Devas, what could they be? Part 9: Devas are supernatural beings like magic

Click for part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

This is the last resort in the case where all else fails. So the devas and Brahmas are really magical and supernatural beings which arises due to our merits and powers in meditation. They have the following properties, to be interpreted literally.

●   Spontaneous rebirth

●   Invisible, but can reveal themselves, or be seen via divine eye

●   Blissful, but not end of suffering

●   Long life

●   Many levels

●   Superior powers, but limited knowledge

●   Virtuous conduct needed to be reborn here

●   Powers of instant travelling

●   Luminous light shining forth from them

●   One for each world

Our human ancestors are devolution of these devas due to their greed for delicious food.

Experimental verification awaits those who had died and be reborn there or obtained the divine eye to be able to see directly for oneself if devas truly exists and their nature.

There is no need to access probability of devas existing if this possibility is true, as it is one, or certainty. Comments: the existence of devas would be additional laws of nature outside of currently known physics and also all of the possibilities mentioned before. Specifically the laws of kamma, rebirth, mind (supernatural powers and Brahma realms from Jhana meditations).

Now for a bit of curiosity, if we assume that if devas exists, we can use the probability analysis of inclusion-exclusion principle to obtain the union of the various ways the devas can exist, then we get close to the total probability which devas exist.

The weaknesses of this analysis is the subjective probabilities I had assigned earlier and later on and the incompleteness of our level of understanding in physics (these probabilities will change as we update physics in the future, new ones might come out). Also in listing down the ten characteristics of devas and multiplying the probabilities from there together, I had assumed they are all independent characteristics of each other, which is most likely not the case.

1.   Probability that aliens exists: 99%

2.  Probability that higher dimension exists: 30%

3.  Probability that brane multiverse exists: 25%

4.  Probability that advanced intelligence exists: 98%

5.  Probability that dark matter or dark energy exists and allows beings to exists consisting of them: 50%

6.  Probability that we are in a simulated universe: 10%

7.  Probability of the Union of the above (using inclusion-exclusion principle and assuming that the probabilities of the above six are independent of each other): 99.995275%

8. Probability that supernatural stuffs exists apart from the above (splitting the remaining probability equally for the last two):  0.0023625%

9.  Probability that none of the above are true: 0.0023625%

A bit of comment on the subjective placement of the above probabilities, I think it’s fairly certain that the universe will contain aliens and advanced intelligence as a result of them, the others are relatively low probabilities of actually being true as they are quite radical.

Using the law of total probabilities then, we calculate the probabilities that devas exists to be: 33%. That is pretty high considering that most people thought that science precludes the possibilities of gods existing, whereas in this percentage estimation, the vast majority of it is assuming that gods are one of the six hypothesis above or a combination of them, with only 0.0023625% probability that gods are magical. Most of the probabilities goes towards gods as aliens. Do be reminded that this value will change with our knowledge of the universe and also by personal subjective valuation of likelihood differing from person to person.

Seeing the probabilities for devas existing according to our current knowledge of physics, speculation of science fiction and future possibilities is less than half, and a wide room of error given the sloppy methodology, we can hardly blame anyone for not believing in gods. Yet seeing the significant value of that probability, we cannot blame Buddhists or indeed anyone for professing faith in these unseen beings. It is pretty certain that in the future, people will look back at this chapter and laugh what ignorant fools we were for thinking in error most of the stuffs written here.