The Tibetan Book of the Dead/Foreword
‘Strive after the Good before thou art in danger, before pain masters thee and thy mind loses its keenness.’—Kulārnava Tantra, I. 27.
The thought of death suggests two questions. The first is: ‘How may one avoid death, except when death is desired as in “Death-at-will” (Ichchhāmrityu)?’ The avoidance of death is the aim when Hathayoga is used to prolong present life in the flesh. This is not, in the Western sense, a ‘yea-saying’ to ‘life’, but, for the time being, to a particular form of life. Dr. Evans-Wentz tells us that according to popular Tibetan belief no death is natural. This is the notion of most, if not of all, primitive peoples. Moreover, physiology also questions whether there is any ‘natural death’, in the sense of death through mere age without lesion or malady. This Text, however, in the language of the renouncer of fleshly life the world over, tells the nobly-born that Death comes to all, that human kind are not to cling to life on earth with its ceaseless wandering in the Worlds of birth and death (Sangsāra). Rather should they implore the aid of the Divine Mother for a safe passing through the fearful state following the body’s dissolution, and that they may at length attain all-perfect Buddhahood.
The second question then is: ‘How to accept Death and die?’ It is with this that we are now concerned. Here the technique of dying makes Death the entrance to good future lives, at first out of, and then again in, the flesh, unless and until liberation (Nirvāṇa) from the wandering (Sangsāra) is attained.
This Book, which is of extraordinary interest, both as regards Text and Introduction, deals with the period (longer or shorter according to the circumstances) which, commencing immediately after death, ends with ‘rebirth’. In the Buddhists’ view, Life consists of a series of successive states of consciousness. The first state is the Birth-Consciousness; the last is the consciousness existing at the moment of death, or the Death-Consciousness. The interval between the two states of Consciousness, during which the transformation from the ‘old’ to a ‘new’ being is effected, is called the Bardo or intermediate state (Antarābhāva), divided into three stages, called the Chikhai, Chönyid, and Sidpa Bardo respectively.
This Manual, common in various versions throughout Tibet, is one of a class amongst which Dr. Evans-Wentz includes the Egyptian Book of the Dead, a guide for the use of the Ka or so-called ‘Double’, the De Arte Moriendi and other similar medieval treatises on the craft of dying, to which may be added the Orphic Manual called The Descent into Hades (cf. ‘He descended into Hell’) and other like guide-books for the use of the dead, the Pretakhanda of the Hindu Garuda Purāna, Swedenborg’s De Coelo et de Inferno, Rusca’s De Inferno, and several other eschatological works both ancient and modern. Thus, the Garuda Purāna deals with the rites used over the dying, the death-moment, the funeral ceremonies, the building up, by means of the Pretashrāddha rite, of a new body for the Preta or deceased in lieu of that destroyed by fire, the Judgement, and thereafter (ch. V) the various states through which the deceased passes until he is reborn again on earth.
Both the original text and Dr. Evans-Wentz’s Introduction form a very valuable contribution to the Science of Death from the standpoint of the Tibetan Mahāyāna Buddhism of the so-called ‘Tantrik’ type. The book is welcome not merely in virtue of its particular subject-matter, but because the ritual works of any religion enable us more fully to comprehend the philosophy and psychology of the system to which they belong.
The Text has three characteristics. It is, firstly, a work on the Art of Dying; for Death, as well as Life, is an Art, though both are often enough muddled through. There is a Bengali saying, ‘Of what use are Japa and Tapas (two forms of devotion) if one knoweth not how to die?’ Secondly, it is a manual of religious therapeutic for the last moments, and a psychurgy exorcising, instructing, consoling, and fortifying by the rites of the dying, him who is about to pass on to another life. Thirdly, it describes the experiences of the deceased during the intermediate period, and instructs him in regard thereto. It is thus also a Traveller’s Guide to Other Worlds.
The doctrine of ‘Reincarnation’ on the one hand and of ‘Resurrection’ on the other is the chief difference between the four leading Religions—Brahmanism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. Christianity, in its orthodox form, rejects the most ancient and widespread belief of the Kúklos geneseōn, or Sangsāra, or ‘Reincarnation’, and admits one universe only—this, the first and last—and two lives, one here in the natural body and one hereafter in the body of Resurrection.
It has been succinctly said that as Metempsychosis makes the same soul, so Resurrection makes the same body serve for more than one Life. But the latter doctrine limits man’s lives to two in number, of which the first or present determines for ever the character of the second or future.
