Here is a mental thought exercise:pilgrim wrote: ↑Fri Oct 19, 2018 8:46 am The Ganges Valley where the Buddha lived is thousands of miles from the coast. Yet there are suttas where the Buddha talked about the oceans and its creatures. There are also suttas where he spoke of the cosmos. I'm wondering if his knowledge of the former was thru heresay from others or personal sight of the sea or was it, like his knowledge of the cosmos, acquired thru his psychic vision. Is there any sutta which mentions the Buddha traveling to the coast?
If you can see your past lives including many cosmic contractions and expansions, then you don't need "divine eye" or the ability to see the future, or the ability to see other beings, since you'll have tons of data that would show you all these places and beings, which were all from your past lives. Hence seeing your hundreds of thousands of past lives will teach you how karma works, about other planets, etc..
Maybe a previous civilization was more advanced than our civilization (like the mythology of Atlantis). So technically having the ability to see 100,000+ past lives may give you all the knowledge you need to know about the universe.
Another mental exercise:
If you had perfect memory you wouldn't move. Why do you eat junk food? Why do you eat pizza? Because the associated sensations have faded, so you want to "Refresh" the experience. But if you had perfect memory like a computer, you wouldn't need to "Refresh" the experience. If you had perfect memory, you wouldn't need to revisit places, you wouldn't need to move at all. If you had perfect memory, your cravings would be forever satiated.
A god is a being that is omniscient (all knowing) thus a god wouldn't need to do anything if he knew everything. So omnipotence and omniscience are directly conflicting with each other. Epicurus's God theorem (google it) is flawed, because he assumes God is malevolent for not "Willing" to stop evil, all he compares is willing vs omnipotence, but he never considers omniscience. If you know everything then there is no reason to do anything.
Hence, ignorance means movement, and the omission of ignorance means non-movement / stilling, hence the highest fetter is ignorance which leads to existence which is movement.