The therapeutic psychology of The Tibetan Book of the Dead

·期刊原文
The therapeutic psychology of The Tibetan Book of the Dead

by Robert Wicks
Philosophy East and West

Vol.47 No.4

Pp.479-494

1997.10

Copyright by University of Hawaii

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Although we usually conceive of death as the endpoint of life, there
is an important sense in which death, as an aspect of change and
renewal, is ever present throughout life: each passing moment "dies"
as it becomes past experience; a new moment is constantly "born" as
the future becomes present. From moment to moment, beginnings and
endings perpetually coincide. At a more mundane level, we also
frequently meet with another form of death -- a counterpart to our
familiar conception: our habitual patterns of expectation and
reaction to circumstances often lead to a deathlike stagnation and
unanimated redundancy within our experience. This narrowing of
horizons, though certainly problematic, does not preclude the
permanent possibility of experiencing a liberating transformation of
character and a "rebirth" of personality. The implicit and explicit
means to achieve such a personal transformation within our present
lives, as described in The Tibetan Book for the Dead,(1) is the
subject of this essay. My aim is to recall and reemphasize some of
the affinities between the text's therapeutic intentions and the
goals of psychotherapy, in recognition of its practical, socially
all-encompassing message. In the course of this inquiry, I will
discuss how some authoritative commentators on the text, namely Carl
Jung and Lama Anagarika Govinda, have drawn our attention away from
the text's more pragmatic and existential value as a handbook for
more insightful and liberated living.
In ordinary practice, The Tibetan Book for the Dead is read aloud as
part of a Tibetan Buddhist funeral ceremony: it speaks to the dead
person who, as a disembodied spirit, is believed to persist within
hearing distance in an after-death realm of transition, or bardo.
This is a transitional realm through which a disembodied spirit
passes between reincarnations.(2) The text's manifest purpose is to
offer the dead person repeated opportunities for enlightenment
during the bardo experience, such as to avoid rebirth into a renewed
condition of suffering. This transitional experience, most
importantly, presents itself as a period of decision making: the
dead person can choose either to become enlightened by giving up his
or her "unconscious tendencies" that inevitably led to suffering, or
the person can choose to remain bonded to those dispositions and
become fated to circle once more through the patterns of his or her
former existence. The text's guiding words are intended to help the
dead person choose the path toward enlightenment. On the face of
things, then, the text articulates the mechanisms that cause a
disembodied soul to gravitate toward reincarnation, and be directed
toward the avoidance of suffering through an enlightening
personality transformation.
The after-death experiences described in The Tibetan Book for the
Dead begin with those immediately following bodily death, and end
with experiences that occur just before the disembodied person is
reborn into a new physical body. The initial after-death experiences
are moments of perfect clarity and insight. These are short-lived,
however, and soon fall off into partially enlightened modes of
consciousness, which themselves eventually degenerate into
increasingly hellish and horrific experiences of bewilderment,
selfishness, and animal aggression. The latter, absolutely
terrifying, states of consciousness arise as the disembodied
consciousness, after having failed to forsake its unconscious
tendencies time and time again in its descent through the stages of
the bardo, approaches the moment of being reborn into a new physical
body and the world of ordinary life. Though couched in religious
terms, the text's underlying message is familiar and commonsensical:
people who do not change their ways are fated painfully to repeat
themselves.
Since the after-death states of consciousness range from the
heavenly to the hellish, individuals of different personality types
will see themselves reflected in one or another of the bardo states.
If one is a relatively enlightened person, then one will feel akin
to the visions within the more peaceful bardos; if one is a more
violent and selfish person, then one will easily recognize the
visions within the more hellish after-death states. The text assumes
that no one to whom it speaks is a perfectly enlightened
personality, so at each stage of the after-death experience, the
dead person receives therapeutic advice on how to overcome his or
her "unconscious tendencies," whether the tendencies involve
ignorance in general, overwhelming desire, envy, jealousy, or
aggression. At whatever level of mentality the dead person is at
home, the text aims to release the person from the confines and
sufferings that characterize that individual's particular
psychological condition.
The manifest contents of the after-death states of consciousness are
visions of various Tibetan gods and demons. These deities appear to
be as "real" as life within the after-death experience, but the text
instructs the disembodied consciousness to regard them as merely the
dream-like reflections of its own inner self. The gods and demons
can thereby be viewed as symbolic forms expressive of the
disembodied consciousness' basic psychic tendencies. In this
respect, The Tibetan Book for the Dead is a psychological document
that characterizes basic personality styles and presents the
principles of those personalities in a symbolic and condensed, yet
fantastically realistic, manner.