Brahmanism and Buddhism would accept the doctrine that ‘as a tree falls so shall it lie’, but they deny that it so lies for ever. To the adherents of these two kindred beliefs this present universe is not the first and last. It is but one of an infinite series, without absolute beginning or end, though each universe of the series appears and disappears. They also teach a series of successive existences therein until morality, devotion, and knowledge produce that high form of detachment which is the cause of Liberation from the cycle of birth and death called ‘The Wandering’ (or Sangsāra). Freedom is the attainment of the Supreme State called the Void, Nirvāṇa, and by other names. They deny that there is only one universe, with one life for each of its human units, and then a division of men for all eternity into those who are saved in Heaven or are in Limbo and those who are lost in Hell. Whilst they agree in holding that there is a suitable body for enjoyment or suffering in Heaven and Hell, it is not a resurrected body, for the fleshly body on death is dissolved for ever.
The need of some body always exists, except for the non-dualist who believes in a bodiless (Videha) Liberation (Mukti); and each of the four religions affirms that there is a subtle and death-surviving element—vital and psychical—in the physical body of flesh and blood, whether it be a permanent entity or Self, such as the Brahmanic Ãtmā, the Moslem Ruh, and the Christian ‘Soul’, or whether it be only a complex of activities (or Skandha), psychical and physical, with life as their function—a complex in continual change, and, therefore, a series of physical and psychical momentary states, successively generated the one from the other, a continuous transformation, as the Buddhists are said to hold. Thus to none of these Faiths is death an absolute ending, but to all it is only the separation of the Psyche from the gross body. The former then enters on a new life, whilst the latter, having lost its principle of animation, decays. As Dr. Evans-Wentz so concisely says, Death disincarnates the ‘soul-complex’, as Birth incarnates it. In other words, Death is itself only an initiation into another form of life than that of which it is the ending.
On the subject of the physical aspect of Death, the attention of the reader is drawn to the remarkable analysis here given of symptoms which precede it. These are stated because it is necessary for the dying man and his helpers to be prepared for the final and decisive moment when it comes.[2] Noteworthy, too, is the description of sounds heard as (to use Dr. Evans-Wentz’s language) ‘the psychic resultants of the disintegrating process called death’. They call to mind the humming, rolling, and crackling noises heard before and up to fifteen hours after death, which, recognized by Greunwaldi in 1618 and referred to by later writers, were in 1862 made the subject of special study by Dr. Collingues.
But it is said that the chain of conscious states is not always broken by death, since there is Phowa, or power to project consciousness and enter the body of another.[3] Indian occultism speaks of the same power of leaving one’s body (Svechchhotkrānti), which, according to the Tantrarāja (ch. xxvii, vv. 45–7, 72–80), is accomplished through the operation (Vāyudhārana) of the vital activity (or Vāyu) in thirty-eight points, or junctions (Marma), of the body. How, it may be asked, does this practice work in with the general doctrine or ‘reincarnation’? We should have been glad if Dr. Evans-Wentz had elucidated this point. On principle, it would seem that in the case of entry into an unborn body such entry may be made into the Matrix in the same way as if it had occurred after a break of consciousness in death. But in the case of entry into beings already born the operation of the power or Siddhi would appear to be by the way of possession (Āvesha) by one consciousness of the consciousness and body of another, differing from the more ordinary case by the fact that the possessing consciousness does not return to its body, which ex hypothesi is about to die when the consciousness leaves it.
If transference of consciousness is effected, there is, of course, no Bardo, which involves the break of consciousness by death. Otherwise, the Text is read.
Then, as the breathing is about to cease, instruction is given and the arteries are pressed. This is done to keep the dying person conscious with a consciousness rightly directed. For the nature of the Death-consciousness determines the future state of the ‘soul-complex’, existence being the continuous transformation of one conscious state into another. Both in Catholic and Hindu ritual for the dying there is constant prayer and repetition of the sacred names.
The pressing of the arteries regulates the path to be taken by the outgoing vital current (Prāṇa). The proper path is that which passes through the Brāhmarandhra, or Foramen of Monro. This notion appears to have been widely held (to quote an instance) even in so remote and primitive a spot as San Cristoval in the Solomon Islands (see Threshold of the Pacific, by C. E. Fox). The function of a holed-stone in a Dolmen found there (reminiscent of the Dolmen à dalle percée common in the Marne district of Western Europe, in South Russia, and in Southern India) is ‘to allow the free passage to its natural seat, the head, of the dead man’s adaro, or “double” ’.
