¹ Owing to having arrived at the false concept that the Intermediate State is a desirable or fixed state of existence, all dwellers therein,—sprites, preias, demons, and deceased human entities,—becoming thereby habituated to the Bardo, their normal evolution is retarded. According to the most enlightened of the lāmas, whenever a spirit is called up, as in such spirit—evocations as are nowadays common throughout the West, that spirit, through contact with this world and the prevailing traditional animistic beliefs concerning the hereafter, being strengthened in the illusion that the Bardo is a state wherein real spiritual progress is possible, makes no attempt to quit it. The spirit called up ordinarily describes the Bardo (which is pre—eminently the realm of illusion), in which it is a dweller, more or less after what it had believed whilst in the fleshly body concerning the hereafter; for just as a dreamer in the human world lives over again in the dream—state the experience of the waking state, so the inhabitant of the Bardo experiences hallucinations in karmic accord with the content of his consciousness created by the human world. His symbolic visions, as the Bardo Thödol repeatedly emphasizes, are but the psychic reflexes of thought—forms carried over from earth—life as mental deposits or seeds of karma. (See pp. 31—5.) This is said to explain why none but very exceptional spirits when evoked have any rational philosophy to offer concerning the world in which they exist; they are regarded as being merely the playthings of karma, lacking in mental coherence and stability of personality—more often than not, as being senseless ghosts, or psychic ’shells* which have been cast off by the consciousness—principle, and which, when coming into rapport with a human ‘medium’, are galvanized into automaton—like life.

It is true that spirit—evocation of a kind is practised in Tibet, as throughout Mongolia and China, by lāmas who form a class of oracular priests, consulted on important problems of political policy even by the Dalai LāMa himself. But the spirits called up are tutelary deities of a low order called the ‘executive—order’ (Tib. bkah—dod——pron. ka—döt, meaning’ one awaiting orders’) and never intentionally the spirits or ghosts of men or women recently deceased. Some of these bkahdods are, so the Tibetans believe, the spirits of lāmas and devotees who have failed—often through practising black magic—to obtain spiritual enlightenment when in the human world, or who otherwise, in the manner described in the text here, have been diverted from the normal path of progress. Thus, in many instances, they have become demoniacal and malignant spirits, whose progress has been arrested not by being bound to the earth—plane through having been called up by ‘mediums’ soon after their decease, but naturally through very evil karma. Such bkahdods, thus often presenting themselves with ordinary spirits of the dead, are, as obsessing demons, said to do much harm mentally and psychically to the untrained ‘medium’ and clients, insanity and moral irresponsibility not infrequently resulting. For these reasons, the lāmas maintain that psychic research should be conducted only by masters of the occult, or magical, sciences, and not indiscriminately by thegurn—)ess multitude.

In Sikkim, where our translation was made, necromancy precisely like that now practised in the West has been practised for unknown centuries, as it still is. The Lepchas, descendants of the primitive races of Sikkim, who still form a large part of the rural population, are as thoroughly animistic in their worships as the American Red Men ; and, largely through their influence, the evocation of the dead has become rather widespread among the Sikkimese Buddhist lay—folk, many of whom are of both Tibetan and Lcpcha blood. Similarly, in Buddhist Bhutan, such spirit—evocation is common. In both countries, however, the lāmas strenuously, though rather ineffectually, oppose it.

It is said that the retardation of a Bardo—bound spirit may be for any time from five hundred to one thousand years; and, in exceptional cases, for ages. All the while, escape from the Bardo being prevented, the deceased can neither pass on to a paradise realm nor be reborn in the human world. Ultimately, however, the womb will be entered and the Bardo come to an end.