~ The Psychedelic Experience ~
A manual based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead
By Timothy Leary, Ph.D., Ralph Metzner, Ph.D., &
Richard Alpert, Ph.D.
The authors were engaged in a program of experiments with LSD and
other psychedelic drugs at Harvard University, until sensational
national publicity, unfairly concentrating on student interest in the
drugs, led to the suspension of the experiments. Since then, the
authors have continued their work without academic auspices.
This version of THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD
is dedicated,
to
ALDOUS HUXLEY
July 26, 1894 - November 22, 1963
with profound admiration and gratitude.
"If you started in the wrong way," I said in answer to the
investigator's questions, "everything that happened would be a proof
of the conspiracy against you. It would all be self-validating. You
couldn't draw a breath without knowing it was part of the plot."
"So you think you know where madness lies?"
My answer was a convinced and heartfelt, "Yes."
"And you couldn't control it?"
"No I couldn't control it. If one began with fear and hate as the
major premise, one would have to go on the conclusion."
"Would you be able," my wife asked, " to fix your attention on what
The Tibetan Book of the Dead calls the Clear Light?"
I was doubtful.
"Would it keep the evil away, if you could hold it? Or would you not
be able to hold it?"
I considered the question for some time. "Perhaps," I answered at
last, "perhaps I could - but only if there were somebody there to tell
me about the Clear Light. One couldn't do it by oneself. That's the
point, I suppose, of the Tibetan ritual - somebody sitting there all
the time and telling you what's what."
(DOORS OF PERCEPTION, 57-58)
I.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
A psychedelic experience is a journey to new realms of consciousness.
The scope and content of the experience is limitless, but its
characteristic features are the transcendence of verbal concepts, of
space-time dimensions, and of the ego or identity. Such experiences of
enlarged consciousness can occur in a variety of ways: sensory
deprivation, yoga exercises, disciplined meditation, religious or
aesthetic ecstasies, or spontaneously. Most recently they have become
available to anyone through the ingestion of psychedelic drugs such as
LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, DMT, etc. [This is the statement of an
ideal, not an actual situation, in 1964. The psychedelic drugs are in
the United States classified as "experimental" drugs. That is, they
are not available on a prescription basis, but only to "qualified
investigators." The Federal Food and Drug Administration has defined
"qualified investigators" to mean psychiatrists working in a mental
hospital setting, whose research is sponsored by either state or
federal agencies.]
Of course, the drug dose does not produce the transcendent experience.
It merely acts as a chemical key - it opens the mind, frees the
nervous system of its ordinary patterns and structures. The nature of
the experience depends almost entirely on set and setting. Set denotes
the preparation of the individual, including his personality structure
and his mood at the time. Setting is physical - the weather, the
room's atmosphere; social - feelings of persons present towards one
another; and cultural - prevailing views as to what is real. It is for
this reason that manuals or guide-books are necessary. Their purpose
is to enable a person to understand the new realities of the expanded
consciousness, to serve as road maps for new interior territories
which modern science has made accessible.
Different explorers draw different maps. Other manuals are to be
written based on different models - scientific, aesthetic,
therapeutic. The Tibetan model, on which this manual is based, is
designed to teach the person to direct and control awareness in such a
way as to reach that level of understanding variously called
liberation, illumination, or enlightenment. If the manual is read
several times before a session is attempted, and if a trusted person
is there to remind and refresh the memory of the voyager during the
experience, the consciousness will be freed from the games which
comprise "personality" and from positive-negative hallucinations which
often accompany states of expanded awareness. The Tibetan Book of the
Dead was called in its own language the Bardo Thodol, which means
"Liberation by Hearing on the After-Death Plane." The book stresses
over and over that the free consciousness has only to hear and
remember the teachings in order to be liberated.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead is ostensibly a book describing the
experiences to be expected at the moment of death, during an
intermediate phase lasting forty-nine (seven times seven) days, and
during rebirth into another bodily frame. This however is merely the
exoteric framework which the Tibetan Buddhists used to cloak their
mystical teachings. The language and symbolism of death rituals of
Bonism, the traditional pre-Buddhist Tibetan religion, were skillfully
blended with Buddhist conceptions. The esoteric meaning, as it has
been interpreted in this manual, is that it is death and rebirth that
is described, not of the body. Lama Govinda indicates this clearly in
his introduction when he writes: "It is a book for the living as well
as the dying." The book's esoteric meaning is often concealed beneath
many layers of symbolism. It was not intended for general reading. It
was designed to be understood only by one who was to be initiated
personally by a guru into the Buddhist mystical doctrines, into the
pre-mortem-death-rebirth experience. These doctrines have been kept a
closely guarded secret for many centuries, for fear that naive or
careless application would do harm. In translating such an esoteric
text, therefore, there are two steps: one, the rendering of the
original text into English; and two, the practical interpretation of
the text for its uses. In publishing this practical interpretation for
use in the psychedelic drug session, we are in a sense breaking with
the tradition of secrecy and thus contravening the teachings of the
lama-gurus.
However, this step is justified on the grounds that the manual will
not be understood by anyone who has not had a consciousness-expanding
experience and that there are signs that the lamas themselves, after
their recent diaspora, wish to make their teachings available to a
wider public.
Following the Tibetan model then, we distinguish three phases of the
psychedelic experience. The first period (Chikhai Bardo) is that of
complete transcendence - beyond words, beyond space-time, beyond self.
