A NEW LOOK AT THE PSYCHEDELIC TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD Ralph Metzner

IN OUR 1964 BOOK The Psychedelic Experience, Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert and I, following a suggestion from Aldous Huxley, had adapted the Tibetan Book of the Dead as a paradigm for a spiritually-oriented psychedelic experience. With appropriate preparation and orientation, so we proposed, psychedelic travelers could be guided, or guide themselves, to release their ego-attachments and illusory self-images, the way a Tibetan Buddhist lama would guide a person who was actually dying to relinquish their attachments while noting the physical signs of bodily death.

In the years since that publication, my co-authors and I have received numerous letters expressing the grateful appreciation of readers who used it to prepare themselves for spiritually transcendent psychedelic experiences—even when they were not actually dying, or anywhere near the end of their life. In the course of experiencing their attachments and identifications with the bodily ego, they could let go their fears of letting go and move into expanded and liberated states of consciousness. The experience, like any state of consciousness, was temporary and the fear of death could return—but the memory of the experience remained as an inspiration.

Indeed, experiencing the transcendence of your physical identification, with the certain knowledge that your essence, your spiritual core, your soul, persists beyond the boundary of bodily death is without doubt the most precious gift that psychedelic experiences can provide. This was the gift vouchsafed in the mystery religions of ancient civilizations, where initiates went through an experience of death and rebirth, in which they were provided an experiential preparation for death and a vision of the reality of the spiritual worlds beyond.

We do not know the details of what was involved in these ceremonies, since initiates were sworn to secrecy. However, in the case of the Eleusinian Mysteries, which were for two thousand years the fountainhead of Western spirituality, the scholarly and pharmacological researches related by R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann and Carl Ruck in their book The Road to Eleusis, have demonstrated with high probability that the ingestion of an LSD-like ergot derivative was involved.

The relevance of spiritually-oriented and guided psychedelic experiences in alleviating death anxiety and helping prepare people for the ultimate transition has found modern expression and application in medical-psychiatric research. Stanislav Grof and Joan Halifax, in their book The Human Encounter with Death, described the work they did in the 1970s, using DPT with patients suffering from terminal cancer. More recently, psychiatrist Charles Grob, working at UCLA, has done studies using psilocybin (the active ingredient in the visionary mushroom of ancient Mexico) with people who were diagnosed with terminal cancer. It is a significant advance and positive expansion of the accepted medicoscientific worldview that a medicine can be approved that has not been shown to effect a cure of an illness–but rather to alleviate the normal near-universal human anxiety about the end-of-life. The following is a report on one person from that study.

A woman with end-stage cancer who participated in this study, related (in a filmed interview) how all her fears about death, her guilt and worries about surviving family members, congealed into a kind of mass that pressed on her chest, squeezing her life-force—and then, as the psilocybin medicine came on, simply dissolved. At that exact moment she had the insight that all her fears and worries were about a future that had not yet happened. She realized that she could choose instead to focus her attention on the life she still had, with its love of family, the beauty and pleasure afforded by her garden and even a renewed devotion to improving her well-being through yoga.

Studies such as these have led visionary physicians and scientists of consciousness to consider the far-reaching possibilities of future care for the dying, involving selective use of entheogenic medicines. While the growth of the hospice movement, involving palliative in-home pain-management, is an encouraging sign, the mainstream medical establishment still tends to regard death as a condition to be aggressively delayed and prevented—perhaps because as long as a patient is alive there is insurance money to be made with life-prolonging medications and operations.

From my fifty years of exploration and research on consciousness expanding substances and methods, my conviction has grown that the two most beneficent potential areas of application of psychedelic technologies are in the treatment of addictions and in the psycho-spiritual preparation for the final transition. Considering the widespread fearful misunderstanding of the journey to that “undiscovered country, from which no traveler returns,” as well as the increasing likelihood of massive human population reduction in our time of global collapse, the significance of such developments can hardly be overestimated.

With an expanded spiritual worldview that recognizes the continuity of life after death and the possibilities of communication with the spirits of the dead, one can envision centers, in beautiful natural environments, in which meditative practices with guided psychedelic amplification could be offered for those in the final stages of life. Just such centers for preparation for the dying were envisioned by Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), in his last utopian novel Island. Huxley, who had done so much to first bring psychedelics to the attention of the larger culture, described how this utopian community used what they called a moksha-medicine. Moksha is a Sanskrit term meaning “liberation.” In Huxley’s vision the psychedelic moksha-medicine was used in the utopian community during transition rituals for adolescents, for adults in transition crises, and for preparation for the dying. Huxley had characterized the psychedelic medicines at best providing a kind of “gratuitous grace”—a spiritual blessing that could never be prescribed, demanded or bought.