According to Hindu belief (see Pretakhanda of Garuda Purāna) there are nine apertures of the body which are the means of experience, and which, in the divine aspect, are the Lords (Nātha) or Gurus.[4] A good exit is one which is above the navel. Of such exits the best is through the fissure on the top of the cranium called Brāhmarandhra. This is above the physical cerebrum and the Yoga centre called ‘Lotus of the Thousand Petals’ (Sahasrāra Padma), wherein Spirit is most manifest, since it is the seat of Consciousness. Because of this, the orthodox Hindu wears a crest-lock (Shikhā) at this spot; not, as some have absurdly supposed, so that he may thereby be gripped and taken to Heaven or Hell, but because the Shikhā is, as it were, a flag and its staff, raised before and in honour of the abode of the Supreme Lord, Who is Pure Consciousness itself. (The fancy-picture in a recent work by C. Lancelin, La Vie posthume, p. 96, does not show the aperture of exit, which is given in Plate 8 of the second edition of Arthur Avalon’s Serpent Power, p. 93.)
Whatever be the ground for the belief and practice of primitive peoples, according to Yoga doctrine, the head is the chief centre of consciousness, regulating other subordinate centres in the spinal column. By withdrawal of the vital current through the central or Sushumnā ‘nerve’ (nāḍī), the lower parts of the body are devitalized, and there is vivid concentrated functioning at the cerebral centre.
Exotericism speaks of the ‘Book of Judgement’. This is an objective symbol of the ‘Book’ of Memory. The ‘reading’ of that ‘Book’ is the recalling to mind by the dying man of the whole of his past life on earth before he passes from it.[5]
The vital current at length escapes from the place where it last functioned. In Yoga, thought and breathing being interdependent, exit through the Brāhmarandhra connotes previous activity at the highest centre. Before such exit, and whilst self-consciousness lasts, the mental contents are supplied by the ritual, which is so designed as to secure a good death, and, therefore (later on), birth-consciousness.
At the moment of death the empiric consciousness, or consciousness of objects, is lost. There is what is popularly called a ‘swoon’, which is, however, the corollary of super-consciousness itself, or the Clear Light of the Void; for the swoon is in, and of, the Consciousness as knower of objects (Vijñāna Skandha). This empiric consciousness disappears, unveiling Pure Consciousness, which is ever ready to be ‘discovered’ by those who have the will to seek and the power to find It.
That clear, colourless Light is a sense-symbol of the formless Void, ‘beyond the Light of Sun, Moon, and Fire’, to use the words of the Indian Gītā. It is clear and colourless, but māyik (or ‘form’) bodies are coloured in various ways. For colour implies and denotes form. The Formless is colourless. The use of psycho-physical chromatism is common to the Hindu and Buddhist Tantras, and may be found in some Islamic mystical systems also.
What then is this Void? It is not absolutely ‘nothingness’. It is the Alogical, to which no categories drawn from the world of name and form apply. But whatever may have been held by the Mādhyamika Bauddha, a Vedāntist would say that ‘Being’, or ‘Is-ness’, is applicable even in the case of the Void, which is experienced as ‘is’ (asti). The Void is thus, in this view, the negation of all determinations, but not of ‘Is-ness’ as such, as has been supposed in accounts given of Buddhist ‘Nihilism’; but it is nothing known to finite experience in form, and, therefore, for those who have had no other experience, it is no-thing.
A description of Buddhist Mahāyāna teaching which is at once more succinct and clear than, to my knowledge, any other, is given in the Tibetan work, The Path of Good Wishes of Samanta Bhadra, which I have published in the seventh volume of Tantrik Texts (p. xxi et seq.) and here summarize and explain.
All is either Sangsāra or Nirvāṇa. The first is finite experience in the ‘Six Worlds’ or Loka—a word which means ‘that which is experienced’ (Lokyante). The second, or Nirvāṇa, is, negatively speaking, release from such experience, that is from the worlds of Birth and Death and their pains. The Void cannot even be strictly called Nirvāṇa, for this is a term relative to the world, and the Void is beyond all relations. Positively, and concomitantly with such release, it is the Perfect Experience which is Buddhahood, which, again, from the cognitive aspect, is Consciousness unobscured by the darkness of Unconsciousness, that is to say, Consciousness freed of all limitation. From the emotional aspect, it is pure Bliss unaffected by sorrow; and from the volitional aspect, it is freedom of action and almighty power (Amogha-Siddhi). Perfect Experience is an eternal or, more strictly speaking, a timeless state. Imperfect Experience is also eternal in the sense that the series of universes in which it is undergone is infinite. The religious, that is practical, problem is then how from the lesser experience to pass into that which is complete, called by the Upanishads ‘the Whole’ or Pūrna. This is done by the removal of obscuration. At base, the two are one—the Void, uncreated, independent, uncompounded, and beyond mind and speech, If this were not so, Liberation would not be possible. Man is in fact liberated, but does not know it. When he realizes it, he is freed. The great saying of the Buddhist work the Prajñā-Pāramitā runs thus: ‘Form (Rūpa) is the Void and the Void is Form.’[6] Realization of the Void is to be a Buddha, or ‘Knower’, and not to realize it is to be an ‘ignorant being’ in the Sangsāra. The two paths, then, are Knowledge and Ignorance. The first path leads to—and, as actual realization, is—Nirvāṇa. The second means continuance of fleshly life as man or brute, or as a denizen of the other four Lokas. Ignorance in the individual is in its cosmic aspect Māyā, which in Tibetan (sGyuma) means a magical show. In its most generic form, the former is that which produces the pragmatic, but, in a transcendental sense, the ‘unreal’ notion of self and otherness. This is the root cause of error (whether in knowing, feeling, or action) which becomes manifest as the ‘Six Poisons’ (which Hindus call the ‘Six Enemies’) of the Six Lokas of Sangsāra (of which the Text gives five only)—pride, jealousy, sloth (or ignorance), anger, greed, and lust. The Text constantly urges upon the dying or ‘dead’ man to recognize in the apparitions, which he is about to see or sees, the creatures of his own māyā-governed mind, veiling from him the Clear Light of the Void. If he does so, he is liberated at any stage.
