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

(Cf.
Katha Upanishad, ii. 5; iii. 8, 15; iv. 10-113; vi. 18.)

Preserved in an Old Javanese MS. of the fourteenth century is a very similar Hades legend in which the Yaksha Kufijarakarna is commanded by the Lord Vairéchana ‘to go to Yama’s kingdom to see what is prepared for all evil-doers’. Peculiar interest attaches to this version, because it records a doctrine—akin to that referred to by the Greek and Roman writers—of thousand-year periods of transmigration into plants, animals, and defective human beings, prior to rebirth in a human body free from karmic blemishes. It mentions, too, that from Yama’s kingdom Piirnavijaya was recalled to human life. (Cf. The Legend of Kujsijarakayna, translated from the Dutch of Prof. Kern by Miss L. A. Thomas, in the Indian Antiquary, Bombay, 1903, vol. xxxii, pp. 111-2'7.)

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resistance, that such highly evolved mental compounds as are bound up with the complex human consciousness cannot be disintegrated instantaneously, but require due allowance of time for their degeneration and ultimate dissolution and transmigration.?

1 Examination of The Laws of Manu, the authority of which is unquestioned by orthodox Hindus, seems to confirm the esoteric interpretation, following the translation by Sir William Jones as revised by G. C. Haughton (in /ustilutes of Hindu Law or the Ordinances of Menu, London, 1825), and that by G. Biihler (in The Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxv, Oxford, 1886).

Manu at first sets forth the fundamental laws that ‘Action, which springs from the mind, from speech, and from the body, produces either good or evil results ; by action are caused the [various] conditions of man, the highest, the middling, and the lowest’ ; and that ‘{A man] obtains [the results of] a good or evil mental [act] in his mind, [that of] a verbal [act] in his speech, [that of] a bodily [act] in his body’. (Biihler’s trans., xii. 3, 8.)

Manu then proceeds to expound how man is not a simple but a complex being:

‘That substance, which gives a power of motion to the body, the wise call kshétrajna [i.e. ‘the knower of the field’—Biihler’s trans.], or j7vatman, the vital spirit ; and that body, which thence derives active functions, they name bhitatman, or composed of elements :

‘Another internal spirit, called mahat, or the great soul, attends the birth of all creatures embodied, and thence in all mortal forms is conveyed a perception either pleasing or painful.

‘These two, the vital spirit and reasonable soul, are closely united with five elements, but connected with the supreme spirit, or divine essence, which pervades all beings high and low.’ (Jones’s trans., xii, 12-14.)

From what follows, Manu apparently implies that it is this ‘vital spirit’, or animal soul, which alone is capable of transmigrating into sub-human forms, and not ‘the reasonable soul’, or super-animal principle :

‘When the vital soul has gathered the fruit of sins, which arise from a love of sensual [i.e. animal or brutish] pleasure, but must produce misery, and, when its taint has thus been removed, it approaches again those two most effulgent essences, the intellectual soul and the divine spirit:

‘They two, closely conjoined, examine without remission the virtues and vices of that sensitive [or animal] soul, according to its union with which it acquires pleasure or pain in the present and future worlds.

If the vital spirit had practised virtue for the most part, and vice in a small degree, it enjoys delight in celestial abodes, clothed with a body formed of pure elementary [i. e. ethereal] particles ;

‘But, if it had generally been addicted to vice, and seldom attended to virtue, then shall it be deserted by those pure elements, and, haung a coarser body of sensible nerves, it feels the pains to which Yama shall doom it:

‘Having endured those torments according to the sentence of Yama, and its taint being almost removed, it again reaches those five pure elements in the order of their natural distribution.’ (Jones’s trans., xii, 18-22.)

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Accordingly, the esotericists hold it to be unscientific to believe that a human life-flux or consciousness-principle could re-incarnate in the body of a sub-human creature within fortynine days after its extraction from the human form, as the exotericist believes who accepts literally such a rebirth doctrine

After further exposition of the science of rebirth in its esoteric or rational aspect, Manu arrives at the following summary:

‘Thus, by indulging the sensual {i.e. animal or brutish] appetites, and by neglecting the performance of duties, the basest of men, ignorant of sacred expiations, assume [in their vital spirit form, but not in their reasonable soul form] the basest forms.

‘What particular bodies the vital spirit enters in this world, and in consequence of what sins here committed, now hear at large and in order,’ (Jones’s trans., xii, 52-3.)

Manu evidently exerts himself apart from the main subject of his treatise, as the whole of The Laws suggests, to invest with legal and divine sanction the dogma that the person of a Brahmin is peculiarly sacred and inviolable, and so gives prominence to the sin of slaying a Brahmin by mentioning it first; then to the sin of a priest drinking spirituous liquor, and then to the sin of stealing the gold of a priest. In all such instances, as in all which follow them, the implication is, as we have above observed, that the ‘vital spirit’, or animal soul, separated from the two higher elements of man’s complex constitution, which are ‘the reasonable soul’ and ‘the divine essence’, suffers the penalty of migrating in sub-human creatures :

‘The slayer of a Brahmen (i.e. the vital spirit, or the irrational animal soul, of a Brahmen-slayer] must enter, according to the circumstances of the crime, the body of a dog, a boar, an ass, a camel, a bull, a goat, a sheep, a stag, a bird, a Chandala, or a Puccasa’ ; and so on for other crimes (Jones’s trans., xii. 55-7).

In this connexion, it is interesting to observe a few of the correspondences between cause and effect which other of The Laws suggest. Thus, if a man steal precious things he ‘shall be born zm the tribe of goldsmiths (considered to be of very low caste], or among birds called hémacaras, or gold-makers. Ifaman steal grain in the husk, he shall be born a rat; if a yellow mixed metal, a gander [which is of like mixed colour] ; if water, a plava, or diver. ... If he steal fleshmeat, a vulture; ... if oil, a d/a¢za, or oil-drinking beetle; . .. if exquisite perfumes, a musk-rat’. (Jones’s trans., xii. 61-5.)

Understanding Manu in the sense which this note aims to set forth, the esotericists disallow such popular and literal interpretation of Manu’s Laws as the Brahmins in their own Brahmin interests promulgate—according to the esotericists—among the common people concerning the doctrines of rebirth and karma,

The student should observe that the italicized non-Sanskrit words in the passages quoted in this note from the translation by Sir William Jones mark his interpolations from commentaries on Manu, especially from the Gloss of Culluca, and that the bracketed words indicate our own interpolations. Because the italicized interpolations tend to bring out the more obscure meanings of the passages cited, preference has been given to the Jones translation, although that by Biihler, which is more literal and therefore more technical, is, in all essentials, substantially the same.

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as the Bardo Thodol, when viewed exoterically, or literally, presents.

The Bardo rebirth symbols themselves ought now to be considered from the standpoint of the esoteric interpretation ; and to elucidate them innumerable parallels could be chosen from widely separated sources, but because of its recognized authority no parallel seems more appropriate than that contained in the tenth book of Plato’s Republic, describing certain of the Greek Heroes in the Szdpa Bardo choosing their bodies for the next incarnations: