what was outside my door?

[Anonymous]

This morning I woke up, sent my usual morning greeting SMS to my honey and looked to the front.

I saw, from that space under the door, an unusual light, with the shadow of some people walking away from the other side of my door.

No one was awake yet. If you wondered if I was wide awake at that time, I can say, ”yes”. I slept early last nite, 9.30, woke up 6.15, sent my honey an SMS before I looked at the direction of the door. That’s my daily morning schedule.

I thought the landlady woke up, or her daughter let the dog out. But it’s confirmed that this morning no one woke yet even when I set out for work at 8am, the dog and all family members still sleeping as it was raining outside and the daughter does not work on fridays.

Tell me, what did I see?

[Anonymous]

hmm penunggu rumah kot? 😈

[Anonymous]

harap bukan lar…

then my bathroom light failed me. i did not do my morning chant.

and throughout the afternoon, i hear something running across the ceiling atop of me. am staying in a double-storey terrace, can’t be anyone upstairs. and it seemed heavier than a cat, and seemed to be dragging things with it as it ran.

gee, i must not miss my morning chants. they sure like to disturb my peace. but at night i just slept, wanted to have a night chant, but was too tired. this morning i did.

[Anonymous]

Hi Ajeyya, do you always have encounter with the paranormal?

[Anonymous]

it depends on what you will term as paranormal, because to me it becomes a very normal thing. sometimes i can ignore, but sometimes no. weighing the importance of their ‘visits’, i will see what i need to do.

oh well, there are many stories i’ve put in my own site as well, perhaps you’ve seen them before. previously i had also told of some stories in another paranormal site, but doesn’t matter. the really good ones i reserve for API. you’ll see more soon. 😀

[Anonymous]

@Ajeyya wrote:

it depends on what you will term as paranormal, because to me it becomes a very normal thing. sometimes i can ignore, but sometimes no. weighing the importance of their ‘visits’, i will see what i need to do.

Off topic a little. Just to confirm that you are the Angelina that I knew a few months ago, right?

Back to topic, while this is a very normal thing to you, it has never happened to me till today. Although I have been to cemeteries and spooky places and working alone back in my army days, still there are no encounters with “them”.

But curious to know why “they” want to get near you?

[Anonymous]

I guess its the attention. Since they know u can sense or see them, they’ll probably hang around u alot more. Thats what i deduce anyway.

[Anonymous]

Yes, seetoh, you knew me many months ago. and i recognised you the moment you stepped in here. welcome to API.

well, talk about fears, i had not felt any fear for them ever since i understood that they meant no harm. we are only afraid of what we don’t understand and don’t know, Lucifer. 🙂

about why they seemed to be attracted to me. seetoh, perhaps there need to be an understanding, one being doesn’t get attracted to another being (even humans) if there is no kammic force at play.

these beings that we cannot see with the naked eye are selective in the sense that they do come near if we possess the qualities that are useful to them. just like human beings. though being ‘useful’ has many reasons.

when i was young, i was devoted to the Avalokitesvara (Guan Yin) and able to learn the complicating sanskrit chants very quickly. when i got older, i learn the chant of the Ksitigarba (Di Zang Wang).

you can say that the unseen beings are always near me, but it does not necessarily means ‘ghost’.

many times, these unseen beings gives me a knowing feeling, which some may term it simply as sixth-sense. by stopping me or disrupting my plans, they actually help me.

for example, the burglary incident sometime ago. my initial plans were to get home ASAP as i had to prepare for an event in my company that night with a huge performance by a team of singaporean models. i had to feed my puppy before that. somehow, i was driven by an intense desire to stop by at the flower shop instead, to get flowers for the altar as the next day was an uposatha day. delayed i was, really, but as i returned home, it was just right immediately after the time when the burglars fled from the backdoor of my home. if i had reached home earlier, i would have met them and perhaps today you will not see me kicking and alive.

another time was the thought of not wanting to drive, and i sat at the passanger seat instead. my colleague drove my car and the car met an accident, and flipped to sleep on its side, the driver’s side. i was the only one unharmed at all, because i was at the passanger side and the safety belt had me hanging in mid-air without a single scratch on my fragile body. usually i would be driving but that day i just refused to, don’t ask me why. sixth sense? perhaps. but attribution to that intense desire to NOT drive.

then there was my desire to learn meditation. i was in search of a meditation master but never had much luck at all. but the incident that brought me to my master was a strange one, in a meditation centre in penang. he had his back turned towards me, and i had not called out at all. but he suddenly turned back and walked towards me, as i walked towards him too. later on he told me that he turned back because he heard me calling him, even though i had my lips sealed and not uttered a single word, given the circumstances that the meditation centre is a quiet place. no one calls out to another loudly there at all, definitely not me either. strange?

no, not all unseen beings are here to harm us. not all unseen beings must be ghosts. there are so many others around us, except that no one had ever caught any. not just me alone, seetoh, but there are so many others who experience the same.

another monk told me that it is fortunate that i get visited by these beings, because it means that i have good merits and they come to share merits with me. there is nothing to fear about.

many other incidences points to the same, that is they do come near and protects me sometimes. some merely wanted merit sharing. i have many other incidences where they just wanted to listen to the chanting of the suttas and they gather around me in my office to do that. no joke, and no lies either.

so it is not that they are attracted to me as in me personally.

