Gandhabba in a Human Body Senses Differently Than When Outside

 1. The six critical entities in the gandhabba (hadaya vatthu and the five pasāda rupa of cakkhu, sota, ghāna, jivhā, kāya) are responsible for the amazing feats of cognition. See “Mind and Matter – Buddhist Analysis,”

• As we have discussed, a gandhabba has only a trace of matter and is invisible. It is essentially an invisible “mental body.”
• When outside the physical body, a gandhabba can hear and see by itself without having eyes and ears like us. This idea of a living being without a physical body like ours is hard to imagine. But Brahmā in the higher 20 realms have such “invisible bodies.”
• Of course, a Brahma or a gandhabba cannot taste, smell, or touch since they do not have “dense solid bodies.”
• But when trapped inside a physical body, a gandhabba can experience all five sensory inputs. However, now the gandhabba depends on the brain to receive those sensory inputs.
• One way to get the basic idea is to look at the following analogy. This analogy works ONLY for the five physical senses.