This philosophical scheme has so obvious a resemblance to the Indian Māyāvāda Vedānta that the Vaishnava Padma Purāna dubs that system ‘a bad scripture and covert Buddhism’ (māyāvādam asachchāstram prachchhannam bauddham). Nevertheless, its great scholastic, ‘the incomparable Shangkarāchāryya’, as Sir William Jones calls him, combated the Buddhists in their denial of a permanent Self (Ātmā), as also their subjectivism, at the same time holding that the notion of an individual self and that of a world of objects were pragmatic truths only, superseded by and on the attainment of a state of Liberation which has little, if anything, to distinguish it from the Buddhist Void. The difference between the two systems, though real, is less than is generally supposed. This is a matter, however, which it would be out of place to discuss further here.
However this may be, the after-death apparitions are ‘real’ enough for the deceased who does not, as and when they appear, recognize their unsubstantiality and cleave his way through them to the Void. The Clear Light is spoken of in the Bardo Thödol as such a Dazzlement as is produced by an infinitely vibrant landscape in the springtide. This joyous picture is not, of course, a statement of what It is in itself, for It is not an object, but is a translation in terms of objective vision of a great, but, in itself, indescribable joyful inner experience. My attention was drawn, in this connexion, to a passage in a paper on the Avatamsaka Sūtra (ch. xv), by Mr. Hsu, a Chinese scholar, which says, ‘The Bodhisattva emits the light called “Seeing the Buddha” in order to make the dying think about the Tathāgata and so enable them to go to the pure realms of the latter after death’.
The dying or deceased man is adjured to recognize the Clear Light and thus liberate himself. If he does so, it is because he is himself ripe for the liberated state which is thus presented to him. If he does not (as is commonly the case), it is because the pull of worldly tendency (Sangskāra) draws him away. He is then presented with the secondary Clear Light, which is the first, somewhat dimmed to him by the general Māyā. If the mind does not find its resting-place here, the first or Chikhai Bardo, which may last for several days, or ‘for the time that it takes to snap a finger’ (according to the state of the deceased), comes to an end.
In the next stage (Chönyid Bardo) there is a recovery of the Death-Consciousness of objects. In one sense, that is compared with a swoon, it is a rewakening. But it is not a waking-state such as existed before death. The ‘soul-complex’ emerges from its experience of the Void into a state like that of dream. This continues until it attains a new fleshly body and thus really awakes to earth-life again. For this world-experience is life in such a body.