The key instruction that, if acted upon, generates a liberating
personality transformation is repeated at each level of after-death
consciousness: whatever the contents of the particular bardo phase
happen to be, the disembodied consciousness is instructed to regard
the objects experienced within that phase as nothing more than its
own psychological projections. The assumption is that upon seeing
one's own godlike or demonic reflection as having no more substance
than the moon's shimmering image in a pool of water, the natural
attachment to one's egocentered personality will soften. By
interpreting the godlike and demonic objectifications of one's
personality as illusory, one will be able to see one's own
individuality itself as illusory. In this way, forsaking one's
egocentered self-conception leads to enlightenment. With this issues
an elimination of personal suffering, since suffering is believed to
be caused by egocentric forces such as ignorance, pride, jealousy,
envy, and desire -- forces that are objectively embodied by the
godlike and demonic visions. Regarding these deities as "empty"
entails a recognition that the psychological forces that generate
personal suffering have no substantial reality.(3)
The exposition above broadly characterizes the manifest purpose and
meaning of the text -- a meaning that recognizes after-death states
of consciousness, images of gods and demons, and rebirth into a new
material body either as a human or as some other form of sentient
creature. Complementary to this manifest meaning, however, is a more
symbolic meaning -- one that reveals how The Tibetan Book for the
Dead is pragmatically and existentially directed toward the "dead"
who are still living, and not especially toward those who are
clinically dead. To reveal this less obvious meaning, we need to
examine more closely some of the key features of the manifest
meaning, for these indicate that both the existence of gods and the
existence of an after-death bardo realm are questionable.
With respect to the reality of the gods and demons that are
experienced in the after-death state, we have noted that the text
informs the disembodied consciousness that these deities have no
substantial reality of their own. Indeed, this is the central
illuminating principle of the text. Two memorable excerpts are as
follows:
Through the instruction of his guru he will recognize them [the
visionary
deities] as his own projections, the play of the mind, and he will
be liberated. It is
just like seeing a stuffed lion, for instance: he feels very
frightened if he does
not know that it is really only a stuffed lion, but if someone shows
him what it
is he is astonished and no longer afraid. So here too he feels
terrified and
bewildered when the blood-drinking deities appear with their huge
bodies
and thick limbs, filling the whole of space, but as soon as he is
shown he
recognises them as his own projections or as yidams; the luminosity
that
arises later, mother and son, merge together, and, like meeting a
man he used
to know very well, the self-liberating luminosity of his own mind
spontaneously arises before him, and he is self-liberated.(4)
[W]hatever you see, however terrifying it is, recognise it as your
own
projection; recognise it as the luminosity, the natural radiance of
your own mind. If
you recognise it in this way, you will become a buddha at that very
moment,
there is no doubt. What is called perfect instantaneous
enlightenment will
arise on the spot. Remember!(5)
These excerpts confirm that the gods and demons experienced in the
after-death state, although they appear with a reality equal to the
material objects in the world of the living, are indeed believed to
be nothing more than manifestations of the dead person's own
psychological states.(6) They are merely symbolic forms that express
conditions of either psychological liberation or psychological
bondage and suffering. This suggests that the path to enlightenment
in no way depends upon favors or obstructions issued from the realm
of the gods and demons that populate the after-death state; the path
depends upon initially recognizing the images of the gods as
manifestations of oneself in various possible and actual forms.
Self-recognition alone initiates the path to more satisfactory
levels of consciousness.
Although emotionally powerful in its employment of metaphors like
the image of the moon and the recognition of a fearsome lion as
merely a stuffed animal, the text's key instruction for
enlightenment rests upon a questionable line of reasoning. To see
this, we can distinguish between the form and the content of the
visions of gods and demons within the bardo. Their form is to "look
real"; their content is the disembodied consciousness' individual
personality structure. With regard to the deceptively realistic form
of the visions, although the dead person might feel vaguely at home
within one of the bardos, it is not initially obvious to the dead
person that what is being experienced is simply a projection of
himself or herself, and not some objective realm of gods and demons.
The situation is comparable to a person, who asleep in the midst of
a vivid dream, remains unaware that he or she is only dreaming. What
the key instructions do is wake up the dead person to the true
nature of the experience, such as the dissolving of the objective
form of the experience. When the visions are seen as they truly are,
they are appreciated as having no independent reality and hence no
power over the dead person, as would be the case if they existed
independently.