There are no visions, no sense of self, no thoughts. There are only
pure awareness and ecstatic freedom from all game (and biological)
involvements. ["Games" are behavioral sequences defined by roles,
rules, rituals, goals, strategies, values, language, characteristic
space-time locations and characteristic patterns of movement. Any
behavior not having these nine features is non-game: this includes
physiological reflexes, spontaneous play, and transcendent awareness.]
The second lengthy period involves self, or external game reality
(Chonyid Bardo) - in sharp exquisite clarity or in the form of
hallucinations (karmic apparitions). The final period (Sidpa Bardo)
involves the return to routine game reality and the self. For most
persons the second (aesthetic or hallucinatory) stage is the longest.
For the initiated the first stage of illumination lasts longer. For
the unprepared, the heavy game players, those who anxiously cling to
their egos, and for those who take the drug in a non-supportive
setting, the struggle to regain reality begins early and usually lasts
to the end of their session.
Words like these are static, whereas the psychedelic experience is
fluid and ever-changing. Typically the subject's consciousness flicks
in and out of these three levels with rapid oscillations. One purpose
of this manual is to enable the person to regain the transcendence of
the First Bardo and to avoid prolonged entrapments in hallucinatory or
ego-dominated game patterns.
The Basic Trusts and Beliefs. You must be ready to accept the
possibility that there is a limitless range of awareness for which we
now have no words; that awareness can expand beyond range of your ego,
your self, your familiar identity, beyond everything you have learned,
beyond your notions of space and time, beyond the differences which
usually separate people from each other and from the world around
them.
You must remember that throughout human history, millions have made
this voyage. A few (whom we call mystics, saints or buddhas) have made
this experience endure and have communicated it to their fellow men.
You must remember, too, that the experience is safe (at the very
worst, you will end up the same person who entered the experience),
and that all of the dangers which you have feared are unnecessary
productions of your mind. Whether you experience heaven or hell,
remember that it is your mind which creates them. Avoid grasping the
one or fleeing the other. Avoid imposing the ego game on the
experience.
You must try to maintain faith and trust in the potentiality of your
own brain and the billion-year-old life process. With you ego left
behind you, the brain can't go wrong.
Try to keep the memory of a trusted friend or a respected person whose
name can serve as a guide and protection.
Trust your divinity, trust your brain, trust your companions.
Whenever in doubt, turn off your mind, relax, float downstream.
After reading this guide, the prepared person should be able, at the
very beginning of his experience, to move directly to a state of non-
game ecstasy and deep revelation. But if you are not well prepared, or
if there is game distraction around you, you will find yourself
dropping back. If this happens, then the instructions in Part IV
should help you regain and maintain liberation.
"Liberation in this context does not necessarily imply (especially in
the case of the average person) the Liberation of Nirvana, but chiefly
a liberation of the 'life-flux' from the ego, in such a manner as will
afford the greatest possible consciousness and consequent happy
rebirth. Yet for the very experienced and very highly efficient
person, the [same] esoteric process of Transference [Readers
interested in a more detailed discussion of the process of
"Transference" are referred to Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines,
edited by W. Y. Evans-Wentz, Oxford University Press, 1958.] can be,
according to the lama-gurus, so employed as to prevent any break in
the flow of the stream of consciousness, from the moment of the ego-
loss to the moment of a conscious rebirth (eight hours later). Judging
from the translation made by the late Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup, of an old
Tibetan manuscript containing practical directions for ego-loss
states, the ability to maintain a non-game ecstasy throughout the
entire experience is possessed only by persons trained in mental
concentration, or one-pointedness of mind, to such a high degree of
proficiency as to be able to control all the mental functions and to
shut out the distractions of the outside world." (Evans-Wentz, p. 86,
note 2)
This manual is divided into four parts. The first part is
introductory. The second is a step-by-step description of a
psychedelic experience based directly on the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
The third part contains practical suggestions on how to prepare for
and conduct a psychedelic session. The fourth part contains
instructive passages adapted from the Bardo Thodol, which may be read
to the voyager during this session, to facilitate the movement of
consciousness.
In the remainder of this introductory section, we review three
commentaries on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, published with the
Evans-Wentz edition. These are the introduction by Evans-Wentz
himself, the distinguished translator-editor of four treatises on
Tibetan mysticism; the commentary by Carl Jung, the Swiss
psychoanalyst; and by Lama Govinda, and initiate of one of the
principle Buddhist orders of Tibet.
A TRIBUTE TO W. Y. EVANS-WENTZ
"Dr. Evans-Wentz, who literally sat at the feet of a Tibetan lama for
years, in order to acquire his wisdom . . . not only displays a deeply
sympathetic interest in those esoteric doctrines so characteristic of
the genius of the East, but likewise possesses the rare faculty of
making them more or less intelligible to the layman." [Quoted from a
book review in Anthropology on the back of the Oxford University Press
edition of The Tibetan Book of the Dead.]
W. Y. Evans-Wentz is a great scholar who devoted his mature years to
the role of bridge and shuttle between Tibet and the west: like an RNA
molecule activating the latter with the coded message of the former.
No greater tribute could be paid to the work of this academic
liberator than to base our psychedelic manual upon his insights and to
quote directly his comments on "the message of this book."
The message is, that the Art of Dying is quite as important as the Art
of Living (or of Coming into Birth), of which it is the complement and
summation; that the future of being is dependent, perhaps entirely,
upon a rightly controlled death, as the second part of this volume,
setting forth the Art of Reincarnating, emphasizes.
