The Tibetan Book of the Dead — ed. W. Y. Evans-Wentz
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It is true that spirit-evocation of a kind is practised in Tibet, as throughout Mongolia and China, by /amnas who form a class of oracular priests, consulted on important problems of political policy even by the Dalai Lama himself. But the spirits called up are tutelary deities of a low order called the ‘executive-order’ (Tib. bkah-dod—pron. ka-dét, meaning ‘ one awaiting orders’) and never intentionally the spirits or ghosts of men or women recently deceased. Some of these bkahdods are, so the Tibetans believe, the spirits of /émas and devotees who have failed—often through practising black magic—to obtain spiritual enlightenment when in the human world, or who otherwise, in the manner described in the text here, have been diverted from the normal path of progress, Thus, in many instances, they have become demoniacal and malignant spirits, whose progress has been arrested not by being bound to the earth-plane through having been called up by ‘mediums’ soon after their decease, but naturally through very evil karma. Such bkahdods, thus often presenting themselves with ordinary spirits of the dead, are, as obsessing demons, said to do much harm mentally and psychically to the untrained ‘medium’ and clients, insanity and moral irresponsibility not infrequently resulting. For these reasons, the /@mas maintain that psychic research should be conducted only by masters of the occult, or magical, sciences, and not indiscriminately by the guru-less multitude.
In Sikkim, where our translation was made, necromancy precisely like that now practised in the West has been practised for unknown centuries, as it still
p. 188
At this time, if one can recollect the Great Symbol | teachings] concerning the Voidness, that will be best. If one be not trained in that, train the [mental] powers + into [regarding] all things as illusion [or maya]. Even if this be impossible, be not attracted by anything, By meditating upon the Tutelary Deity, the Great Compassionate [One], Buddhahood will be obtained in the Sambhoga-K aya.
[THE ALTERNATIVE CHOOSING: SUPERNORMAL
BIRTH; OR WOMB-BIRTH]
If, however, O nobly-born, thou hast, because of the influence of karma, to enter into a womb, the teaching for the selection of the womb-door will be explained now. Listen.
Do not enter into any sort of womb which may be come by. If compelled by tormenting furics to enter, meditate upon Hayagriva.
Since thou now possessest a slender supernormal power of foreknowledge, all the places [of birth] will be known to thee, one after another.? Choose accordingly.
There are two alternatives: the transference [of the consciousness-principle] to a pure Buddha realm, and the sclection of the impure sangsaric womb-door, to be accomplished as follows:
Choose accordingly.
There are two alternatives: the transference [of the consciousness-principle] to a pure Buddha realm, and the sclection of the impure sangsaric womb-door, to be accomplished as follows:
is. The Lepchas, descendants of the primitive races of Sikkim, who still form a large part of the rural population, are as thoroughly animistic in their worships as the American Red Men; and, largely through their influence, the evocation of the dead has become rather widespread among the Sikkimese Buddhist layfolk, many of whom are of both Tibetan and Lepcha blood. Similarly, in Buddhist Bhutan, such spirit-evocation iscommon. In both countries, however, the /amas strenuously, though rather ineffectually, oppose it.
It is said that the retardation of a Bardo-bound spirit may be for any time from five hundred to one thousand years; and, in exceptional cases, for ages. All the while, escape from the Bardo being prevented, the deceased can neither pass on to a paradise realm nor be reborn in the human world. Ultimately, however, the womb will be entered and the Bardo come to an end.
1 Text: rtsal (pron, sal): ‘powers’; elsewhere in our text dvang-po (pron. wang-po) being rendered as ‘ faculties’.
# In a series of visions, the Knower will become aware of the lot or destiny associated with cach womb or place of birth seen. Here again we are reminded of the episode in the tenth book of Plato’s Republic, describing a band of Greek heroes in the Otherworld choosing their bodies for the next incarnation.
PART II] CONSCIOUSNESS PROJECTION 189
[SUPERNORMAL BIRTH BY TRANSFERENCE TO A
PARADISE REALM]
In the first—the transference to a pure paradise—the projection is directed [by thinking or meditating] thus:
‘Alas! how sorrowful it is that I, during all the innumerable kalpas since illimitable, beginningless time, until now, have been wandering in the Quagmire of Sangs@ra! O how painful that I have not been liberated into Buddhahood by knowing the consciousness to be the self! hitherto cre this! Now doth this Sangsara disgust me, horrify me, sicken me; now hath the hour come to prepare to flee from it. I mysclf will so act as to be born in The Happy Western Realm, at the feet of the Buddha Amitabha,? miraculously from amidst a lotus blossom.’ ®
Thinking thus, direct the resolution [or wish] earnestly [to that Realm]; or, likewise, to any Realm thou mayst desire,—The Pre-eminently Happy Realm, or The Thickly- Formed Realm, or The Realm [of Those] of Long Hair,* miraculously from amidst a lotus blossom.’ ®
Thinking thus, direct the resolution [or wish] earnestly [to that Realm]; or, likewise, to any Realm thou mayst desire,—The Pre-eminently Happy Realm, or The Thickly- Formed Realm, or The Realm [of Those] of Long Hair,*
1 Text: vig-pa (‘consciousness’) + bdag (pro. dag, meaning ‘self’: Skt. dima). Should we consider ‘consciousness’ in this context to be the essential or true consciousness, i. e. the subconsciousness—and this meaning is implied— the passage would be in direct accord with the psychology of the West, which, on the basis of much accumulated data, might very well postulate that the subconsciousness, being the storehouse of all memory-records, from this life or from hypothetical past lives, is the real self—the bed in which flows on unbrokenly the ‘life-flux’, from one state of existence to another, aud which, when transmuted by the alchemy of Perfect Enlightenment, becomes the supramundane consciousness, i. e, the Buddha consciousness. (Cf. W.Y.Evans-Wentz, The Fairy-laith in Celtic Countries, Oxford University Press, 1911, chap. XII.)
That this view is in keeping with the recorded teachings of the Buddha Himself is evident from the Lonaphala Vagga of the Anguttara Nikaya, wherein He expounds the yogic method of recovering memories, innate in the subconsciousness (see our Introduction, pp. go-1). Sobhita, one of the Buddha’s disciples, was declared, by the Buddha Himself, to be pre-eminent in ‘ ability to remember former existences’ (cf. Etaddagga Vagga, Anguttara Nikdya), being credited with ability to recall systematically his former existences throughout soo falpas; and, in the same Vagga, the Buddha names, from among His female disciples, Bhadda Kapilanit as being pre-eminent ‘in ability to trace lineage of prior sandhas (or human bodies)’.
2 Here, as elsewhere through this treatise, the Buddha Amitabha is to be regarded not as a personal deity, but as a divine power or principle inherent in or emanating from The Happy Western Realm.
8 See p. 190%.
4 This is the Paradise of Vajra-Pani (sec p. 116+), and is not a Buddha Realm.
p. 190
or The Illimitable Vihara of the Lotus Radiance,! in Urgyan’s presence; or direct thy wish to any Realm which thou desirest most, in undistracted one-pointedness [of mind]. By doing so, birth will take place in that Realm instantaneously.
Or, if thou desirest to go to the presence of Maitreya, in the Tushita Heavens,? by directing an earnest wish in like manner and thinking, ‘I will go to the presence of Maitreya in the Tushita Heavens, for the hour hath struck for me here in the Intermediate State’, birth will be obtained miraculously inside a lotus blossom? in the presence of Maitreya.
[WOMB-BIRTH: THE RETURN TO THE HUMAN WORLD]
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