Revealing that the realistic appearance of the bardo visions is
deceptive, however, does not entail that the psychological content
expressed by these visions is itself illusory. If the objects in a
dream, for example, are shown to the dreamer to be none other than a
figment of his or her imagination (e.g., as when one teaches a child
to see that the objects of a nightmare are simply imaginary), it
does not follow that the psychological structure that that dream
objectively presents is also a figment of the imagination. For
example, an imaginary monster within a young child's nightmare could
very well express the child's inner anxiety. So from the recognition
that the objects of the bardo experience are illusory, we cannot
also conclude that the individual self that projects these objects
is itself illusory. Such an individual self may indeed be illusory
upon further reflection and in consequence of further argument, but
this does not itself follow from the recognition that the dream-like
visions have no substantial reality of their own.
These considerations lead us to examine another aspect of the dead
person's dispositions of character or "unconscious tendencies" that
the gods and demons symbolically express. Representative of the more
enlightened states are buddha forms that embody the fusion of
compassion and knowledge; representative of the more animalistic
states are flesh-eating demons, who, screaming "strike" and "kill,"
tear corpses limb from limb. With respect to interpreting the text
in a practical and existential manner, it is important to determine
whether there is good reason to interpret these represented states
of consciousness literally, as after-death states occurring in an
actual, after-death bardo, or whether it makes more sense to regard
the after-death bardo itself as another projection of consciousness.
If the latter is the case, then the after-death bardo would indeed
represent a transitional condition, but one that can occur only
within living experience. It would also follow that the
consciousness that projects the after-death bardo could be none
other than that of a living, flesh-and-bones person.
It might be thought that a definitive interpretation of the
after-death bardo realm, either as a literal or as a purely symbolic
realm, would depend upon how the text characterizes the essence of
consciousness. We shall see, however, that the description of the
essence of consciousness within the text is logically independent of
whether or not there are actual after-death states of consciousness.
In view of this independence, it remains well within the text's
overall spirit to interpret its references to the after-death bardo
as purely symbolic and, hence, as potentially quite meaningful to
those who cannot recognize an afterlife. This, as we shall see,
characterizes Lama Govinda's view, although he arrives at this
perspective through a different line of reasoning. Before
considering his interpretation, though, we should briefly examine
how the text describes the essence of consciousness, and note that
this description neither implies nor precludes the existence of
after-death states of consciousness.
In its description of the experiences immediately following death,
The Tibetan Book for the Dead characterizes consciousness as it is
in itself. This is the condition of consciousness that is regarded
as the ground of all experience. We can consider three alternative
translations (1927, 1975, and 1994, respectively) of a central
passage:
Thy breathing is about to cease. Thy guru hath set thee face to face
before
with the Clear Light; and now thou art about to experience it in its
Reality in
the Bardo state, wherein all things are like the void and cloudless
sky, and the
naked, spotless intellect is like unto a transparent vacuum without
circumference or centre.(7)
As soon as your breath stops, what is called the basic luminosity of
the first
bardo, which your guru has already shown you, will appear to you.
This is the
dharmata, open and empty like space, luminous void, pure naked mind
without centre or circumference.(8)
Just as your breath stops, the objective clear light of the first
between will
dawn as previously described to you by your teacher. Your outer
breath stops
and you experience reality stark and void like space, your
immaculate naked
awareness dawning clear and void without horizon or center.(9)
These passages assert that at the point of death, the dead person
initially experiences the true, "clear and void" nature of
consciousness -- a "luminous emptiness" or "shining void." Soon
thereafter, the dead person loses contact with this, the person's
own universal nature, and begins to experience more idiosyncratic
objectifications of himself or herself in the form of godlike and
demonic projections -- projections that reflect the unconscious
tendencies of his or her personality. The experiential movement of
the book, understood literally, is thus from a universal and
liberated consciousness that appears to present reality in itself,
to more and more particularized and restricted forms of
consciousness, which represent the limited reality of the dead
person's egocentricity. These latter forms do not represent
consciousness in its purity, but consciousness as "karmically
obscured" in its more familiar, benighted, and bewildered forms --
ones that we can recognize as typical of ordinary consciousness.
Although the text states that the gods and demons experienced in the
after-death states are the projections of the dead person's
consciousness, the excerpts above still leave indeterminate the
status of consciousness as a "luminous void." It could be that,
although the gods and demons are illusory, that the experience of
the "luminous void" is not. On the other hand, it could be that the
experience of the "luminous void" as representative of an actual
after-death state of consciousness is also an illusion. There are
thus two questions to be distinguished: (1) should a reasonable
reading of the text recognize any after-death states of
consciousness at all? (2) if it is reasonable to recognize
after-death states of consciousness, which, if any, reveal either
consciousness as it is in itself or reality as it is in itself? The
manifest meaning of the text suggests that there are after-death
states of consciousness, and that only the experience of
consciousness as "clear and void" is truly revelatory. It remains
unclear whether what is revealed is the nature of consciousness
independent of the nature of reality or the nature of consciousness
as nature of reality, but the spirit of the passages suggests the
latter.
Consistent with the key passages cited above are two alternative
positions: (1) reality is consciousness, and this is immediately
known when consciousness is in the state of luminous emptiness
during this life and/or during the initial after-death bardo state;
(2) reality in general is indeterminate or indeterminable, but the
reality of consciousness in itself, whatever its relation to reality
in general happens to be, is a luminous emptiness. Both of these
alternatives are consistent with the existence of after-death states
of consciousness; both are also consistent with the nonexistence of
after-death states of consciousness.
With regard to the second of the alternative views above, some
further explanation may be appropriate, since one might believe that
the claim that "all reality is consciousness" entails the existence
of after-death states of individual consciousness. This, however,
would not follow. There need not be after-death states of an
individual's consciousness (i.e., a dead person or "ego" who has
after-death experiences), since at the moment of actual bodily death
it is possible that every individual consciousness completely, and
without a moment of personal reflection, dissolves into the
universal consciousness, just as a raindrop dissolves into the
ocean.
From an analysis of the text's explicit claims about the nature of
consciousness, then, we are left without a definitive position
regarding the actuality of after-death states of consciousness that
a dead person, as such, might experience. That is, if we accept that
consciousness is essentially a luminous void, this alone does not
imply the existence of after-death states of consciousness. We must
subsequently approach the latter issue from a different angle, for
example through an inquiry into the universality of the states of
consciousness described in the after-death realm.
It is safe to assume that anyone who lives and dies in a place
communicationally dissociated from Tibet in either time or space
(e.g., ancient Peru) is not likely to experience Tibetan Buddhist
gods in an after-death state of consciousness. Even supposing, quite
remotely, that such a person had after-death experiences of the kind
described by The Tibetan Book for the Dead, the entire symbolic
meaning of the gods -- a meaning revealed to the dead person by
exposure to The Tibetan Book for the Dead -- would be virtually
meaningless.(10) This fact alone goes very far in leading us to
question the universality, not to mention the very reality, of the
after-death visions of gods and demons described in the text. If,
however, we were to acknowledge the existence of after-death states
of the very general kind that the text describes, then perhaps a
plausible position would be to maintain that after one dies, one
experiences a series of basic human personality structures in some
symbolic form or other.(11) Without some guide to the experiences,
though, there would still be little possibility for salvation or
enlightenment. The possibilities for the dead person's enlightenment
depend so heavily upon the instructions given in The Tibetan Book
for the Dead, or upon some comparable text or person who can fully
communicate these instructions, that without such guidance, the
person will regard the symbolic forms as realities, and not as
projections of his/her own personality. Moreover, there remains the
issue of whether there is indeed any communicational interface at
all between the world of the living and the world of the dead, let
alone one that can be crossed simply by means of inspired
vocalization or mental concentration.
Such complications suggest that it is more reasonable to interpret
the text as directed more toward the living than toward the dead,
and directed more toward psychological realities than toward
metaphysical ones. This leads us to regard the text mainly from a
psychological and therapeutic perspective. Quite consistent with
this is the essential spirit of Buddhism as a practice-centered, and
not speculation-centered, outlook. Chandradhar Sharma describes this
well:
[Buddha] repeatedly told his disciples: "Two things only, my
disciples, do I
teach -- misery and the cessation of misery." Human existence is
full of misery
and pain. Our immediate duty, therefore, is to get rid of this
misery and pain.
If instead we bother about barren metaphysical speculations, we
behave like
that foolish man whose heart is pierced by a poisonous arrow and
who,
instead of taking it out whiles away his time on idle speculation
about the
origin, the size, the metal, the maker and the shooter of the
arrow.(12)
Buddhism in general issues from the perception and experience of
suffering in this world of the living, and is grounded upon
fundamental prescriptions to alleviate this suffering. Given this
pragmatic emphasis at the core of Buddhist insight, it would be
consistent to interpret The Tibetan Book for the Dead as
predominantly written for the "dead" of this world -- those whose
lives are tangled within cycles of desire, jealousy, envy, hatred,
and aggression that generate continual suffering. This would include
everyone at one time or another during their lives. The existence of
suffering within this life is an absolute certainty; the existence
of after-death states of consciousness is a matter of speculation
and interpretation.(13) It is commonly said that The Tibetan Book
for the Dead is a book for both the dead and the living. The present
interpretation suggests that it is certainly a book for the living,
and perhaps one for the dead.
