Translated by R. F. C. Hull from Das Tibeianische Totenbuch
Before embarking upon the psychological commentary, I should like to say a few words about the text itself. The Tibetan Book of the Dead, or the Bardo Thödol, is a book of instructions for the dead and dying. Like The Egyptian Book of the Dead, it is meant to be a guide for the dead man during the period of his Bardo existence, symbolically described as an intermediate state of forty—nine days’ duration between death and rebirth. The text falls into three parts. The first part, called Chikhai Bardo, describes the psychic happenings at the moment of death. The second part, or Chönyid Bardo, deals with the dream—state which supervenes immediately after death, and with what are called ‘karmic illusions ‘. The third part, or Sidpa Bardo, concerns the onset of the birth—instinct and of prenatal events. It is characteristic that supreme insight and illumination, and hence the greatest possibility of attaining liberation, are vouchsafed during the actual process of dying. Soon afterward, the ‘illusions ‘begin which lead eventually to reincarnation, the illuminative lights growing ever fainter and more multifarious, and the visions more and more terrifying. This descent illustrates the estrangement of consciousness from the liberating truth as it approaches nearer and nearer to physical rebirth. The purpose of the instruction is to fix the attention of the dead man, at each successive stage of delusion and entanglement, on the ever—present possibility of liberation, and to explain to him the nature of his visions. The text of the Bardo Thödol is recited by the lāma in the presence of the corpse.
I do not think I could better discharge my debt of thanks to the two previous translators of the Bardo Thödol, the late LāMa Kazi Dawa—Samdup and Dr. Evans—Wentz, than by attempting, with the aid of a psychological commentary, to make the magnificent world of ideas and the problems contained in this treatise a little more intelligible to the Western mind. I am sure that all who read this book with open eyes, and who allow it to impress itself upon them without prejudice, will reap a rich reward.
The Bardo Thödol, fitly named by its editor, Dr. W. Y. Evans—Wentz, ‘The Tibetan Book of the Dead ‘, caused a considerable stir in English—speaking countries at the time of its first appearance in 1927. It belongs to that class of writings which are not only of interest to specialists in Mahāyāna Buddhism, but which also, because of their deep humanity and their still deeper insight into the secrets of the human psyche, make an especial appeal to the layman who is seeking to broaden his knowledge of life. For years, ever since it was first published, the Bardo Thödol has been my constant companion, and to it I owe not only many stimulating ideas and discoveries, but also many fundamental insights. Unlike The Egyptian Book of the Dead, which always prompts one to say too much or too little, the Bardo Thodol oñers one an intelligible philosophy addressed to human beings rather than to gods or primitive savages. Its philosophy contains the quintessence of Buddhist psychological criticism; and, as such, one can truly say that it is of an unexampled superiority. Not only the ‘wrathful ‘but also the ‘peaceful’ deities are conceived as sangsāric projections of the human psyche, an idea that seems all too obvious to the enlightened European, because it reminds him of his own banal simplifications. But though the European can easily explain away these deities as projections, he would be quite incapable of positing them at the same time as real. The Bardo Thodol can do that, because, in certain of its most essential metaphysical premises, it has the enlightened as well as the unenlightened European at a disadvantage. The ever—present, unspoken assumption of the Bardo Thodol is the antinominal character of all metaphysical assertions, and also the idea of the qualitative difference of the various levels of consciousness and of the metaphysical realities conditioned by them. The background of this unusual book is not the niggardly European ‘either—or’, but a magnificently affirmative ‘both—and’. This statement may appear objectionable to the Western philosopher, for the West loves clarity and unambiguity; consequently, one philosopher clings to the position, ‘God is ‘, while another clings equally fervently to the negation. * God is not’. What would these hostile brethren make of an assertion like the following:
‘Recognizing the voidness of thine own intellect to be Buddha—hood, and knowing it at the same time to be thine own consciousness, thou shalt abide in the state of the divine mind of the Buddha.’
Such an assertion is, I fear, as unwelcome to our Western philosophy as it is to our theology. The Bar do Thodol is in the highest degree psychological in its outlook; but, with us, philosophy and theology are still in the mediaeval, pre—psychological stage where only the assertions are listened to, explained, defended, criticized and disputed, while the authority that makes them has, by general consent, been deposed as outside the scope of discussion.
Metaphysical assertions, however, are statements of the psyche, and are therefore psychological. To the Western mind, which compensates its well—known feelings of resentment by a slavish regard for ‘rational’ explanations, this obvious truth seems all too obvious, or else it is seen as an inadmissible negation of metaphysical ‘truth’ Whenever the Westerner hears the word ‘psychological’, it always sounds to him like’ only psychological’. For him the ‘soul’ is something pitifully small, unworthy, personal, subjective, and a lot more besides. He therefore prefers to use the word ‘mind’ instead, though he likes to pretend at the same time that a statement which may in fact be very subjective indeed is made by the ‘mind’ naturally by the ‘Universal Mind’, or even—at a pinch—by the ‘Absolute’ itself. This rather ridiculous presumption is probably a compensation for the regrettable smallness of the soul. It almost seems as if Anatole France had uttered a truth which were valid for the whole Western world when, in his Penguin Island, Catherine d’ Alexandrie offers this advice to God: ‘Donnez leur une ante, mats une petite’ ! [‘Give them a soul, but a little one!’]
It is the soul which, by the divine creative power inherent in it, makes the metaphysical assertion; it posits the distinctions between metaphysical entities. Not only is it the condition of all metaphysical reality, it is that reality.1
With this great psychological truth the Bardo Thödol opens. The book is not a ceremonial of burial, but a set of instructions for the dead, a guide through the changing phenomena of the Bardo realm, that state of existence which continues for 49 days after death until the next incarnation. If we disregard for the moment the supra—temporality of the soul—which the East accepts as a self—evident fact—we, as readers of the Bardo Thödol, shall be able to put ourselves without difficulty in the position of the dead man, and shall consider attentively the teaching set forth in the opening section, which is outlined in the quotation above. At this point, the following words are spoken, not presumptuously, but in a courteous manner:—
‘O nobly—born (so and so), listen. Now thou art experiencing the Radiance of the Clear Light of Pure Reality. Recognize it. O nobly—born, thy present intellect, in real nature void, not formed into anything as regards characteristics or colour, naturally void, is the very Reality, the All—Good.
’ Thine own intellect, which is now voidness, yet not to be regarded as of the voidness of nothingness, but as being the intellect itself, unobstruced, shining, thrilling, and blissful, is the very consciousness, the All—good Buddha.’
This realization is the Dhartna—Kāya state of perfect enlightenment; or, as we should express it in our own language, the creative ground of all metaphysical assertion is consciousness, as the invisible, intangible manifestation of the soul. The ‘Voidness ‘is the state transcendent over all assertion and all predication. The fulness of its discriminative manifestations still lies latent in the soul.
The text continues:—
‘Thine own consciousness, shining, void, and inseparable from the Great Body of Radiance, hath no birth, nor death, and is the Immutable Light—Buddha Amitabha.’
The soul [or, as here, one’s own consciousness] is assuredly not small, but the radiant Godhead itself. The West finds this statement either very dangerous, if not downright blasphemous, or else accepts it unthinkingly and then suffers from a theosophical inflation. Somehow we always have a wrong attitude to these things. But if we can master ourselves far enough to refrain from our chief error of always wanting to do something with things and put them to practical use, we may perhaps succeed in learning an important lesson from these teachings, or at least in appreciating the greatness of the Bardo Thödol, which vouchsafes to the dead man the ultimate and highest truth, that even the gods are the radiance and reflection of our own souls. No sun is thereby eclipsed for the Oriental as it would be for the Christian, who would feel robbed of his God; on the contrary, his soul is the light of the Godhead, and the Godhead is the soul. The East can sustain this paradox better than the unfortunate Angelus Silesius, who even today would be psychologically far in advance of his time.
It is highly sensible of the Bardo Thödol to make clear to the dead man the primacy of the soul, for that is the one thing which life does not make clear to us. We are so hemmed in by things which jostle and oppress that we never get a chance, in the midst of all these ‘given’ things, to wonder by whom they are ‘given’ It is from this world of ‘given ‘things that the dead man liberates himself; and the purpose of the instruction is to help him towards this liberation. We, if we put ourselves in his place, shall derive no lesser reward from it, since we learn from the very first paragraphs that the ‘giver’ of all ‘given’ things dwells within us. This is a truth which in the face of all evidence, in the greatest things as in the smallest, is never known, although it is often so very necessary, indeed vital, for us to know it. Such knowledge, to be sure, is suitable only for contemplatives who are minded to understand the purpose of existence, for those who are Gnostics by temperament and therefore believe in a saviour who, like the saviour of the Mandaeans, calls himself ‘gnosis of life’ (manda d’hajie). Perhaps it is not granted to many of us to see the world as something ‘given ‘. A great reversal of standpoint, calling for much sacrifice, is needed before we can see the world as ‘given* by the very nature of the soul. It is so much more straight—forward, more dramatic, impressive, and therefore more convincing, to see that all the things happen to me than to observe how I make them happen. Indeed, the animal nature of man makes him resist seeing himself as the maker of his circumstances. That is why attempts of this kind were always the object of secret initiations, culminating as a rule in a figurative death which symbolized the total character of this reversal. And, in point of fact, the instruction given in the Bardo Thödol serves to recall to the dead man the experiences of his initiation and the teachings of his guru, for the instruction is, at bottom, nothing less than an initiation of the dead into the Bardo life, just as the initiation of the living was a preparation for the Beyond. Such was the case, at least, with all the mystery cults in ancient civilizations from the time of the Egyptian and Eleusinian mysteries. In the initiation of the living, however, this ‘Beyond * is not a world beyond death, but a reversal of the mind’s intentions and outlook, a psychological ‘Beyond ‘or, in Christian terms, a ‘redemption ‘from the trammels of the world and of sin. Redemption is a separation and deliverance from an earlier condition of darkness and unconsciousness, and leads to a condition of illumination and releasedness, to victory and transcendence over everything ‘given ‘.
