As the question, What is and is not the right interpretation of the Rebirth Doctrine? is by no means settled among the Oriental peoples who hold the Doctrine, it is necessary for us frankly to recognize the problem as highly controversial. Consequently in this Section we should try to weigh both interpretations carefully; and, if possible, arrive at a sound conclusion, in order to guide the student aright in what is the most fundamental doctrine underlying the Bardo Thédol. In doing so, it seems desirable to invoke the aid of such facts of Western Science as appear to be directly applicable.
As to the esoteric interpretation, the editor has discovered that the initiates who hold to it invariably follow the Buddha’s command as contained in the Kalama Sitta, Anguttara Nikaya,
1 William James, Varieties of Religious Experiences (New York, 1902), p. 483.
2 Cf, translation by E. R. J. Gooneratne, Anguttara Nikaya, Eka Duka and Tika Nipata (Galle, Ceylon, 1913), pp. 188-9, 273-4. Passages parallel to these are contained in the Kandaraka Sittanta and Potaliya Sittanta of the Mayhima Nikaya (see translations by Bhikkhus Narada and Mahinda in The Blessing, Colombo, Ceylon, Jan. and Feb., 1925, vol. i, nos. 1 and 2). Buddhaghosa, in his Vissudhi Magga (i.e. ‘Path of Purity’), gives in more detail similar yogic methods for recovering (from the subconsciousness) memories of past births.
42 Introduction
or else the Hindu equivalent in works on Yoga, not to accept any doctrine as true until it be tested, and proven true, even though it be ‘found written in the Scriptures’; and they hold no Scriptures to be infallible, on this or any doctrine, or free from corruptions, Pali, Sanskrit, Tibetan, or others.
The exoteric interpretation, namely that the human stream of consciousness, that is to say, the human life-flux, not only can, but very often does take re-embodiment in sub-human creatures immediately after having been in human form, is accepted universally by Buddhists, both of the Northern and Southern Schools—as by Hindus—who, referring to Scriptures, invariably regard it as being incontrovertible. Their belief, being based on the authority of written records, and on untested theories of gurus and priests who consider the literally interpreted written records to be infallible and who are not adept in yoga, is nowadays considered to be the orthodox interpretation.
Over against the exoteric interpretation, which, without any doubt, the Bardo Thodol, if read literally, conveys, the esoteric interpretations may be stated—on the authority of the various philosophers, both Hindu and Buddhist, from whom the editor has received instruction—as follows:
The human form (but not the divine nature in man) is a direct inheritance from the sub-human kingdoms; from the lowest forms of life it has evolved, guided by an ever- growing and ever-changing life-flux, potentially conscious- ness, which figuratively may be called the seed of the life- force, connected with or overshadowing each sentient creature, being in its essence psychical. As such, it is the evolving principle, the principle of continuity, the principle capable of acquiring knowledge and understanding of its own nature, the principle whose normal goal is Enlightenment. And, just as the physical seed of a vegetable or animal organism— even man’s seed—is seen by the eyes to be capable of pro- ducing after its own kind only, so with that which figuratively may be called the psychical seed of the life-flux which the eyes cannot sce—if of a human being it cannot incarnate in, or overshadow, or be intimately bound up with a body
Esotericism of Rebirth Doctrine 43
foreign to its evolved characteristics, either in this world, -in Bardo, or in any realm or world of sangsdaric existence. This is held to be a natural Jaw governing the manifestation of life, as inviolable as the law of karma, which sets it into operation.
For a human life-flux to flow into the physical form of a dog, or fowl, or insect, or worm, is, therefore, held to be as impossible as would be—Ict us say—the transferring of the waters of Lake Michigan into the depression occupied by the waters of Lake Killarney, or—as the Hindu would say—as putting into the bed of the Ganges River the waters of the Indian Ocean.
Degeneration, in a highly developed flowering plant, or apple, or vegetable, or wheat, or animal, is, of course, con- comitant with cultural neglect; but within this creation period—at least so far as the physical vision of science has penetrated therein—the flowering plant does not de- generate into the apple, nor into the corn, nor one species of animals into another, nor does man degenerate into any- thing but the savage man—never into a sub-human creature. As to the processes affecting the life-flux which the human eye cannot see, the esoteric teaching coincides with that of the ancient Greek and Egyptian mystics: ‘As below, so above’; which implies that there is one harmonious karmic law governing with unwavering and impartial justice the visible as well as the invisible operations of nature.
From this follows the corollary, which the Oriental advocates of the esoteric interpretation give out: Progression or retro- gression—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 sub- human—save step by step. And retrogression and pro- gression 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 con- stituents 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 retro- grade 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 re- trograding, step by step, into lower and lower states of consciousness. Each step downwards is preceded by a swoon- ing 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-
Esotericism of Rebirth Doctrine 45
ing, 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, be- came 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.)
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,
46 Introduction
And this theory, when amended with certain necessary modi- fications, helps to illustrate the symbolical or esoteric inter- pretation 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 com- pletely 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 liter- ally: 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.)
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.)