Principle is attained, with it comes the power of divine speech, symbolized by Amitābha. The perfection of the Divine Thought-Principle brings divine infallibility, symbolized by Vairochana. The perfection of the Divine Qualities of Goodness and Beauty is the realization of Ratna-Sambhava, their producer. With the perfection of Divine Actions comes the realization of Amogha-Siddhi, the Omnipotent Conqueror.
To one after another of these divine attributes, or principles, innate in every human being, the deceased is introduced, as though in a symbolic drama of initiation, to test him and discover whether or not any part of his divine (or bodhic) nature has been developed. Full development in all the bodhic powers of the Five Dhyānī Buddhas, who are the personifications of them, leads to Liberation, to Buddhahood. Partial development leads to birth in one of the happier states: deva-loka, the world of the devas or gods; asura-loka, the world of the asuras or titans; nara-loka, the world of mankind.
After the Fifth Day the Bardo visions become less and less divine; the deceased sinks deeper and deeper into the morass of sangsāric hallucinations; the radiances of the higher nature fade into the lights of the lower nature. Then—the after-death dream ending as the Intermediate State exhausts itself for the percipient, the thought-forms of his mental-content all having shown themselves to him like ghostly spectres in a nightmare—he passes on from the Intermediate State into the equally illusionary state called waking, or living, either in the human world or in one of the many mansions of existence, by being born there. And thus revolves the Wheel of Life, until the one who is bound on it breaks his own bonds through Enlightenment, and there comes, as the Buddha proclaims, the Ending of Sorrow.
In Sections I to V, above, the more prominent occult teachings underlying the Bardo Thödol have been briefly expounded. In Sections VI to XII, which are to follow, the chief Bardo rites and ceremonies, the Bardo psychology, and other of the Bardo doctrines will be explained and interpreted. The last Sections, XIII to XV, will be devoted
