Understanding Astral and Celestial Bodies : หน้า 107/164

Suzanne Jeffrey astral body, but other bodies as well. If you look at light through a prism, you will see seven different colors. It is like that: the bodies are there, but unless you shine a light through them, you will not see them. Your celestial body will return to you when you keep the precepts. But if you do not, and your body becomes twisted or drunk or angry or greedy, you will be born differently. Celestial beings are part of this. It is your job to tell your students about this. If they deny it without proof, then they are simply stubborn. They have the method to prove it for themselves! Ever since the time of the Buddha, people had more than one body. Once you meditate, you will find this out for yourself. Q: Was the Buddha seeing His mind with celestial bodies? And then He could see defilements, or kilesa? A: Remember that the body is made up of the four impure elements, and the mind is a refined element. But the mind can get extremely dirty due to defilements. So there are impure elements that can become attached to the mind. We can, of course, see this for ourselves. But defilements are manifested in the mind. Ever since we were born, defilements have been with us because they came with us from past lifetimes. This is called accumulated defilements. The more we have, the more we have defilements that continue to cloud our mind. But it depends on the shade of glasses that we wear. After the Buddha practiced, He got rid of defilement because He realized that defilements were a twisted perception that caused us to speak and act badly. Defilements are an eternal enemy, but not a living organism. It can, however, spread like rust and that is how defilements deteriorate the mind. You can ask ‘why?’ but that is its nature. If you want to learn more – because language is a limitation – then you need to meditate. We know how germs attack the body. And what causes us to be sick, and perhaps to kill us. Well, defilement is the same, except that it follows us from lifetime to lifetime. The mind becomes infected and we begin to think badly and that becomes a bad habit over a period of time. When we think, speak, and act badly, the habit becomes more difficult to break. So when we die, defilements follow us into another world through the mind. Bad habits also follow us, and that is why bad habits undermine the mind. And how do we get rid of defilement? How do we eradicate defilements?