The aged philosopher put his vision into practice when he was himself dying from cancer of the throat, on the same day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated—November 22, 1963. He and his wife Laura had prearranged with physician friends that he could choose to take LSD when the end time was at hand. Laura Huxley, has related in her autobiographical This Timeless Moment how at a certain point, suffering from debilitating discomfort, Aldous seemed to know his time was coming and he asked her to give him an injection of 100 micrograms of LSD. A second dose of 100 mcg was given a short while later. While the Dallas murder drama was unfolding on a TV set in another room, she described how his breathing, which had been labored, became easy, his expression, which had been agitated, became serene and peaceful. Her soothing voice guided him into a deeper and deeper meditative state, urging him to release all struggle and attachment into ultimate peace. In my book, The Life Cycle of the Human Soul, I quoted the letter which Laura Huxley wrote to the family describing his final, psychedelically facilitated passing. It was her express wish that this letter be made public—as a kind of final legacy concerning the moksha-medicine.

Tibetan Buddhist Teachings on Death and the Afterlife

The original Bardo Thödol, or Tibetan Book of the Dead, is attributed to the legendary eighth century Indian Buddhist adept Padmasambhava, who brought Buddhism to Tibet. It is widely known that the Bardo Thödol describes three bardos (the word means “phases” or “stages”) occurring between death and rebirth. These are the infamous bardos that have become Western mass culture memes as afterdeath experiences. It is not so well known that the Tibetan Buddhist teachings actually concern a total of six bardos: the other three—the bardos of waking life, of dreaming and of meditating—are phases of consciousness in ordinary life between birth and death.

In the so-called “Root Verses” appended to the original text of the Bardo Thödol, there is a summary one-verse teaching describing the essential practice while in each of these six possible stages of consciousness. The text by the great fifth century Indian philosopher Naropa, called The Yogas of the Six Bardos, describes the yogic practices by means of which one can attain enlightenment or liberation from each of the six bardo states. The Bardo Thödol (literally, The Book of Liberation through Understanding the Bardo States) concerns itself primarily with providing guidance for the dying person on how to find their way through the three afterdeath bardo states, giving detailed and explicit instructions on how people can be helped to make the most favorable kind of rebirth possible.

According to Tibetan Buddhism, both proficient yogic practitioners as well as ordinary people with no particular yogic aptitude or experience, can be helped to find their way through the confusing and terrifying afterlife states. Liberation from the samsaric round of conditioned existence can occur in, or from, any of the bardo states, if we understand and remember the teachings, recognize the bardo state we are in, and choose the most enlightened conscious option available to us. It is for this reason that Buddhist teachers refer to it not only as a book of preparation for dying, but really a profound guidebook for both living and dying.

In practical terms, the teachings of the Bardo Thödol, are that immediately at death, in the bardo of the moment of dying, the dying person is urged (by the attendant lamas reading from the ancient texts) to maintain one-pointed concentration on the “clear light,” which is also referred to as “the Uncreated.” In the Root Verses the essential teaching related to each of the bardo states is summarized. Here is (my version of) the “Root Verse” for the bardo of dying, which emphasizes paying attention to releasing one’s attachments to the physical body and world.

Now as the bardo of dying dawns upon me,

I will abandon desires and cravings for worldly objects.

Entering without distraction into the clarity of the teachings,

I will merge my awareness into the space of the Uncreated.

The time has come to let go this body of flesh and blood—

It is merely a temporary and illusory shell.

If the deceased, like most ordinary people, is not able to pass on to the unobstructed “pure land” realms during the bardo of dying and gets caught up in fear and confusion, due to insufficient concentration and preparation, he or she will wander through the “intermediate realms” of the second bardo realm.

In this realm or phase, called the bardo of the experiencing of reality, the dominant features are dramatically contrasting visionary encounters with peaceful, angelic beings and ferocious, demonic ones. These “peaceful and wrathful deities” are described with elaborate detail in the fantastic iconography of Tibetan Buddhism. The deceased is repeatedly reminded, by the attendant lama-priests reading from the Bardo Thödol, not to be overwhelmed by either the heavenly or the hellish visions, but to remember that they are all projections of one’s own mind. “These beautiful and ugly visions,” he is told, “are the reflections and projections of your mind and life, as seen in the mirror held up by the death god Yama. If you stay centered in the middle path between the extremes of dualistic judgment, you will still be able to pass through to the pure light realms of the higher dimensions.” There are also encounters with mysterious “knowledge-holding deities”—whose flame-surrounded bodies burn off the false images obstructing and distorting true knowledge.