The Art of Dying, as indicated by the death-rite associated with
initiation into the Mysteries of Antiquity, and referred to by
Apuleius, the Platonic philosopher, himself an initiate, and by many
other illustrious initiates, and as The Egyptian Book of the Dead
suggests, appears to have been far better known to the ancient peoples
inhabiting the Mediterranean countries than it is now by their
descendants in Europe and the Americas.
To those who had passed through the secret experiencing of pre-mortem
death, right dying is initiation, conferring, as does the initiatory
death-rite, the power to control consciously the process of death and
regeneration. (Evans-Wentz, p. xiii-xiv)
The Oxford scholar, like his great predecessor of the eleventh
century, Marpa ("The Translator"), who rendered Indian Buddhist texts
into Tibetan, thereby preserving them from extinction, saw the vital
importance of these doctrines and made them accessible to many. The
"secret" is no longer hidden: "the art of dying is quite as important
as the art of living."
A TRIBUTE TO CARL G. JUNG
Psychology is the systematic attempt to describe and explain man's
behavior, both conscious and non-conscious. The scope of study is
broad - covering the infinite variety of human activity and
experience; and it is long - tracing back through the history of the
individual, through the history of his ancestors, back through the
evolutionary vicissitudes and triumphs which have determined the
current status of the species. Most difficult of all, the scope of
psychology is complex, dealing as it does with processes which are
ever-changing.
Little wonder that psychologists, in the face of such complexity,
escape into specialization and parochial narrowness.
A psychology is based on the available data and the psychologists'
ability and willingness to utilize them. The behaviorism and
experimentalism of twentieth-century western psychology is so narrow
as to be mostly trivial. Consciousness is eliminated from the field of
inquiry. Social application and social meaning are largely neglected.
A curious ritualism is enacted by a priesthood rapidly growing in
power and numbers.
Eastern psychology, by contrast, offers us a long history of detailed
observation and systematization of the range of human consciousness
along with an enormous literature of practical methods for controlling
and changing consciousness. Western intellectuals tend to dismiss
Oriental psychology. The theories of consciousness are seen as occult
and mystical. The methods of investigating consciousness change, such
as meditation, yoga, monastic retreat, and sensory deprivation, and
are seen as alien to scientific investigation. And most damning of all
in the eyes of the European scholar, is the alleged disregard of
eastern psychologies for the practical, behavioral and social aspects
of life. Such criticism betrays limited concepts and the inability to
deal with the available historical data on a meaningful level. The
psychologies of the east have always found practical application in
the running of the state, in the running of daily life and family. A
wealth of guides and handbooks exists: the Book of Tao, the Analects
of Confucius, the Gita, the I Ching, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, to
mention only the best-known.
Eastern psychology can be judged in terms of the use of available
evidence. The scholars and observers of China, Tibet, and India went
as far as their data allowed them. They lacked the findings of modern
science and so their metaphors seem vague and poetic. Yet this does
not negate their value. Indeed, eastern philosophic theories dating
back four thousand years adapt readily to the most recent discoveries
of nuclear physics, biochemistry, genetics, and astronomy.
A major task of any present day psychology - eastern or western - is
to construct a frame of reference large enough to incorporate the
recent findings of the energy sciences into a revised picture of man.
Judged against the criterion of the use of available fact, the
greatest psychologists of our century are William James and Carl Jung.
[To properly compare Jung with Sigmund Freud we must look at the
available data which each man appropriated for his explorations. For
Freud it was Darwin, classical thermodynamics, the Old Testament,
Renaissance cultural history, and most important, the close overheated
atmosphere of the Jewish family. The broader scope of Jung's reference
materials assures that his theories will find a greater congeniality
with recent developments in the energy sciences and the evolutionary
sciences.] Both of these men avoided the narrow paths of behaviorism
and experimentalism. Both fought to preserve experience and
consciousness as an area of scientific research. Both kept open to the
advance of scientific theory and both refused to shut off eastern
scholarship from consideration.
Jung used for his source of data that most fertile source - the
internal. He recognized the rich meaning of the eastern message; he
reacted to that great Rorshach inkblot, the Tao Te Ching. He wrote
perceptive brilliant forewords to the I Ching, to the Secret of the
Golden Flower, and struggled with the meaning of The Tibetan Book of
the Dead. "For years, ever since it was first published, the Bardo
Thodol has been my constant companion, and to it I owe not only many
stimulating ideas and discoveries, but also many fundamental insights.
. . Its philosophy contains the quintessence of Buddhist psychological
criticism; and, as such, one can truly say that it is of an unexampled
superiority."
The Bardo Thodol is in the highest degree psychological in its
outlook; but, with us, philosophy and theology
are still in the mediaeval, pre-psychological stage where only the
assertions are listened to, explained, defended, criticized and
disputed, while the authority that makes them has, by general consent,
been deposed as outside the scope of discussion.
Metaphysical assertions, however, are statements of the psyche, and
are therefore psychological. To the Western mind, which compensates
its well-known feelings of resentment by a slavish regard for
"rational" explanations, this obvious truth seems all too obvious, or
else it is seen as an inadmissible negation of metaphysical "truth."
Whenever the Westerner hears the word "psychological," it always
sounds to him like "only psychological."
