AtD, 'the ending'...is a Tibetan Sky-Funeral a relevant allusion?....(found for Robin)

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

I've heard of that particular funeral ritual. 

Truth to tell, I'm often interested in what's missing in Pynchon's historical 
fictions. Einstein is mentioned once and once only in AtD. Hamilton is all 
over the book. Richard Strauss [who coulda, woulda, shoulda been in 
Gravity's Rainbow, perhaps snorting a line or two with Saure Bummer] 
appears a couple two-three times,along with Offenbach and Vaughan 
Williams. But Gustav Mahler—of "Das Lied von der Erde" [Song of the Earth] 
fame is never mentioned.

By way of example, Madame Blavatsky, A.E.Waite, "Pixie" Coleman and
other occultists with Theosophical/Rosicrucian links are mentioned in
Against the Day. The obvious missing character is Crowley.
Nicholas Nookshaft appears to be a parody version of Crowley.

While the sky funeral is interesting and certainly illuminates Tibetan 
spirituality and culture, Pynchon is quite deliberately concealing 
the world of "Shangri La", so that even when Kit & Auberon Halfcourt
show up in Shambhala, there's no way they can know they actually 
got there. The Chums [or at least Miles] know when they have reached
Shambhala, but then again they also get to the Counter-Earth as well, 
they can move "between the worlds", to coin a phrase;) Then again,
the Chums are pure fiction, nicht whar?

Back to Mahler: his Eighth Symphony ["of a thousand", give or take a 
few hundred], ending as it does with the final scene from Goethe's Faust
part two certainly could be packed into Against the Day with little
collateral damage. Das Lied von der Erde's final "Lied" ends with
an old soul climing up a mountain to die,  a parallel to the Tibetan 
Sky funeral you cited. The final lines:

               Die liebe Erde allüberall
               Blüht auf im Lenz und grünt aufs neu! 
               Allüberall und ewig
               Blauen licht die Fernen!
               Ewig... ewig...

. . . .is an ode to the eternal rebirth of the Earth.

http://www.mahlerarchives.net/DLvDE/Der_Abschied.htm

My thread here is of course way off track, but it is worth noting that 
the time period of the conception of Mahler's masterwork was 1908 
to 1911, squarely within the time-frame of AtD. Even though it seems 
as if Pynchon includes the whole world in his novels, it's a half-filled
ark at best.