in the Intermediate State of the Moments of Death they should practise the Transference, which giveth automatic liberation by one’s merely remembering it.
Devotees of ordinary wit ought most certainly to be freed thereby; but should they not be freed, then, while in the Intermediate State [during the experiencing] of Reality, they should persevere in the listening to this Great Doctrine of Liberation by Hearing.
Accordingly, the devotee should at first examine the symptoms of death as they gradually appear [in his dying body], following Self-Liberation [by Observing the] Characteristics [of the] Symptoms of Death.[1] Then, when all the symptoms of death are complete [he should] apply the Trans- ference, which conferreth liberation by merely remembering [the process ].[2]
- ↑ A Tibetan work of the Bardo cycle, commonly used by lāmas as supplementary to the Bardo Thödol (see part 9 of Note 1, p. 71). It treats of the symptoms of death in particular, scientifically and in very great detail. The late Lāma Kazi Dawa-Samdup had planned its translation into English.
- ↑ Liberation in this context does not necessarily imply, especially in the case of the average devotee, the Liberation of Nirvāṇa, but chiefly a liberation of the ‘life-flux’ from the dying body, in such manner as will afford the greatest possible after-death consciousness and consequent happy rebirth. Yet for the very exceptional and very highly efficient yogī, or saint, the same esoteric process of Transference can be, according to the lāma-gurus, so employed as to prevent any break in the flow of the stream of consciousness, from the moment of a conscious death to the moment of a conscious rebirth. Judging from a translation, made by the late Lāma Kazi Dawa-Samdup, of an old Tibetan manuscript containing practical directions for performing the Transference, which the editor possesses, the process is essentially yogīc, and could be employed only by a person trained in mental concentration, or one-pointedness of mind, to such a high degree of proficiency as to have gained control over all the mental and bodily functions. Merely remembering the process at the all-important moment of death—as the text implies—is, for a yogī, equivalent to performing the Transference itself; for once the yogī’s trained mind is directed
‘transference’ (of the sum-total, or aggregate, of karmic propensities, composing, or bound up with, personality and consciousness). The use of the term ‘soul’ being objectionable, since Buddhism, as a whole, denies the existence of a permanent, unchanging personal-consciousness entity such as the Semitic Faiths and animistic creeds in general understand thereby, the translator has avoided using it. But wherever any similar or equivalent term occurs herein it should be taken to imply something akin to ‘consciousness-principle’ or ‘compound of consciousness’ as implied by the Tibetan Hpho, or else as synonymous with the term ‘life-flux’ as used chiefly by Southern Buddhists.