[Anonymous]

@Ajeyya wrote:

when i was young, i was devoted to the Avalokitesvara (Guan Yin) and able to learn the complicating sanskrit chants very quickly. when i got older, i learn the chant of the Ksitigarba (Di Zang Wang).

you can say that the unseen beings are always near me, but it does not necessarily means ‘ghost’.

I thought you were saying the spirits always come to disturb you.

I had this kind of feeling before. It was quite wonderful and I felt safe. I never see them before, but they do give a sense of security. Now I do not have this feeling anymore, however whenever I’m going to meet an accident, unbelievable things just happened. It’s just too difficult for me to accept it’s just a mere coincident. I remembered telling you how I escaped death during my military training in Australia.

@JuggerNaut wrote:

I guess its the attention. Since they know u can sense or see them, they’ll probably hang around u alot more. Thats what i deduce anyway.

That’s a cute deduction.

If we can sense them, I wonder do they “switch on” themselves to let us sense them?

[Anonymous]

I guess “switch on�, no. But get back to that magnetic energy field thing, and you may understand why. Just as dogs can hear the sound from dog whistle. Remember that paranormal investigators record a drop in temperature, detect movements etc. as they make investigations on the unseen. Similarly, these are all energy forces.

The physical body of human beings are made of the elements of water, air, fire and earth, according to the Abhidhamma metaphysics. We are also generally formed of two main things: mind and matter.

Take a simple example. Let’s talk about love. When we have loving feelings for someone, it is very likely that the other person feels it too. This is when the mind sends a signal in a way to cause vibrations, which we call as waves, to the other party. Similarly if a person is jealous, or hates us, we feel their vibe as well. All these are due to the vibrations sent by the body.

Not only are humans capable of such interaction, those of the animal kingdoms do too. In fact, let’s talk about human-animal interaction.

Pet lovers will tell you how much in-tune they are with their pets. And I’m not just talking about dogs and cats, in fact I had good records about fishes as well. For example the Japanese carp that my mom’s boss used to have. And even my tortoises many, many years back (now gone and lost forever… :lol:)

Call it vibrations or whatever, but scientists had always agreed that every atom vibrates, not staying stagnant for a single moment. Every moment, the molecules vibrate, even when they take the form of a solid substance that we are able to hold. Simply because the element of fire (heat) is always there.

I am not going to go too much into this explanation other than the examples given, but basically it makes no difference whether we are communicating with beings of our same species or with another species. Similarly, whether we are able to see the beings with our naked eye or not.

The interconnection of the kammic forces that brings two beings together, in proximity in either way of communication through any media will see the interaction between the two. There are many ways to communicate, and if in the instance of contact, friendship, loving-kindness and compassion is felt, peace is the result of this communication. If hostility, hatred and anger is the vibration, you can be sure of meeting with those who are of similar characteristics.

In one particular relationship, I had tried to be very peaceful with the other. However, he is so used to making it a must that he gets his say in everything that it comes to the extend that each time the love I vibrated to him was crushed by his harsh attitude. And lately, when I called him due to some matters in which some people were trying to harm him, without listening carefully yet at all, he just scolded me, “Can you stop disturbing me?� (Mind you, I’ve not spoken to him for a long, long time.) And so, given such vibrations from him, seeing his annoyance and I do not wish to provoke further displeasure in him, my only solution is to avoid him like plague. I get the feeling that he will be ringing me up soon (his mom was looking for him and I had given her his number, he’s overseas and didn’t want even his mom to find him). But I make the resolution not to answer anymore of his calls, until perhaps when he returns from overseas and I will return him all the things he left for my safekeeping, just to end it all.

On the other hand, when I vibrate my feelings and thoughts of love to my little nephew, my landlady’s grand daughter, my mom and my honey, they are receptive towards it. They love me in return. The vibration goes on in there, and this makes the relationship happy, peaceful and fun.

Back to communications with those unseen, the same theory applies. The practicality lies in what kind of vibrations we release. If we are afraid, we may emit some hostile feelings towards them, which will be detrimental and they may, in turn, also feel fearsome towards us as they receive the ‘hostility’. This is just simple logic.