Thus far the Bardo Thödol is, as Dr. Evans—Wentz also feels, an initiation process whose purpose it is to restore to the soul the divinity it lost at birth. Now it is a characteristic of Oriental religious literature that the teaching invariably begins with the most important item, with the ultimate and highest principles which, with us, would come last—as for instance in Apuleius, where Lucius is worshipped as Helios only right at the end. Accordingly, in the Bardo Thödol, the initiation is a series of diminishing climaxes ending with rebirth in the womb. The only ‘initiation process’ that is still alive and practised today in the West is the analysis of the unconscious as used by doctors for therapeutic purposes. This penetration into the ground—layers of consciousness is a kind of rational maieutics in the Socratic sense, a bringing forth of psychic contents that are still germinal, subliminal, and as yet unborn. Originally, this therapy took the form of Freudian psychoanalysis and was mainly concerned with sexual fantasies. This is the realm that corresponds to the last and lowest region of the Bardo, known as the Sidpa Bardo, where the dead man, unable to profit by the teachings of the Chikhai and Chonyid Bardo, begins to fall a prey to sexual fantasies and is attracted by the vision of mating couples. Eventually he is caught by a womb and born into the earthly world again. Meanwhile, as one might expect, the Oedipus complex starts functioning. If his karma destines him to be reborn as a man, he will fall in love with his mother—to—be and will find his father hateful and digusting. Conversely, the future daughter will be highly attracted by her father—to—be and repelled by her mother. The European passes through this specifically Freudian domain when his unconscious contents are brought to light under analysis, but he goes in the reverse direction. He journeys back through the world of infantile—sexual fantasy to the womb. It has even been suggested in psychoanalytical circles that the trauma par excellence is the birth—experience itself—nay more, psychoanalysts even claim to have probed back to memories of intrauterine origin. Here Western reason reaches its limit, unfortunately. I say ‘unfortunately’, because one rather wishes that Freudian psychoanalysis could have happily pursued these so called intra—uterine experiences still further back; had it succeeded in this bold undertaking, it would surely have come out beyond the Sidpa Bardo and penetrated from behind into the lower reaches of the Chönyid Bardo. It is true that with the equipment of our existing biological ideas such a venture would not have been crowned with success; it would have needed a wholly different kind of philosophical preparation from that based on current scientific assumptions. But, had the journey back been consistently pursued, it would undoubtedly have led to the postulate of a pre—uterine existence, a true Bardo life, if only it had been possible to find at least some trace of an experiencing subject. As it was, the psychoanalysts never got beyond purely conjectural traces of intra—uterine experiences, and even the famous ‘birth trauma’ has remained such an obvious truism that it can no longer explain anything, any more than can the hypothesis that life is a disease with a bad prognosis because its outcome is always fatal.
Freudian psychoanalysis, in all essential aspects, never went beyond the experiences of the Sidpa Bardo; that is, it was unable to extricate itself from sexual fantasies and similar ‘incompatible ‘tendencies which cause anxiety and other affective states. Nevertheless, Freud’s theory is the first attempt made by the West to investigate, as if from below, from the animal sphere of instinct, the psychic territory that corresponds in Tantric Lāmaism to the Sidpa Bardo. A very justifiable fear of metaphysics prevented Freud from penetrating into the sphere of the ‘occult’. In addition to this, the Sidpa state, if we are to accept the psychology of the Sidpa Bardo, is characterized by the fierce wind of karma, which whirls the dead man along until he comes to the ‘womb—door’ In other words, the Sidpa state permits of no going back, because it is sealed off against the Chönyid state by an intense striving downwards, towards the animal sphere of instinct and physical rebirth. That is to say, anyone who penetrates into the unconscious with purely biological assumptions will become stuck in the instinctual sphere and be unable to advance beyond it, for he will be pulled back again and again into physical existence. It is therefore not possible for Freudian theory to reach anything except an essentially negative valuation of the unconscious. It is a’ nothing but’. At the same time, it must be admitted that this view of the psyche is typically Western, only it is expressed more blatantly, more plainly, and more ruthlessly than others would have dared to express it, though at bottom they think no differently. As to what’ mind ‘means in this connection, we can only cherish the hope that it will carry conviction. But, as even Max Scheler noted with regret, the power of this ‘mind ‘is, to say the least of it, doubtful.
I think, then, we can state it as a fact that with the aid of psychoanalysis the rationalizing mind of the West has pushed forward into what one might call the neuroticism of the Sidpa state, and has there been brought to an inevitable standstill by the uncritical assumption that everything psychological is subjective and personal. Even so, this advance has been a great gain, inasmuch as it has enabled us to take one more step behind our conscious lives. This knowledge also gives us a hint of how we ought to read the Bardo Thödol —that is, backwards. If, with the help of our Western science, we have to some extent succeeded in understanding the psychological character of the Sidpa Bardo , our next task is to see if we can make anything of the preceding Chönyid Bardo.
The Chönyid state is one of karmic illusion—that is to say, illusions which result from the psychic residua of previous existences. According to the Eastern view, karma implies a sort of psychic theory of heredity based on the hypothesis of reincarnation, which in the last resort is an hypothesis of the supra—temporality of the soul. Neither our scientific knowledge nor our reason can keep in step with this idea. There are too many if s and but’s. Above all, we know desperately little about the possibilities of continued existence of the individual soul after death, so little that we cannot even conceive how anyone could prove anything at all in this respect. Moreover, we know only too well, on epistemological grounds, that such a proof would be just as impossible as the proof of God. Hence we may cautiously accept the idea of karma only if we understand it as psychic heredity in the very widest sense of the word. Psychic heredity does exist—that is to say, there is inheritance of psychic characteristics such as predisposition to disease, traits of character, special gifts, and so forth. It does no violence to the psychic nature of these complex facts if natural science reduces them to what appear to be physical aspects (nuclear structures in cells, and so on). They are essential phenomena of life which express themselves, in the main, psychically, just as there are other inherited characteristics which express themselves, in the main, physiologically, on the physical level. Among these inherited psychic factors there is a special class which is not confined either to family or to race. These are the universal dispositions of the mind, and they are to be understood as analogous to Plato’s forms (eidola), in accordance with which the mind organizes its contents. One could also describe these forms as categories analogous to the logical categories which are always and everywhere present as the basic postulates of reason. Only, in the case of our ‘forms’, we are not dealing with categories of reason but with categories of the imagination. As the products of imagination are always in essence visual, their forms must, from the outset, have the character of images and moreover of typical images, which is why, following St. Augustine, I call them ‘archetypes’. Comparative religion and mythology are rich mines of archetypes, and so is the psychology of dreams and psychoses. The astonishing parallelism between these images and the ideas they serve to express has frequently given rise to the wildest migration theories, although it would have been far more natural to think of the remarkable similarity of the human psyche at all times and in all places. Archetypal fantasy—forms are, in fact, reproduced spontaneously anytime and anywhere, without there being any conceivable trace of direct transmission. The original structural components of the psyche are of no less surprising a uniformity than are those of the visible body. The archetypes are, so to speak, organs of the pre—rational psyche. They are eternally inherited forms and ideas which have at first no specific content. Their specific content only appears in the course of the individual’s life, when personal experience is taken up in precisely these forms. If the archetypes were not pre—existent in identical form everywhere, how could one explain the fact, postulated at almost every turn by the Bardo Thödol, that the dead do not know that they are dead, and that this assertion is to be met with just as often in the dreary, half—baked literature of European and American Spiritualism? Although we find the same assertion in Swedenborg, knowledge of his writings can hardly be sufficiently widespread for this little bit of information to have been picked up by every small—town’ medium \ And a connection between Swedenborg’s and the Bardo Thödol is completely unthinkable. It is a primordial, universal idea that the dead simply continue their earthly existence and do not know that they are disembodied spirits—an archetypal idea which enters into immediate, visible manifestation whenever anyone sees a ghost. It is significant, too, that ghosts all over the world have certain features in common. I am naturally aware of the unverifiable spiritualistic hypothesis, though I have no wish to make it my own. I must content myself with the hypothesis of an omnipresent, but differentiated, psychic structure which is inherited and which necessarily gives a certain form and direction to all experience. For, just as the organs of the body are not mere lumps of indifferent, passive matter, but are dynamic, functional complexes which assert themselves with imperious urgency, so also the archetypes, as organs of the psyche, are dynamic, instinctual complexes which determine psychic life to an extraordinary degree. That is why I also call them dominants of the unconscious. The layer of unconscious psyche which is made up of these universal dynamic forms I have termed the collective unconscious.
So far as I know, there is no inheritance of individual prenatal, or pre—uterine, memories, but there are undoubtedly inherited archetypes which are, however, devoid of content, because, to begin with, they contain no personal experiences. They only emerge into consciousness when personal experiences have rendered them visible. As we have seen, Sidpa psychology consists in wanting to live and to be born. (The Sidpa Bardo is the ‘Bardo of Seeking Rebirth’.) Such a state, therefore, precludes any experience of transubjective psychic realities, unless the individual refuses categorically to be born back again into the world of consciousness. According to the teachings of the Bardo Thödol, it is still possible for him, in each of the Bardo states, to reach the Dharma—Kāya by transcending the four—faced Mount Meru, provided that he does not yield to his desire to follow the ‘dim lights’. This is as much as to say that the dead man must desperately resist the dictates of reason, as we understand it, and give up the supremacy of egohood, regarded by reason as sacrosanct. What this means in practice is complete capitulation to the objective powers of the psyche, with all that this entails; a kind of symbolical death, corresponding to the Judgement of the Dead in theSidpa Bardo. It means the end of all conscious, rational, morally responsible conduct of life, and a voluntary surrender to what the Bardo Thödol calls ‘karmic illusion \ Karmic illusion springs from belief in a visionary world of an extremely irrational nature, which neither accords with nor derives from our rational judgements but is the exclusive product of uninhibited imagination. It is sheer dream or ‘fantasy’, and every well—meaning person will instantly caution us against it; nor indeed can one see at first sight what is the difference between fantasies of this kind and the phantasmagoria of a lunatic. Very often only a slight abaissement du niveau mental is needed to unleash this world of illusion. The terror and darkness of this moment has its equivalent in the experiences described in the opening sections of the Sidpa Bardo. But the contents of this Bardo also reveal the archetypes, the karmic images which appear first in their terrifying form. The Chönyid state is equivalent to a deliberately induced psychosis.
One often hears and reads about the dangers of yoga, particularly of the ill—reputed Kundaliniyoga. The deliberately induced psychotic state, which in certain unstable individuals might easily lead to a real psychosis, is a danger that needs to be taken very seriously indeed. These things really are dangerous and ought not to be meddled with in our typically Western way. It is a meddling with fate, which strikes at the very roots of human existence and can let loose a flood of sufferings of which no sane person ever dreamed. These sufferings correspond to the hellish torments of the Chönyid state, described in the text as follows:—
’ Then the Lord of Death will place round thy neck a rope and drag thee along; he will cut off thy head, tear out thy heart, pull out thy intestines, lick up thy brain, drink thy blood, eat thy flesh, and gnaw thy bones; but thou wilt be incapable of dying. Even when thy body is hacked to pieces, it will revive again. The repeated hacking will cause intense pain and torture.’
These tortures aptly describe the real nature of the danger: it is a disintegration of the wholeness of the Bardo body, which is a kind of ‘subtle body’ constituting the visible envelope of the psychic self in the after—death state. The psychological equivalent of this dismemberment is psychic dissociation. In its deleterious form it would be schizophrenia (split mind). This most common of all mental illnesses consists essentially in a marked abaissement du niveau mental which abolishes the normal checks imposed by the conscious mind and thus gives unlimited scope to the play of the unconscious ‘dominants’.
