Nigredo · Object · Chapter 29 of 48

1.3.5. Realms of Existence

If experience is conditioned by earlier moments of mind, how much of the world we inhabit is discovered—and how much is carried into the present?

Object · Chapter 5 of 12 Video · 35:43 Karma, consciousness and rebirth Published March 2026

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Why Your Reality Feels the Way It Does

Why Your Reality Feels the Way It Does | Modern Alchemy

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The book

The chapter in brief

This chapter places the Theravāda Abhidhamma categories of intentional, functional and resultant consciousness within Nigredo’s account of lived reality. Its central model is bhavaṅga, the “life-continuum” used in later Theravāda thought to explain continuity between active cognitive processes and across rebirth.

From there, the chapter connects nineteen kinds of rebirth-linking consciousness with human, animal, painful, form and formless modes of existence. Dr Robinson also reads these realms psychologically, as patterns that can colour a life here and now. That pairing of traditional cosmology with a modern therapeutic and alchemical interpretation is the author’s synthesis: it offers a map for reflection, not an empirically established account of consciousness, trauma or mental illness.

Visual orientation

A hierarchy of conditioned experience

Illustrated map flowing from painful animal and hell-like states through human consciousness towards heavenly and formless realms, centred on the life-continuum — The course’s visual synthesis of the realms: painful, human and refined states arranged around the conditioning role attributed to the life-continuum. The image is a conceptual guide, not a scientific hierarchy or a diagnostic scale.

Video guide

What builds the reality that feels immediate?

The recording begins with an ordinary act of recognition: seeing the colour blue. The first learning may require active discrimination, but later recognition seems instant. The discussion uses this as a model for vipāka, or resultant consciousness—the way earlier choices and learning can condition what is noticed and how it is interpreted now. It then turns to trauma, where a response formed under danger may be reactivated by reminders in safer circumstances. The analogy illuminates automaticity, but it does not make trauma a moral failure or prove that clinical symptoms are karmic consequences.

The inquiry then moves beneath active thought to bhavaṅga. In the Theravāda commentarial model, discrete moments of consciousness arise and cease in conditioned succession, while the life-continuum accounts for continuity when an active sense or thought process is absent. The recording imagines this as a pulsation and relates it to the physical heart, blood and electromagnetic activity. Those physiological correspondences belong to Dr Robinson’s speculative synthesis; bhavaṅga is not a structure detected by neuroscience, and the supplied sources do not establish a haemoglobin-based mechanism of mind.

From this foundation, the video climbs through the traditional cosmological map: painful realms, animal existence, the human realm, celestial form realms and formless attainments. It also turns the map inward. “Realm” can then name a quality of experience shaped by hostility, craving, confusion, generosity, goodwill, wisdom or meditative refinement. The recording’s demons and ghosts function partly as images for lives organised around threat, predation, shame or insatiable escape. These images can be evocative, but they should never become labels for people with addiction, post-traumatic symptoms or severe mental distress.

The practical challenge is therefore smaller and more demanding than choosing a place in a cosmic diagram: notice what the present response is preparing next. The video’s hope lies in trainability. Habit is powerful, but not identical with fate; a different relationship to perception, intention and action can alter the conditions that follow.

Argument map

How the recording develops

Begin with recognition

Learning “blue” shows how an initially active judgement can become an apparently effortless feature of later perception.

Distinguish three functions

Intentional consciousness creates karmic momentum, functional consciousness performs a task, and resultant consciousness bears conditioned effects.

Follow conditioning into fear

The same automaticity becomes painful when earlier danger shapes the reading of a present situation, though this analogy must not become blame.

Enter the life-continuum

The recording introduces bhavaṅga as the Theravāda model underlying continuity between active cognitive episodes and across lives.

Map the thirty-one realms

Types of rebirth-linking consciousness are related to painful, animal, human, form and formless planes of conditioned existence.

Turn cosmology inward

Hell, hunger, humanity and heaven become analogies for experiential worlds organised by different habits, roots and capacities.

Recover the possibility of change

The conclusion shifts from classification to cultivation: what is repeatedly noticed and enacted helps condition what becomes available next.

Book, tradition and interpretation

Four layers in the discussion

Abhidhamma analysis TRADITIONAL FRAMEWORK

The distinctions among wholesome, unwholesome, functional and resultant consciousness, together with momentary citta, come from a specifically Buddhist scholastic analysis of experience.

Realms of rebirth RELIGIOUS COSMOLOGY

The sensual, form and formless planes are traditional conditioned destinations within saṃsāra, not findings established by contemporary empirical science.

Realms as states of mind PSYCHOLOGICAL READING

The video uses cosmic images to illuminate hostility, craving, shame, ordinary moral agency and contemplative refinement within human life.

The embodied continuum AUTHOR’S SYNTHESIS

Links among bhavaṅga, the heart, circulating iron and electromagnetic resonance are speculative correspondences and should not be presented as physiology.

