Time is probably in the sense of the experience of time.
Speech as we know it is likely not used but more of telepathic transfer of ideas, concepts and understanding.
Wow Ven, that’s amazing, an actual physics analysis! So it looks like the Goldilocks idea doesn’t work, at least as currently postulated. Still one of the reasons it attracted me was that it was testable: even if we don’t know the mechanism we can still (in theory) test it. And your analysis shows that it is amenable to treatment in physical terms.
Well, I guess I’ll let it percolate, perhaps something else will come!
Don’t give up! I think it’s an area that rewards serious attention, and you are one of the few people with the skills. I think it’s only reasonable to expect that not everything will fit neatly into a physics model, what’s remarkable is how many things do.
Yes, I would not assume that the Sutta accounts are going to be 100% consistent. I mean, on the whole the cosmology is pretty coherent and rational, but still.
What struck me in this case was the convergence of several features, each of which seemed to relate directly to relativity.
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Lots of interesting comments here. I could make a general comment that observing time-dilation (one person getting older slower) from special relativity (i.e. motion) requires that person to have gone through accelerations, e.g. accelerate to travel to another star, accelerate to turn around, accelerate to slow down on return. Otherwise the two people will never be back in the same place, where they can meaningfully compare their ages.
However, the acceleration could be constant, such a spacecraft in orbit around the earth (or a particle being accelerated in a circle in a particle accelerator). In that case, the special-relativity effect is that the clocks on the spacecraft will appear to run slower, which is readily observable with modern atomic clocks and radio communication.
For general relativity effects (gravity) the difference is also observable by sending messages back and forth. This has practical effects - the clocks in GPS satellites run faster than clocks on earth. There is some cancellation between the effect of the orbital motion described in the previous paragraph, and the effect of gravity, but for the GPS satellites the gravity effect wins because they are relatively high and slow.
The overall effect is that the orbiting clocks on the GPS satellites will run faster.
The total fractional effect is about +4.5 × 10^-10 (0.00000000045).
This doesn’t sound like much but it’s about 40,000 ns (nanoseconds) per day, and since light travels 30 cm in one ns, this correction is critical to GPS navigation, otherwise there would be a drift equivalent to a distance error of 12km per day…
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This just in:
Castelvecchi, D., ‘How light is a neutrino? The answer is closer than ever’, Nature, 14 February 2022,
(accessed 14 February 2022).
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The image of the “4 Great Kings sweating to visit our world every 2-3 minutes” comes to mind. (based on AN 3.37) 
It’s been a great read so far, can’t wait to read the rest of this thread. 
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This is interesting Bhante @sujato.
There was a philosopher who made the observation that the reality we experience depends on our rate of perception. For example, if we speed up the rate of our perception, a fly’s wings would slow down and eventually stop.
Increasing the rate of perception even more would result in us ceasing to see matter and seeing waves (light) instead.
I’ve wondered whether this leads to the possibility that the deva realm is right here, but time shifted.
Mindfulness and jhana development would presumably allow us to be faster in our perception, hence the relationship between jhana and accessing the devas realms.
Possible, but requiring confirmation through science or jhana though I suspect science won’t get there in our lifetime …
Best wishes Bhante.
Right. Hmm. This is even more speculative, but I wonder if the rate of perception is tied to the speed of light in some fundamental way?
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Bhante, I think you may be correct. I’m not a physicist, but I believe Einstein’s theory of relativity has implications for the perception of time (when you travel closer to the speed of light, subjective time slows down?).
Just googling the phrase ‘rate of perception is tied to the speed of light, relativity’ brings up some interesting links, but you’re best to have someone else explain them to you!
This is something I’ve noticed living in the forest for a while now: bigger creatures (humans, deer, etc) have slower reaction times than smaller animals (monkeys, squirrels, etc) and the insects generally have the fastest reaction times of all. I always assumed it just takes a longer time for electrical signals to make their way through larger brains. There’s also a bit of a correlation with lifespan too, as smaller creatures tend to have shorter lifespans, while whales are slow and long-lived in addition to large.
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I have been making up a reply to this thread for a few days now and it became unmanageably long so I will stick to a more condensed version (yes, what follows is a condensed version!! 
) and bring in a different perspective; starting from where we are instead of including further unknowns in what is already a speculation. This is definitely a biased point of view based on my own research trajectory, which started off with gravitational waves (big) then quantum fields and Bose-Einstein condensates (small) and eventually settled onto the scale of tangible things, a field called soft matter physics (middle).