The transition, then, from the Sidpa state to the Chönyid state is a dangerous reversal of the aims and intentions of the conscious mind. It is a sacrifice of the ego’s stability and a surrender to the extreme uncertainty of what must seem like a chaotic riot of phantasmal forms. When Freud coined the phrase that the ego was ‘the true seat of anxiety ‘, he was giving voice to a very true and profound intuition. Fear of self—sacrifice lurks deep in every ego, and this fear is often only the precariously controlled demand of the unconscious forces to burst out in full strength. No one who strives for selfhood (individuation) is spared this dangerous passage, for that which is feared also belongs to the wholeness of the self—the sub—human, or supra—human, world of psychic ‘dominants ‘from which the ego originally emancipated itself with enormous effort, and then only partially, for the sake of a more or less illusory freedom. This liberation is certainly a very necessary and very heroic undertaking, but it represents nothing final: it is merely the creation of a subject, who, in order to find fulfilment, has still to be confronted by an object. This, at first sight, would appear to be the world, which is swelled out with projections for that very purpose. Here we seek and find our difficulties, here we seek and find our enemy, here we seek and find what is dear and precious to us; and it is comforting to know that all evil and all good is to be found out there, in the visible object, where it can be conquered, punished, destroyed or enjoyed. But nature herself does not allow this paradisal state of innocence to continue for ever. There are, and always have been, those who cannot help but see that the world and its experiences are in the nature of a symbol, and that it really reflects something that lies hidden in the subject himself, in his own transubjective reality. It is from this profound intuition, according to lāmaist doctrine, that the Chönyid state derives its true meaning, which is why the Chönyid Bardo is entitled’ The Bardo of the Experiencing of Reality \
The reality experienced in the Chönyid state is, as the last section of the corresponding Bardo teaches, the reality of thought. The ‘thought—forms ‘appear as realities, fantasy takes on real form, and the terrifying dream evoked by karma and played out by the unconscious ‘dominants’ begins. The first to appear (if we read the text backwards) is the all—destroying God of Death, the epitome of all terrors; he is followed by the 28’ power—holding’ and sinister goddesses and the 58 ‘blood—drinking’ goddesses. In spite of their daemonic aspect, which appears as a confusing chaos of terrifying attributes and monstrosities, a certain order is already discernible. We find that there are companies of gods and goddesses who are arranged according to the four directions and are distinguished by typical mystic colours. It gradually becomes clearer that all these deities are organized into mandolas, or circles, containing a cross of the four colours. The colours are co—ordinated with the four aspects of wisdom:
(1) White =the light—path of the mirror—like wisdom;
(2) Yellow =the light—path of the wisdom of equality;
(3) Red=the light—path of the discriminative wisdom;
(4) Green =the light—path of the all—performing wisdom.
On a higher level of insight, the dead man knows that the real thought—forms all emanate from himself, and that the four light—paths of wisdom which appear before him are the radiations of his own psychic faculties. This takes us straight to the psychology of the lāmaistic mandala, which I have already discussed in the book I brought out with the late Richard Wilhelm, The Secret oj the Golden Flower.
Continuing our ascent backwards through the region of the Chönyid Bardo, we come finally to the vision of the Four Great Ones: the green Amogha—Siddhi, the red Amitabha, the yellow Ratna—Sambhava, and the white Vajra—Sattva. The ascent ends with the effulgent blue light of the Dharma—Dhātu, the Buddha—body, which glows in the midst of the mandala from the heart of Vairochana.
With this final vision the karmic illusions cease; consciousness, weaned away from all form and from all attachment to objects, returns to the timeless, inchoate state of the Dharma—Kāya. Thus (reading backwards) the Chikhai state, which appeared at the moment of death, is reached.
I think these few hints will suffice to give the attentive reader some idea of the psychology of the Bardo ThödoL The book describes a way of initiation in reverse, which, unlike the eschato—logical expectations of Christianity, prepares the soul for a descent into physical being. The thoroughly intellectualistic and rationalistic worldly—mindedness of the European makes it advisable for us to reverse the sequence of the Bardo Thödol and to regard it as an account of Eastern initiation experiences, though one is perfectly free, if one chooses, to substitute Christian symbols for the gods of the Chönyid Bardo. At any rate, the sequence of events as I have described it oners a close parallel to the phenomenology of the European unconscious when it is undergoing an ‘initiation process \ that is to say, when it is being analyzed. The transformation of the unconscious that occurs under analysis makes it the natural analogue of the religious initiation ceremonies, which do, however, differ in principle from the natural process in that they forestall the natural course of development and substitute for thespontaneous production of symbols a deliberately selected set of symbols prescribed by tradition. We can see this in the Exercitia of Ignatius Loyola, or in the yoga meditations of the Buddhists and Tantrists.
The reversal of the order of the chapters, which I have suggested here as an aid to understanding, in no way accords with the original intention of the Bardo Thödol. Nor is the psychological use we make of it anything but a secondary intention, though one that is possibly sanctioned by lāmaist custom. The real purpose of this singular book is the attempt, which must seem very strange to the educated European of the twentieth century, to enlighten the dead on their journey through the regions of the Bardo. The Catholic Church is the only place in the world of the white man where any provision is made for the souls of the departed. Inside the Protestant camp, with its world—affirming optimism, we only find a few mediumistic ‘rescue circles’ whose main concern is to make the dead aware of the fact that they are dead. But, generally speaking, we have nothing in the West that is in any way comparable to the Bardo Thödol, except for certain secret writings which are inaccessible to the wider public and to the ordinary scientist. According to tradition, the Bardo Thödol, too, seems to have been included among the ‘hidden ‘books, as Dr. Evans—Wentz makes clear in his Introduction. As such, it forms a special chapter in the magical ‘cure of the soul’ which extends even beyond death. This cult of the dead is rationally based on the belief in the supra—temporality of the soul, but its irrational basis is to be found in the psychological need of the living to do something for the departed. This is an elementary need which forces itself upon even the most ‘enlightened’ individuals when faced by the death of relatives and friends. That is why, enlightenment or no enlightenment, we still have all manner of ceremonies for the dead. If Lenin had to submit to being embalmed and put on show in a sumptuous mausoleum like an Egyptian pharaoh, we may be quite sure it was not because his followers believed in the resurrection of the body. Apart, however, from the Masses said for the soul in the Catholic Church, the provisions we make for the dead are rudimentary and on the lowest level, not because we cannot convince ourselves of the soul’s immortality, but because we have rationalized the above—mentioned psychological need out of existence. We behave as if we did not have this need, and because we cannot believe in a life after death we prefer to do nothing about it. Simpler—minded people follow their own feelings, and, as in Italy, build themselves funeral monuments of gruesome beauty. The Catholic Masses for the soul are on a level considerably above this, because they are expressly intended for the psychic welfare of the deceased and are not a mere gratification of lachrymose sentiments. But the highest application of spiritual effort on behalf of the departed is surely to be found in the instructions of the Bardo Thödol. They are so detailed and thoroughly adapted to the apparent changes in the dead man’s condition that every serious—minded reader must ask himself whether these wise old lāmas might not, after all, have caught a glimpse of the fourth dimension and twitched the veil from, the greatest of life’s secrets.
If the truth is always doomed to be a disappointment, one almost feels tempted to concede at least that much reality to the vision of life in the Bardo. At any rate, it is unexpectedly original, if nothing else, to find the after—death state, of which our religious imagination has formed the most grandiose conceptions, painted in lurid colours as a terrifying dream—state of a progressively degenerative character. The supreme vision comes not at the end of the Bardo, but right at the beginning, in the moment of death; what happens afterward is an ever—deepening descent into illusion and obscuration, down tc the ultimate degradation of new physical birth. The spiritual climax is reached at the moment when life ends. Human life, therefore, is the vehicle of the highest perfection it is possible to attain; it alone generates the karma that makes it possible for the dead man to abide in the perpetual light of the Voidness without clinging to any object, and thus to rest on the hub of the wheel of rebirth, freed from all illusion of genesis and decay. Life in the Bardo brings no eternal rewards or punishments, but merely a descent into a new life which shall bear the individual nearer to his final goal. But this eschatological goal is what he himself brings to birth as the last and highest fruit of the labours and aspirations of earthly existence. This view is not only lofty, it is manly and heroic.
The degenerative character of Bardo life is corroborated by the spiritualistic literature of the West, which again and again gives one a sickening impression of the utter inanity and banality of communications from the ‘spirit world’. The scientific mind does not hesitate to explain these reports as emanations from the unconscious of the ‘mediums’ and of those taking part in the seance, and even to extend this explanation to the description of the Hereafter given in The Tibetan Book of the Dead. And it is an undeniable fact that the whole book is created out of the archetypal contents of the unconscious. Behind these there lie— and in this our Western reason is quite right—no physical or metaphysical realities, but ‘merely ‘the reality of psychic facts, the data of psychic experience. Now whether a thing is ‘given ‘subjectively or objectively, the fact remains that it is. The Bardo Thödol says no more than this, for its five Dhyāni Buddhas are themselves no more than psychic data. That is just what the dead man has to recognize, if it has not already become clear to him during life that his own psychic self and the giver of all data are one and the same. The world of gods and spirits is truly ‘nothing but’ the collective unconscious inside me. To turn this sentence round so that it reads: The collective unconscious is the world of gods and spirits outside me, no intellectual acrobatics are needed, but a whole human lifetime, perhaps even many lifetimes of increasing completeness. Notice that I do not say ‘of increasing perfection ‘, because those who are ‘perfect’ make another kind of discovery altogether.
* * *
The Bardo Thödol began by being a * closed’ book, and so it has remained, no matter what kind of commentaries may be written upon it. For it is a book that will only open itself to spiritual understanding, and this is a capacity which no man is born with, but which he can only acquire through special training and special experience. It is good that such to all intents and purposes ‘useless ‘books exist. They are meant for those ‘queer folk ‘who no longer set much store by the uses, aims, and meaning of present—day ‘civilisation ‘.
It may be argued that nobody can talk about death with authority who has not died; and since nobody, apparently, has ever returned from death, how can anybody know what death is, or what happens after it?
The Tibetan will answer: ‘There is not one person, indeed, not one living being, that has not returned from death. In fact, we all have died many deaths, before we came into this incarnation. And what we call birth is merely the reverse side of death, like one of the two sides of a coin, or like a door which we call “entrance” from outside and “exit” from inside a room.’
It is much more astonishing that not everybody remembers his or her previous death; and, because of this lack of remembering, most persons do not believe there was a previous death. But, likewise, they do not remember their recent birth—and yet they do not doubt that they were recently born. They forget that active memory is only a small part of our normal consciousness, and that our subconscious memory registers and preserves every past impression and experience which our waking mind fails to recall.