Jung draws upon Oriental conceptions of consciousness to broaden the
concept of "projection":
Not only the "wrathful" but also the "peaceful" deities are conceived
as sangsaric projections of the human psyche, an idea that seems all
too obvious to the enlightened European, because it reminds him of his
own banal simplifications. But though the European can easily explain
away these deities as projections, he would be quite incapable of
positing them at the same time as real. The Bardo Thodol can do that,
because, in certain of its most essential metaphysical premises, it
has the enlightened as well as the unenlightened European at a
disadvantage. The ever-present, unspoken assumption of the Bardo
Thodol is the anti-nominal character of all metaphysical assertions,
and also the idea of the qualitative difference of the various levels
of consciousness and of the metaphysical realities conditioned by
them. The background of this unusual book is not the niggardly
European "either-or," but a magnificently affirmative "both-and." This
statement may appear objectionable to the Western philosopher, for the
West loves clarity and unambiguity; consequently, one philosopher
clings to the position, "God is," while another clings equally
fervently to the negation, "God is not."
Jung clearly sees the power and breadth of the Tibetan model but
occasionally he fails to grasp its meaning and application. Jung, too,
was limited (as we all are) to the social models of his tribe. He was
a psychoanalyst, the father of a school. Psychotherapy and psychiatric
diagnosis were the two applications which came most naturally to him.
Jung misses the central concept of the Tibetan book. This is not (as
Lama Govinda reminds us) a book of the dead. It is a book of the
dying; which is to say a book of the living; it is a book of life and
how to live. The concept of actual physical death was an exoteric
facade adopted to fit the prejudices of the Bonist tradition in Tibet.
Far from being an embalmers' guide, the manual is a detailed account
of how to lose the ego; how to break out of personality into new
realms of consciousness; and how to avoid the involuntary limiting
processes of the ego; how to make the consciousness-expansion
experience endure in subsequent daily life.
Jung struggles with this point. He comes close but never quite
clinches it. He had nothing in his conceptual framework which could
make practical sense out of the ego-loss experience.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead, or the Bardo Thodol, is a book of
instructions for the dead and dying. Like The Egyptian Book of the
Dead it is meant to be a guide for the dead man during the period of
his Bardo existence. . . .
In this quote Jung settles for the exoteric and misses the esoteric.
In a later quote he seems to come closer:
. . . the instruction given in the Bardo Thodol serves to recall to
the dead man the experience of his initiation and the teachings of his
guru, for the instruction is, at bottom, nothing less than an
initiation of the dead into the Bardo life, just as the initiation of
the living was a preparation for the Beyond. Such was the case, at
least, with all the mystery cults in ancient civilizations from the
time of the Egyptian and Eleusinian mysteries. In the initiation of
the living, however, this "Beyond" is not a world beyond death, but a
reversal of the mind's intentions and outlook, a psychological
"Beyond" or, in Christian terms, a "redemption" from the trammels of
the world and of sin. Redemption is a separation and deliverance from
an earlier condition of darkness and unconsciousness, and leads to a
condition of illumination and releasedness, to victory and
transcendence over everything "given."
Thus far the Bardo Thodol is, as Dr. Evans-Wentz also feels, an
initiation process whose purpose it is to restore to the soul the
divinity it lost at birth.
In still another passage Jung continues the struggle but misses again:
Nor is the psychological use we make of it (the Tibetan Book) anything
but a secondary intention, though one that is possibly sanctioned by
lamaist custom. The real purpose of this singular book is the attempt,
which must seem very strange to the educated European of the twentieth
century, to enlighten the dead on their journey through the regions of
the Bardo. The Catholic Church is the only place in the world of the
white man where any provision is made for the souls of the departed.
In the summary of Lama Govinda's comments which follow we shall see
that the Tibetan commentator, freed from the European concepts of
Jung, moves directly to the esoteric and practical meaning of the
Tibetan book.
In his autobiography (written in 1960) Jung commits himself wholly to
the inner vision and to the wisdom and superior reality of internal
perceptions. In 1938 (when his Tibetan commentary was written) he was
moving in this direction but cautiously and with the ambivalent
reservations of the psychiatrist cum mystic.
The dead man must desperately resist the dictates of reason, as we
understand it, and give up the supremacy of egohood, regarded by
reason as sacrosanct. What this means in practice is complete
capitulation to the objective powers of the psyche, with all that this
entails; a kind of symbological death, corresponding to the Judgement
of the Dead in the Sidpa Bardo. It means the end of all conscious,
rational, morally responsible conduct of life, and a voluntary
surrender to what the Bardo Thodol calls "karmic illusion." Karmic
illusion springs from belief in a visionary world of an extremely
irrational nature, which neither accords with nor derives from our
rational judgments but is the exclusive product of uninhibited
imagination. It is sheer dream or "fantasy," and every well-meaning
person will instantly caution us against it; nor indeed can one see at
first sight what is the difference between fantasies of this kind and
the phantasmagoria of a lunatic. Very often only a slight abaissement
du niveau mental is needed to unleash this world of illusion. The
terror and darkness of this moment has its equivalent in the
experiences described in the opening sections of the Sidpa Bardo. But
the contents of this Bardo also reveal the archetypes, the karmic
images which appear first in their terrifying form. The Chonyid state
is equivalent to a deliberately induced psychosis. . . .
The transition, then, from the Sidpa state to the Chonyid state is a
dangerous reversal of the aims and intentions of the conscious mind.