If we consider The Tibetan Book for the Dead as certainly a book for
the living and maybe one for disembodied souls, then Carl Jung's
authoritative and respected psychological commentary on the text
stands in need of reevaluation.(14) This is not because jung
acknowledges the existence of an afterlife; it is because his
psychological interpretation draws the reader away from those very
parts of the text that address living people who now suffer. This as
we shall see in a moment, is partly the result of Jung's interest in
showing how his own psychological theory fits the text more
comprehensively than Freud's.
Before considering the details of Jung's psychological commentary,
it is important to note why either Jungian or Freudian psychology is
compatible at all with the spirit and meaning of the text. This has
been alluded to above, and arises from the very close affinity
between the character of ordinary dream consciousness and the
after-death experiences described in The Tibetan Book for the Dead.
It is well known that both Freud and Jung interpret dreams as
symbolic of fundamental psychic contents. According to Freud, these
contents are basic sexual tensions; according to Jung, they are
universal thought structures, or "archetypes." Independently of the
accuracy of Freud's or Jung's views on the specific nature of dream
contents, both believe that although the items experienced within
any particular dream have no objective reality of their own, they
nonetheless symbolically reveal the psychic nature of the person who
dreams. Similarly, with the possible exception of the initial
experiences of the "luminous void," the after-death states of
consciousness described in The Tibetan Book for the Dead are
understood to represent symbolically the nature of the dead person's
individual personality, as represented by deity-like
objectifications of his or her "unconscious tendencies" - tendencies
that lead the person into cycles upon cycles of rebirth and
suffering.
This affinity between ordinary dream states and the after-death
states of consciousness described in The Tibetan Book for the Dead
establishes a close connection between the Western practice of
psychoanalysis and the Tibetan Buddhist concept of rebirth:
successful psychotherapy entails a rebirth of personality. The goal
of psychoanalysis is to improve an individual's psychological health
by revealing to the individual that individual's basic psychic
structure and constellations of inner conflict. Within Freudian and
Jungian analysis, this structure is discerned through an examination
of the person's dreams (among other methods), since dreams are
regarded as the symbolic manifestations of the person's psychic
energy. The Tibetan Book for the Dead comparably aims to bring an
individual into a condition of increased psychic health (i.e.,
enlightenment) by displaying the individual's "unconscious
tendencies" symbolically and objectively, such as to allow the
individual subsequently to render these forms ineffectual within his
or her psyche.
For example, if an individual is angry and violent, the text
powerfully and shockingly illustrates the world of angry and violent
people for the individual to contemplate, and then urges the
individual to reinterpret that world as akin to no more than a
reflection in a pool of water (i.e., as illusory). The procedure
aims to dissolve the meaning and reality of the individual's former
world by detaching the individual from involvement in that world,
and by allowing the person thereby to become "reborn" into a more
enlightened condition as a new personality. In these basic ways,
both the psychoanalytic method of dream interpretation and the modes
of visionary interpretation and liberation expressed in The Tibetan
Book for the Dead aim to alleviate psychic suffering and to restore
mental health. Both are fundamentally therapeutic in their
inspiration and aims.
In his psychological commentary to The Tibetan Book for the Dead,
Carl Jung points out how the text first describes the highest stage
of consciousness in the experiences immediately after death, and
then goes on to describe more and more animalistic forms of
consciousness. Addressing the Western reader, and intending to offer
a more familiar orientation toward the text, Jung offers a "reverse"
reading that begins with the more common states of consciousness and
gradually progresses toward the more enlightened states.
Reconceptualized in this way, the series of bardo experiences forms
an ascending path reminiscent of the Christian conception of
spiritual development -- a path that begins with imperfect and
finite humanity and extends toward a perfect and infinite God.
Dante's Divine Comedy would clearly exemplify this conception, as it
begins with a description of hell and then progresses to
descriptions of purgatory and heaven.(15)
Complementary to his intention to provide the Western reader with a
more familiar orientation toward the text, Jung urges a "backwards"
reading for the purpose of contrasting his psychological theory with
Freud's. Near the very end of the after-death experience (which Jung
reads as the "beginning"), the text most intriguingly describes the
psychological effects of assuming a specifically male or female
identity: the assumption of a male identity generates love for one's
mother and aversion toward one's father; the assumption of a female
identity generates love for one's father and aversion toward one's
mother. Since The Tibetan Book for the Dead was composed as early as
the eighth century A.D., quite independently of the development of
Western psychoanalysis, these observations offer some startling
confirmation of Freud's core insights into the development of sexual
identity.