There are those who, in virtue of concentration and other yogic practices, are able to bring the subconscious into the realm of discriminative consciousness and, thereby, to draw upon the unrestricted treasury of subconscious memory, wherein are stored the records not only of our past lives but the records of the past of our race, the past of humanity, and of all pre—human forms of life, if not of the very consciousness that makes life possible in this universe.
If, through some trick of nature, the gates of an individual’s subconsciousness were suddenly to spring open, the unprepared mind would be overwhelmed and crushed. Therefore, the gates of the subconscious are guarded, by all initiates, and hidden behind the veil of mysteries and symbols.
For this reason, the Bardo Thödol, the Tibetan book vouch— safing liberation from the intermediate state between life and re—birth,—which state men call death,—has been couched in symbolical language. It is a book which is sealed with the seven seals of silence,—not because its knowledge should be withheld from the uninitiated, but because its knowledge would be misunderstood, and, therefore, would tend to mislead and harm those who are unfitted to receive it. But the time has come to break the seals of silence; for the human race has come to the juncture where it must decide whether to be content with the subjugation of the material world, or to strive after the conquest of the spiritual world, by subjugating selfish desires and transcending self—imposed limitations.
According to Tibetan tradition, the Bardo Thödol is one of those works of Padma—Sambhava which were secretly hidden in order to preserve them for later generations, and which were to be revealed to the world when the time was ripe. However this may be, it is a fact that during the persecution of Buddhism by Langdarma, at the beginning of the ninth century, A.D., innumerable books of the earliest period of Tibetan Buddhism were concealed under rocks, in caves, and other places, to prevent their destruction. Since all members of the Buddhist Order and their supporters were either killed or driven out of Tibet, most of these buried scriptures remained where they had been hidden. Many of them were recovered during the succeeding centuries and designated Termas, a term derived from the Tibetan word Gter, pronounced Ter, meaning ‘Treasure ‘. Those who discovered these spiritual treasures and propagated their teachings were called Tertöns, from Tibetan Gter—bston, pronounced Tertön, meaning ‘Revealer of Treasure’.
This seems to me a far more reasonable explanation for the tradition of the Tertöns, which, significantly, is held in the oldest Schools of Tibetan Buddhism, like the Nyingmapa and Kargyütpa, than the theory advanced by certain Western critics, that these scriptures had been ‘faked ‘by people who wanted to pass off their own ideas under the guise of ancient revelations. Such critics underestimate the religious sincerity and the deep respect for the sanctity of spiritual tradition which is engrained in every Tibetan, layman and lāma alike. To add to or omit from the Sacred Scriptures a single word or letter has ever been looked upon by Tibetans as a heinous sin, which even the most impious would fear to commit.
Furthermore, these same critics underestimate the difficulties of forging and issuing such scriptures, for the forging would require a technical and critical knowledge of history and linguistics such as was not only unknown in Tibet, but such as would have required a master—mind for its execution. Had a genius of that sort existed in Tibet, he would have had no need to resort to the subterfuge of forgery, for he could have stood on his own feet, as did many scholarly geniuses who wrote and taught in their own name. Nor is it likely that men who could create and propagate such profound thoughts and lofty ideals as the Termas contain would stoop so low as to deceive their fellow—men. And when we consider that the literature in question is not a matter of a few isolated treatises but of about a hundred big volumes (according to tradition 108 volumes), running into tens of thousands of folios, then the theory of wilful deception becomes not only improbable, but absurd.
In considering the influences on the Bardo Thödol of the pre—Buddhistic religion of Tibet, namely that of the Bön—pos, there must be taken into account the fact that all of those Termas attributed to Padma—Sambhava declare, in no uncertain terms, their adherence to him, the very personage who opposed and defeated the Bön—pos. These recovered scriptures cannot, therefore, be regarded as propagating Bön ideas.
Even though Padma—Sambhava did adopt into the Buddhist system some of the local Tibetan deities, to serve as guardians of the Faith, in doing so he did not give up one inch of Buddhist ground to the Bön—pos, but acted in perfect conformity with the principles of orthodox Buddhism, wherein, in all Buddhist countries, the deities of the Earth and of space have always been honoured and propitiated, as being protectors of the Dharma. Thus, the following Pali verses are still recited, in the course of the regular pujā (or ceremony of worship), by the followers of Theravāda Buddhism, in Ceylon, Burma, Siam, Cambodia, and elsewhere:—
‘Akāsatthā ca bhummatthā, devā nāgā mahiddhikā,
Puññantam anutnoditvā, dram rakkhantu sāsanam.’
These verses may be rendered into English as follows:—
‘May the beings of the sky [or of space] and of the Earth, Devas and Nāgas [i.e., gods and serpent—spirits] of great power,
After having shared in the merit [of this puja],
Long protect the Sacred Doctrine.’
Any cultural influence, as between Buddhism and Bönism, was more in the nature of a one—way traffic than a mutual exchange of ideas; for the Bön—pos, who had no literature of their own, took over Buddhist concepts and symbols on a vast scale, and thereby created a literature and an iconography which so greatly resemble those of the Buddhists as to be almost indistinguishable to the casual observer.
There is also current the wholly arbitrary assertion that it was the Bön influence which encouraged laxity in the observance of Buddhist monastic rules in Tibet and led to a general decline in the standard of Tibetan learning and morality. Whoever has had the opportunity to stay for even a short time in one of the still existing Bön monasteries of Tibet, will have noticed, with surprise, that the rules of celibacy and monastic discipline are stricter there than in most Buddhist monasteries, and that for many of the major scriptures of the Tibetan Buddhist Canon a parallel can be found in the scriptures of the Bön—pos. They have their * Prajnāpāramitā Sutras, ‘ their ‘Pratlyasamutpāda * (represented in a Wheel of Life of thirteen divisions), their T āntras and Mantras; and their deities more or less correspond to the various Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, Devatas, and Dharmapalas of Buddhism.
It may seem paradoxical, but it is a fact, that whereas the older Schools of Tibetan Buddhism, despite their tolerance of local deities, succeeded in breaking the power of Bönism, it was the Gelugpas, the youngest and most vigorously reformed School, which re—introduced one of the most influential institutions of the Bön—pos, namely, State Oracles in Oracle—Temples, in all important monasteries of the Yellow Sect. The deities who are invoked in these Oracle—Temples are exclusively of Bön origin. Among the older Buddhist sects, and especially among the Kargyütpas, no such Oracle—Temples exist. This shows that the Old Schools, contrary to common belief, are less under the influence of Bönism than the Gelugpas, in spite of the Gelugpas’ reforms and stricter monastic discipline. This stricter monastic discipline of the Gelugpas really brings them nearer to the above—mentioned puritanism of the Bön—pos.
We must, therefore, beware of sweeping statements, as to what can be attributed to the influence of Bönism and what not. Especially is this so because we do not know of what the teachings of Bön consisted before the advent of Buddhism, although we can safely assume that they were animistic, the spiritualised forces of man and nature being worshipped, chiefly in their awe—inspiring and terrifying aspects; and certain rituals were performed for the benefit and the guidance of the dead. Such religious practices as these are commonly found in almost all early civilizations; and they prevailed in India as much as they did in Tibet. This ‘animism ‘permeates all Buddhistic texts, wherein every tree and grove, and every locality, is held to have its own peculiar deities; and the Buddha is represented as discoursing with gods and other spiritual beings, inhabiting the Earth and the realms beyond, as if that were a most natural procedure. Only a completely intellectualized and Westernized Buddhism, which attempts to separate the rational thought—content of Buddhism from its equally profound mythological elements, can deny this animistic background and with it the metaphysical foundations of Buddhism.
The Buddhist universe is alive through and through; it has no room for inert matter and mere mechanism. And what is more, the Buddhist is alert to all possibilities of existence and to all aspects of reality. If we have read of the fearful apparitions which surrounded the Buddha during the night preceding His Enlightenment, we need not search for Bön influences in relation to the animal—headed monsters that appear from the abyss of the subconscious mind in the hour of death, or in the visions of meditation. Wrathful deities, demons in animal form, and gods in demonical guise are as much at home in Indian as in Tibetan tradition. Despite the popular usages to which the Bardo Thödol has been put in connection with the death rituals—and herein, probably, is discernible the only trace of Bön influence worth considering—the central idea and the profound symbolism of the Bardo Thödol are genuinely Buddhistic.
The Tibetans themselves have put forth considerable effort to free their Scriptures from errors and non—Buddhistic accretions, and to ensure the correctness and reliability of their traditions. After the rules for the translation of Sanskrit texts and the necessary corresponding Tibetan terminology had been established by the early Tibetan translators and pioneers of the Dharma, ‘ translators were explicitly forbidden to coin new terms. When this was unavoidable, they were directed to report the matter to a special Tribunal, called " the Tribunal of the Doctrine of the Blessed One/’ attached to the royal palace. The translation of Tantric works could be undertaken with the king’s permission only. These rules were promulgated by King Ti—de Song—tsen (Ral—pa—can, 817—36 A.D.) and have been followed by all Tibetan translators ever since.’1
With the advent of wooden block—prints, similar precautions were taken, not only with regard to translations, but with regard to all religious literature. Thus it became a rule that no religious book could be published without the sanction of the highest spiritual authorities, who appointed qualified proof—readers and scholars to prevent faulty renderings or unwarranted interpolations. This, however, did not interfere with the diversity of interpretations by the various acknowledged Schools and their Teachers. The chief purpose was to prevent the degeneration of established traditions either through carelessness or ignorance of unqualified copyists and interpreters.
It is for this reason that the authorized block—prints contain the most reliable versions of the generally accepted traditional sacred texts. But hand—written books, although sometimes suffering from mistakes in spelling and from other errors of the copyist, who often shows lack of understanding of the archaic or classical language of the text, are, nevertheless, valuable, especially if they go back to originals of greater antiquity than those of the current block—prints, or if they represent some lesser known tradition handed down from guru to chela through many generations.
If, therefore, I direct the reader’s attention to certain differences between the officially accepted version of the block—print and that of the manuscript, which formed the basis of LāMa Kazi Dawa Samdup’s translation, I do not wish to question the value of the manuscript, but merely to throw light upon some important points of Buddhist tradition, which may lead to a deeper understanding, not only from the historical, but, likewise, from a spiritual point of view.
Indeed, it is the spiritual point of view that makes this book so important for the majority of its readers. If the Bardo Thödol were to be regarded as being based merely upon folklore, or as consisting of religious speculation about death and a hypothetical after—death state, it would be of interest only to anthropologists and students of religion. But the Bardo Thödol is far more. It is a key to the innermost recesses of the human mind, and a guide for initiates, and for those who are seeking the spiritual path of liberation.