For several curious features mentioned in the suttas, my first instinct also was to invoke relativity, extra dimensions, dark matter etc. but then I started to think more along the lines of how could such things be plausible using only the ideas we know so far (with reasonable certainty) with possibly a moderate extension, without invoking unknown conjectured entities like dark matter, dark energy, parallel universes etc. I am only speculating about beings somewhat advanced than humans, not all the types mentioned in DN27 (unified in body and/or unified in perception etc.)
If we look at non-living and living entities on earth, they fall on a spectrum of a mix of matter and electromagentic (EM) energy that moves around. The proportion of each in the composition is crucial. Rocks for example are mostly all matter and very little mobile EM fields or energy. Plants have minimal EM component and mostly are solids, fluids, and gas exchangers. Animals and humans have a more refined composition with a matter based “plumbing” system with an EM energy component for sensory apparatus. It appears to me that this ratio of matter to EM components could decide all sorts of things like longevity, various powers and abilities, and so forth (I just read the observation by @Khemarato.bhikkhu - the reasons for that is metabolic, biological. Tardigrades can stay in stasis in vaccum indefinitely, apparently, and come back to life).
The biggest problem with matter is that it has inertia; it takes force to move it around and keep it moving. It takes a lot more force or energy to pump blood constantly than to keep a current flowing. So, any being with predominantly EM constituents and minimal matter would be “finer”, easier to maintain, and longer lasting.
A good candidate for such a spatially confined and organized entity could be one made up of cold plasma (ionized gas) and EM signaling network like we have or better, with minimal matter component. Right now, we confine cold plasma in glass casing (fluorescent lights) but all it needs is a stronger EM field around it. The same with sensory EM signals; we have a network of nerves (flexible matter tubes) but it only needs some kind of conduit to support solitary traveling waves (solitons). These are waves that retain their shape over long distances and don’t disperse like normal light.
A few salient points:
- For the time scale difference (DN23): There doesn’t have to be large scale relativistic motion of the whole system. The time clock of even an individual life form made up predominantly of EM fields would be much much slower because almost everything inside of them is moving at the speed of light.
- It also sort of accounts for rarity of their visits— every time such a being has to appear and stabilize itself in high gravity and dense atmosphere, a lot of energy and adjustments are needed and very importantly like in Hatthaka’s case, temporarily acquire more matter and change the matter to EM ratio. This has not only energy costs but it costs them in terms of life-span. Their clocks will run much faster for the duration of the visit.
- An additional point not mentioned in OP is about devas lighting up the sky or a forest when they appear. That can happen for two reasons— one is because they are made of predominantly EM fields (light) and hence are radiant and the other is when charged particles traveling close to speed of light are forced to travel through a matter medium, they emit Cherenkov radiation. It is like a sonic boom for sound. This is actually seen as a blue glow around nuclear reactors in water.
An even better candidate is an entity made up of Bose-Einstein condensate or a superfluid and superconducting components for EM transmissions. Such a being, once “switched on” or alive would function for thousands of years without any decay.
It would also remain in a coherent state (like a laser that doesn’t disperse like normal light) and maintain its shape. In this state of matter, a lot of particles can be collapsed into a low energy state and they experience no resistance to motion.
About the realms and kamma: From DN27 (which has a lot of interesting physics parallels including conversion of light energy into matter) I inferred that there were no heavenly or separate realms in the beginning. The realms seem to appear when there are sufficient number of beings with similar kamma. It could be the collective kamma of beings that brings and keeps these realms in existence.
About location: There doesn’t have to be a separate location, although that is the most likely scenario, but a predominantly EM being could be right next to us and we would not be able to detect them or mistake them as arising from some banal source.
A noteworthy point here is that both Indian and Chinese medicine systems have posited a network of pure energy channels in the body mirroring the network of nerves but distinct in nature. No such energy flow structure has ever been observed scientifically so it is possible that we do not have fine enough instruments to detect that type of energy or it could be a new phase of matter or energy.
Finally, let us not forget the greatest mystery of all the imbalance of matter and antimatter. There should be equal amount of them but there is practically no antimatter around and it is all matter on our side of the observable universe (here, the neutrinos may hold the key). Maybe the devas gobbled it all up!
This speculation is a lot of fun and can be quite distracting and time consuming if pursued without restraint, which is why I try not to do it too often 
Good analysis using normal scale science! I didn’t think it very seriously. It could fit into the advanced aliens or advanced intelligence (AI) category then for what could devas be.
It would be interesting if we can have all the EM wave readers as the cameras on everyone’s phone, then people can help record and scan the whole earth to search for these beings. Ghost or gods hunting.