When I first read the account of the fifteen days following recovery from the ‘swoon’, I thought it was meant to be a scheme of gradual arising of limited consciousness, analogous to that described in the thirty-six Tattvas by the Northern Shaivāgama and its Tantras, a process which is given in its ritual form in the Tantrik Bhūtashuddhi rite and in Laya or Kuṇḍalinī Yoga. But on closer examination I found that this was not so. After the ending of the first Bardo the scheme commences with the complete recovery, without intermediate stages, of the Death-Consciousness. The psychic life is taken up and continued from that point, that is from the stage immediately prior to the ‘swoon’.[7] Life immediately after death is, according to this view, as Spiritists assert, similar to, and a continuation of, the life preceding it. As in Swedenborg’s account, and in the recent play Outward Bound, the deceased does not at first know that he is ‘dead’. Swedenborg, who also speaks of an intermediate state, says that, except for those immediately translated to Heaven or Hell, the first state of man after death is like his state in the world, so that he knows no other, believing that he is still in the world notwithstanding his death.[8]
Two illustrations may be given of the doctrine of the continuity and the similarity of experience before and immediately after death. In India, on the one hand, there are reports of hauntings by unhappy ghosts or Pretas, which hauntings are said to be allayed by the performance of the Preta Shrāddha rite at the sacred town of Gaya. On the other hand, I have heard of a case in England where it was alleged that a haunting ceased on the saying of a Requiem Mass. In this case, it was supposed that a Catholic soul in Purgatory felt in need of a rite which in its earth-life it had been taught to regard as bringing peace to the dead. The Hindu ghost craves for the Hindu rite which gives to it a new body in lieu of that destroyed on the funeral pyre. These souls do not (in an Indian view) cease to be Hindu or Catholic, or lose their respective beliefs because of their death. Nor (in this view) do those who have passed on necessarily and at once lose any habit, even though it be drinking and smoking. But in the after-death state the ‘whisky and cigars’ of which we have heard are not gross, material things. Just as a dream reproduces waking experiences, so in the after-death state a man who was wont to drink and smoke imagines that he still does so. We have here to deal with ‘dream-whisky’ and ‘dream-cigars’ which, though imaginary, are, for the dreamer, as real as the substances he drank and smoked in his waking state.[9]
Subsequently, the deceased becomes aware that he is ‘dead’. But as he carries over with him the recollection of his past life, he, at first, still thinks that he has such a physical body as he had before. It is, in fact, a dream-body, such as that of persons seen in dreams. It is an imagined body, which, as the Text says, is neither reflected in a mirror nor casts a shadow, and which can do such wonders as passing through mountains and the like, since Imagination is the greatest of magicians. Even in life on earth a man may imagine that he has a limb where he has none. Long after a man’s leg has been amputated above the knee he can ‘feel his toes’, or is convinced that the soles of his feet (buried days before) are tickling. In the after-death state the deceased imagines that he has a physical body, though he has been severed therefrom by the high surgery of death. In such a body the deceased goes through the experiences next described.
In the First Bardo the deceased glimpses the Clear Light, as the Dharma-Kāya, called by Professor Sylvain Lévy the ‘Essential Body’. This, which is beyond form (Arūpa), is the Dharma-Dhātu, or Matrix of Dharma-substance, whence all the Blessed Ones, or Tathāgatas, issue. This is the body of a Buddha in Nirvāṇa. The second body, or Sambhoga-Kāya, has such subtle form (Rūpavān) as is visible to the Bodhisattvas, and is an intermediate manifestation of the Dharma-Dhātu. In the third body, or Nirmāṇa-Kāya, the Void, or State of Buddhahood, is exteriorized into multiple individual appearances more material, and, therefore, visible to the gross senses of men, such as the forms in which the manifested Buddhas (for there are many and not, as some think, only one, or Gautama) have appeared on earth. If the deceased recognizes the Clear Light of the First Bardo, he is liberated in the Dharma-Kāya. In the Second Bardo Liberation is into the Sambhoga-Kāya (the passage touching the Paradise Realms is not, I think, meant to conflict with this); and in the Third Bardo Liberation is experienced in the Nirmāṇa-Kāya.
During the Second and Third Bardo the deceased is in the Māyik-world (or world of forms), and if Liberation is then attained it is with form (Rūpavān). The deceased being thus in the world of duality, we find that from this point onwards there is a double parallel presentation to his consciousness. There is firstly a Nirvāṇic line, comprising the Five Dhyāni Buddhas of the Sambhoga-Kāya, symbolized by various dazzling colours, with certain Divinities, peaceful and wrathful, emanating from them; and, secondly, a Sangsāric line, consisting of the Six Lokas. These latter, with one exception (if it be one and not due to corruption of text, viz. the association of the smoky or black light of Hell with the blue Vajra-Sattva), have the same colour as their Nirvāṇic counterparts, but of a dull hue. With the Lokas are given their ‘Poisons’, or the sinful characteristics of their inhabitants. The ‘soul-complex’ is then adjured, on the one hand, to seek Liberation through the compassionate grace of the Nirvāṇic line of Buddhas and Devatās (Divinities), and, on the other hand, to shun the particular Loka (World) which is concomitantly presented to his mental vision. With these Buddhas, Devatās, and Lokas are associated certain Nidānas (Causal Connexions), Skandhas (Constituent Factors), material elements, and the colours of the latter. This account appears to have suffered from corruption of the Text. Thus the Nidānas and Skandhas are not complete. Logically, Vijñāna Skandha should go first with Vairochana, and Nāma-rūpa with Vajra-Sattva. Only four out of the five elements are mentioned. Ether, which is omitted, should be associated with Vairochana and Vijñāna. The colours of the elements accord with those given in the Hindu Tantras except as regards ‘air’, to which is assigned a green colour, appropriate for Asuric jealousy, though it is not that of the Hindu colouration, which is smoky grey. Again, the order of the Six Lokas is not the usual one, viz. first the better Lokas, of Devas, Asuras, and Men, and then the Lokas of Ghosts (Pretas), Brutes, and Hell. Each Loka is characterized by its ‘poison’ or besetting sin, but, of these, five only are mentioned. The editor has, however, referred to corruption in the Text in some of these matters, and others I have noted on a careful analysis of the translated Text.