Although the Bardo Thödol is at the present time widely used in Tibet as a breviary, and read or recited on the occasion of death, —for which reason it has been aptly called ‘The Tibetan Book of the Dead’—one should not forget that it was originally conceived to serve as a guide not only for the dying and the dead, but for the living as well. And herein lies the justification for having made The Tibetan Book of the Dead accessible to a wider public.
Notwithstanding the popular customs and beliefs which, under the influence of age—old traditions of pre—Buddhist origin, have grown around the profound revelations of the Bardo Thödol, it has value only for those who practise and realize its teaching during their life—time.
There are two things which have caused misunderstanding. One is that the teachings seem to be addressed to the dead or the dying; the other, that the title contains the expression " Liberation through Hearing" (in Tibetan, Thos—grol). As a result, there has arisen the belief that it is sufficient to read or to recite the Bardo Thödol in the presence of a dying person, or even of a person who has just died, in order to effect his or her liberation.
Such misunderstanding could only have arisen among those who do not know that it is one of the oldest and most universal practices for the initiate to go through the experience of death before he can be spiritually reborn. Symbolically he must die to his past, and to his old ego, before he can take his place in the new spiritual life into which he has been initiated. The dead or the dying person is addressed in the Bardo Thödol mainly for three reasons: (i) the earnest practitioner of these teachings should regard every moment of his or her life as if it were the last; (2) when a follower of these teachings is actually dying, he or she should be reminded of the experiences at the time of initiation, or of the words (or mantra) of the guru, especially if the dying one’s mind lacks alertness during the critical moments; and (3) one who is still incarnate should try to surround the person dying, or just dead, with loving and helpful thoughts during the first stages of the new, or after—death, state of existence, without allowing emotional attachment to interfere or to give rise to a state of morbid mental depression. Accordingly, one function of the Bardo Thödol appears to be more to help those who have been left behind to adopt the right attitude towards the dead and towards the fact of death than to assist the dead, who, according to Buddhist belief, will not deviate from their own karmic path.
In applying the Bardo Thödol teachings, it is ever a matter of remembering the right thing at the right moment. But in order so to remember, one must prepare oneself mentally during one’s life—time; one must create, build up, and cultivate those faculties which one desires to be of deciding influence at death and in the after—death state,—in order never to be taken unawares, and to be able to react, spontaneously, in the right way, when the critical moment of death has come.
This is clearly expressed in the Root Verses of the Bardo Thödol as rendered in The Tibetan Book of the Dead: —
[‘O] procrastinating one, who thinketh not of the coming of death,
Devoting thyself to the useless doings of this life,
Improvident art thou in dissipating thy great opportunity;
Mistaken, indeed, will thy purpose be now if thou returnest empty—handed [from this life].
Since the Holy Dharma is known to be thy true need, Wilt thou not devote [thyself] to the Holy Dharma even now?’
It is recognized by all who are acquainted with Buddhist philosophy that birth and death are not phenomena which happen only once in any given human life; they occur uninterruptedly. At every moment something within us dies and something is reborn. The different bardos, therefore, represent different states of consciousness of our life: the state of waking consciousness, the normal consciousness of a being born into our human world, known in Tibetan as the skyes—nas bardo; the state of dream—consciousness (rmi—lam bar—do) ; the state of dhyāna, or trance—consciousness, in profound meditation (bsam—gtan bar—do)) the state of the experiencing of death (hchhi—kha bar—do) ; the state of experiencing of Reality (chhos—nyid bar—do) ; the state of rebirth—consciousness (srid—pa bar—do).
All this is clearly described in The Root—Verses of the Six Bardos, which, together with The Paths of Good Wishes, form the authentic and original nucleus of the Bardo Thodol, around which the prose parts crystallized as commentaries. This proves that we have to do here with life itself and not merely with a mass for the dead, to which the Bardo Thodol was reduced in later times.
The Bardo Thodol is addressed not only to those who see the end of their life approaching, or who are very near death, but to those who still have years of incarnate life before them, and who, for the first time, realize the full meaning of their existence as human beings. To be born as a human being is a privilege, according to the Buddha’s teaching, because it offers the rare opportunity of liberation through one’s own decisive effort, through a ‘turning—about in the deepest seat of consciousness,’ as the Lankāvatāra Sütra puts it.
Accordingly, The Root Verses of the Six Bardos open with the words:
’ O that now, when the Bardo of Life1 is dawning upon me,
—After having given up indolence, since there is no time to waste in life—
May I undistractedly enter the path of listening, reflecting, and meditating,
So that, . . . once having attained human embodiment,
No time may be squandered through useless distractions.’
Listening, reflecting, and meditating are the three stages of discipleship. The Tibetan word for ‘listening ‘, or ‘hearing \ thos in this connection, as well as in the expression ‘Thödol * (thos—grol), cannot be confused with the mere physical sense—awareness of hearing, as may be seen from the Tibetan term ‘nyan—thos, ‘ the equivalent of the Sanskrit word ‘sravaka, ‘ referring to a ‘disciple/ and, more particularly, to a personal disciple of the Buddha, and not merely to one who by chance happened to hear the Buddha’s teaching. It refers to one who has accepted this teaching in his heart and has made it his own. Thus the word ‘listening/ in this connection, implies ‘hearing with one’s heart/ that is, with sincere faith (sraddha). This represents the first stage of discipleship. In the second stage, this intuitive attitude is transformed into understanding through reason; while, in the third stage, the disciple’s intuitive feeling, as well as intellectual understanding, are transformed into living reality through direct experience. Thus intellectual conviction grows into spiritual certainty, into a knowing in which the knower is one with the known.
This is the high spiritual state vouchsafed by the teachings set forth in the Bardo Thödol. Thereby the initiated disciple attains dominion over the realm of death, and, being able to perceive death’s illusory nature, is freed from fear. This illusoriness of death comes from the identification of the individual with his temporal, transitory form, whether physical, emotional, or mental, whence arise the mistaken notion that there exists a personal, separate egohood of one’s own, and the fear of losing it. If, however, the disciple has learned, as the Bardo Thödol directs, to identify himself with the Eternal, the Dharma, the Imperishable Light of Buddahood within, then the fears of death are dissipated like a cloud before the rising sun. Then he knows that whatever he may see, hear, or feel, in the hour of his departure from this life, is but a reflection of his own conscious and subconscious mental content; and no mind—created illusion can then have power over him if he knows its origin and is able to recognize it. The illusory Bardo visions vary, in keeping with the religious or cultural tradition in which the percipient has grown up, but their underlying motive—power is the same in all human beings. Thus it is that the profound psychology set forth by the Bardo Thödol constitutes an important contribution to our knowledge of the human mind and of the path that leads beyond it. Under the guise of a science of deathj the Bardo Thödol reveals the secret of life; and therein lies its spiritual value and its universal appeal.
The Bardo Thödol is a treatise which needs more than philological knowledge for its translation and interpretation, namely, a thorough knowledge of its traditional background and of the religious experience of one who either has grown up in the tradition or who has imbibed its tradition from a competent living guru. In times of old ‘it was not considered that the mere knowledge of language sufficed to make a man a " translator” in any serious sense of the word; no one would have undertaken to translate a text who had not studied it for long years at the feet of a traditional and authoritative exponent of its teaching, and much less would anyone have thought himself qualified to translate a book in the teachings of which he did not believe.’1
Our modern attitude, unfortunately, is a complete reversal of this; a scholar is regarded as being all the more competent (’ scholarly’) the less he believes in the teachings which he has undertaken to interpret. The sorry results are only too apparent, especially in the realm of Tibetology, which such scholars have approached with an air of their own superiority, thus defeating the very purpose of their endeavours.
LāMa Kazi Dawa—Samdup and Dr. Evans—Wentz were the first to re—establish the ancient method of Lotsavas (as the translators of sacred texts are called in Tibet). They approached their work in the spirit of true devotion and humility, as a sacred trust that had come into their hands through generations of initiates, a trust which had to be handled with the utmost respect for even the smallest detail. At the same time, they did not regard their translation as final, or infallible, but rather like the pioneer translations of the Bible, that is, as being a starting—point for ever deeper and more perfect renderings in accordance with our growing acquaintance with the sources of Tibetan tradition.
Such an attitude is not only the hall—mark of spiritual understanding and true scholarship, but it makes even the reader feel that he is treading on sacred ground. This explains the deep impression which The Tibetan Book of the Dead, as well as the other complementary volumes of the Oxford Tibetan Series, have made upon thoughtful readers all over the world. The outstanding success of these works was due to their convincing sincerity and seriousness of purpose. Indeed, the world owes a great debt of gratitude to these two devoted scholars. * Sabbadānam dhatnmadānam jināti ‘ : ‘The best of all gifts is the gift of Truth/ 1
THE BUDDHA’S REMEMBERING
’ In recollection all former births passed before His
eyes. Born in such a place, of such a name, and
downwards to His present birth, so through
hundreds, thousands, myriads, all His births and
deaths He knew.’
Ashvaghosha’s Life of the Buddha
(Samuel Beal’s Translation).
BY SIR JOHN WOODROFFE
THE SCIENCE OF DEATH1
’Strive after the Good before thou art in danger, before pain masters thee and thy mind loses its keenness.’ —Kulārnava Tan t ra, I. 97.
THE thought of death suggests two questions. The first is: ‘How may one avoid death, except when death is desired as in "death—at—will" (Ichchhāmrityn)?’ The avoidance of death is the aim when Hathayoga is used to prolong present life in the flesh. This is not, in the Western sense, a ‘yea—saying’ to ‘life’ but, for the time being, to a particular form of life. Dr. Evans—Wentz tells us that according to popular Tibetan belief no death is natural. This is the notion of most, if not of all, primitive peoples. Moreover, physiology also questions whether there is any ‘natural death’, in the sense of death through mere age without lesion or malady. This Text, however, in the language of the renouncer of fleshly life the world over, tells the nobly—born that Death comes to all, that human kind are not to cling to life on earth with its ceaseless wandering in the Worlds of birth and death (Sangsåra). Rather should they implore the aid of the Divine Mother for a safe passing through the fearful state following the body’s dissolution, and that they may at length attain all—perfect Buddhahood.
The second question then is: ‘How to accept Death and die ?’ It is with this that we are now concerned. Here the technique of dying makes Death the entrance to good future lives, at first out of, and then again in, the flesh, unless and until liberation (Nirvana) from the wandering (Sangsāra) is attained.
This Book, which is of extraordinary interest, both as regards Text and Introduction, deals with the period (longer or shorter according to the circumstances) which, commencing immediately after death, ends with ‘rebirth1. In the Buddhists’ view, Life consists of a series of successive states of consciousness. The first state is the Birth—Consciousness; the last is the consciousness existing at the moment of death, or the Death—Consciousness. The interval between the two states of Consciousness, during which the transformation from the ‘old’ to a * new * being is effected, is called the Bardo or intermediate state (Antar åbhāva), divided into three stages, called the Chikhai) Chönyid) and Sidpa Bardo respectively.