Course category	Qualities emphasised	Experiential association
Triple-rooted	Non-greed, non-hatred and wisdom	Human consciousness with a traditional aptitude for deeper understanding
Double-rooted	Non-greed and non-hatred	Wholesome human consciousness without wisdom functioning as a root in that moment
Rootless	No ethical root accompanies the consciousness	Specific resultant or functional processes; “rootless” does not mean morally worthless
Jhānic resultant	Result of form or formless absorption	Traditional rebirth in corresponding refined planes

Recording outline

The route through the video

The nine valid supplied markers below ascend from 00:00 to 35:20 and fall within the stated 35:43 final runtime. A supplied 39:10 closing marker was omitted because it exceeds that runtime.

00:00Opening: You Are Already in a Realm
02:10What Determines Your Experience?
06:00Karma and Resultant Consciousness (Vipāka)
10:20The Life-Continuum (Bhavaṅga) Explained
15:10How Perception Becomes Conditioned
20:00The Six Realms as States of Mind
25:30Trauma, Addiction, and Hellish Experience
30:40Rooted vs Rootless Consciousness
35:20Transformation and Hope

Key language

Glossary

Abhidhamma · Abhidharma

The systematic Buddhist analysis of mind, matter, causation and experience. Distinct Abhidharma traditions developed in different early Buddhist schools; the chapter primarily uses the Pali Theravāda system. Its taxonomies are philosophical and contemplative frameworks, not classifications produced by modern experimental psychology.

Citta

A Pali and Sanskrit term commonly translated as mind, heart-mind or a moment of consciousness. In Abhidhamma, a citta knows an object together with associated mental factors. It is not a tiny substance, an enduring self or an experimentally isolated neurological unit.

Kamma · karma

Intentional action and its conditioning consequences. In Buddhist traditions, karma operates within ethical and rebirth frameworks; it is not simply fate or cosmic reward and punishment. It should never be used to blame people for trauma, illness, disability, addiction or misfortune.

Kusala · akusala

Terms often rendered wholesome or skilful, and unwholesome or unskilful. They concern whether qualities and actions tend away from or towards greed, hatred, delusion and suffering. The distinction is more precise than social approval, pleasant feeling or being a conventionally “good person”.

Kiriya

Functional or inoperative consciousness: mental activity that performs a function without generating new rebirth-producing karma. In Theravāda analysis, some functional cittas are ordinary rootless processes while others describe an arahant’s activity. “Functional” therefore does not mean mechanical, meaningless or ethically indifferent in every context.

Vipāka

The result or maturation of previous karma. Resultant consciousness arises due to prior conditions rather than creating the same kind of fresh karmic result at that moment. The video’s learning and trauma analogies help convey automaticity, but they do not establish a one-to-one equivalence between vipāka and memory, conditioning or post-traumatic symptoms.

Bhavaṅga · life-continuum

A Theravāda Abhidhamma and commentarial concept used to explain continuity when active sense or thought processes are not occurring, and to connect rebirth-linking consciousness with the stream of a life. It is not a soul and should not be equated straightforwardly with the neurological unconscious, a heart field or a scientifically measured background consciousness.

Paṭisandhi · rebirth-linking

The first consciousness of a new life in the Theravāda Abhidhamma model, conditioned by the final cognitive process of the preceding life. It is described without a permanent entity migrating between bodies. This is a doctrinal explanation of continuity within rebirth, not an empirically verified transfer mechanism.

Roots · hetu

Qualities that give a consciousness its ethical orientation. The unwholesome roots are greed, hatred and delusion; the wholesome roots are non-greed, non-hatred and non-delusion or wisdom. A “rootless” citta lacks these six roots in that technical moment—it does not designate a rootless, subhuman or morally empty person.

Kāma-loka · sensual plane

The broad traditional sphere containing hell, animal, ghost, asura, human and lower deva realms, all connected with sense experience and desire. Modern presentations often group these into six classes of being, while detailed Theravāda lists divide conditioned existence into thirty-one planes.

Rūpa-loka and arūpa-loka

The form and formless planes associated in Theravāda cosmology with mastery of corresponding meditative absorptions. They are refined states within saṃsāra, not nibbāna. The formless plane concerns mind without material form in the traditional account; it should not be confused with the Buddhist teaching of emptiness.

Jhāna

Meditative absorption or deep collectedness. Theravāda systems relate form and formless jhānas to refined modes of consciousness and possible rebirth. The experience may be profound, but Buddhist traditions do not generally treat temporary absorption by itself as liberation from greed, hatred, delusion and rebirth.

Saṃsāra

The conditioned round of birth, death and rebirth, sustained by ignorance and craving. It can also illuminate the repeated construction of suffering within present experience, but that psychological reading does not exhaust the traditional cosmological meaning.

Continue into the ideas

What did the mind add?

Choose one mild, ordinary moment from today—a delayed reply, a queue or a change of plan. Separate what was directly present from the interpretation that arrived with it. Without trying to erase the response, ask: what earlier expectation might have made this meaning feel immediate, and what small action would condition the next moment more helpfully? Avoid using this exercise with traumatic or destabilising material; it is reflection, not treatment or a test of spiritual development.