It is a sacrifice of the ego's stability and a surrender to the
extreme uncertainty of what must seem like a chaotic riot of
phantasmal forms. When Freud coined the phrase that the ego was "the
true seat of anxiety," he was giving voice to a very true and profound
intuition. Fear of self-sacrifice lurks deep in every ego, and this
fear is often only the precariously controlled demand of the
unconscious forces to burst out in full strength. No one who strives
for selfhood (individuation) is spared this dangerous passage, for
that which is feared also belongs to the wholeness of the self - the
sub-human, or supra-human, world of psychic "dominants" from which the
ego originally emancipated itself with enormous effort, and then only
partially, for the sake of a more or less illusory freedom. This
liberation is certainly a very necessary and very heroic undertaking,
but it represents nothing final: it is merely the creation of a
subject, who, in order to find fulfillment, has still to be confronted
by an object. This, at first sight, would appear to be the world,
which is swelled out with projections for that very purpose. Here we
seek and find our difficulties, here we seek and find our enemy, here
we seek and find what is dear and precious to us; and it is comforting
to know that all evil and all good is to be found out there, in the
visible object, where it can be conquered, punished, destroyed or
enjoyed. But nature herself does not allow this paradisal state of
innocence to continue for ever. There are, and always have been, those
who cannot help but see that the world and its experiences are in the
nature of a symbol, and that it really reflects something that lies
hidden in the subject himself, in his own transubjective reality. It
is from this profound intuition, according to lamaist doctrine, that
the Chonyid state derives its true meaning, which is why the Chonyid
Bardo is entitled "The Bardo of the Experiencing of Reality."
The reality experienced in the Chonyid state is, as the last section
of the corresponding Bardo teaches, the reality of thought. The
"thought-forms" appear as realities, fantasy takes on real form, and
the terrifying dream evoked by karma and played out by the unconscious
"dominants" begins.
Jung would not have been surprised by professional and institutional
antagonism to psychedelics. He closes his Tibetan commentary with a
poignant political aside:
The Bardo Thodol began by being a "closed" book, and so it has
remained, no matter what kind of commentaries may be written upon it.
For it is a book that will only open itself to spiritual understanding
and this is a capacity which no man is born with, but which he can
only acquire through special training and special experience. It is
good that such to all intents and purposes "useless" books exist. They
are meant for those "queer folk" who no longer set much store by the
uses, aims, and meaning of present-day "civilization."
To provide "special training" for the "special experience" provided by
psychedelic materials is the purpose of this version of The Tibetan
Book of the Dead.
A TRIBUTE TO LAMA ANAGARIKA GOVINDA
In the preceding section the point was made that eastern philosophy
and psychology - poetic, indeterministic, experiential, inward-
looking, vaguely evolutionary, open-ended - is more easily adapted to
the findings of modern science than the syllogistic, certain,
experimental, externalizing logic of western psychology. The latter
imitates the irrelevant rituals of the energy sciences but ignores the
data of physics and genetics, the meanings and implications.
Even Carl Jung, the most penetrating of the western psychologists,
failed to understand the basic philosophy of the Bardo Thodol.
Quite in contrast are the comments on the Tibetan manual by Lama
Anagarika Govinda.
His opening statement at first glance would cause a Judaeo-Christian
psychologist to snort in impatience. But a close look at these phrases
reveals that they are the poetic statement of the genetic situation as
currently described by biochemists and DNA researchers.
It may be argued that nobody can talk about death with authority who
has not died; and since nobody, apparently, has ever returned from
death, how can anybody know what death is, or what happens after it?
The Tibetan will answer: "There is not one person, indeed, not one
living being, that has not returned from death. In fact, we all have
died many deaths, before we came into this incarnation. And what we
call birth is merely the reverse side of death, like one of the two
sides of a coin, or like a door which we call "entrance" from outside
and "exit" from inside a room."
The lama then goes on to make a second poetic comment about the
potentialities of the nervous system, the complexity of the human
cortical computer.
It is much more astonishing that not everybody remembers his or her
previous death; and, because of this lack of remembering, most persons
do not believe there was a previous death. But, likewise, they do not
remember their recent birth - and yet they do not doubt that they were
recently born. They forget that active memory is only a small part of
our normal consciousness, and that our subconscious memory registers
and preserves every past impression and experience which our waking
mind fails to recall.
The lama then proceeds to slice directly to the esoteric meaning of
the Bardo Thodol - that core meaning which Jung and indeed most
European Orientalists have failed to grasp.
For this reason, the Bardo Thodol, the Tibetan book vouchsafing
liberation from the intermediate state between life and re-birth,-
which state men call death,- has been couched in symbolical language.
It is a book which is sealed with the seven seals of silence,- not
because its knowledge would be misunderstood, and, therefore, would
tend to mislead and harm those who are unfitted to receive it. But the
time has come to break the seals of silence; for the human race has
come to the juncture where it must decide whether to be content with
the subjugation of the material world, or to strive after the conquest
of the spiritual world, by subjugating selfish desires and
transcending self-imposed limitations.
The lama next describes the effects of consciousness-expansion
techniques. He is talking here about the method he knows-the Yogic-but
his words are equally applicable to psychedelic experience.
There are those who, in virtue of concentration and other yogic
practices, are able to bring the subconscious into the realm of
discriminative consciousness and, thereby, to draw upon the
unrestricted treasury of subconscious memory, wherein are stored the
records not only of our past lives but the records of the past of our
race, the past of humanity, and of all pre-human forms of life, if not
of the very consciousness that makes life possible in this universe.
If, through some trick of nature, the gates of an individual's
subconsciousness were suddenly to spring open, the unprepared mind
would be overwhelmed and crushed. Therefore, the gates of the
subconscious are guarded, by all initiates, and hidden behind the veil
of mysteries and symbols.