Someone did offer to ‘teach’ me how to communicate with those things that are hanging around me, but I do suppose we are quite comfortable with the way we are communicating now. I acknowledge that they are there, they know that I am harmless to them, and this strikes a harmonious relationship, not burdening each other in anyway at all.

Peaceful, my friends, is this relationship which is applicable to both humans and non-humans alike. As it goes, mind is the fore-runner of all states, good and evil. If the mind is inclined towards the good, good it will be. If it is inclined towards the bad, evil will be the result.

[Anonymous]

I’m particularly interested in the working principle of the mind. However mind itself is very general. Just like the body is general and we can break it down into many systems like nervous system, digestive system, skeletal system and so on.

I think 6th sense could be part of the mind. Now, if we talk about sensing the unseen beings, do we sense them with our body or our mind or both? Needless to say, sensing with the body’s 5 senses is easily understood. However, sensing with the mind is difficult to understand. First of all, what are the components of mind? What is the structure of the mind? What are the systems in the mind that allow us to sense? Basically, what I’m trying to do is to develope the graphical representation of the components of the mind.

Since you practise meditation, then I think you might be able to provide me with some useful info.

[Anonymous]

@seetoh wrote:

I’m particularly interested in the working principle of the mind. However mind itself is very general. Just like the body is general and we can break it down into many systems like nervous system, digestive system, skeletal system and so on.

I think 6th sense could be part of the mind. Now, if we talk about sensing the unseen beings, do we sense them with our body or our mind or both? Needless to say, sensing with the body’s 5 senses is easily understood. However, sensing with the mind is difficult to understand. First of all, what are the components of mind? What is the structure of the mind? What are the systems in the mind that allow us to sense? Basically, what I’m trying to do is to develope the graphical representation of the components of the mind.

Since you practise meditation, then I think you might be able to provide me with some useful info.

In Abhidhamma terms, there are 6 sense bases: eye, ear, nose, tongue, body (touch) and mind. Yes, mind is one of the senses.

When one does the Vipassana meditation, the method is simply to observe what goes on in the body. First the observation of the rising and falling of the abdomen as you breathe in and out. The mind directs towards any other more significant conditions of the body, such as the numbness of the leg, or the itch at the back of the body, but refrains from giving any reaction to these sensations. For example, the natural 1st reaction towards numbness of the leg is to move and for itch, to scratch.

Refraining from this, there comes the realisation of suffering, impermanence and non-self. The itch comes uninvited, it is non-self; the itch that comes uninvited is suffering as you never wanted it to itch at all; the itch that comes destroys the peace you had with the body which shows that the peaceful condition is impermanent. And later on, one will notice that the itch changes characteristics as the concentration gets stronger, it feels just like there is a poking sensation, nothing more than that. Eventually it subsides. So the suffering is also impermanent, it is non-self that it goes away on its own and as we crave for it to go away, we suffer mental anguish.

Later on, another realisation that comes is this: that there are just two: mind and matter (body – made of the elements). As elements are open to the vibrations that comes, the physical side is easily understood. It is the mind that always marvels.

The mind is known along with the body because when you feel the itch, the body is the one that faces the itchy condition, and it is the mind that knows this as an itch. Mind is the one with the knowledge. And as a whole person, the six sense-bases are binded together in this way. The body that feels and the knowing mind.

In the Jayamangala Sutta, one of the Chief Disciples of the Buddha, Mogallana subsided the fierce naga king through “controlled mind”. The Elder was able to control his mind and fix himself in the 4th Jhana immediately so that the fire emitted by the naga king could not harm him. It is stated that, besides the Buddha, Mogallana was the only one who is able to fix himself into the 4th Jhana immediately this way. In another instance, as the Buddha performed the “Twin Miracles”, emitting rays of blue and red from His body to subside the quarrels between two clans from two sides of the river, He was also practicing meditation, in this case, the fire and water kasina meditation at the same time. To us whose concentration is not strong enough, it may seem like the rays emit both at the same time, simultaneously. But in reality, it is known that there can only be one thought moment at one time, and each thought moment is as fast as 10,000 million thought moments within a short second (correct me if i’m wrong, i don’t really bother much about numerical details.)

In modern times we see the use of this optical illusion theory in movie making. Each second has 24 frames in movies, and yet we see the show as a continuous movement. And so, due to our untrained mind, we still ‘see’ in our mind’s eye the previous image and so the delusion of a continuous movement is formed.

Back to the topic. Since there are actually 6 sense bases, and all these sense bases work together, it is no surprise that paranormal activities such as the existence of a being is sometimes ‘felt’ by the feelings of ‘cold’, ‘raised hair at the back of the neck’ and all kinds of sensations. Yet, it is the body that feels and the mind that knows.

