¹ Herein we see the animal symbolism expanded in such manner as quite to parallel the passage in Plato’s Republic describing the choosing of animal bodies for the next incarnation. (See p. 178; also pp. 49—53.) The popular or exoteric interpretation of such passages in our text as this passage (cf. pp. 126, 129, 156—7 herein) would seem to be as reasonable as it would if applied to similar passages in Plato; and, furthermore, the copyist, and possibly the composer or composers of the Bardo Thödol, may have been exotericists, or at least intended their text to emphasize the exoteric interpretation, holding as priests often have held, and as some hold even nowadays, that fear—producing doctrines (e.g. the Christian doctrine that hell is an eternal condition), although literally untrue, are, nevertheless, like whips to keep the lower mentalities alert and possibly more virtuous. Nevertheless, for our own (more or less corrupted) text, as for Plato’s, there does exist the esoteric key to the real meaning, such as we have given in our Introduction, pp. 55—9.