The peaceful Devatās follow on the sixth and seventh day, and the wrathful Devatās on the eighth and subsequent days. The latter are of the terrific type, characteristic both of the Buddhist and Hindu Shākta Tantras, with their Bhairavas, Bhairavīs, Ḍākinīs, Yoginīs, and so on. Hinduism also makes this distinction in the nature of Divinities and interprets the wrathful orders as representative of the so-called ‘destructive’ power of the Supreme Lord and of his lesser manifestations; though, in truth, ‘God never destroys’ (na devo nāshakah kvachit), but withdraws the Universe to Himself.
But Power, which thus dissolves the world, is ever terrible to those who are attached to the world. All bad action (Adharma), too, is dissolvent; and, according to the Text, the deceased’s evil Karma in the Sangsāra is reflected in the Nirvāṇic line in its forms as Divinities of the Lower Bardo, who so terrify the deceased that he flees from them and sinks therefore more and more into such a state as will eventually bring him birth in one or other of the Lokas.
The Peaceful Devatās are said to issue from the heart, and the Wrathful from the head. I do not, however, think that this statement necessarily lets in the Yoga doctrine of the ‘Serpent Power’ and the Six Centres, which the editor has shortly set out in Part II of the Addenda, assuming (a matter of which I have no personal knowledge) that the Tibetans both practise this Yoga and teach it in its Indian form. I myself think that the mention of the heart and head does not refer to these places as Yoga-centres, but possibly to the fact that the Peaceful Deities reflect, as stated in the Text, the love of the deceased which springs from his heart.
I make a reservation also as regards the subject of Mantras, dealt with in Part III of the Addenda. No doubt the Tibetans employ Sanskrit Mantras, but such Mantras are often found in a sadly corrupt form in their books—a fact which suggests that the Tibetans feel little appreciation of the supposed sound-value of Mantras. But whether their theory on this subject is the same in all respects as that of the Hindus I cannot say.[10] The Hindu theory, which I have elsewhere endeavoured to elucidate (cf. Garland of Letters), is still on several points obscure; the subject being perhaps the most difficult of any in Hinduism. Even though Tibetan Buddhism may have Mantra-Sādhanā, the presentment of it is likely to differ as much as does the general substance of these two Faiths.
About the fifteenth day, passage is made into the Third Bardo, in which the deceased, if not previously liberated, seeks ‘Rebirth’. His past life has now become dim. That of the future is indicated by certain premonitory signs which represent the first movements of desire towards fulfilment. The ‘soul-complex’ takes on the colour of the Loka in which it is destined to be born. If the deceased’s Karma leads him to Hell, thither he goes after the Judgement, in a subtle body which cannot be injured or destroyed, but in which he may suffer atrocious pain. Or he may go to the Heaven-world or other Loka, to return at length and in all cases (for neither punishment nor reward are eternal) to earth, whereon only can new Karma be made. Such return takes place after expiation of his sins in Hell, or the expiration of the term of enjoyment in Heaven which his Karma has gained for him. If, however, the lot of the deceased is immediate rebirth on earth, he sees visions of mating men and women. He, at this final stage towards the awakening to earth-life, now knows that he has not a gross body of flesh and blood. He urgently desires to have one, in order that he may again enjoy physical life on the earth-world.
The Freudian psycho-analyst will find herein a remarkable passage supporting his doctrine of the aversion of the son for the father. The passage says that, if the deceased is to be born as a male, the feeling of its being a male comes upon the knower, and a feeling of intense aversion for the father and attraction for the mother is begotten, and vice versa as regards birth as a female. This is, however, an old Buddhist doctrine found elsewhere. Professor De la Vallée Poussin cites the following passage: ‘L’esprit troublé par désir d’amour, il va au lieu de sa destinée. Même très éloigné, il voit, par l’œil né de la force de l’acte, le lieu de sa naissance; voyant là son père et sa mère unis, il conçoit désir pour la mère quand il est mâle, désir pour le père quand il est femelle, et, inversement, haine’ (Bouddhisme: Études et Matériaux, Abhidharmakosha, iii. 15, p. 25). The work cited also contains other interesting details concerning the embryo. (See, too, the same author’s La Théorie de douze causes.)
