6. To believe the existence of beings who are ‘spontaneously born’ (opapātika)―born without the instrumentality of parents

Another characteristic of Right View is the belief in the existence of beings who are born spontaneously, without the instrumentality of parents. A peta-ghost, a deva, a brahma, a yakkha,1 an asura, a demonic-being of niraya, or animal-like peta-ghosts [are all creatures that] get born spontaneously, without an apparent external cause or influence. Those who think of the Dhamma with a leaning towards modern science show a certain reluctance to believe there are spontaneously born beings. If revered-you have no conviction that beings get born spontaneously, you won’t believe in a peta-ghost plane or a niraya. And purely as a result, the moral fear of evil deeds will abate in you. Similarly, when the belief in the existence of devas and brahmas is weakening, your liking for wholesome deeds will wane.

You will necessarily have to train your samādhi to a profound level if you are to personally witness the rebirth of a spontaneously born being. The cutūpapāta-ñāna, or the specific faculty of wisdom that enables you to see the vanishing and reappearing of beings according to their karma, which you must cultivate through samādhi, engenders in you the belief in the existence of beings who are born spontaneously. It is only because you still haven’t developed these intellectual faculties that you don’t yet see the frightfulness of the round of rebirths, …that you don’t yet perfect Right View.

Once when a monk was in a noble samādhi―a state of deep concentration of the mind―he has envisioned a yakkha being born spontaneously. It was when the monk was residing in a rock-cave kuṭī in an ancient forest hermitage that he envisioned this incident through the samādhi. Some 20 meters in front of the monk, about six feet in mid-air, a rapid vortex of swirling winds suddenly appeared in an instant. It was through the noble samādhi that the monk saw this vortex. This vortex whirled and whirled round and round at an extremely high velocity and the corporeal form (rūpa) of the yakkha formed. That means the yakkha was born spontaneously.

What the monk envisioned thus in the form of a rapid vortex was this creature’s consciousness (viññāna)―that is, its rebirth-consciousness, which means its first mind of the present life. Its rebirth-consciousness comes into being due to its last mind of the previous life―the death-consciousness―turning impermanent. The death-consciousness forms under the phenomenon known as ‘saṅkhāra-paccayā viññānaŋ’―‘consciousness arises with karma-formations as its condition.’ What the monk witnessed there was that by the velocity of consciousness per se the creature is born spontaneously. This very conviction that there are beings born spontaneously is a worthy characteristic of Right View.

1 Yakkha is a sub-class of nonhumans that rank slightly above peta-ghosts. In fact, some of the superior peta-ghosts are sometimes called yakkhas.