This Manual, common in various versions throughout Tibet, is one of a class amongst which Dr. Evans—Wentz includes the Egyptian Book of the Dead, a guide for the use of the Ka or so—called ‘Double \ the De Arte Moriendi and other similar medieval treatises on the craft of dying, to which may be added the Orphic Manual called The Descent into Hades (cf.’ He descended into Hell’) and other like guide—books for the use of the dead, the Pretakhanda of the Hindu Gartida Purana, Swedenborg’s Dc Coelo et dc Infer HO% Rusca’s Dc Inferno i and several other cschatological works both ancient and modern. Thus, the Gañida Purāna deals with the rites used over the dying, the death—moment, the funeral ceremonies, the building up, by means of the Pretashrāddha rite, of a new body for the Prcta or deceased in lieu of that destroyed by fire, the Judgement, and thereafter (ch. V) the various states through which the deceased passes until he is reborn again on earth.
Both the original text and Dr. Evans—Wentz’s Introduction form a very valuable contribution to the Science of Death from the standpoint of the Tibetan Mahāyāna Buddhism of the so—called ‘Tantrik’ type. The book is welcome not merely in virtue of its particular subject—matter, but because the ritual works of any religion enable us more fully to comprehend the philosophy and psychology of the system to which they belong.
The Text has three characteristics. It is, firstly, a work on
the Art of Dying ; for Death, as well as Life, is an Art, though both are often enough muddled through. There is a Bengali saying, * Of what use are Japa and Tapas (two forms of devotion) if one knoweth not how to die ?’ Secondly, it is a manual of religious therapeutic for the last moments, and a psychurgy exorcising, instructing, consoling, and fortifying by the rites of the dying, him who is about to pass on to another life. Thirdly, it describes the experiences of the deceased during the intermediate period, and instructs him in regard thereto. It is thus also a Traveller’s Guide to Other Worlds.
The doctrine of ‘Reincarnation’ on the one hand and of ‘Resurrection’ on the other is the chief difference between the four leading Religions—Brahmanism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. Christianity, in its orthodox form, rejects the most ancient and widespread belief of the Kúklos geneseön, or Sangsāra, or ‘Reincarnation’, and admits one universe only— this, the first and last—and two lives, one here in the natural body and one hereafter in the body of Resurrection.
It has been succinctly said that as Metempsychosis makes the same soul, so Resurrection makes the same body serve for more than one Life. But the latter doctrine limits man’s lives to two in number, of which the first or present determines for ever the character of the second or future.
Brahmanism and Buddhism would accept the doctrine that as a tree falls so shall it lie’, but they deny that it so lies for ever. To the adherents of these two kindred beliefs this present universe is not the first and last. It is but one of an infinite scries, without absolute beginning or end, though each universe of the series appears and disappears. They also teach a series of successive existences therein until morality, devotion, and knowledge produce that high form of detachment which is the cause of Liberation from the cycle of birth and death called ‘The Wanderingf (or Sangsāra). Freedom is the attainment of the Supreme State called the Void, Nirvana, and by other names. They deny that there is only one universe, with one life for each of its human units, and then a. division of men for all eternity into those who are saved in Heaven or are in Limbo and those who are lost in Hell. Whilst they agree in holding that there is a suitable body for enjoyment or suffering in Heaven and Hell, it is not a resurrected body, for the fleshly body on death is dissolved for ever.
The need of some body always exists, except for the non—dualist who believes in a bodiless ( Videha) Liberation {Mukti) \ and each of the four religions affirms that there is a subtle and death—surviving element—vital and psychical—in the physical body of flesh and blood, whether it be a permanent entity or Self, such as the Brahmanic Atona, the Moslem Ruh, and the Christian’ Soul’, or whether it be only a complex of activities (or Skandha), psychical and physical, with life as their function—a complex in continual change, and, therefore, a series of physical and psychical momentary states, successively generated the one from the other, a continuous transformation, as the Buddhists are said to hold. Thus to none of these Faiths is death an absolute ending, but to all it is only the separation of the Psyche from the gross body. The former then enters on a new life, whilst the latter, having lost its principle of animation, decays. As Dr. Evans—Wentz so concisely says, Death disincarnatcs the * soul—complex \ as Birth incarnates it In other words, Death is itself only an initiation into another form of life than that of which it is the ending.
On the subject of the physical aspect of Death, the attention of the reader is drawn to the remarkable analysis here given of symptoms which precede it. These are stated because it is necessary for the dying man and his helpers to be prepared for the final and decisive moment when it comes.1 Noteworthy, too, is the description of sounds heard as (to use Dr. Evans—Wcntz’s language) ‘the psychic resultants of the disintegrating process called death \ They call to mind the humming, rolling, and crackling noises heard before and up to fifteen hours after death, which, recognized by Greunwaldi in 1618 and referred to by later writers, were in 1862 made the subject of special study by Dr. Collingues.
But it is said that the chain of conscious states is not always broken by death, since there is Phozva, or power to project consciousness and enter the body of another.1 Indian occultism speaks of the same power of leaving one’s body (Svech—chhotkrānti), which, according to the TantraRāja (ch. XXVII, vv. 45—7, 72—80), is accomplished through the operation ( Vāyudhārand) of the vital activity (or Vāyu) in thirty—eight points, or junctions (Alarma), of the body. How, it may be asked, does this practice work in with the general doctrine or ‘reincarnation’? We should have been glad if Dr. Evans—Wcntz had elucidated this point. On principle, it would seem that in the case of entry into an unborn body such entry may be made into the Matrix in the same way as if it had occurred after a break of consciousness in death. But in the case of entry into beings already born the operation of the power or Siddhi would appear to be by the way of possession (āveshd) by one consciousness of the consciousness and body of another, differing from the more ordinary case by the fact that the possessing consciousness does not return to its body, which ex hypothesi is about to die when the consciousness leaves it.
If transference of consciousness is effected, there is, of course, no Bardo, which involves the break of consciousness by death. Otherwise, the Text is read.
Then, as the breathing is about to cease, instruction is given and the arteries are pressed. This is done to keep the dying person conscious with a consciousness rightly directed. For the nature of the Death—consciousness determines the future state of the ‘soul—complex’, existence being the continuous transformation of one conscious state into another. Both in Catholic and Hindu ritual for the dying there is constant prayer and repetition of the sacred names.
The pressing of the arteries regulates the path to be taken by the outgoing vital current (Frāna). The proper path is that which passes through the Brāhmarandhra or Foramen of Monro. This notion appears to have been widely held (to quote an instance) even in so remote and primitive a spot as San Cristoval in the Solomon Islands (see Threshold of the Pacific by C, E. Fox). The function of a holed—stone in a Dolmen found there (reminiscent of the Dolmen á dallepcrcée common in the Marne district of Western Europe, in South Russia, and in Southern India) is ‘to allow the free passage to its natural seat, the head, of the dead man’s adaro, or 11 double "\
According to Hindu belief (see Pretakhanda of Garuda Purāna) there are nine apertures oí the body which are the means of experience, and which, in the divine aspect, are the Lords (Nātha) or Gurus.1 A good exit is one which is above the navel. Of such exits the best is through the fissure on the top of the cranium called Brāhmarandhra. This is above the physical cerebrum and the Yoga centre called ‘Lotus of the Thousand Petals’ (Sahasrāra Padma), wherein Spirit is most manifest, since it is the seat of Consciousness. Because of this, the orthodox Hindu wears a crest—lock (S/iikha) at this spot; not, as some have absurdly supposed, so that he may thereby be gripped and taken to Heaven or Hell, but because the Shikkā is, as it were, a flag and its staff, raised before and in honour of the abode of the Supreme Lord, Who is Pure Consciousness itself. (The fancy—picture in a recent work by C. Lancelin, La Vic posthume p. 96, does not show the aperture of exit, which is given in Plate 8 of the second edition of Arthur Avalon’s Serpent Power p. 93.)
Whatever be the ground for the belief and practice of primitive peoples, according to Yoga doctrine, the head is the chief centre of consciousness, regulating other subordinate centres in the spinal column. By withdrawal of the vital current through the central or Sushumnā * nerve’ (nadi) the lower parts of the body are devitalized, and there is vivid concentrated functioning at the cerebral centre.
Exotcricism speaks of the * Book of Judgement*. This is an objective symbol of the ‘Book ‘of Memory. The ‘reading’ of that’ Book’ is the recalling to mind by the dying man of the whole of his past life on earth before he passes from it.2
The vital current at length escapes from the place where it last functioned. In Yoga, thought and breathing being interdependent, exit through the Brāhmarandhra connotes previous activity at the highest centre. Before such exit, and whilst self—consciousness lasts, the mental contents are supplied by the ritual, which is so designed as to secure a good death, and, therefore (later on), birth—consciousness.
At the moment of death the empiric consciousness, or consciousness of objects, is lost. There is what is popularly called a ‘swoon’, which is, however, the corollary of super—consciousness itself, or the Clear Light of the Void; for the swoon is in, and of, the Consciousness as knower of objects ( Vijnāna Skandha). This empiric consciousness disappears, unveiling Pure Consciousness, which is ever ready to be ‘discovered’ by those who have the will to seek and the power to find It.
That clear, colourless Light is a sense—symbol of the formless Void, ‘beyond the Light of Sun, Moon, and Fire’, to use the words of the Indian Gitā. It is clear and colourless, but māyik (or ‘form’) bodies are coloured in various ways. For colour implies and denotes form. The Formless is colourless. The use of psycho—physical chromatism is common to the Hindu and Buddhist Tantras, and may be found in some Islamic mystical systems also.
What then is this Void ? It is not absolutely * nothingness*. It is the A logical, to which no categories drawn from the world of name and form apply. But whatever may have been held by the Mādhyamika Bauddha, a Vcdfmtist would say that * Being1, or ‘Is—ness’, is applicable even in the case of the Void, which is experienced as ‘is1 (asti). The Void is thus, in this view, the negation of all determinations, but not of ‘Is—ness’ as such, as has been supposed in accounts given of Buddhist ‘Nihilism’; but it is nothing known to finite experience in form, and, therefore, for those who have had no other experience, it is no—thing.
A description of Buddhist Mahāyāna teaching which is at once more succinct and clear than, to my knowledge, any other, is given in the Tibetan work, The Path of Good Wishes of Samanta Bhadra, which I have published in the seventh volume of Tantrik Texts (p. xxi et seq.) and here summarize and explain.
All is either Sangsāra or Nirvana. The first is finite experience in the ‘Six Worlds’ or Loka—a. word which means ‘that which is experienced* (Lokyante). The second, or Nirvana, is, negatively speaking, release from such experience, that is from the worlds of Birth and Death and their pains. The Void cannot even be strictly called Nirvana, for this is a term relative to the world, and the Void is beyond all relations. Positively, and concomitantly with such release, it is the Perfect Experience which is Buddhahood, which, again, from the cognitive aspect, is Consciousness unobscured by the darkness of Unconsciousness, that is to say, Consciousness freed of all limitation. From the emotional aspect, it is pure Bliss unaffected by sorrow; and from the volitional aspect, it is freedom of action and almighty power (Amogha—Siddhi). Perfect Experience is an eternal or, more strictly speaking, a timeless state. Imperfect Experience is also eternal in the sense that the series of universes in which it is undergone is infinite. The religious, that is practical, problem is then how from the lesser experience to pass into that which is complete, called by the Upanishads ‘the Whole’ or Puma. This is done by the removal of obscuration. At base, the two are one—the Void, uncreated, independent, uncompounded, and beyond mind and speech. If this were not so, Liberation would not be possible. Man is in fact liberated, but does not know it. When he realizes it, he is freed. The great saying of the Buddhist work the Prajnā—Påramitā runs thus : ‘Form (Rüpa) is the Void and the Void is Form.’ Realization of the Void is to be a Buddha, or ‘Knower’, and not to realize it is to be an ‘ignorant being’ in the Sangsåra. The two paths, then, are Knowledge and Ignorance. The first path leads to—and, as actual realization, is— Nirvana. The second means continuance of fleshly life as man or brute, or as a denizen of the other four Lok as. Ignorance in the individual is in its cosmic aspect Måyā, which in Tibetan (sGyutna) means a magical show. In its most generic form, the former is that which produces the pragmatic, but, in a transcendental sense, the * unreal’ notion of self and otherness. This is the root cause of error (whether in knowing, feeling, or action) which becomes manifest as the’ Six Poisons’ (which Hindus call the ‘Six Enemies’) of the Six Lokas of Sangsāra (of which the Text gives five only)—pride, jealousy, sloth (or ignorance), anger, greed, and lust. The Text constantly urges upon the dying or’ dead’ man to recognize in the apparitions, which he is about to see or sees, the creatures of his own måya—governed mind, veiling from him the Clear Light of the Void. If he does so, he is liberated at any stage.
This philosophical scheme has so obvious a resemblance to the Indian Māyāvāda Vedānta that the Vaishnava Padma Parana dubs that system ‘a bad scripture and covert Buddhism ‘(måyåvādam asachchåstram prachekhannam bauddham). Nevertheless, its great scholastic, ‘the incomparable Shang—karāchāryya’, as Sir William Jones calls him. combated the Buddhists in their denial of a permanent Self (ātmā), as also their subjectivism, at the same time holding that the notion of an individual self and that of a world of objects were pragmatic truths only, superseded by and on the attainment of a state of Liberation which has little, if anything, to distinguish it from the Buddhist Void. The difference between the two systems, though real, is less than is generally supposed. This is a matter, however, which it would be out of place to discuss further here.
However this may be, the after—death apparitions are ‘real’ enough for the deceased who does not, as and when they appear, recognize their unsubstantiality and cleave his way through them to the Void. The Clear Light is spoken of in the Bardo Thödol as such a Dazzlement as is produced by an infinitely vibrant landscape in the springtide. This joyous picture is not, of course, a statement of what It is in itself, for It is not an object, but is a translation in terms of objective vision of a great, but, in itself, indescribable joyful inner experience. My attention was drawn, in this connexion, to a passage in a paper on the Avatatnsaka Sütra (ch. xv), by Mr. Hsu, a Chinese scholar, which says, ‘The Bodhisattva emits the light called " Seeing the Buddha” in order to make the dying think about the Tathāgata and so eftable them to go to the pure realms of the latter after death’.
The dying or deceased man is adjured to recognize the Clear Light and thus liberate himself. If he does so, it is because he is himself ripe for the liberated state which is thus presented to him. If he does not (as is commonly the case), it is because the pull of worldly tendency {Sangskāra) draws him away. He is then presented with the secondary Clear Light, which is the first, somewhat dimmed to him by the general Māyå. If the mind does not find its resting—place here, the first or Chikhai Bardo, which may last for several days, or ‘for the time lhat it takes to snap a finger’ (according to the state of the deceased), comes to an end.
In the next stage (Chonyid Bardo) there is a recovery of the Death—Consciousness of objects. In one sense, that is compared with a swoon, it is a rewakening. But it is not a waking—state such as existed before death. The (soul—complex ‘emerges from its experience of the Void into a state like that of dream. This continues until it attains a new fleshly body and thus really awakes to earth—life again. For this world—experience is life in such a body.
When I first read the account of the fifteen days following recovery from the * swoon’, I thought it was meant to be a scheme of gradual arising of limited consciousness, analogous to that described in the thirty—six Tattvas by the Northern Shaivāgama and its Tantras, a process which is given in its ritual form in the Tantrik Bhütashuddhi rite and in Laya or Kundalini Yoga. But on closer examination I found that this was not so. After the ending of the first Bardo the scheme commences with the complete recovery, without intermediate stages, of the Death—Consciousness. The psychic life is taken up and continued from that point, that is from the stage immediately prior to the ‘swoon’.1 Life im—mediatel}’ after death is, according to this view, as Spiritists assert, similar to, and a continuation of, the life preceding it. As in Swedenborg’s account, and in the recent play Outward Bound, the deceased does not at first know that he is ‘dead’. Swedenborg, who also speaks of an intermediate state, says that, except for those immediately translated to Heaven or Hell, the first state of man after death is like his state in the world, so that he knows no other, believing that he is still in the world notwithstanding his death.1
Two illustrations may be given of the doctrine of the continuity and the similarity of experience before and immediately after death. In India, on the one hand, there are reports of hauntings by unhappy ghosts or Prctas> which hauntings are said to be allayed by the performance of the Preta Shrāddha rite at the sacred town of Gaya. On the other hand, I have heard of a case in England where it was. alleged that a haunting ceased on the saying of a Requiem Mass. In this case, it was supposed that a Catholic soul in Purgatory felt in need of a rite which in its earth—life it had been taught to regard as bringing peace to the dead. The Hindu ghost craves for the Hindu rite which gives to it a new body in lieu of that destroyed on the funeral pyre. These souls do not (in an Indian view) cease to be Hindu or Catholic, or lose their respective beliefs because of their death. Nor (in this view) do those who have passed on necessarily and at once lose any habit, even though it be drinking and smoking. But in the after—death state the * whisky and cigars’ of which we have heard are not gross, material things. Just as a dream reproduces waking experiences, so in the after—death state a man who was wont to drink and smoke imagines that he still docs so. We have here to deal with * dream—whisky’ and ‘dream—cigars ‘which, though imaginary, are, for the dreamer, as real as the substances he drank and smoked in his waking state.2
Subsequently, the deceased becomes aware that he is’ dead \ But as he carries over with him the recollection of his past life, he, at first, still thinks that he has such a physical body as he had before. It is, in fact, a dream—body, such as that of persons seen in dreams. It is an imagined body, which, as the Text says, is neither reflected in a mirror nor casts a shadow, and which can do such wonders as passing through mountains and the like, since Imagination is the greatest of magicians. Even in life on earth a man may imagine that he has a limb where he has none. Long after a man’s leg has been amputated above the knee he can ‘feel his toes’, or is convinced that the soles of his feet (buried days before) are tickling. In the after—death state the deceased imagines that he has a physical body, though he has been severed therefrom by the high surgery of death. In such a body the deceased goes through the experiences next described.
In the First Bardo the deceased glimpses the Clear Light, as the Dharma—Kāya, called by Professor Sylvain Levy the ‘Essential Body’. This, which is beyond form {Arüpa), is the Dharma—Dhātu, or Matrix of Dharma—substance, whence all the Blessed Ones, or Tathāgatas, issue. This is the body of a Buddha in Nirvana. The second body, or Sambhoga—Káya, has such subtle form (Rfipavān) as is visible to the Bodhisattvas and is an intermediate manifestation of the Dharma—Dhātu. In the third body,or Nirviāna—Kåya.ihQ Void, or State of Buddha—hood, is exteriorized into multiple individual appearances more material, and, therefore, visible to the gross senses of men, such as the forms in which the manifested Buddhas (for there arc many and not, as some think, only one, or Gautama) have appeared on earth. If the deceased recognizes the Clear Light of the First Bardo, he is liberated in the Dharma—Kāya. In the Second Bardo Liberation is into the Sambhoga—Kāya (the passage touching the Paradise Realms is not, I think, meant to conflict with this); and in the Third Bardo Liberation is experienced in the Ninnāna—Kāya.
During the Second and Third Bardo the deceased is in the Mayik—world (or world of forms), and if Liberation is then attained it is with form (Rupavān). The deceased being thus in the world of duality, we find that from this point onwards there is a double parallel presentation to his consciousness. There is firstly a Nirvānic line, comprising the Five Dhyāni Buddhas of the Sambhoga—Kaya, symbolized by various dazzling colours, with certain Divinities, peaceful and wrathful, emanating from them; and, secondly, a Sangsāric line, consisting of the Six Lokas. These latter, with one exception (if it be one and not due to corruption of text, viz. the association of the smoky or black light of Hell with the blue Vajra—Sattva), have the same colour as their Nirvānic counterparts, but of a dull hue. With the Lokas are given their ‘Poisons’, or the sinful characteristics of their inhabitants. The ‘soul—complex ‘is then adjured, on the one hand, to seek Liberation through the compassionate grace of the Nirvānic line oí Buddhas and Devatās (Divinities), and, on the other hand, to shun the particular Loka (World) which is concomitantly presented to his mental vision. With these Buddhas, Devatās, and Lokas are associated certain Nidānas (Causal Connexions), Skandhas (Constituent Factors), material elements, and the colours of the latter. This account appears to have suffered from corruption of the Text. Thus the Nidānas and Skandhas arc not complete. Logically, Vijnāna Skandha should go first with Vairochana, and Nāma—rupa with Vajra—Sattva. Only four out of the five elements are mentioned. Ether, which is omitted, should be associated with Vairochana and Vijnāna. The colours of the elements accord with those given in the Hindu Tantras except as regards ‘air’, to which is assigned a green colour, appropriate for Asuric jealousy, though it is not that of the Hindu colouration, which is smoky grey. Again, the order of the Six Lokas is not the usual one, viz. first the better Lokas, of Dcvas, Asuras, and Men, and then the Lohas of Ghosts (Pretas), Brutes, and Hell. Each Loka is characterized by its ‘poison ‘or besetting sin, but, of these, five only arc mentioned. The editor has, however, referred to corruption in the Text in some of these matters, and others I have noted on a careful analysis of the translated Text.