In a later section of his foreword the lama presents a more detailed
elaboration of the inner meaning of the Thodol.
If the Bardo Thodol were to be regarded as being based merely upon
folklore, or as consisting of religious speculation about death and a
hypothetical after-death state, it would be of interest only to
anthropologists and students of religion. But the Bardo Thodol is far
more. It is a key to the innermost recesses of the human mind, and a
guide for initiates, and for those who are seeking the spiritual path
of liberation.
Although the Bardo Thodol is at present time widely used in Tibet as a
breviary, and read or recited on the occasion of death,- for which
reason it has been aptly called "The Tibetan Book of the Dead"- one
should not forget that it was originally conceived to serve as a guide
not only for the dying and the dead, but for the living as well. And
herein lies the justification for having made The Tibetan Book of the
Dead accessible to a wider public.
Notwithstanding the popular customs and beliefs which, under the
influence of age-old traditions of pre-Buddhist origin, have grown
around the profound revelations of the Bardo Thodol, it has value only
for those who practise and realize its teaching during their life-
time.
There are two things which have caused misunderstanding. One is that
the teachings seem to be addressed to the dead or the dying; the other
that the title contains the expression "Liberation through Hearing"
(in Tibetan, Thos-grol). As a result, there has arisen the belief that
it is sufficient to read or recite the Bardo Thodol in the presence of
a dying person, or even of a person who has just died, in order to
effect his or her liberation.
Such misunderstanding could only have arisen among those who do not
know that it is one of the oldest and most universal practices for the
initiate to go through the experience of death before he can be
spiritually reborn. Symbolically he must die to his past, and to his
old ego, before he can take his place in the new spiritual life into
which he has been initiated.
The dead or the dying person is addressed in the Bardo Thodol mainly
for three reasons: (1) the earnest practitioner of these teachings
should regard every moment of his or her life as if it were the last;
(2) when a follower of these teachings is actually dying, he or she
should be reminded of the experiences at the time of initiation, or of
the words (or mantra) of the guru, especially if the dying one's mind
lacks alertness during the critical moments; and (3) one who is still
incarnate should try to surround the person dying, or just dead, with
loving and helpful thoughts during the first stages of the new, or
afterdeath, state of existence, without allowing emotional attachment
to interfere or to give rise to a state of morbid mental depression.
Accordingly, one function of the Bardo Thodol appears to be more to
help those who have been left behind to adopt the right attitude
towards the dead and towards the fact of death than to assist the
dead, who, according to Buddhist belief, will not deviate from their
own karmic path. . . .
This proves that we have to do here with life itself and not merely
with a mass for the dead, to which the Bardo Thodol was reduced in
later times. . . .
Under the guise of a science of death, the Bardo Thodol reveals the
secret of life; and therein lies its spiritual value and its universal
appeal.
Here then is the key to a mystery which has been passed down for over
2,500 years - the consciousness-expansion experience - the pre-mortem
death and rebirth rite. The Vedic sages knew the secret; the
Eleusinian initiates knew it; the Tantrics knew it. In all their
esoteric writings they whisper the message: it is possible to cut
beyond ego-consciousness, to tune in on neurological processes which
flash by at the speed of light, and to become aware of the enormous
treasury of ancient racial knowledge welded into the nucleus of every
cell in your body.
Modern psychedelic chemicals provide a key to this forgotten realm of
awareness. But just as this manual without the psychedelic awareness
is nothing but an exercise in academic Tibetology, so, too, the potent
chemical key is of little value without the guidance and the
teachings.
Westerners do not accept the existence of conscious processes for
which they have no operational term. The attitude which is prevalent
is: - if you can't label it, and if it is beyond current notions of
space-time and personality, then it is not open for investigation.
Thus we see the ego-loss experience confused with schizophrenia. Thus
we see present-day psychiatrists solemnly pronouncing the psychedelic
keys as psychosis-producing and dangerous.
The new visionary chemicals and the pre-mortem-death-rebirth
experience may be pushed once again into the shadows of history.
Looking back, we remember that every middle-eastern and European
administrator (with the exception of certain periods in Greece and
Persia) has, during the last three thousand years, rushed to pass laws
against any emerging transcendental process, the pre-mortem-death-
rebirth session, its adepts, and any new method of consciousness-
expansion.
The present moment in human history (as Lama Govinda points out) is
critical. Now, for the first time, we possess the means of providing
the enlightenment to any prepared volunteer. (The enlightenment always
comes, we remember, in the form of a new energy process, a physical,
neurological event.) For these reasons we have prepared this
psychedelic version of The Tibetan Book of the Dead. The secret is
released once again, in a new dialect, and we sit back quietly to
observe whether man is ready to move ahead and to make use of the new
tools provided by modern science.
II.
THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD
FIRST BARDO:
THE PERIOD OF EGO-LOSS OR
NON-GAME ECSTASY
(Chikhai Bardo)
Part I: The Primary Clear Light Seen At the Moment of Ego-Loss.
All individuals who have received the practical teachings of this
manual will, if the text be remembered, be set face to face with the
ecstatic radiance and will win illumination instantaneously, without
entering upon hallucinatory struggles and without further suffering on
the age-long pathway of normal evolution which traverses the various
worlds of game existence.
This doctrine underlies the whole of the Tibetan model. Faith is the
first step on the "Secret Pathway." Then comes illumination and with
it certainty; and when the goal is won, emancipation. Success implies
very unusual preparation in consciousness expansion, as well as much
calm, compassionate game playing (good karma) on the part of the
participant. If the participant can be made to see and to grasp the
idea of the empty mind as soon as the guide reveals it - that is to
say, if he has the power to die consciously - and, at the supreme
moment of quitting the ego, can recognize the ecstasy which will dawn
upon him then, and become one with it, all game bonds of illusion are
broken asunder immediately: the dreamer is awakened into reality
simultaneously with the mighty achievement of recognition.
It is best if the guru (spiritual teacher), from whom the participant
received guiding instructions, is present, but if the guru cannot be
present, then another experienced person; or it the latter is also
unavailable, then a person whom the participant trusts should be
available to read this manual without imposing any of his own games.
Thereby the participant will be put in mind of what he had previously
heard of the experience and will at once come to recognize the
fundamental Light and undoubtedly obtain liberation.
Liberation is the nervous system devoid of mental-conceptual activity.
[Realization of the Voidness, the Unbecome, the Unborn, the Unmade,
the Unformed, implies Buddhahood, Perfect Enlightenment - the state of
the divine mind of the Buddha. It may be helpful to remember that this
ancient doctrine is not in conflict with modern physics. The
theoretical physicist and cosmologist, George Gamow, presented in 1950
a viewpoint which is close to the phenomenological experience
described by the Tibetan lamas.
If we imagine history running back in time, we inevitably come to the
epoch of the "big squeeze" with all the galaxies, stars, atoms and
atomic nuclei squeezed, so to speak, to a pulp. During that early
stage of evolution, matter must have been dissociated into its
elementary components. . . . We call this primordial mixture ylem.
At this first point in the evolution of the present cycle, according
to this first-rank physicist, there existed only the Unbecome, the
Unborn, the Unformed. And this, according to astrophysicists, is the
way it will end; the silent unity of the Unformed. The Tibetan
Buddhists suggest that the uncluttered intellect can experience what
astrophysics confirms. The Buddha Vairochana, the Dhyani Buddha of the
Center, Manifester of Phenomena, is the highest path to enlightenment.
As the source of all organic life, in him all things visible and
invisible have their consummation and absorption. He is associated
with the Central Realm of the Densely-Packed, i.e., the seed of all
universal forces and things are densely packed together. This
remarkable convergence of modern astrophysics and ancient lamaism
demands no complicated explanation. The cosmological awareness- and
awareness of every other natural process- is there in the cortex. You
can confirm this preconceptual mystical knowledge by empirical
observation and measurement, but it's all there inside your skull.
Your neurons "know" because they are linked directly to the process,
are part of it.] The mind in its conditioned state, that is to say,
when limited to words and ego games, is continuously in thought-
formation activity. The nervous system in a state of quiescence,
alert, awake but not active is comparable to what Buddhists call the
highest state of dhyana (deep meditation) when still united to a human
body. The conscious recognition of the Clear Light induces an ecstatic
condition of consciousness such as saints and mystics of the West have
called illumination.
The first sign is the glimpsing of the "Clear Light of Reality," "the
infallible mind of the pure mystic state." This is the awareness of
energy transformations with no imposition of mental categories.
The duration of this state varies with the individual. It depends upon
experience, security, trust, preparation and the surroundings. In
those who have had even a little practical experience of the tranquil
state of non-game awareness, and in those who have happy games, this
state can last from thirty minutes to several hours.
In this state, realization of what mystics call the "Ultimate Truth"
is possible, provided that sufficient preparation has been made by the
person beforehand. Otherwise he cannot benefit now, and must wander on
into lower and lower conditions of hallucinations, as determined by
his past games, until he drops back to routine reality.
It is important to remember that the conscious-expansion process is
the reverse of the birth process, birth being the beginning of game
life and the ego-loss experience being a temporary ending of game
life. But in both there is a passing from one state of consciousness
into another. And just as an infant must wake up and learn from
experience the nature of this world, so likewise a person at the
moment of consciousness expansion must wake up in this new brilliant
world and become familiar with its own peculiar conditions.
In those who are heavily dependent on their ego games, and who dread
giving up their control, the illuminated state endures only so long as
it would take to snap a finger. In some, it lasts as long as the time
taken for eating a meal.
If the subject is prepared to diagnose the symptoms of ego loss, he
needs no outside help at this point. Not only should the person about
to give up his ego be able to diagnose the symptoms as they come, one
by one, but he should also be able to recognize the Clear Light
without being set face to face with it by another person. If the
person fails to recognize and accept the onset of ego loss, he may
complain of strange bodily symptoms. This shows that he has not
reached a liberated state. Then the guide or friend should explain the
symptoms as indicating the onset of ego loss.
Here is a list of commonly reported physical sensations:
1. Bodily pressure, which the Tibetans call earth-sinking-into-water;
2. Clammy coldness, followed by feverish heat, which the Tibetans call
water-sinking-into-fire; 3. Body disintegrating or blown to atoms,
called fire-sinking-into-air; 4. Pressure on head and ears, which
Americans call rocket-launching-into-space; 5. Tingling in
extremities; 6. Feelings of body melting or flowing as if wax; 7.
Nausea; 8. Trembling or shaking, beginning in pelvic regions and
spreading up torso.
These physical reactions should be recognized as signs heralding
transcendence. Avoid treating them as symptoms of illness, accept
them, merge with them, enjoy them.
Mild nausea occurs often with the ingestion of morning-glory seeds or
peyote, rarely with mescaline and infrequently with LSD or psilocybin.
