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

p. 156

in the Hell-world, in the Deva-world, and in this Bardo-body is of the kind called supernormal birth.!

Indeed, when thou wert experiencing the radiances of the Peaceful and the Wrathful, in the Chényid Bardo, being unable to recognize, thou didst faint away, through fear, about three? and one-half days [after thy decease]; and, then, when thou wert recovered from the swoon, thy Knower must have risen up in its primordial condition and a radiant body, resembling the former body, must have sprung forth °—as the Zanira says,

‘Having a body [seemingly] fleshly [resembling] the former and that to be produced,

Endowed with all sense-faculties and power of unimpeded motion,

Possessing karmic miraculous powers,

Visible to pure celestial eyes [of Bardo beings] of like nature.’

Such, then, is the teaching.

That [radiant body ]|—thus referred to as [resembling] ‘the former and that to be produced’ (meaning that one will have a body just like the body of flesh and blood, the former human, propensity body)—will also be endowed with certain signs and beauties of perfection such as beings of high destiny possess.

This body, [born] of desire, is a thought-form hallucination in the Intermediate State, and it is called desire-body.

At that time—if thou art to be born as a deva—visions of the Deva-world will appear to thee; similarly—wherever thou art to be born—if as an asura, or a human being, or

1 Text: rdztis-skyes (pron, 2i%-kye), meaning ‘to be born in disguise ’—rdziis = ‘to disguise’ + skyes = ‘to be born’—or ‘to be born in a supernormal manner’, i.e. ‘supernormal birth’. As the text will proceed to explain, the birth-process in the after-death states is quite unlike that known on earth.

2 In error, probably in transcribing, the text here has ‘ four’ instead o1 ‘three.

5 This springing forth, or birth of the Bardo-body, about three and one-half days after death, i.e. upon the expiration of the three and one-half (or four) days (comparable to the pre-natal period, normally passed in sleep, or dream, or unconsciousness, on the human-plane), mentioned on pages 93 and 105, is said to occur instantaneously. ‘Like a trout leaping forth from water’ is the simile used by Tibetan gurus to explain it ; it is the actual process of being born in the Intermediate State, paralleling birth in our world.

PART I] VISIONS OF BIRTHELRACE 157

a brute,’ or a preta, or a being in Hell, a vision of the place will appear to thee.

PART I] VISIONS OF BIRTHELRACE 157

a brute,’ or a preta, or a being in Hell, a vision of the place will appear to thee.

Accordingly, the word ‘former’ [in the quotation] implieth that prior to the three and one-half days thou wilt have been thinking thou hadst the same sort of a body as the former body of flesh and blood, possessed by thee in thy former existence because of habitual propensities;? and the word ‘produced’ is so used because, afterwards, the vision of thy future place of birth will appear to thee. Hence, the expression as a whole, ‘former and that to be produced’, referreth to these |i.e. the fleshly body just discarded and the fleshly body to be assumed at rebirth].

At that time, follow not the visions which appear to thee.
Be not attracted; be not weak: if, through weakness, thou
be fond of them, thou wilt have to wander amidst the Six
Lokas and suffer pain.

Up to the other day thou wert unable to recognize the Choinyid Bardo, and hast had to wander down this far. Now, if thou art to hold fast to the real Truth, thou must allow thy mind to rest undistractedly in the nothing-to-do, nothing-to-hold condition of the unobscured, primordial, bright, void state of thine intellect, to which thou hast been introduced by thy guru® [Thereby] thou wilt obtain Liberation without having to enter the door of the womb. But if thou art unable to know thyself, then, whosoever may be thy tutelary deity and thy gurz, meditate on them, in a state of intense fendness

1 That is to say, esoterically, a human brute-like being (cf. pp. 126, 129; and 39-61).

2 That is to say, the habitual (or kaymic) predilection for sangsdric existence arising from the thirst for life, from the wish to be born, is the sole cause of one’s possessing a body, human or any other. The Goal which the devotee must gain is ‘the Unbecome, the Unborn, the Unmade, the Unformed ’— Mirvana.

3 It is herein assumed that the deceased has had, when in the human world, some elementary teachings, at least, concerning mental concentration, or control of the thinking processes, sufficient to have realized the state of non-thought formation described as that of ‘the nothing-to-do, nothing-to-hold condition’ of the unmodified, primordial mind, which is the state of Yoga defined by Patanjali (in his Yoga Aphorisnis, i. 2) as ‘the suppression of the transformations of the thinking principle’, Another rendering of the same passage is, ‘ Yoga is the restraint of mental modifications’ (Rama Prasad, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras in The Sacred Books of the Hindus, Allahabad, 1912, iv. 5).

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and humble trust, as overshadowing the crown of thy head. This is of great importance. Be not distracted.

5).

p. 158

and humble trust, as overshadowing the crown of thy head. This is of great importance. Be not distracted.

[Instructions to the Officiant]: Thus speak, and, if recognition result from that, Liberation will be obtained, without need of the wandering in the Six Lokas. If, however, through influence of bad arma, recognition is made difficult, thereupon say as follows:

O nobly-born, again listen. ‘Endowed with all sensefaculties and power of unimpeded motion’ implicth [that although] thou mayst have been, when living, blind of the cye, or deaf, or lame, yet on this After-Death Plane thine eyes will see forms, and thine ears will hear sounds, and all other sense-organs of thine will be unimpaired and very keen and complete. Wherefore the Bardo-body hath been spoken of as ‘endowed with all sense-faculties’, That [condition of existence, in which thou thyself now art] is an indication that thou art deceased and wandering in the bardo. Act so as to know this. Remember the teachings ; remember the teachings.

O nobly-born, ‘unimpeded motion’ implieth that thy present body being a desire-body—thine intellect having been separated from its seat 2—is not a body of gross matter, so that now thou hast the power to go right through any rock-masses, hills, boulders, carth, houses, and Mt. Mcru itself without being impeded.’ Ixcepting Budh-Gaya and the mother’s womb,* even

1 Or ‘directly above’ ; or lit., ‘as being upon the crown of thy head’. The significance herein is occult: the Brahmanic Aperture, through which the consciousness-principle normally departs from the human body, either temporarily in yogic trance or permanently at death, is upon the crown of the head ; and if the visualization be centred directly over that aperture very definite psychic or spiritual benefit accrues to the visualizer. (Cf. p. 92!.)

2 The ‘seat’ is the human body which has been left behind.

8 This power, supernormal in the human world, is normal in the fourthdimensional after-death state. In the human world, such powers, innate in all persons, can be developed and exercised through proficiency in yoga. The Buddha describes some of them thus: ‘In this case suppose that a being enjoyeth the possession, in various ways, of mystic power: from being one, he becometh multiform; from being multiform, he becometh one ; from being visible, he becometh invisible; he passeth without hindrance to the further side of a wall or battlement, or a mountain, as if through air; he walketh on water without dividing it, as if on solid ground; he travelleth cross-legged through the sky, like the birds on the wing’—(Brahmana Vagga, Anguttara Nikaya).

* Unless previously endowed with a very high degree of spiritual enlighten-

PART T] MIRACULOUS POWERS 159