The peaceful Devatās follow on the sixth and seventh day, and the wrathful Devatās on the eighth and subsequent days. The latter arc of the terrific type, characteristic both of the Buddhist and Hindu Shākta Tantras, with their Bhairavas, B hair avis, Dākinls, Yoginis, and so on. Hinduism also makes this distinction in the nature of Divinities and interprets the wrathful orders as representative of the so—called * destructive’ power of the Supreme Lord and of his lesser manifestations; though, in truth, ‘God never destroys’ (na devo nāshakah kvachit), but withdraws the Universe to Himself.
But Power, which thus dissolves the world, is ever terrible to those who are attached to the world. All bad action {Adhanna)> too, is dissolvent; and, according to the Text, the deceased’s evil Karma in the Sangsāra is reflected in the Nirvānic line in its forms as Divinities of the Lower Bardo, who so terrify the deceased that he flees from them and sinks therefore more and more into such a state as will eventually bring him birth in one or other of the Lokas.
The Peaceful Devatās are said to issue from the heart, and the Wrathful from the head. I do not, however, think that this statement necessarily lets in the Yoga doctrine of the ‘Serpent Power1 and the Six Centres, which the editor has shortly set out in Part II of the Addenda, assuming (a matter of which I have no personal knowledge) that the Tibetans both practise this Yoga and teach it in its Indian form. I myself think that the mention of the heart and head does not refer to these places as F—centres, but possibly to the fact that the Peaceful Deities reflect, as stated in the Text, the love of the deceased which springs from his heart.
I make a reservation also as regards the subject of Mantras, dealt with in Part III of the Addenda. No doubt the Tibetans employ Sanskrit Mantras, but such Mantras are often found in a sadly corrupt form in their books—a fact which suggests that the Tibetans feel little appreciation of the supposed sound—value of Mantras. But whether their theory on this subject is the same in all respects as that of the Hindus I cannot say.1The Hindu theory, which I have elsewhere endeavoured to elucidate (cf. Garland of Letters) is still on several points obscure; the subject being perhaps the most difficult of any in Hinduism. Even though Tibetan Buddhism may have Mantra—Sādhanå, the presentment of it is likely to differ as much as does the general substance of these two Faiths.
About the fifteenth day, passage is made into the Third Bardo, in which the deceased, if not previously liberated, seeks ‘Rebirth’ His past life has now become dim. That of the future is indicated by certain premonitory signs which represent the first movements of desire towards fulfilment. The ‘soul—complex’ takes on the colour of the Loka in which it is destined to be born. If the deceased’s Karma leads him to Hell, thither he goes after the Judgement, in a subtle body which cannot be injured or destroyed, but in which he may suffer atrocious pain. Or he may go to the Heaven—world or other Loka, to return at length and in all cases (for neither punishment nor reward are eternal) to earth, whereon only can new Karma *be made. Such return takes place after expiation of his sins in Hell, or the expiration of the term of enjoyment in Heaven which his Karma has gained for him. If, however, the lot of the deceased is immediate rebirth on earth, he sees visions of mating men and women. He, at this final stage towards the awakening to earth—life, now knows that he has not a gross body of flesh and blood. He urgently desires to have one, in order that he may again enjoy physical life on the earth—world.
The Freudian psycho-analyst will find herein a remarkable passage supporting his doctrine of the aversion of the son for the father. The passage says that, if the deceased is to be born as a male, the feeling of its being a male comes upon the knower, and a feeling of intense aversion for the father and attraction for the mother is begotten, and vice versa as regards birth as a female. This is, however, an old Buddhist doctrine found elsewhere. Professor De la Vallée Poussin cites the following passage: ‘L’esprit trouble par désir d’amour, il va au lieu de sa destinéc. Méme tres éloigné, il voit, par né de la force de l’acte, le lieu de sa naissance; voyant la son pore et sa mere unis, il conceit désir pour la mere quand il est måle, désir pour le pére quand il est femelle, et, inversement, haine ’ (Bouddhisme: Etudes et Matériaux, Abhidharmakosha, iii. 15, p. 25). The work cited also contains other interesting details concerning the embryo, (See, too, the same author’s La Théorie de douze causes.)
At length the deceased passes out of the Bardo dreamworld into a womb of flesh and blood, issuing thence once more into the waking state of earth—experience. This is what in English is called Re—incarnation, or Re—birth in the flesh. The Sanskrit term is Sangsāra, that is, rising and rising again’ (Punarutpatti) in the worlds of birth and death. Nothing is permanent, but all is transitory. In life, the * soul—complex’ is never for two consecutive moments the same, but is, like the body, in constant change. There is thus a series (Santāna) of successive, and, in one sense, different states, which are in themselves but momentary. There is still a unifying bond in that each momentary state is a present transformation representative of all those which are past, as it will be the generator of all future transformations potentially involved in it.
This process is not interrupted by death. Change continues in the Skandhas (or constituents of the organism) other than the gross body which has been cast off and which undergoes changes of its own. But there is this difference: the after—death change is merely the result of the action of accumulated past Karma and does not, as in earthly life, create new Karma, for which a physical body is necessary. (Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity are in agreement in holding that man’s destiny is decided on Earth, though the last differs from the first two, as explained above, on the question whether there is more than one life on Earth.) There is no breach (Uckchheda) of consciousness, but a continuity of transformation. The Death—Consciousness is the starting—point, followed by the other states of consciousness already described. Karma at length generates a fully—formed desire or mental action. This last is followed by the consciousness taking up its abode in a suitable matrix, whence it is born again as a Birth—Consciousness. What is so born is not altogether different from what has gone before, because it is the present transformation of it; and has no other independent existence.
There are thus successive births of (to use Professor de la Vallée Poussin’s term) a ‘fluid soul—complex’ because the series of psychic states continues at intervals of time to enter the physical womb of living beings. It has been said by the authority cited (Way to Nirvana, p. 85) that the birth—consciousness of a new celestial or infernal being makes for itself and by itself, out of unorganized matter, the body it is to inhabit. Therefore the birth of such beings will follow immediately after the death of the being which is to be reborn as an infernal or celestial being. But the case is said to be different, as a rule, where there is to be ‘reincarnation’, that is ‘rebirth’ in the flesh. Conception and birth then presuppose physical circumstances that may not be realized at the moment of the death of the being to be * re—incarnated \ In these cases and others it is alleged that the dying consciousness cannot be continued at once into the birth—consciousness of a new being. The Professor says that this difficulty is solved by those Schools which, maintaining the intermediary existence (Antarābhāva), hold that the dying consciousness is continued into a short—lived being called Gandharva, which lasts for seven days, or seven times seven days (cf. the forty—nine days of the Bardó). This Gandharva creates, with the help of the conceptional elements, an embryo as soon as it can find opportunity. This doctrine, if it has been rightly understood, is apparently another and cruder version of the Bardo doctrine. There cannot, in any philosophic view of the doctrine of Karma be any ‘hold up’ of what is a continuous life—process. Such process does not consist of independent sections watting upon one another. And so a ‘soul—complex’ cannot be ready to reincarnate before the circumstances are fit for it. The law which determines that a being shall incarnate is the same as that which provides the means and conditions by, and under, which the incarnation is to take place. Nor is the body of the infernal or celestial being gross matter. This is clear from the present Text.
Dr. Evans—Wentz raises again the debated question of the transmigration of human ‘souls’ into sub—human bodies, a process which this Text, exoterically viewed, seems to assume, and which is, as he points out, the general Hindu and Buddhist belief. It seems to be an irrational, though it may be a popular, belief that a human ‘soul’ can permanently inhabit a sub—human body as its own. For the body cannot exist in such disagreement with its occupant. The right doctrine appears to be that, as man has evolved through the lowest forms of being (Hinduism speaks of 8,400,000 graded kinds of births culminating in man),1 so by misconduct and neglect to use the opportunity of manhood there can, equally, be a descent along the ‘downward path’ to the same low forms of being from which humanity has, with difficulty, emerged. The Sanskrit term Durlabham, meaning ‘difficult to get’ refers to this difficulty of securing human birth. But such descent involves (as Dr. Evans—Wentz says) the loss of the human nature and the enormous lengths of time of a creation epoch.
If the series (Santåna) of conscious states are determined by the past Karma, it may be asked how that liberty of choice exists which the whole Text assumes by its injunctions to the deceased to do this or to avoid that. No doubt even in one individual there are diverse tendencies (Sangskåra). But the question still remains. If the Karma ready to ripen determines the action, then advice to the accused is useless. If the ‘soul’ is free to choose, there is no determination by Karma. Hinduism holds that, notwithstanding the influence of Karma, the Åtmå is essentially free. Here the answer appears to be twofold. Apart from what is next stated, the instructions given may, by their suggestions, call up that one of several latent tendencies which tends towards the action counselled. Further, this system allows that one ‘soul’ can help another. And so there are prayers for, and application of merits to, the deceased, just as we find in Hinduism the Pretashråddka, in Catholicism the Requiem Mass, and in Islam the Moslem’s Fatiha. In this and other matters one mind can, it is alleged, influence another otherwise than through the ordinary sense channels whether before or after death. There is also a tendency to overlook collective Karma and its effects. An individual is not only affected by his own Karma, but by that of the community to which he belongs. A wider question arises as to the meaning of the Re—incarnation Doctrine itself, but this is not the place to discuss it.
There are many other points of interest in this remarkable Book, but I must now stop and let the reader discover them for himself. I would like, however, to add a word as to the manner of its making. The Text has been fortunate in finding as its editor Dr. Evans—Wcntz, whose knowledge of, and sympathy with, his subject has enabled him to give us a very comprehensible account of it. He, in his turn, was fortunate in his teacher, the translator, the late LāMa Kazi Dawa—Samdup (Tib. Zla—va—bsam—hgrub) who, when I first met him, was Chief Interpreter on the staff of His Excellency Lonchen Satra, the Tibetan Plenipotentiary to the Government of India. He was also attached to the Political Staff of His Holiness the Dalai LāMa on the latter’s visit to India. At the time of his premature and greatly regretted death LāMa Kazi Dawa—Samdup was Lecturer in Tibetan to the University of Calcutta. These, and the other appointments which the translator held, and to which Dr. Evans—Wentz has referred, sufficiently establish his high competency both in Tibetan and English. He had also, I may add, some knowledge of Sanskrit, which I found of much use in discussing with him the meaning of terms used in Tibetan—Buddhist doctrine and ritual. I can, then, speak personally of his attainments, for I saw a good deal of him when he was preparing for me a translation of the Tibetan Shrichakrasambhāra Tantra, which I have published as the seventh volume of the series of Tantrik Texts (Luzac & Co.). I can, likewise, from my own knowledge, associate myself with what Dr. Evans—Wentz has said as to this remarkable man. May their joint work have the success it deserves, and so encourage Dr. Evans—Wentz to publish some at least of the other Texts which he tells me he has in store.
JOHN WOODROFFE.
OXFORD,
October 3, 1925.