At length the deceased passes out of the Bardo dream-world into a womb of flesh and blood, issuing thence once more into the waking state of earth-experience. This is what in English is called Re-incarnation, or Re-birth in the flesh. The Sanskrit term is Sangsāra, that is, ‘rising and rising again’ (Punariutpatti) in the worlds of birth and death. Nothing is permanent, but all is transitory. In life, the ‘soul-complex’ is never for two consecutive moments the same, but is, like the body, in constant change. There is thus a series (Santāna) of successive, and, in one sense, different states, which are in themselves but momentary. There is still a unifying bond in that each momentary state is a present transformation representative of all those which are past, as it will be the generator of all future transformations potentially involved in it.
This process is not interrupted by death. Change continues in the Skandhas (or constituents of the organism) other than the gross body which has been cast off and which undergoes changes of its own. But there is this difference: the after-death change is merely the result of the action of accumulated past Karma and does not, as in earthly life, create new Karma, for which a physical body is necessary. (Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity are in agreement in holding that man’s destiny is decided on Earth, though the last differs from the first two, as explained above, on the question whether there is more than one life on Earth.) There is no breach (Uchchheda) of consciousness, but a continuity of transformation. The Death-Consciousness is the starting-point, followed by the other states of consciousness already described. Karma at length generates a fully-formed desire or mental action. This last is followed by the consciousness taking up its abode in a suitable matrix, whence it is born again as a Birth-Consciousness. What is so born is not altogether different from what has gone before, because it is the present transformation of it; and has no other independent existence.
There are thus successive births of (to use Professor de la Vallée Poussin’s term) a ‘fluid soul-complex’, because the series of psychic states continues at intervals of time to enter the physical womb of living beings. It has been said by the authority cited (Way to Nirvāṇa, p. 85) that the birth-consciousness of a new celestial or infernal being makes for itself and by itself, out of unorganized matter, the body it is to inhabit. Therefore the birth of such beings will follow immediately after the death of the being which is to be reborn as an infernal or celestial being. But the case is said to be different, as a rule, where there is to be ‘reincarnation’, that is ‘rebirth’ in the flesh. Conception and birth then presuppose physical circumstances that may not be realized at the moment of the death of the being to be ‘re-incarnated’. In these cases and others it is alleged that the dying consciousness cannot be continued at once into the birth-consciousness of a new being. The Professor says that this difficulty is solved by those Schools which, maintaining the intermediary existence (Antarābhāva), hold that the dying consciousness is continued into a short-lived being called Gandharva, which lasts for seven days, or seven times seven days (cf. the forty-nine days of the Bardo). This Gandharva creates, with the help of the conceptional elements, an embryo as soon as it can find opportunity. This doctrine, if it has been rightly understood, is apparently another and cruder version of the Bardo doctrine. There cannot, in any philosophic view of the doctrine of Karma, be any ‘hold up’ of what is a continuous life-process. Such process does not consist of independent sections waiting upon one another. And so a ‘soul-complex’ cannot be ready to reincarnate before the circumstances are fit for it. The law which determines that a being shall incarnate is the same as that which provides the means and conditions by, and under, which the incarnation is to take place. Nor is the body of the infernal or celestial being gross matter. This is clear from the present Text.
Dr. Evans-Wentz raises again the debated question of the transmigration of human ‘souls’ into sub-human bodies, a process which this Text, exoterically viewed, seems to assume, and which is, as he points out, the general Hindu and Buddhist belief. It seems to be an irrational, though it may be a popular, belief that a human ‘soul’ can permanently inhabit a sub-human body as its own. For the body cannot exist in such disagreement with its occupant. The right doctrine appears to be that, as man has evolved through the lowest forms of being (Hinduism speaks of 8,400,000 graded kinds of births culminating in man),[11] so by misconduct and neglect to use the opportunity of manhood there can, equally, be a descent along the ‘downward path’ to the same low forms of being from which humanity has, with difficulty, emerged. The Sanskrit term Durlabham, meaning ‘difficult to get’, refers to this difficulty of securing human birth. But such descent involves (as Dr. Evans-Wentz says) the loss of the human nature and the enormous lengths of time of a creation epoch.
If the series (Santāna) of conscious states are determined by the past Karma, it may be asked how that liberty of choice exists which the whole Text assumes by its injunctions to the deceased to do this or to avoid that. No doubt even in one individual there are diverse tendencies (Sangskāra). But the question still remains. If the Karma ready to ripen determines the action, then advice to the accused is useless. If the ‘soul’ is free to choose, there is no determination by Karma. Hinduism holds that, notwithstanding the influence of Karma, the Ātmā is essentially free. Here the answer appears to be twofold. Apart from what is next stated, the instructions given may, by their suggestions, call up that one of several latent tendencies which tends towards the action counselled. Further, this system allows that one ‘soul’ can help another. And so there are prayers for, and application of merits to, the deceased, just as we find in Hinduism the Pretashrāddha, in Catholicism the Requiem Mass, and in Islam the Moslem’s Fatiha. In this and other matters one mind can, it is alleged, influence another otherwise than through the ordinary sense channels whether before or after death. There is also a tendency to overlook collective Karma and its effects. An individual is not only affected by his own Karma, but by that of the community to which he belongs. A wider question arises as to the meaning of the Re-incarnation Doctrine itself, but this is not the place to discuss it.
