¹ This mantra is believed to have the magical power of so transmuting food sacrificed to the dead as to make it acceptable to them.

² In its fullness, this power of prescience includes knowledge of the past, present, and future, the ability to read others1 thoughts, and the unobscured knowing of one’s own capabilities and limitations. Only highly developed beings, such, for example, as adepts in yoga, enjoy such complete power of prescience. On the Bardo plane—unlike the human world—every being possesses, in virtue of freedom from the impeding gross physical body, a certain degree of the power, as the text makes clear.

³ That is, fear and fright, or impropriety, or carelessness on the part of any person conducting the funeral rites.