Here is the encapsulated teaching from the Root Verses concerning this second afterdeath phase, which the Evans-Wentz translation calls the bardo of experiencing reality. Since it deals essentially with the heaven-and-hell visions that one may encounter in this phase, I am calling it the bardo of visions.

Now as I enter into the bardo of visions,

I will abandon all awe and terror that may arise.

Recognizing whatever appears as my own thought-forms,

As apparitions and visions in this intermediate state.

This is a crucial turning point on the path.

I will not fear the peaceful and terrifying visions in my mind.

Again, due to lack of training and/or preparation on the part of most ordinary people, the bardo-traveling soul, after repeatedly lapsing into unconsciousness, then finds itself in the third phase, the bardo of seeking rebirth, in which he or she wanders about seeking to orient itself again to ordinary existence and find a family to be born into. Thus the life between lives, the second bardo, ends with the process of choosing another human incarnation.

What the Tibetan Book of the Dead calls the bardo of rebirth is the phase that involves the choosing and preparing for one’s next incarnation. This phase includes the soul’s selection of a new set of parents, the conception event and the entire prenatal journey up to the new birth. Although the Buddhist texts do not explicitly use our current terminology of prenatal epoch or prenatal experience, we can find in the teachings of the afterdeath states striking parallels with findings now emerging out of the work of prenatal and past-life regression therapists as well as highly developed intuitives.

In this third phase, called the bardo of seeking a new life, the traveler in the intermediate realms is repeatedly admonished to remember where he is, and that his thoughts and intentions will profoundly affect the kind of experience he or she will have in a new life. He is told that he is not in his ordinary body, but a “mental body,” or “bardo body,” or “desire body”—a body that can’t be killed, but that can fly, pass through walls, and has all kinds of non-ordinary capacities. In other words, he or she is experiencing what in esoteric traditions is referred to as the etheric double and the intermediate planes, descending step by step to the time-space material level of existence.

The deceased is then reminded of the six possible worlds of samsara (existence) into which one might find him or herself drifting, carried along by the karmic propensities of their previous existence. Here the teachings of the Bardo Thödol converge with the teachings represented in the well-known “Wheel of Samsara” with its six possible realms or states of consciousness in which we may find ourselves after death, but also during life. Francesca Freemantle, a student of Trungpa Rinpoche, writes in her book on the Tibetan Book of the Dead,

“Many Western Buddhists have difficulties with the concept of rebirth in the six realms, or even with rebirth at all. No one can prove to us what lies beyond death. However, we can investigate our minds here and now and discover all the worlds contained within. We can find out what life as a human being really means at this very moment…. Trungpa Rinpoche always spoke of the six realms as states of mind, and emphasized the importance of understanding them in this way while we have the opportunity in this life” (Freemantle, F. Luminous Emptiness, pp. 143-44).

I discuss the six realms and the Wheel of Births and Deaths in more detail in my book Worlds Within and Worlds Beyond, but will mention here only briefly the chief characteristics and qualities of these realms—and how we (human beings) may find ourselves in these realms, because of unconscious karmic tendencies. These six “worlds” can best be thought of as states of consciousness in which we may find ourselves in dreams and hallucinogenic experiences. And, as we know, these “worlds” may be manifested in outer reality—for some of us, at some times. For example, one may be in the hell of an actual prison being tortured by diabolical human beings, or one may be in a purely internal hell of profound despair and depression, while outwardly in normal conditions. We may be in states of heavenly ecstasy induced by beautiful scenes in nature, or in a quiet mood of contemplation in ordinary external circumstances, like a street corner.

The hell realm is marked by claustrophobic and catastrophic feelings of pain, suffering and victimization. The preta realm of “hungry ghosts” is a world of perpetually frustrated craving, symbolized by the distended stomachs but thin mouths of the spirits in this realm. The animal realm is a world focused on survival instincts—food, sex, sleep, self-preservation, with lack of aspiration for higher values. The asura realm is a world of struggle, competition and violence, into which we come through discontent and grasping envy. The world of devas or gods is a realm of pleasure and aesthetic delight of the senses. In the Buddhist view this realm or state is not a goal to be sought but merely a pleasant though transient state resulting from good karma but not contributive to growth or new learning. The human realm is described by Trungpa as “the epitome of communication and relationship,” in which there is curiosity for knowledge and aspiration for spiritual values. It has some of the qualities of all the other realms, but is less fixated and bound than those.

