UFOlogists: have you correlated lights in the sky with deaths in the immediate area?  The Tibetan Book of the Dead identifies signs of souls attaining buddhahood upon death: "piercing white [and/or yellow, blue, red, green] rainbow lights will shine in the sky," "manifold white fiery lights will shine in the sky," and "sounds will reverberate throughout the universe" (chapter 14 of the 2005 translation by Gyurme Dorje).

Right after we formulated our question, we saw this amazing backstory to a musical recording:

The first signs of morning sunlight appear above the mountain’s rock covered peaks, as the Earth spins us around to witness the brilliance of another new day. Bright rays shine visibly through the morning mist, and dewdrops sparkle like diamonds among the tree leaves as the valley below slowly fills with warmth and light.

Flora watches from her vantage point high above; witnessing her friends in the forest come alive to greet another day; and the people in the city streets down in the valley below come alive to serve another day. She’s watched this dance for many years; the forest remaining peaceful in its ancient perfection; the people below growing ever more unsatisfied as they strive for an illusionary and strangely unattainable perfection of their own.

This idea might sound sad to you and I. But over the years she has also seen miracles occur among us. From her vantage point she sees us like fields of energy; and the majority of that energy looks rather stagnant and mucky, like cesspools of unmoving water, unaware of the renewing stream we have been cut off from. But once in a while, an explosion of light energy will burst outward from a single house or apartment building, as someone becomes disenfranchised from their false identity, and their hearts open up to new ideas for the first time.

Surprisingly, these changes often occur after great loss. And she suspects this is due to the fragility of our illusion. She sees how lost we all are in these roles and characters we have built for ourselves, and she sees how quickly that false identity can shatter when we lose the things we prioritized the most. The loss of a relationship or loved one, a terminal illness in the body, the end of a career, a complete collapse in financial stability… when we have lost the things we thought mattered most to us, some of us experience a miraculous opportunity for awakening to the truth that we were never those things to begin with.

Flora lovingly watches the majority of us grow more sickly and stagnant with time. And she never loses hope… because every evening, she has the same beautiful dream.

In her mind, the first signs of morning sunlight appear above the mountain’s rock covered peaks, as the Earth spins us around to witness the brilliance of another new day. Bright rays shine visibly through the morning mist, and dewdrops sparkle like diamonds among the tree leaves as the valley slowly fills with warmth and light.

But even brighter still are the explosions of light energy bathing the valley down below. After so many truly dark nights, many of us finally wake up the next morning to discover we were never all the things we lost in the night. In fact, we are something much larger. And as our energy explodes out, and the laws of attraction take hold, these simultaneous bursts prove to be strong and frequent enough to cause a chain reaction… and the whole valley lights up brighter than the sun itself.

We have finally realized we are simply conscious life, and nothing more. And in our new found freedom from identity, we all begin again.

Flora slumbers peacefully, knowing full well… this dream will some day come true.