Rather than wholeheartedly acknowledging that The Tibetan Book for
the Dead confirms Freud's insights, jung points out that the sexual
attitudes noted by Freud originate and operate only within what the
text describes as the most primitive and unenlightened form of
consciousness (i.e., in ordinary, day-to-day consciousness). Jung
takes this as evidence that, with its strong emphasis upon
sexuality, Freud's psychological theory penetrates only into the
elementary layers of the psyche. He adds that when we progress to
the less instinctual, and more enlightened, conditions of
consciousness, we reach levels that are better comprehended by
Jung's own theory of archetypes.
Due to Jung's orientation toward higher levels of consciousness and
his interest in criticizing Freud's psychological theory, his
commentary on The Tibetan Book for the Dead has the subtle effect of
leading the reader away from the text's vivid descriptions of the
less enlightened forms of consciousness. The problem with this
approach, however, is that it fails to recognize that almost
everyone, at one time or another, lives within these more
animalistic stages of sensual pleasures, sexuality, and desire, and
that by downplaying the text's prescriptions for overcoming psychic
bondage within such conditions, one undermines the potentially
widespread effectiveness of the text's practical application.
As a handbook whose intention is to reveal the path to enlightenment
to the great majority of those who are now alive, The Tibetan Book
for the Dead speaks to the large audience of individuals who must
start along this path from one of the lower realms. The text itself
acknowledges that only a mere handful of people -- those who have
practiced meditation their entire lives -- end their life in a
highly refined and illuminated psychological condition. Since most
people do not live with a consciousness of this sort, there is an
important sense in which the basic orientation of Jung's
interpretation is implicitly counterproductive: it draws our
attention away from that part of the text that speaks to most
people. This suggests that reading the text from its natural
beginning is the most appropriate way to experience the work: the
reader begins with a description of the ideal, enlightened state of
mind, and gradually descends into more and more hellish conditions
until -- if one is a typical person whose daily consciousness is
informed with reports, and perhaps experiences, of wars, sickness,
poverty, and crime -- one encounters a reflection of one's daily
world of ignorance, envy, jealousy, and violence mirrored near the
end of the book. The experience of reading the text in this way
indicates to the reader exactly how far he or she actually is from
an enlightened condition, and allows the reader to interpret his or
her present condition (assuming that the person is in a condition of
ordinary consciousness) as the culmination of many levels of
spiritual loss. Such an experience of self-recognition is exactly
what the text intends to generate in its readers.
Similar to Jung, Lama Anagarika Govinda offers a psychologically
centered interpretation of the text. The following excerpt
summarizes his view:
The different bardos, therefore, represent different states of
consciousness of
our life: the state of waking consciousness, the normal
consciousness of a
being born into our human world, known in Tibetan as the skyes-nas
bardo;
the state of dream-consciousness (rmi-lam bar-do); the state of
dhyana, or
trance-consciousness, in profound meditation (bsam-gtan bar-do); the
state of
the experiencing of death (hchhi-kha bar-do); the state of
experiencing of
Reality (chhos-nyid bar-do); the state of rebirth-consciousness
(srid-pa
bardo).
All this is clearly described in The Root-Verses of the Six Bardos,
which
together with The Paths of Good Wishes, from the authentic and
original
nucleus of the Bardo Thodol, is that source around which the prose
parts
crystallized as commentaries. 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.(16)
Lama Govinda interprets the text as referring primarily to
"different states of consciousness of our life," and in this respect
his account is directed toward the living, and less toward
disembodied spirits. At the same time, though, we can ask how many
of the living are taken into consideration within his view. This
question arises because Lama Govinda's attitude toward the text's
essential meaning is clearly aristocratic: he refers to the text's
true meaning as accessible only to "initiated disciples" in Tibetan
meditative practice. Although he regards the text as a psychological
document -- as "a key to the innermost recesses of the human mind"
-- he maintains that this "key" is far from accessible to everyone:
Only he who has ears to hear, i.e., who has prepared himself in life
for the
call of liberation and has made himself receptive for it by training
his inner
organ of hearing, can respond to the call and follow it. Only he who
has
opened his inner eye can see the redeeming visions. Those, however,
who
have neither developed the faculty of inner hearing nor that of
inner vision,
cannot be benefited by merely listening to the recital of the Bardo
Thodol.(17)
As does Jung, Lama Govinda interprets The Tibetan Book for the Dead
in a way that draws our attention away from its generally applicable
therapeutic aspects. He directs our attention toward the more
enlightened states of consciousness, but precludes the experience of
these states to all but the properly initiated. Insofar as only a
small group of people practice Tibetan meditation, the true meaning
of The Tibetan Book for the Dead will, in his opinion, remain a
"secret" doctrine.(18)
The Tibetan Book for the Dead may indeed contain subtleties of
meaning that are accessible only to those who have practiced Tibetan
meditation for decades. To privilege this level of knowledge as the
essential meaning of the text, however, leads one's focus away from
the less enlightened states of consciousness -- those states of
consciousness that are typical of the majority of the human
population. Just as Jung downplays the more instinctual and
bewildered states of consciousness due to his interest in revealing
the limit of Freudian psychology, Lama Govinda, due to his keen
interest in the meditational experience of higher states of
consciousness, similarly focuses our attention on the more elevated
and more inaccessible states of human awareness.(19)
The prevailing spirit of The Tibetan Book for the Dead, however,
opposes aristocracy and elitism. It is clearly a book addressed to
everyone, independently of the reader's capacity for profound
insight or abstraction. The book offers a series of opportunities
and procedures for achieving enlightenment, such that if one fails
to comprehend the path to enlightenment at one level, then one
receives another chance at another level. The book begins by
addressing the most receptive people, and tells them simply to
consider their experiences in a certain way (namely to regard their
experiences as the result of their own psychological projections).
If they can do so, then enlightenment follows. If the text's
instructions are impossible to follow with such ease, then the
reader moves into a less enlightened condition and receives the same
instructions as before, with some added incentive. Sometimes more
gods appear to assist the person, with the hope that the increased
social presence of the gods will cause the person to adhere to the
text's directives. If this effort to enlighten the person again
fails, then the same message is introduced once more, except that it
is accompanied by more and more terrifying imagery. At some level of
consciousness, it is hoped that the person will finally achieve the
awareness to interpret his or her world in a more enlightened way.
At every level of consciousness, then, there is a prescription for
enlightenment. At every level of consciousness it remains possible
-- if only the correct mode of interpretation were to be adopted --
to spring instantaneously into an enlightened condition.(20) The
following passage unequivocally displays this socially
all-encompassing interest of the text:
Up to now there have been seven stages in the dangerous pathway of
the
bardo of the peaceful deities, and by being shown at each of the
stages, even
if he has not recognised at one he will have at another, and
boundless
attainments of liberation occur. But although many are liberated
like this,
sentient beings are great in number, bad karma is very strong, the
neurotic
veils are heavy and thick, the unconscious tendencies last for a
long time, and
this cycle of confusion and ignorance neither wears out nor
increases, so
there are many who are not liberated but wander downwards, although
they
have been shown accurately in this way.(21)
Addressed here is a far more widespread audience for The Tibetan
Book for the Dead than is emphasized by either Jung or Lama Govinda.
Both interpret the text convincingly in their efforts to understand
its profound psychological import, but in terms of the text's
function as a therapeutic tool to lead any person to enlightenment,
independently of whether that person is intrinsically closer or
further from an enlightened condition, Jung and Lama Govinda offer
interpretations that leave most suffering people behind.
The Tibetan Book for the Dead is a book written especially for
benighted and bewildered souls. It acknowledges that enlightenment
is difficult, and that it takes many repetitions of the key message
for there to be any significant spiritual effect. It repeats its
message that we, and only we, are the source of our desires, our
interpretations, our evaluations, our pleasures, and our fears, and
that we can render such sources of suffering ineffectual, if we were
only to interpret the apparent seriousness and significance of the
world as the play of our own creation. In this respect, The Tibetan
Book for the Dead is a book of practical wisdom comparable to
Epictetus' Handbook; it offers a set of advisories intended to
reduce suffering and to guide all people, not just the select
initiates, toward a rebirth of personality and composure -- a
rebirth to take place not within a life after clinical death but
within our very present life.
NOTES
(1) - Although the English translation of the Bardo Thodol (The
great liberation through learning in the bardo) has been titled The
Tibetan Book of the Dead, it is not quite a book "of" the dead, but
rather a book "for" the dead. Since the latter is more aptly
descriptive, I will refer to the Bardo Thodol as The Tibetan Book
for the Dead throughout this essay.
(2) - In Robert Thurman's translation of the text, the bardo is
simply referred to as "the between." See Robert A. F. Thurman,
trans., The Tibetan Book of the Dead (London: Aquarian Press, 1994).

(3) - For example, both desire and hatred betray a deep attachment
to objects. By eliminating this bondage to objects, the person is
freed from compulsions and aggressions.
