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

Literally,
Siddhz is the attainment of any aim.

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or stddhic powers, and hence called siddhaugha; the third is of ordinary religious teachers and hence called manavaugha, ‘human line’?

Women as well as men, if qualified, may be gurus. The shishya is, as a rule, put on probation for one year before receiving the first initiation. If at the end of that time he proves to be an unworthy receptacle for the higher teachings, he is rejected. Otherwise, he is taken in hand by the guru and carefully prepared for psychical development. A shishya when on probation is merely commanded to perform such and such exercises as are deemed suitable to his or her particular needs. Then, when the probation ends, the shishya is told by the guru the why of the exercises, and the final results which are certain to come from the exercises when successfully carried out. Ordinarily, once a guru is chosen, the skishya has no right to disobey the surz, or to take another guru until it is proven that the first gar can guide the skishya no further. If the skzshya develops rapidly, because of good karma, and arrives at a stage of development equal to that of the guru, the guru, if unable to guide the shishya further, will probably himself direct the skzshya to a more advanced guru.

For initiating a skzshya, the guru must first prepare himself, usually during a course of special ritual exercises occupying several days, whereby the guru, by invoking the gift-waves of the divine line of gurus, sets up direct communication with the spiritual plane on which the divine gurus exist. If the human guru be possessed of szddhic powers, this communion is believed to be as real as wireless or telepathic communication between two human beings on the earth-plane.

The actual initiation, which follows, consists of giving to the shishya the secret mantra, or Word of Power, whereby at-one-ment is brought about between the s/zskya, as the new member of the secret brotherhood, and the Supreme Guru

1 The three lines of gurus are so called not because of any difference in their respective powers, but because of their different places of abode. In the Tantraraja (ch. I) it is said that the Gurus of the Divya Order always abide in Shiva’s

Heaven, those of the Siddha Order both in the Human-World and in the Heaven- Worlds, and those of the Manava Order on Earth only.

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In the Tantraraja (ch. I) it is said that the Gurus of the Divya Order always abide in Shiva’s

Heaven, those of the Siddha Order both in the Human-World and in the Heaven- Worlds, and those of the Manava Order on Earth only.

p. 224

who stands to all gurus and shishyas under him as the Divine Father. The vital-force, or vital-airs (praua-vayu), serve as a psycho-physical link uniting the human with the divine; and the vital-force, having been centred in the Seventh Psychic-Centre, or Thousand-petalled Lotus, by exercise of the awakened Serpent-Power, through that Centre, as through a wireless receiving station, are received the spiritual gift-waves of the Supreme Guru. Thus is the divine grace received into the human organism and made to glow, as electricity is made to glow when conducted to the vacuum of an electric bulb; and the true initiation is thereby conferred and the shzshya Illuminated.

In the occult language of the Indian and Tibetan Mysteries, the Supreme Guru sits enthroned in the pericarp of the Thousand-petalled Lotus. Thither, by the power of the Serpent Power of the awakened Goddess Kundalini, the skzshya, guided by the human guru, is led, and bows down at the feet of the Divine Father, and receives the blessing and the benediction. The Veil of Aaya has been lifted, and the Clear Light shines into the heart of the skzskya unobstructedly. As one Lamp is lit by the Flame of another Lamp, so the Divine Power is communicated from the Divine Father, the Supreme Guru, to the newly-born one, the human shishya.

The secret mantra conferred at the initiation, like the Egyptian Word of Power, is the Password necessary for a conscious passing from the embodied state into the disembodied state. If the initiate is sufficiently developed spiritually before the time comes for the giving up of the gross physical body at death, and can at the moment of quitting the earthplane remember the mystic santra, or Word of Power, the change will take place without loss of consciousness; nor will the shishya of full development suffer any break in the continuity of consciousness from incarnation to incarnation.

V. gREALDI Y,

In denying the soul hypothesis, Buddhism of all Schools maintains that personal immortality is impossible, because all personal existence is but a mere flux of instability and continualREALITY 2.25 change karuzically dependent upon the false concept that phenomena, or phenomenal appearances, or phenomenal states and beings, are real. In other words, Buddhism holds that individualized mind or consciousness cannot realize Reality.

In other words, Buddhism holds that individualized mind or consciousness cannot realize Reality.

The essence of the Bardo Thidol teachings is, likewise, that so long as the mind is human, so long as it is individualized, so long as it regards itself as separate and apart from all other minds, it is but the plaything of Ward, of Ignorance, which causes it to look upon the hallucinatory panorama of existences within the Sanugsara as real, and thence leads it to lose itself in the Quagmire of Phenomena.

Followers of the Semitic Faiths are hereditarily so completely dominated by the theory of soul and of personal immortality after death, in a phenomenal paradise or hell, that in their view there can be no alternative; and to them the Buddhist denial of the theory erroneously appears to imply a doctrine of the absolute negation of being.

The realization of Reality, according to the Bardo Thodol, is wholly dependent upon expurgating from the mind all error, all false belief, and arriving at a state in which Mara no longer controls. Once the mind becomes freed from all karmic obscurations, from the supreme heresy that phenomenal appearances—in heavens, hells, or worlds—are real, then there dawns Right Knowledge; all forms merge into that which is non-form, all phenomena into that which is beyond phenomena, all Ignorance is dissipated by the Light of Truth, personality ceases, individualized being and sorrow are at an end, mind and matter are known to be identical, the mundane consciousness becomes the supramundane, and, one with the Darma- Kaya, the pilgrim reaches the Goal.

The great Patriarch Ashvaghosha, who set down in writing during the first century A.D.! the essential teachings of Mahayana Buddhism as at first handed down orally by

1 The exact date of Ashvaghosha (or A¢vaghosha) is uncertain. According to Suzuki, who has investigated the question with great care, Ashvaghosha ‘lived at the time extending from the latter half of the first century before Christ to about 50 or 80 a.p.... At the very most, his time cannot be placed later than the first century of the Christian era’ (T. Suzuki, The Awakening of Faith, Chicago, 1900, p. 17).

3069 G¢gp. 226 initiates direct from the time of the Buddha, has otherwise stated the doctrines touching Reality as follows, in his remarkable treatise called The Awakening of Faith :*

Of Ignorance: ‘The True Reality is originally only one, but the degrees of ignorance are infinite ; therefore the natures of men differ in character accordingly. There are unruly thoughts more numerous than the sands of the Ganges, some arising from ignorant conceptions and others arising from ignorance of senses and desires. Thus all kinds of wild thoughts arisc from ignorance and have first and last infinite differences which Ju Lai [i.e. the Tathagata] alone knows.’ ?