A meditator quietens down his senses, in which he sees each moment as the present. Surely you cannot anticipate the rising of the stomach before it happens: the untrained mind will imagine and make assumptions but when it happens the feeling is different from the imagined condition. Each rising and falling of the abdomen is also different, not identical.

Being at the present moment, the consciousness is heightened, senses are sharp. This, being the reason, may make meditators more sensitive towards existences, whether seen or unseen. However, as meditators already understood, there is nothing to fear or be awe about. Some prefer not to say, but there are also many who, even though meditators they are, may not experience these things. As said, the association of beings is due to kammic relations, if they do not have such kamma that links them to the unseen, then they may not be associated in anyway at all.

This may be a lengthy explanation, but I try to be as brief as possible. Simply because the Abhidhamma is a very difficult subject to understand and my Buddhist master had also commented that it is difficult to teach Abhidhamma if the person does not practice meditation. And at that point we were only going into the Paticcasamupada Sutta (Relations of Cause and Effect).

[Anonymous]

That’s indeed a lengthy one. However I would like to catch on some points for some discussions.

@Ajeyya wrote:

The mind is known along with the body because when you feel the itch, the body is the one that faces the itchy condition, and it is the mind that knows this as an itch. Mind is the one with the knowledge. And as a whole person, the six sense-bases are binded together in this way. The body that feels and the knowing mind.

You said mind is the one with knowledge. In your view, how would you describe the interaction between the brain and the mind.

I’m asking because when a baby is born, the brain is fresh just like a newly formatted hardisk. But not sure if the mind is fresh or an old one. The baby then sees things, hears sound and eventually learn things. And the fact that the bio mechanism inside the brain is actually moving and working. From this point, is the brain thinking or the mind thinking? If the mind is involved, how does the brain transmit info to the mind?

[Anonymous]

😆 Forum Critic, I always enjoy your words of wisdom. 😆

anyway, back to discussion. brain as we see is just the physical thing that embodies the mind.

a newborn baby, if he/she could speak, you will know that his/her mind is not a fresh one. reincarnation begins at the moment of conception, in which this new life begins by living in the womb. in it, the tiny physical manifestation already feels, hears and knows.

it knows that it is in the womb, dark and more likely than not, afraid. when the baby gets delivered, it experience the pain of being pushed out of the mother’s body, through the limited passageway, feeling the pain of birth just as much as the mother. in the Great Chronicles of The Buddha, the Arahants had memories of their painful birth, and as the Buddha was born, he was the only one who did not suffer. His birth was an easy one, as His mother, the queen, gave birth while standing. Unlike the birth of other children, He was clean, and without those mucous and blood. the story is lengthy there, but just a note toi mention is that He was born without any pain, the only being who experience this so. And He was fully aware of being born.

a baby does not take on this new life immediately. there are memories of the past and if the child was from the hungry ghost realm, still able to communicate with those of the other world. sometimes the child smiles, sometimes cry. the chinese superstitious believe is that there’s this grandma who was teaching the kid to study and if the kid smile means he was doing well and that grandma is praising him, and if the kid cries, then means he’s being punished by that grandma.

it takes sometime for the child to eventually cut off from this previous birth and pay attention to the present one. there is a need to remember that there is one stream of consciousness (not any soul or being) that gets reincarnated into a new body, and so there was a continuity of the kammic force which brought the being into a new birth. even in our present life, we may not remember our childhood after a long lapse of time, but we are still the ‘person’ that we were born as. today i am still angelina, if you know me 15 years ago i was still angelina and if i am still alive for the next 30 years, you will still know me as angelina, just as i will know you as seetoh.

but the me 15 years ago is different from the me in the present and definitely different me in the future. the kammic forces flow and change based on what i do in the present. and this applies to us whatever age we may be.

babies carry certain characteristics. some may attribute it to inheritance, such as being patient attributed to the parents or something. however, if it is true that these characteristics are solely inherited by parents, then we should all look exactly like our parents, carried by our parents’ genes and whatever else physically or physiologically inherited. however, we do see some hot-tempered parents having children who are as patient as saints, or the other way is also possible. simply because the kammic force which is brought into this new life is one of the deciding factors of the person’s behavioral patterns. and this is just an example, i will not go into the physical aspects of kammic consequence at this point.

and so, brain is just the physical house of the mind, the mind knows and we call it sometimes intrinsic knowledge or even sixth sense as already discussed earlier. the brain is the one that housed the veins and neurons etc for signals to be transmitted around the body, sensing the body’s needs and letting the mind know about it.