(4) - Thurman, Tibetan Book of the Dead, p. 68.
(5) - Francesca Fremantle and Chogyam Trungpa, trans., The Tibetan
Book of the Dead (Boston and London: Shambhala, 1987), p. 64.
(6) - The analogy between the experience of the visionary deities
and the experience of ordinary life is obvious, since both are
regarded within Tibetan Buddhism as having no more substance than a
dream. Just as the reality of the visionary deities issues as an
effect of consciousness' own activity, so does the reality of
ordinary life.
(7) - W. Y. Evans-Wentz, ed., The Tibetan Book of the Dead, 3d ed.
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960), p. 91.
(8) - Fremantle and Chogyam Trungpa, Tibetan Book of the Dead, p.
35.
(9) - Thurman, Tibetan Book of the Dead, p. 122.
(10) - One might believe that an ancient Peruvian could
significantly respond to the universal, or archetypal, meanings of
the Tibetan gods, if such gods were to appear to that person in an
afterlife state. Although such a hypothesis may appear plausible, it
is dubious in view of Levi-Strauss' observations on the semantic
character of mythic symbolism. His critique of Jung's theory of
archetypes is particularly appropriate in the present context:
Ancient philosophers reasoned about language the way we do about
mythology. On the one hand, they did notice that in a given language
certain sequences of sounds were associated with definite meanings,
and they earnestly aimed at discovering a reason for the linkage
between those sounds and that meaning. Their attempt, however, was
thwarted from the very beginning by the fact that the same sounds
were equally present in other languages although the meaning they
conveyed was entirely different . The contradiction
was surmounted only by the discovery that it is the combination of
sounds, not the sounds themselves, which provide the significant
data.
It is easy to see, moreover, that some of the more recent
interpretations of mythological thought originated from the same
kind of misconception under which those early linguists were
laboring. Let us consider, for instance, Jung's idea that a given
mythological pattern -- the so-called archetype -- possesses a
certain meaning. This is comparable to the long-supported error that
a sound may possess a certain affinity with a meaning: for instance,
the "liquid" semi-vowels with water, the open vowels with things
that are big, large, loud, or heavy, etc.[,] a theory that still has
its supporters. Whatever emendations the original formulation may
now call for, everybody will agree that the Saussurean principle of
the arbitrary character of linguistic signs was a prerequisite for
the accession of linguistics to the scientific model. (Claude
Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, trans. Claire Jacobson and
Brooke Grundfest Schoepf [New York: Basic Books, 19631, pp. 208-209)

(11) - Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup approaches this view. See Evans-Wentz,
Tibetan Book of the Dead, pp. 33-34.
(12) - Chandradhar Sharma, A Critical Survey of Indian Philosophy
(Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1964), p. 70.
(13) - In his introduction to The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Chogyam
Trungpa, himself a respected representative of Tibetan thought,
mentions that "one never knows" whether or not the meditative
experiences that indicate the existence of after-death states are
indeed veridical. See Fremantle and Chogyam Trungpa, Tibetan Book of
the Dead, p. 12.
(14) - His psychological commentary first accompanied the 1938 Swiss
edition (Das Tibetanishe Totenbuch [Zurich: Rascher Verlag, 1938])
and later, the 1957 English edition.
(15) - We should note, however, that this progression from finite
humans to an infinite God is an abstracted part of a larger pattern.
The Old Testament initially describes a perfect condition (Adam and
Eve before the Fall) that degenerates into a more painful condition
(Adam and Eve after the Fall). The fuller conception thus involves
an initial descent/departure from a divine condition, and a
subsequent ascent/ return to this condition. In this respect, the
sequence of psychological states described in The Tibetan Book for
the Dead is not as foreign to Western sensibilities as it might at
first appear, since it compares to the Biblical episode of the Fall.

(16) - Lama Anagarika Govinda, "Introductory Foreword," in
Evans-Wentz, Tibetan Book of the Dead, p. Ixi.
(17) - Lama Anagarika Govinda, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism
(New York: Samuel Weiser, 1974), p. 123.
(18) - This aristocratic conception of "secret" is described in
Alexandra David-Neel's The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist
Sects (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1967), p. 3.
(19) - Lama Govinda comprehensively described these various realms
of inner experience in Creative Meditation and Multi-Dimensional
Consciousness (Wheaton, Illinois: Theosophical Publishing House,
1976).
(20) - See the excerpt cited in note 4 above.
(21) - Fremantle and Chogyam Trungpa, Tibetan Book of the Dead, p.
57.