The Tibetan Book of the Dead — ed. W. Y. Evans-Wentz

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he is deceased he still possesses a body like the body of flesh and blood. When he comes to realize that really he has no such body, he begins to develop an overmastering desire to possess one; and, seeking for one, the karmic predilection for sangsaric existence naturally becoming all-determining, he enters into the Third Bardo of seeking Rebirth, and eventually, with his rebirth in this or some other world, the after-death state comes to an end.

For the commonalty, this is the normal process; but for those very exceptional minds, possessed of great yogic knowledge and enlightenment, only the more spiritual stages of the Bardo of the first few days will be experienced ; the most enlightened of yogis may escape all of the Bardo, passing into a paradise realm, or else reincarnating in this world as soon as the human body has been discarded, maintaining all the while unbroken continuity of consciousness.’ As men think, so are they, both here and hereafter, thoughts being things, the parents of all actions, good and bad alike; and, as the sowing has been, so will the harvest be.

If escape from the Intermediate State is not achieved, through rebirth into some other state—that of Hell being possible for the very exceptional evil-doer, though not for the ordinary person, who expiates normal moral delinquencies upon beine reborn as a human being—within the symbolic period of Forty-nine Days, a period whose actual duration is determined by karma, the deceased remains subject to all the armic illusions of the Bardo, blissful or miserable as the case may be, and progress is impossible. Apart from liberation by gaining Mirvana after death—thus cutting asunder for ever the karmic bonds of worldly or sangsaric existence in an illusionary body of propensities—the only hope for the ordinary person of reaching Buddhahood lies in being reborn as a human being; for birth in any other than the human world causes delay for one desirous of reaching the Final Goal.

1 This is borne out in the Pali 77-Pitaka, which records several instances of high deva rebirth immediately after death on the human plane.’—Cassius A. Pereira.

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Vill. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE BARDO VISIONS

Definite psychological significance attaches to each of the deities appearing in the Bardo Thédol; but, in order to grasp it, the student must bear in mind that—as suggested above— the apparitional visions seen by the deceased in the Intermediate State are not visions of reality, but nothing more than the hallucinatory embodiments of the thought-forms born of the mental-content of the percipient; or, in other words, they are the intellectual impulses which have assumed personified form in the after-death dream-state.

Accordingly, the Peaceful Deities (Tib. Z’c-wa) are the personified forms of the sublimest human sentiments, which proceed from the psychic heart-centre. As such, they are represented as the first to dawn, because, psychologically speaking, the heart-born impulses precede the brain-born impulses. They come in peaceful aspect to control and to influence the deceased whose connexion with the human world has just been severed; the deceased has left relatives and friends behind, works unaccomplished, desires unsatisfied, and, in most cases, he possesses a strong yearning to recover the lost opportunity afforded by human embodiment for spiritual enlightenment. But, in all his impulses and yearnings, karma is all-masterful; and, unless it be his Larmzc lot to gain liberation in the first stages, he wanders downwards into the stages wherein the heart-impulses give way to prainimpulses.

Whereas the Peaceful Deities are the personifications of the feelings, the Wrathful Deities (Tib. Z’o-wo) are the personifications of the reasonings and proceed from the psychic brain-centre. Yet, just as impulses arising in the heart-centre may transform themselves into the reasonings of the braincentre, so the Wrathful Deities are the Peaceful Deities in a changed aspect.

As the intellect comes into activity, after the sublime heartborn impulses subside, the deceased begins to realize more and more the state in which he is; and with the supernormal faculties of the Bardo-body which he begins to make use of—p. 32 in much the same manner as an infant new-born in the human world begins to employ the human plane sense-faculties—he is enabled to think how he may win this or that state of existence. Karma is, however, still his master, and defines his limitations. As on the human plane the sentimental impulses are most active in youth and often lost in mature life, wherein reason commonly takes the place of them, so on the after-death plane, called the Bardo, the first experiences are happier than the later experiences.

As on the human plane the sentimental impulses are most active in youth and often lost in mature life, wherein reason commonly takes the place of them, so on the after-death plane, called the Bardo, the first experiences are happier than the later experiences.

From another aspect, the chief deities themselves aye the embodiments of universal divine forces, with which the deceased is inseparably related, for through him, as being the microcosm of the macrocosm, penetrate all impulses and forces, good and bad alike. Samanta-Bhadra, the All-Good, thus personifies Reality, the Primordial Clear Light of the Unborn, Unshaped Dharma- Kaya (cf. p. 95). Vairochana is the Originator of all phenomena, the Cause of all Causes. As the Universal Father, Vairochana manifests or spreads forth as seed, or semen, all things; his skaktz, the Mother of Great Space, is the Universal Womb into which the seed falls and evolves as the worldsystems. Vajra-Sattva symbolizes Immutability. Ratna- Sambhava is the Beautifier, the Source of all Beauty in the Universe. Amitabha is Infinite Compassion and Love Divine, the Christos. Amogha-Siddhi is the personification of Almighty Power or Omnipotence. And the minor dcities, heroes, dakinis (or ‘ fairies’), goddesses, lords of death, rakshasas, demons, spirits, and all others, correspond to definite human thoughts, passions, and impulses, high and low, human and sub-human and superhuman, in karmic form, as they take shape from the seeds of thought forming the percipient’s consciousness-content (cf. p. 219).

As the Bardo Théodol text makes very clear by repeated assertions, none of all these deities or spiritual beings has any real individual existence any more than have human beings: ‘It is quite sufficient for thee [ie. the deceased percipient] to know that these apparitions are [the reflections of] thine own thought-forms’ (p. 104). They are merely the consciousness-content visualized, by karmic agency, as appari-

THE APTER-DEATH PSYCHOLOGY oo

tional appearances in the Intermediate State—airy nothings woven into dreams.

The complete recognition of this psychology by the deceased sets him free into Reality. Therefore is it that the Bardo Thodol, as the name implies, is The Great Doctrine of Libera- ‘tion by Hearing and by Seeing.

The deceased human being becomes the sole spectator of a marvellous panorama of hallucinatory visions; each seed of thought in his consciousness-content armically revives ; and he, like a wonder-struck child watching moving pictures cast upon a screen, looks on, unaware, unless previously an adept in yoga, of the non-reality of what he sees dawn and set.