[Author]

Posts

[Anonymous]

This morning I woke up, sent my usual morning greeting SMS to my honey and looked to the front.

I saw, from that space under the door, an unusual light, with the shadow of some people walking away from the other side of my door.

No one was awake yet. If you wondered if I was wide awake at that time, I can say, ”yes”. I slept early last nite, 9.30, woke up 6.15, sent my honey an SMS before I looked at the direction of the door. That’s my daily morning schedule.

I thought the landlady woke up, or her daughter let the dog out. But it’s confirmed that this morning no one woke yet even when I set out for work at 8am, the dog and all family members still sleeping as it was raining outside and the daughter does not work on fridays.

Tell me, what did I see?

[Anonymous]

hmm penunggu rumah kot? 😈

[Anonymous]

harap bukan lar…

then my bathroom light failed me. i did not do my morning chant.

and throughout the afternoon, i hear something running across the ceiling atop of me. am staying in a double-storey terrace, can’t be anyone upstairs. and it seemed heavier than a cat, and seemed to be dragging things with it as it ran.

gee, i must not miss my morning chants. they sure like to disturb my peace. but at night i just slept, wanted to have a night chant, but was too tired. this morning i did.

[Anonymous]

Hi Ajeyya, do you always have encounter with the paranormal?

[Anonymous]

it depends on what you will term as paranormal, because to me it becomes a very normal thing. sometimes i can ignore, but sometimes no. weighing the importance of their ‘visits’, i will see what i need to do.

oh well, there are many stories i’ve put in my own site as well, perhaps you’ve seen them before. previously i had also told of some stories in another paranormal site, but doesn’t matter. the really good ones i reserve for API. you’ll see more soon. 😀

[Anonymous]

@Ajeyya wrote:

it depends on what you will term as paranormal, because to me it becomes a very normal thing. sometimes i can ignore, but sometimes no. weighing the importance of their ‘visits’, i will see what i need to do.

Off topic a little. Just to confirm that you are the Angelina that I knew a few months ago, right?

Back to topic, while this is a very normal thing to you, it has never happened to me till today. Although I have been to cemeteries and spooky places and working alone back in my army days, still there are no encounters with “them”.

But curious to know why “they” want to get near you?

[Anonymous]

I guess its the attention. Since they know u can sense or see them, they’ll probably hang around u alot more. Thats what i deduce anyway.

[Anonymous]

Yes, seetoh, you knew me many months ago. and i recognised you the moment you stepped in here. welcome to API.

well, talk about fears, i had not felt any fear for them ever since i understood that they meant no harm. we are only afraid of what we don’t understand and don’t know, Lucifer. 🙂

about why they seemed to be attracted to me. seetoh, perhaps there need to be an understanding, one being doesn’t get attracted to another being (even humans) if there is no kammic force at play.

these beings that we cannot see with the naked eye are selective in the sense that they do come near if we possess the qualities that are useful to them. just like human beings. though being ‘useful’ has many reasons.

when i was young, i was devoted to the Avalokitesvara (Guan Yin) and able to learn the complicating sanskrit chants very quickly. when i got older, i learn the chant of the Ksitigarba (Di Zang Wang).

you can say that the unseen beings are always near me, but it does not necessarily means ‘ghost’.

many times, these unseen beings gives me a knowing feeling, which some may term it simply as sixth-sense. by stopping me or disrupting my plans, they actually help me.

for example, the burglary incident sometime ago. my initial plans were to get home ASAP as i had to prepare for an event in my company that night with a huge performance by a team of singaporean models. i had to feed my puppy before that. somehow, i was driven by an intense desire to stop by at the flower shop instead, to get flowers for the altar as the next day was an uposatha day. delayed i was, really, but as i returned home, it was just right immediately after the time when the burglars fled from the backdoor of my home. if i had reached home earlier, i would have met them and perhaps today you will not see me kicking and alive.

another time was the thought of not wanting to drive, and i sat at the passanger seat instead. my colleague drove my car and the car met an accident, and flipped to sleep on its side, the driver’s side. i was the only one unharmed at all, because i was at the passanger side and the safety belt had me hanging in mid-air without a single scratch on my fragile body. usually i would be driving but that day i just refused to, don’t ask me why. sixth sense? perhaps. but attribution to that intense desire to NOT drive.

then there was my desire to learn meditation. i was in search of a meditation master but never had much luck at all. but the incident that brought me to my master was a strange one, in a meditation centre in penang. he had his back turned towards me, and i had not called out at all. but he suddenly turned back and walked towards me, as i walked towards him too. later on he told me that he turned back because he heard me calling him, even though i had my lips sealed and not uttered a single word, given the circumstances that the meditation centre is a quiet place. no one calls out to another loudly there at all, definitely not me either. strange?

no, not all unseen beings are here to harm us. not all unseen beings must be ghosts. there are so many others around us, except that no one had ever caught any. not just me alone, seetoh, but there are so many others who experience the same.

another monk told me that it is fortunate that i get visited by these beings, because it means that i have good merits and they come to share merits with me. there is nothing to fear about.

many other incidences points to the same, that is they do come near and protects me sometimes. some merely wanted merit sharing. i have many other incidences where they just wanted to listen to the chanting of the suttas and they gather around me in my office to do that. no joke, and no lies either.

so it is not that they are attracted to me as in me personally.