In the Bardo Thödol the bardo traveler is admonished and reminded to avoid being caught or driven into any of the realms, but if and when rebirth becomes unavoidable to aim our intention either for the deva realm or the human realm. The human world is considered the best of the six to be born into—because it offers the “precious opportunity” of liberation and enlightenment. When we are in any of the other five realms of experience our existence is more or less totally conditioned by our past karmic actions and determined by external circumstances.

The remaining instructions in the bardo of rebirth phase of the afterdeath journey deal with instructions on how to first delay being born at all, and then to choose the best kind of human birth. The guidance for the soul embarking on its journey into a new incarnation are couched as instructions on how to “close the womb-door”—the point here being to delay the rebirth as long as possible, so that one can avoid being sucked into unfavorable births by one’s unconscious karmic propensities (samskaras). The first method of closing the womb-door is to remember that you are in this bardo of rebirth and focus on positive intentions: “holding in mind one single resolution, persist in joining up the chain of good karma; … this is a time when earnestness and pure love are necessary.”

The second, third, fourth and fifth methods of closing the womb-door all involve different ways of responding to visions of men and women copulating. The bardo traveler is urged not to join in the sexual activity, although he or she may be tempted to do so. It’s as if the Buddhist masters are saying “Do not rush into incarnation. Staying with conscious intention at the very beginning is more likely to lead to a more conscious human lifetime.” I suggest that the visions of couples copulating are the soul’s vision of its own conception. This existential choice-point, where the soul chooses which couple to have as parents, and the future parents choose to have a child, can be reached in prenatal regression divinations and is here arrived at from the other side, at the end of the afterlife period, when the decision to reincarnate has been made.

Although I do not believe that conscious remembering of one’s own conception is a very common part of recreational psychedelic experiences, there is an extensive literature of adults and children reporting dreams and hypnotic regression states in which they vividly remember the events and circumstances of their own conception. In my book The Life Cycle of the Human Soul, I describe psychedelically amplified intentional divination journeys, in which the parental imprints at conception could be identified and integrated, as well as memories of the soul from before conception.

The Bardo Thödol says that if the voyager feels attraction to the female and aversion to the male, he will be reborn as a male; and if attraction to the male and aversion to the female, she will be born as female. As we now know from medical research, the gender of the child is determined in the earliest phases of embryonic development, and can involve all kinds of variations of genital anatomy. As Sigmund Freud famously observed, “anatomy is destiny.” Some scientists now believe the origin of the inclination to homosexuality may be in embryonic development. These scientific findings could be seen as consistent with a view that sees homosexuality, as well as gender and its anatomical variations, as soul choices made to provide certain learning conditions for that soul in its earthly-human existence.

If, even after using the various methods of preventing or postponing rebirth by meditating with conscious intention on one’s chosen deity, one is still drawn down into a womb for birth, the bardo-traveling soul is given instructions for “choosing of the womb-door.” First there are “premonitory visions of the place of rebirth”—the continents in four directions are described, where one might be born. “All the places of birth will be known to you, one after another. Choose accordingly.” The soul in the bardo of rebirth is advised to use their foresight to choose a human birth in an area in which religion and ethics prevail.

To summarize, the instructions of the Bardo Thödol for the most favorable kind of rebirth, are: to delay the return from the light and wisdom-filled heaven worlds as long as possible, and when the time finally does come, which you will know by seeing acts of copulation and conception between men and women, to choose a birth family where the likelihood of coming into contact with the dharma teachings are greatest. The ending of the interlife period is the beginning of the bardo of rebirth: the decision is made to reincarnate, in a blending of karmic tendencies and conscious choice, and conception takes place in a fleshly human womb. This rebirth phase then ends with the actual physical birth, nine months later, when we start cycling through the three bardos of waking life, dreaming and meditating. In conclusion, below is my version of the Root-Verse for the bardo of rebirth:

Now, as the bardo of rebirth dawns upon me,

I will hold one-pointedly to a single wish—

Continuously directing intention with a positive outlook.

Delaying the return to Earth-Life as long as possible.

I will concentrate on pure energy and love,

And cast off jealousy while meditating on the Guru Father-Mother.