but also, after death, they get reborn into purely mental states, no physical body at all to accompany that. Not even mind made bodies.
To identify them to say even infinite space is problematic as space is physical.