If the subject experiences stomach messages, they should be hailed as
a sign that consciousness is moving around in the body. The symptoms
are mental; the mind controls the sensation, and the subject should
merge with the sensation, experience it fully, enjoy it and, having
enjoyed it, let consciousness flow on to the next phase. It is usually
more natural to let consciousness stay in the body - the subject's
attention can move from the stomach and concentrate on breathing,
heart beat. If this does not free him from nausea, the guide should
move the consciousness to external events - music, walking in the
garden, etc.
The appearance of physical symptoms of ego-loss, recognized and
understood, should result in peaceful attainment of illumination. If
ecstatic acceptance does not occur (or when the period of peaceful
silence seems to be ending), the relevant sections of the instructions
can be spoken in a low tone of voice in the ear. It is often useful to
repeat them distinctly, clearly impressing them upon the person so as
to prevent his mind from wandering. Another method of guiding the
experience with a minimum of activity is to have the instructions
previously recorded in the subject's own voice and to flip the tape on
at the appropriate moment. The reading will recall to the mind of the
voyager the former preparation; it will cause the naked consciousness
to be recognized as the "Clear Light of the Beginning;" it will remind
the subject of his unity with this state of perfect enlightenment and
help him to maintain it.
If, when undergoing ego-loss, one is familiar with this state, by
virtue of previous experience and preparation, the Wheel of Rebirth
(i.e., all game playing) is stopped, and liberation instantaneously is
achieved. But such spiritual efficiency is so very rare, that the
normal mental condition of the person is unequal to the supreme feat
of holding on to the state in which the Clear Light shines; and there
follows a progressive descent into lower and lower states of the Bardo
existence, and then rebirth. The simile of a needle balanced and set
rolling on a thread is used by the lamas to elucidate this condition.
So long as the needle retains its balance, it remains on the thread.
Eventually, however, the law of gravitation (the pull of the ego or
external stimulation) affects it, and it falls. In the realm of the
Clear Light, similarly, the mentality of a person in the ego-
transcendent state momentarily enjoys a condition of balance, of
perfect equilibrium, and of oneness. Unfamiliar with such a state,
which is an ecstate state of non-ego, the consciousness of the average
human being lacks the power to function in it. Karmic (i.e., game)
propensities becloud the consciousness-principle with thoughts of
personality, of individualized being, of dualism. Thus, losing
equilibrium, consciousness falls away from the Clear Light. It is
thought processes which prevent the realization of Nirvana (which is
the "blowing out of the flame" of selfish game desire); and so the
Wheel of Life continues to turn.
All or some of the appropriate passages in the instructions may be
read to the voyager during the period of waiting for the drug to take
effect, and when the first symptoms of ego-loss appear. When the
voyager is clearly in a profound ego-transcendent ecstasy, the wise
guide will remain silent.
Part II: The Secondary Clear Light Seen Immediately After Ego-Loss.
The preceding section describes how the Clear Light may be recognized
and liberation maintained. But if it becomes apparent that the Primary
Clear Light has not been recognized, then it can certainly be assumed
there is dawning what is called the phase of the Secondary Clear
Light. The first flash of experience usually produces a state of
ecstasy of the greatest intensity. Every cell in the body is sensed as
involved in orgastic creativity.
It may be helpful to describe in more detail some of the phenomena
which often accompany the moment of ego-loss. One of these might be
called "wave energy flow." The individual becomes aware that he is
part of and surrounded by a charged field of energy, which seems
almost electrical. In order to maintain the ego-loss state as long as
possible, the prepared person will relax and allow the forces to flow
through him. There are two dangers to avoid: the attempt to control or
to rationalize this energy flow. Either of these reactions is
indicative of ego-activity and the First Bardo transcendence is lost.
The second phenomenon might be called "biological life-flow." Here the
person becomes aware of physiological and biochemical processes;
rhythmic pulsing activity within the body. Often this may be sensed as
powerful motors or generators continously throbbing and radiating
energy. An endless flow of cellular forms and colors flashes by.
Internal biological processes may also be heard with characteristic
swooshing, crackling, and pounding noises. Again the person must
resist the temptation to label or control these processes. At this
point you are tuned in to areas of the nervous system which are
inaccessible to routine perception. You cannot drag your ego into the
molecular processes of life. These processes are a billion years older
than the learned conceptual mind.
Another typical and most rewarding phase of the First Bardo involves
ecstatic energy movement felt in the spine. The base of the backbone
seems to be melting or seems on fire. If the person can maintain quiet
concentration the energy will be sensed as flowing upwards. Tantric
adepts devote decades of concentrated meditation to the release of
these ecstatic energies which they call Kundalini, the Serpent Power.
One allows the energies to travel upwards through several ganglionic
centers (chakras) to the brain, where they are sensed as a burning
sensation in the top of the cranium. These sensations are not
unpleasant to the prepared person, but, on the contrary, are
accompanied by the most intense feelings of joy and illumination. Ill-
prepared subjects may interpret the experience in pathological terms
and attempt to control it, usually with unpleasant results. [Professor
R. C. Zaehner, who as an Oriental scholar and "expert" on mysticism
should have know better, has published an account of how this prized
experience can be lost and distorted into hypochondriacal complaint in
the ill-educated.
. . . I had a curious sensation in my body which reminded me of what
Mr. Custance describes as a "tingling at the base of the spine," which
according to him, usually precedes a bout of mania. It was rather like
that. In the Broad Walk this sensation occurred again and again until
the climax of the exp
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very clever!