[Anonymous]

@Ajeyya wrote:

when i was young, i was devoted to the Avalokitesvara (Guan Yin) and able to learn the complicating sanskrit chants very quickly. when i got older, i learn the chant of the Ksitigarba (Di Zang Wang).

you can say that the unseen beings are always near me, but it does not necessarily means ‘ghost’.

I thought you were saying the spirits always come to disturb you.

I had this kind of feeling before. It was quite wonderful and I felt safe. I never see them before, but they do give a sense of security. Now I do not have this feeling anymore, however whenever I’m going to meet an accident, unbelievable things just happened. It’s just too difficult for me to accept it’s just a mere coincident. I remembered telling you how I escaped death during my military training in Australia.

@JuggerNaut wrote:

I guess its the attention. Since they know u can sense or see them, they’ll probably hang around u alot more. Thats what i deduce anyway.

That’s a cute deduction.

If we can sense them, I wonder do they “switch on” themselves to let us sense them?

[Anonymous]

I guess “switch on�, no. But get back to that magnetic energy field thing, and you may understand why. Just as dogs can hear the sound from dog whistle. Remember that paranormal investigators record a drop in temperature, detect movements etc. as they make investigations on the unseen. Similarly, these are all energy forces.

The physical body of human beings are made of the elements of water, air, fire and earth, according to the Abhidhamma metaphysics. We are also generally formed of two main things: mind and matter.

Take a simple example. Let’s talk about love. When we have loving feelings for someone, it is very likely that the other person feels it too. This is when the mind sends a signal in a way to cause vibrations, which we call as waves, to the other party. Similarly if a person is jealous, or hates us, we feel their vibe as well. All these are due to the vibrations sent by the body.

Not only are humans capable of such interaction, those of the animal kingdoms do too. In fact, let’s talk about human-animal interaction.

Pet lovers will tell you how much in-tune they are with their pets. And I’m not just talking about dogs and cats, in fact I had good records about fishes as well. For example the Japanese carp that my mom’s boss used to have. And even my tortoises many, many years back (now gone and lost forever… :lol:)

Call it vibrations or whatever, but scientists had always agreed that every atom vibrates, not staying stagnant for a single moment. Every moment, the molecules vibrate, even when they take the form of a solid substance that we are able to hold. Simply because the element of fire (heat) is always there.

I am not going to go too much into this explanation other than the examples given, but basically it makes no difference whether we are communicating with beings of our same species or with another species. Similarly, whether we are able to see the beings with our naked eye or not.

The interconnection of the kammic forces that brings two beings together, in proximity in either way of communication through any media will see the interaction between the two. There are many ways to communicate, and if in the instance of contact, friendship, loving-kindness and compassion is felt, peace is the result of this communication. If hostility, hatred and anger is the vibration, you can be sure of meeting with those who are of similar characteristics.

In one particular relationship, I had tried to be very peaceful with the other. However, he is so used to making it a must that he gets his say in everything that it comes to the extend that each time the love I vibrated to him was crushed by his harsh attitude. And lately, when I called him due to some matters in which some people were trying to harm him, without listening carefully yet at all, he just scolded me, “Can you stop disturbing me?� (Mind you, I’ve not spoken to him for a long, long time.) And so, given such vibrations from him, seeing his annoyance and I do not wish to provoke further displeasure in him, my only solution is to avoid him like plague. I get the feeling that he will be ringing me up soon (his mom was looking for him and I had given her his number, he’s overseas and didn’t want even his mom to find him). But I make the resolution not to answer anymore of his calls, until perhaps when he returns from overseas and I will return him all the things he left for my safekeeping, just to end it all.

On the other hand, when I vibrate my feelings and thoughts of love to my little nephew, my landlady’s grand daughter, my mom and my honey, they are receptive towards it. They love me in return. The vibration goes on in there, and this makes the relationship happy, peaceful and fun.

Back to communications with those unseen, the same theory applies. The practicality lies in what kind of vibrations we release. If we are afraid, we may emit some hostile feelings towards them, which will be detrimental and they may, in turn, also feel fearsome towards us as they receive the ‘hostility’. This is just simple logic.

