Clear Light, which dawneth in somewhat more than a mealtime period after that the expiration hath ceased.[1]
According to one's good or bad karma, the vital-force floweth down into either the right or left nerve and goeth out through any of the apertures [of the body].[2] Then cometh a lucid condition of the mind.[3]
To say that the state [of the primary Clear Light] endureth for a meal-time period [would depend upon] the good or bad condition of the nerves and also whether there hath been previous practice or not [in the setting-face-to-face].
When the consciousness-principle getteth outside [the body, it sayeth to itself], 'Am I dead, or am I not dead?' It cannot determine. It seeth its relatives and connexions as it had been used to seeing them before. It even heareth the wailings, The terrifying karmic illusions have not yet dawned. Nor have the frightful apparitions or experiences caused by the Lords of Death[4] yet come.
During this interval, the directions are to be applied [by the lāma or reader]:
There are those [devotees] of the perfected stage and of the
- ↑ Immediately after the passing of the vital-force into the median-nerve, the person dying experiences the Clear Light in its primitive purity, the Dharma-Kāya unobscured; and, if unable to hold fast to that experience, next experiences the secondary Clear Light, having fallen to a lower state of the Bardo, wherein the Dharma-Kāya is dimmed by karmic obscurations.
- ↑ Cf. p. xxx.
- ↑ Text: shes-pa, rendered here as 'mind'. The translator has added the following comment: 'The vital-force, passing from the navel psychic-nerve centre, and the principle of consciousness, passing from the brain psychic-nerve centre, unite in the heart psychic-nerve centre, and in departing thence from the body, normally through the Aperture of Brahma, produce in the dying person a state of ecstasy of the greatest intensity. The succeeding stage is less intense. In the first, or primary, stage, is experienced the Primary Clear Light, in the second stage, the Secondary Clear Light. A ball set bounding reaches its greatest height at the first bound; the second bound is lower, and each succeeding bound is still lower until the ball comes to rest. Similarly is it with the consciousness-principle at the death of a human body. Its first spiritual bound, directly upon quitting the earth-plane body, is the highest; the next is lower. Finally, the force of karma having spent itself in the after-death state, the consciousness-principle comes to rest, a womb is entered, and then comes rebirth in this world.'
- ↑ Text: Gshin-rje (pron. Shin-je): 'Lord of Death'; but the plural form is allowable and preferable here.
