VLVL2 (12): The Tibetan Book of the Dead

[Tim Strzechowski]

218.7:  "We are assured by the Bardo Thodol, or Tibetan Book of the Dead, that the soul newly in transition often doesn't like to admit -- indeed will deny quite vehemently -- that it's really dead, having slipped so effortlessly into the new dispensation that it finds no difference between the weirdness of life and the weirdness of death . . ."


The Tibetan Book of the Dead

http://www.lib.virginia.edu/speccol/exhibits/dead/

http://www.lib.virginia.edu/speccol/exhibits/dead/index2.html


from "The Art of Dying":

"The Six Yogas tradition of the Kagyu School, represented here in this Collection of Kagyu-pa Texts on Naropa's Six Yogas, teaches that there are actually three intermediate periods, or bardo states: the transitional periods between birth and death (Bardo of Ordinary Life), between falling asleep and waking (Bardo of Dreams), and between death and the next life (Bardo of Becoming). At any given moment, all living beings are caught in one or more of the three bardo situations, propelled forward by the force of their own past actions (karma)."

http://www.lib.virginia.edu/speccol/exhibits/dead/dying.html


Also see:

http://reluctant-messenger.com/tibetan-book-of-the-dead.htm


And keeping in mind that the Bardo Thodol was used by Dr. Timothy Leary for "programming" LSD trips at the Millbrook Estate back in the early Sixties (tying in with the psychedelics of the novel, of course):

http://www.lycaeum.org/books/books/psychedelic_experience/tibetan.html

Cf. Jay Stevens, Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream.  Grove Press: New York, 1987.

"Once a week each member of the household ascends the tower and embarks upon a carefully programmed 'ontological adventure.'  The objective is the complete mapping of the Other World.  Leary dreams of the day when it will be possible to program any trip -- early childhood?  the Dark Wood?  an afternoon of archetypes?  -- just tell the guide where you wanted to go, what mental spaces you wished to explore and then lie back and watch the Door open.  But before this can happen, the Other World has to be charted, guidebooks assembled and published.  This is the rationale behind The Psychedelic Experience, which is what they've renamed the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and which is now merely volume one of in an extended guide to psychedelia; there are plans to work similar transformations into Dante's Divine Comedy, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, and the Tao Te Ching."  (pp. 209 - 10)
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