Someone did offer to ‘teach’ me how to communicate with those things that are hanging around me, but I do suppose we are quite comfortable with the way we are communicating now. I acknowledge that they are there, they know that I am harmless to them, and this strikes a harmonious relationship, not burdening each other in anyway at all.

Peaceful, my friends, is this relationship which is applicable to both humans and non-humans alike. As it goes, mind is the fore-runner of all states, good and evil. If the mind is inclined towards the good, good it will be. If it is inclined towards the bad, evil will be the result.

[Anonymous]

I’m particularly interested in the working principle of the mind. However mind itself is very general. Just like the body is general and we can break it down into many systems like nervous system, digestive system, skeletal system and so on.

I think 6th sense could be part of the mind. Now, if we talk about sensing the unseen beings, do we sense them with our body or our mind or both? Needless to say, sensing with the body’s 5 senses is easily understood. However, sensing with the mind is difficult to understand. First of all, what are the components of mind? What is the structure of the mind? What are the systems in the mind that allow us to sense? Basically, what I’m trying to do is to develope the graphical representation of the components of the mind.

Since you practise meditation, then I think you might be able to provide me with some useful info.

[Anonymous]

@seetoh wrote:

I’m particularly interested in the working principle of the mind. However mind itself is very general. Just like the body is general and we can break it down into many systems like nervous system, digestive system, skeletal system and so on.

I think 6th sense could be part of the mind. Now, if we talk about sensing the unseen beings, do we sense them with our body or our mind or both? Needless to say, sensing with the body’s 5 senses is easily understood. However, sensing with the mind is difficult to understand. First of all, what are the components of mind? What is the structure of the mind? What are the systems in the mind that allow us to sense? Basically, what I’m trying to do is to develope the graphical representation of the components of the mind.

Since you practise meditation, then I think you might be able to provide me with some useful info.

In Abhidhamma terms, there are 6 sense bases: eye, ear, nose, tongue, body (touch) and mind. Yes, mind is one of the senses.

When one does the Vipassana meditation, the method is simply to observe what goes on in the body. First the observation of the rising and falling of the abdomen as you breathe in and out. The mind directs towards any other more significant conditions of the body, such as the numbness of the leg, or the itch at the back of the body, but refrains from giving any reaction to these sensations. For example, the natural 1st reaction towards numbness of the leg is to move and for itch, to scratch.

Refraining from this, there comes the realisation of suffering, impermanence and non-self. The itch comes uninvited, it is non-self; the itch that comes uninvited is suffering as you never wanted it to itch at all; the itch that comes destroys the peace you had with the body which shows that the peaceful condition is impermanent. And later on, one will notice that the itch changes characteristics as the concentration gets stronger, it feels just like there is a poking sensation, nothing more than that. Eventually it subsides. So the suffering is also impermanent, it is non-self that it goes away on its own and as we crave for it to go away, we suffer mental anguish.

Later on, another realisation that comes is this: that there are just two: mind and matter (body – made of the elements). As elements are open to the vibrations that comes, the physical side is easily understood. It is the mind that always marvels.

The mind is known along with the body because when you feel the itch, the body is the one that faces the itchy condition, and it is the mind that knows this as an itch. Mind is the one with the knowledge. And as a whole person, the six sense-bases are binded together in this way. The body that feels and the knowing mind.

In the Jayamangala Sutta, one of the Chief Disciples of the Buddha, Mogallana subsided the fierce naga king through “controlled mind”. The Elder was able to control his mind and fix himself in the 4th Jhana immediately so that the fire emitted by the naga king could not harm him. It is stated that, besides the Buddha, Mogallana was the only one who is able to fix himself into the 4th Jhana immediately this way. In another instance, as the Buddha performed the “Twin Miracles”, emitting rays of blue and red from His body to subside the quarrels between two clans from two sides of the river, He was also practicing meditation, in this case, the fire and water kasina meditation at the same time. To us whose concentration is not strong enough, it may seem like the rays emit both at the same time, simultaneously. But in reality, it is known that there can only be one thought moment at one time, and each thought moment is as fast as 10,000 million thought moments within a short second (correct me if i’m wrong, i don’t really bother much about numerical details.)

In modern times we see the use of this optical illusion theory in movie making. Each second has 24 frames in movies, and yet we see the show as a continuous movement. And so, due to our untrained mind, we still ‘see’ in our mind’s eye the previous image and so the delusion of a continuous movement is formed.

Back to the topic. Since there are actually 6 sense bases, and all these sense bases work together, it is no surprise that paranormal activities such as the existence of a being is sometimes ‘felt’ by the feelings of ‘cold’, ‘raised hair at the back of the neck’ and all kinds of sensations. Yet, it is the body that feels and the mind that knows.