There are many other points of interest in this remarkable Book, but I must now stop and let the reader discover them for himself. I would like, however, to add a word as to the manner of its making. The Text has been fortunate in finding as its editor Dr. Evans-Wentz, whose knowledge of, and sympathy with, his subject has enabled him to give us a very comprehensible account of it. He, in his turn, was fortunate in his teacher, the translator, the late Lāma Kazi Dawa-Samdup (Tib. Zla-va-bsam-hgrub), who, when I first met him, was Chief Interpreter on the staff of His Excellency Lonchen Satra, the Tibetan Plenipotentiary to the Government of India. He was also attached to the Political Staff of His Holiness the Dalai Lāma on the latter’s visit to India. At the time of his premature and greatly regretted death Lāma Kazi Dawa-Samdup was Lecturer in Tibetan to the University of Calcutta. These, and the other appointments which the translator held, and to which Dr. Evans-Wentz has referred, sufficiently establish his high competency both in Tibetan and English. He had also, I may add, some knowledge of Sanskrit, which I found of much use in discussing with him the meaning of terms used in Tibetan-Buddhist doctrine and ritual. I can, then, speak personally of his attainments, for I saw a good deal of him when he was preparing for me a translation of the Tibetan Shrīchakrasambhāra Tantra, which I have published as the seventh volume of the series of Tantrik Texts (Luzac & Co.). I can, likewise, from my own knowledge, associate myself with what Dr. Evans-Wentz has said as to this remarkable man. May their joint work have the success it deserves, and so encourage Dr. Evans-Wentz to publish some at least of the other Texts which he tells me he has in store.
John Woodroffe.
Oxford,
October 3, 1925.
- ↑ As to the title of this Foreword, ‘The Science of Death’, see Thanatology, by Dr. Roswell Parks, in The Journal of the American Medical Association, April 27, 1912.
- ↑ Cf. Tantrarāja, ch. xxvii, vv. 83–100, dealing with signs of approaching death, Tantrik Texts, edited by Arthur Avalon, vol. xii.
- ↑ Cf. Tantrik Texts, vol. vii, p. 23, the Buddhist Shrīchakra-sambhāra Tantra.
- ↑ Cf. A. Avalon’s Tantrik Texts, vol. viii, p. 2.
- ↑ That such a review of earth-life is experienced by the dying has been frequently attested by persons who had begun to die, as, for example, in drowning, and then been resuscitated.—W. Y. E-W.
- ↑ See Tantrik Texts, vol. vii, p. 33.
- ↑ Cf. Yogavāshiṣḥṭha, clx, v. 41.
- ↑ De Coelo, ed. 1868, 493–7.
- ↑ The editor has heard of a European planter who, having died in the jungles of the Malabar country of South-west India, was buried there by the people. Some years afterwards, a friend of the planter found the grave carefully fenced in and covered with empty whisky and beer bottles. At a loss to understand such an unusual sight, he asked for an explanation, and was told that the dead sahib’s ghost had caused much trouble and that no way had been discovered to lay the ghost until an old witch-doctor declared that the ghost craved whisky and beer, to which it had long been habituated when in the flesh and which were the real cause of its separation from the fleshly body. The people, although religiously opposed to intoxicants, began purchasing bottled whisky and beer of the same brands which the sahib was well known to have used, and, with a regular ritual for the dead, began sacrificing them to the ghost by pouring them out upon the grave. Finding that this kept the ghost quiet they kept up the practice in self-defence.—W. Y. E-W.
- ↑ Just as the Tibetans took over Tantricism from India, so, as the well-known Tibetan Biography of Jetsün Milarepa (Tibet’s most famous Yogī and Saint), for example, makes clear, they appear also to have derived various systems of Yoga from India, including Laya or Kunṇḍalinī Yoga. While it is undoubtedly true that many Mantras likewise derived from India have grown hopelessly corrupt in the Tibetan language itself, the practice of Laya or Kunṇḍalinī Yoga by Tibetans seems to have been kept fairly pure, largely through oral transmission from guru to guru rather than through written records, except for Tibetanized terminologies and methods of application. Certain Tibetan treatises on Yoga which the editor possesses, both in the original and in English translation, suggest this.—W. Y. E-W.
- ↑ As plants, aquatic animals, reptiles, birds, quadrupeds, simian forms, and man. See Brihad Vishnu Purāna.