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

From this follows the corollary, which the Oriental advocates of the esoteric interpretation give out: Progression or retrogression—never an unchanging neutral state of inactivity— are the alternatives within the Sangsara; and the one or the other, within any of the mansions of existence, cannot lead the life-flux to the threshold of that mansion—neither the sub-human to the human, nor the human to the subhuman—save step by step. And retrogression and progression alike are time-processes: ages pass ere the fire-mist becomes the solidified planet; an Enlightened One is the tare fruit of unknown myriads of embodiments; and” man, the highest of the animal-beings, cannot become the lowest a INTRODUCTION of the animal-beings, no matter how heinous his sins, at one bound.

Given ages of continual retrogression, the life-flux which is now human may cease to be human, the human constituents of it becoming atrophied or latent through lack of exercise, in much the same way as atrophy overcomes the activity of a bodily organ or function which is not used. Thereupon, being no longer kinetically, but merely potentially human—just as a dog or horse or elephant are potentially, but not kinetically, haman—that life-flux can and ordinarily would fall back into the sub-human kingdoms, whence it may begin anew to rise upwards to the human state or continue to retrograde even below the brute world.

The late Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup, the translator, has left on record his own complementary opinion, as follows: ‘The forty-nine days of the Lardo symbolize ages either of evolution or of degeneration. Intellects able to grasp Truth do not fall into the lower conditions of existence.

‘The doctrine of the transmigration of the human to the sub-human may apply solely to the lower or purely brutish constituents of the human principle of consciousness; for the Knower itself neither incarnates nor re-incarnates—it is the Spectator.

‘In the Lardo Thodol, the deceased is represented as retrograding, step by step, into lower and lower states of consciousness. Each step downwards is preceded by a swooning into unconsciousness; and possibly that which constitutes his mentality on the lower levels of the Bardo is some mental element or compound of mental clements formerly a part of his earth-plane consciousness, separated, during the swooning, from higher or more spiritually enlightened elements of that consciousness. Such a mentality ought not to be regarded as on a par with a human mentality; for it seems to be a mere faded and incoherent reflex of the human mentality of the deceased. And perhaps it is some such thing as this which incarnates in sub-human animal bodies—if anything does in a literal sense,’

This theory, coming from the translator, is unusually interest-

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And perhaps it is some such thing as this which incarnates in sub-human animal bodies—if anything does in a literal sense,’

This theory, coming from the translator, is unusually interestp. 45ing, for he expressed it while quite unaware of its similarity to the theory held esoterically by the Egyptian priests and exoterically recorded by Herodotus, who, apparently, became their pupil in the monastic college at Heliopolis. Judging from what Herodotus and others of the ancient Greeks, and Romans as well, have written touching thereon, we arrive at the following summary: ‘The human soul was believed to remain in the after-death state during a period of three thousand years. Its human-plane body of the moment of death disintegrating, the constituents went to form the bodies of animals and plants, transmigrating from one to another during the three thousand years. At the end of that period the soul gathers together the identical particles of matter which had thus been continually transmigrating and which had constituted its former earth-plane body of the moment of death, and from them rebuilds, through habit, as a bird its nest, 2 new body and is reborn in it as a human being.’

1 Cf. Herodotus, ii. 123; Lucretius, De Revum Natura, ili. 843-61. In common with ancient historians and philosophers, Herodotus (ii, 171) refuses to divulge, in a literal manner, the higher or esoteric teachings of the Mysteries of Antiquity :

“On this lake {within the sacred precinct of the temple at Sais] the Egyptians perform by night the representation of his adventures [i.e. the symbolic adventures touching the birth, life, death, and regeneration of Osiris—‘ whose name’, writes Herodotus, ‘I consider it impious to divulge’], which they call Mysteries. On these matters, however, though accurately acquainted with the particulars of them, I must {as an initiate] observe a discreet silence. So, too, with regard to the Mysteries of Demeter (celebrated at Eleusis, in Greece], which the Greeks term ‘‘ The Thesmophoria’’, I know them (as an initiate], but I shall not mention them, except so far as may be done without impiety [or done lawfully }.’

It has now been proven by archaeological and other research that the Mysteries consisted of symbolic dramatic performances open only to initiates and neophytes fit for initiation, illustrating the universally diffused esoteric teachings concerning death and resurrection (i.e. rebirth); and that the doctrine of transmigration of the human soul into animal bodies—if depicted at all—was not intended to be taken (as it has been taken by the uninitiated) literally, but symbolically as in Plato’s Republic, detailed reference to which follows herein. (Cf. Herodotus, ii. 122.)

(Cf. Herodotus, ii. 122.)

Herodotus in the last-mentioned passage gives a symbolic account of the descent into Hades and the return to the human world of King Rhampsinitus, in whose honour the priests of Egypt therefore instituted what was probably— when rationally interpreted—a rebirth festival. The most ancient recorded parallel now known exists in the Aig Veda (Mandala x, Sakta 135), wherein,

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And this theory, when amended with certain necessary modifications, helps to illustrate the symbolical or esoteric interpretation of the Bardo Rebirth Doctrine.

In further illustration, applicable to the higher Hinduism as to the higher Buddhism, advocates of this interpretation point out that even before the final dissolution of the human body of the moment of death there is incessant transmigration of the bodily atoms. So long as the body is the receptacle of the consciousness-principle, it is said to renew itself completely every seven years. And even as the constituents of the physical man thus transmigrate throughout all organic and inorganic kingdoms and the mind remains unchangedly human during the brief cycle of one life-time, so, normally, it likewise remains human during the greater evolutionary cycle—i.e. until it reaches the end of all sangsdaric evolution, namely, NVirvanic Enlightenment.

The esoteric teaching concerning this may be stated literally: That which is common to the human and to the sub-human worlds alike, namely, matter in its varied aspects as solids, liquids, and gases, eternally transmigrates. That which is specifically human and specifically sub-human remains so, in accordance with the law of nature that like attracts like and produces like, that all forces ever follow the line of least as Sayana in his Commentary in the Atharva Veda (xix) seems to explain, the boy mentioned is the same as the boy Nachikctas of the | Tatthiviya] Braéhmana, who went to the realm of Yama, the King of the Dead, in Yama-Loka, and then returned to the realm of men. That this primeval Hades legend was interpreted esoterically as teaching a rebirth doctrine is confirmed by the ancient Katha Upanishad, the story of Nachiketas being used therein as a literary vehicle to convey the highest Vedantic teachings concerning birth, life, and death. (Cf. Katha Upanishad, ii. 5; iii. 8, 15; iv. 10-113; vi. 18.)