A meditator quietens down his senses, in which he sees each moment as the present. Surely you cannot anticipate the rising of the stomach before it happens: the untrained mind will imagine and make assumptions but when it happens the feeling is different from the imagined condition. Each rising and falling of the abdomen is also different, not identical.

Being at the present moment, the consciousness is heightened, senses are sharp. This, being the reason, may make meditators more sensitive towards existences, whether seen or unseen. However, as meditators already understood, there is nothing to fear or be awe about. Some prefer not to say, but there are also many who, even though meditators they are, may not experience these things. As said, the association of beings is due to kammic relations, if they do not have such kamma that links them to the unseen, then they may not be associated in anyway at all.

This may be a lengthy explanation, but I try to be as brief as possible. Simply because the Abhidhamma is a very difficult subject to understand and my Buddhist master had also commented that it is difficult to teach Abhidhamma if the person does not practice meditation. And at that point we were only going into the Paticcasamupada Sutta (Relations of Cause and Effect).

[Anonymous]

That’s indeed a lengthy one. However I would like to catch on some points for some discussions.

@Ajeyya wrote:

The mind is known along with the body because when you feel the itch, the body is the one that faces the itchy condition, and it is the mind that knows this as an itch. Mind is the one with the knowledge. And as a whole person, the six sense-bases are binded together in this way. The body that feels and the knowing mind.

You said mind is the one with knowledge. In your view, how would you describe the interaction between the brain and the mind.

I’m asking because when a baby is born, the brain is fresh just like a newly formatted hardisk. But not sure if the mind is fresh or an old one. The baby then sees things, hears sound and eventually learn things. And the fact that the bio mechanism inside the brain is actually moving and working. From this point, is the brain thinking or the mind thinking? If the mind is involved, how does the brain transmit info to the mind?

[Anonymous]

😆 Forum Critic, I always enjoy your words of wisdom. 😆

anyway, back to discussion. brain as we see is just the physical thing that embodies the mind.

a newborn baby, if he/she could speak, you will know that his/her mind is not a fresh one. reincarnation begins at the moment of conception, in which this new life begins by living in the womb. in it, the tiny physical manifestation already feels, hears and knows.

it knows that it is in the womb, dark and more likely than not, afraid. when the baby gets delivered, it experience the pain of being pushed out of the mother’s body, through the limited passageway, feeling the pain of birth just as much as the mother. in the Great Chronicles of The Buddha, the Arahants had memories of their painful birth, and as the Buddha was born, he was the only one who did not suffer. His birth was an easy one, as His mother, the queen, gave birth while standing. Unlike the birth of other children, He was clean, and without those mucous and blood. the story is lengthy there, but just a note toi mention is that He was born without any pain, the only being who experience this so. And He was fully aware of being born.

a baby does not take on this new life immediately. there are memories of the past and if the child was from the hungry ghost realm, still able to communicate with those of the other world. sometimes the child smiles, sometimes cry. the chinese superstitious believe is that there’s this grandma who was teaching the kid to study and if the kid smile means he was doing well and that grandma is praising him, and if the kid cries, then means he’s being punished by that grandma.

it takes sometime for the child to eventually cut off from this previous birth and pay attention to the present one. there is a need to remember that there is one stream of consciousness (not any soul or being) that gets reincarnated into a new body, and so there was a continuity of the kammic force which brought the being into a new birth. even in our present life, we may not remember our childhood after a long lapse of time, but we are still the ‘person’ that we were born as. today i am still angelina, if you know me 15 years ago i was still angelina and if i am still alive for the next 30 years, you will still know me as angelina, just as i will know you as seetoh.

but the me 15 years ago is different from the me in the present and definitely different me in the future. the kammic forces flow and change based on what i do in the present. and this applies to us whatever age we may be.

babies carry certain characteristics. some may attribute it to inheritance, such as being patient attributed to the parents or something. however, if it is true that these characteristics are solely inherited by parents, then we should all look exactly like our parents, carried by our parents’ genes and whatever else physically or physiologically inherited. however, we do see some hot-tempered parents having children who are as patient as saints, or the other way is also possible. simply because the kammic force which is brought into this new life is one of the deciding factors of the person’s behavioral patterns. and this is just an example, i will not go into the physical aspects of kammic consequence at this point.

and so, brain is just the physical house of the mind, the mind knows and we call it sometimes intrinsic knowledge or even sixth sense as already discussed earlier. the brain is the one that housed the veins and neurons etc for signals to be transmitted around the body, sensing the body’s needs and letting the mind know about it.

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