Death in the Black Box

After old age and illness, when the four great elements fall into severe disorder and can no longer be harmonized, the body becomes unusable. How does it become unusable? The functions of the five gross sense faculties age and can no longer properly receive and transmit the six outer sense objects; the neural conduction system ages and can no longer properly receive and transmit the electrical signals coming from the five gross sense faculties; the brain and the black box of the supreme faculty (indriya) age and become rigid, unable to properly receive the electrical signals transmitted by the nervous system, and thus cannot integrate these signals to form the virtual inner six sense objects—the inner object-aspects—that resemble the outer object-aspects.

When there are no inner six sense objects within the supreme faculty, the conditions for the arising of the six consciousnesses are incomplete, and the six consciousnesses cannot arise to discern the inner six sense objects. Sentient beings then lose the function of awareness. The manas loses its right-hand and left-hand assistants and becomes powerless with respect to all dharmas; it will decide to leave the body, and thus death occurs and it enters the neutrino-body (antarā-bhava).

Once the black box is no longer functional, faculties and objects do not make contact, the six consciousnesses cannot manifest, bodily, verbal, and mental actions cannot occur, and the activities of the five-aggregate body come to an end. When the manas feels it can do nothing, the five-aggregate body will inevitably die. It can be seen that the black box of the supreme faculty is extremely important: even if the five gross sense faculties are perfectly normal and the transmitting nerves are perfectly normal, if the black box is abnormal, the manas cannot be aware of the six sense objects, and it will helplessly choose death—in fact, it is forced rather than a choice.

Why is the black box so important? Because the black box is a venue—the venue where the six faculties, six sense objects, and six consciousnesses converge and interact, the venue where the five aggregates are active. Here the inner object-aspects of the great trichiliocosm can be generated, here the six consciousnesses can be generated, and the six consciousnesses can contact and discern the virtual great trichiliocosm—there is cognition, there can be awareness and feeling, and there can be enjoyment of the virtual six sense objects. In common parlance this is called being alive, or called living. Once one can no longer be alive, or can no longer live, the manas will inevitably go searching anew for a place where it can be alive, and begin a new life.