It would make it more likely if there are aliens who maintain the low temperature needed. As it is, I dunno if there’s anything natural out there that can be cooler than the cosmic background microwave radiation (3K), which is too hot for BEC.
Is my elaboration here correct? Say devas A and B are reborn in the 4 great king deva realm at the same time. They are supposed to die together, all else being equal, due to the same lifespan. We posit the internal subjective lifespan and the external time lifespan as separate time keeping device. Say their internal time should be 500 celestial year lifespan. Translate to human measurement of measuring external lifespan, we see a 50*360 times * the 500 celestial lifespan = 9 million human years.
Deva B likes to visit humans and manifest themselves to humans, he totalled one whole year of his lifespan out of 500 to visit humans. He returns to deva A who never visited humans and compare the time they would die. B dies first, then A. Deva A checks and confirms that he dies 17999 human years after B dies, which to him, is the subjective time of just under 1 year.
Deva A reflects that deva B claimed to have spend 1 year of his subjective time in human realm, but A only sees B gone for a total of about half an hour from the deva realm. So comparing only the subjective lifespan, going to human realm for half an hour, makes the deva dies about 1 year earlier. Although it’s fair in the sense of same subjective time.
A lot of assumptions about lifespan, time translation between deva and human realm here.
Indeed! I wasn’t trying to be precise. It was just based vaguely on the fact that a photon does not have time. When we say we observed light from a galaxy far far away that it is some 5 billion years old light, no time has passed for the photon. Light does not experience time. Time as we know and perceive exists because of relative motion of matter. If the universe only had light in it, there would be no need for time, in fact there would be no time.
that’s a lovely observation @Khemarato.bhikkhu - it reminds me of ajahn chah’s words - “a tree in the forest …”
given that our sense of self is represented neurally (i.e., the homunculus), i wonder what the effect of practicing the arupa jhanas (in particular infinite space) would be on our brain and our sense of time. does the practice of compassion, leading to infinite space, alter our sense of time?
seems like it would have to do something to our perception, and the buddha’s words on the connection between the brahmaviharas and the deva realms seem to echo some earlier aspects of this thread.
this is really quite inspiring for practice - though possibly a bit like nanda’s motivation to practice …
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Those deities, though they number ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, or sixty, can stand on the point of a needle without bumping up against each other.
AN 2.36
I read this sutta last night before sleeping and I got so confused. And the Buddha explains that they can do this because they developed their minds in this world, not in their world. I looked it up in different languages and they all seem to imply that they are standing on a space that is as large as the point of a needle. I don’t know what any of this means. 
How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? - Wikipedia
Did the ancient Christians somehow get the idea from our suttas? Or just some coincidence? Haha.
In the Eye of a Needle | Miniature Museum (theminitimemachine.org)
Anyway, let’s do some physics.
Pin Head Comparison & Scale Of Nature (palomar.edu)
It seems that the minifigures are on the order of magnitude of 100 micrometers.
Bacteria - Size, Shape and Arrangement (microscopemaster.com)
The largest bacteria seems like 2 micrometres. So if devas are single-celled beings, then they can very nicely fit onto the point of a needle even. As speculated here. Is Buddhism consistent with Science? - #8 by NgXinZhao
I still doubt this possibility. It seems to casual to suggest that devas are killed when we use hand sanitiser.
Or the other possibility mentioned above is that devas are neutrino beings, which has no issue resizing themselves due to not being subjected to electromagnetic laws.
Thank you Bhante this is very enjoyable! Maybe they could just be extremely thin. Do they have any dieting advice?
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Very interesting refection Bhante, but I wouldn’t call NASA, just in case they take it up. Given the Climate report we don’t have much time left to reverse the current trend. 
Just adding some other suttas:
-
In DN 18 King Bimbisara reborn as a yakkha named Janavasabha who visited the Buddha when he was on the way delivering duty ordered by Vessavaṇa, a king of gods of Catummaharajika, to do some business in the presence of another king of gods named Virūḷhaka.
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In MN 143 after listening Sariputta’s discourse on his deathbed, Anathapindika died and reborn as a Tusita god then visited the Buddha.
It seems that in these suttas, the time difference between human world and heavenly realms because of time dilation or other reason doesn’t apply.
I agree, it doesn’t seem 100% consistent, and we probably shouldn’t assume that this is anything more than storytelling. What interested me was that the very idea was present at all.
That’s a really intriguing idea. It fits really well with the idea that what we think of as “supernatural” is just an extension of the natural in ways that we are not yet fully aware of.
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