THE BARDO THODOL OR THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD

Detailed accounts of the kinds of experiences natural to the post-death state--brought back, according to Tibetan legend, by one or more highly-trained lamas who "died" and later returned to report their findings--have been kept for centuries in the sacred lore of Tibetan Buddhism, and especially in the Bardo Thodol or the Tibetan Book of the Dead. As recorded by Dr. W.Y. Evans-Wentz and Tibetan scholar and linguist Kazi Dawa-Samdup, the "forty-nine symbolic days" spent by the psyche on the Bardo plane, afford an interesting comparison with the forty-nine days of testing common to world teachers like Jesus in the desert and the Buddha under the Bodhi Tree. There are also a number of provocative connections with the doctrine of purgatory, certain long-neglected Christian books on the art of dying, the ancient Greek mystery rites and even more recent records kept by the British Society for Psychic Research and other accredited groups investigating so-called "spiritualism." The Tibetan Buddhist "science of dying" stresses, however, with typical Buddhist psychological insight, the reminder that all the Bardo experiences--similar to dreams and nightmares--are in reality merely the dead man's own thought forms. The phenomena he experiences in the after-death state are related to his own development, tastes, habits, desires and thoughts during his lifetime. "The deceased human being," writes Dr. Evans-Wentz, "becomes the sole spectator of a marvelous panorama of hallucinatory visions; each seed of thought in his consciousness-content karmically revives, and he, like a wonder-struck child watching moving pictures cast upon a screen, looks on." He is unaware, though, of the source of the phenomena unless he has been previously prepared, through training and contemplative exercises, to understand the "non-reality of what he sees." It is understood, of course, that not all human beings will experience exactly the same phenomena in the after-death state any more than the living do in their real life or in their dreams. Reminiscent here is the widespread belief that a drowning person relives his whole life in mere seconds.