Found 7 posts tagged ‘tibetan book of the dead’ |
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I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought –
July 11, 2027 |
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Here's the text of our first guest hosting of the Insane Signals podcast:The two very oldest books of horror are likely far more ancient than you might guess, and they offer a way to appreciate all horror films from a new perspective. These two books are haunted by terrifying slasher entities armed with blades, who cut throats and sever heads, live among snakes, and feast and dance in blood. There are also monsters who devour hearts, corpses, and souls. Let's not forget the executioner whose noose drags people along as their intestines are extracted, their brains are licked, and their bones are gnawed ... all before they are hacked repeatedly.Just how old are these books of terror with sinister casts of demonic monstrosities? Did you guess thousands of years BC? Yes, the books in question are the books of the dead from Egypt and Tibet. They offer hallucinatory reads, but can it be true that they color all horror in their wake? Well, they present the afterlife in all its gory details, but they also invite us to understand life, too, as a similarly fantastical journey. The Tibetan version most clearly states that the forbidding adventure through the hereafter is in fact no different than other illusory states of consciousness such as dreaming and waking. Indeed, all states of existence are seen by Buddhism as in-between or Bardo-states. We close our eyes and dream little movies, we open our eyes and seem to live different movies, we die and experience another movie on the way to either reincarnating or transcending to an unknown realm.So if within the movie of our life we're watching a film on the silver screen, we might try to interpret the characters from the get-go as having recently deceased, their stories inviting us to travel with them through the hellish afterworld as they battle the fears and demons engendered by their past sins or bad decisions. Applying such a perspective, we can re-interpret favorite films to discover additional significances. Let's take three quick examples, starting with The Lost Boys, of 1987. A mom and her two sons make a move after a divorce, presumably dying in a car accident. They find themselves arriving at the otherworldly, otherwise non-existent city of Santa Carla to reunite with an aged grandpa who specializes in grotesque taxidermy. He greets them by playing dead, as if rather broadly hinting that his family has moved to a necropolis. Santa Carla is a realm of illusions. Within the underground lair of the vampires, maggots are sometimes takeout rice, worms shift into noodles, and wine is also blood. The boardwalk's merry-go-round rotates like the Buddhist wheel of attachment, ignorance, anger, and desire. But, filtered through the books of the dead, the message is uplifting, as predeceased loved ones can help us to overcome the shadows that precede us. Now also consider The Cabin in the Woods, from 2011. The two surviving protagonists finally come to terms with the end of the world, deciding that humanity doesn't deserve endless cycles of ritual murder. Seen from the angle of the books of the dead, the protagonists lost their lives before the film even started, so their final realization isn't actually about the imminent end of world since their world had already ended with their own deaths. Instead, we can view their final realization as consciousness of their own demise and having finally let go of the negative beliefs that sought to keep them attached to lost illusions. Only by the very end of the film have the characters integrated their own darkness and found themselves ready to begin afresh with no old baggage. Instead of a brutally dark, apocalyptic nightmare, the film becomes a documentary of sorts about damned souls extricating themselves from the existential circle of suffering.Finally, Dario Argento's Suspiria of 1977 can be newly understood as one freshly dead ballet dancer's escape from a netherworld of maggots, covens of human-sacrificing witches, throat-ripping dogs, electrical storms, and ambuscades of razor-wire and glass shards. Considering her as being dead from moment one, even the film's opening with her uncanny exit from the airport begins to make a new sort of sense. Everyone she encounters is an unsettling resident of the Bardo, either a fellow wandering spirit or a karmic hellion. Only by consuming the entire ballet school in flames can the protagonist transcend that Bardo. It's as if she had recited the Egyptian Book of the Dead's spell for being transformed into a living soul and not entering into the place of execution. I'll recite that spell at the end of this piece, in case you could use it.Argento's films, like those of David Lynch, are commonly described as dreams. Ingmar Bergman, director of the psychological horror film Hour of the Wolf, even proclaimed that "All my films are dreams." If the ancient wisdom of the books of the dead is correct, all of life is in fact a sort of hallucination, just as all of death is. Waking life is no realer than the world of the dreamtime or of dying. The great researcher of all things weird, Charles Fort, believed in a ghost world, only he decided that waking existence is wholly peopled by phantoms. The also-great science fictionalist Philp K. Dick came to a similar conclusion in his Exegesis, that we are the dead but don't know it, cyclically living in a simulated, purgatorial world until we manage to enact enough good decisions to trigger off an intervention from a divinity or our own higher selves. Dick wrote, "We have for a long time been dying brains/souls slipping lower and lower through the realms, but the punishment of reliving this bottom-realm life is also an opportunity to add new good karma and break the vicious cycle of otherwise endless reliving of a portion of our former life. ... We must change the 'groove' for the better or just keep coming back, not remembering, not re-ascending."For those with faith in ancient Egyptian magic, here's the spell for never perishing as translated by Raymond Faulkner:"I am the soul of Ra who issued from the Abyss, that soul of the god who created authority. Wrong-doing is my detestation, and I will not see it; I think about righteousness, and I live by it; I am Authority which will never perish in this my name of 'Soul.' I came into being of myself with the Primordial Water in this my name of Khepri, and I come into being in it daily. I am the Lord of Light; death is my detestation, and I will not enter into the place of execution of the Netherworld. It is I who cause Osiris to be a spirit, and I have made content those who are in his suite... I am Nun, and the doers of wrong cannot harm me. I am the eldest of the primeval gods, the soul of souls of the eternal gods; my body is everlasting, my shape is eternity, Lord of Years, Ruler of Everlasting. I am he who created darkness and who made his seat in the limits of the sky. I desire to reach their limits, and I walk afoot; I go ahead with my staff; I cross the firmament. I drive away the hidden snakes which are upon my march to the Lord of the Two Regions. I am the soul of the souls of the eternal gods; my body is everlasting. I am he who is on high, Lord of Tatjebu; I am young in my city, I am boyish in the field, and such is my name, for my name will not perish. I am the soul who created the Abyss, who made his seat in the realm of the dead. My nest will not be seen, my egg will not be broken; I have got rid of my ills; I have seen my father, the Lord of the Evening, and whose body it is which is in Heliopolis; I govern those who are in the dusk upon the western Mound of the Ibis."What more is there to say? I am Prof. Oddfellow, whose name will not perish. Check out my "Priceless Spectacles" column in the free House of Scream magazine at HouseofScream.com. And see me in glorious monochrome in the long-running series Prof. Oddfellow's Penetralia and Grave Mood Rings, on Roku, Youtube, MysteryArts.com, and in the House of Scream Studios horror specials.
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I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought –
May 15, 2022 |
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Instead of dwelling on our regrets and failings (and thereby perpetuating our miseries), here's a suggestion to connect with the enduring influences of the things we did right:
"The present moment is the dividing-line between progression and regression. The present moment is the time when, by lapsing into laziness, even for an instant, you will experience constant suffering. The present moment is the time when, by concentrating with singular intention, you will achieve constant happiness. Concentrate your mind with a single-pointed intention. Resolutely connect with the residual potency of your vitrtuous past actions." — The Tibetan Book of the Dead, as translated by Gyurme Dorje (though overall we much prefer the older Evans-Wentz translation)
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Hindpsych: Erstwhile Conjectures by the Sometime Augur of Yore –
August 27, 2021 |
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Two Otherworldly Books: Polar Opposites?
The two most famous mystical manuals for guidance through the Otherworld are, in staggering ways, diametric opposites. The Tibetan Book of the Dead was preserved by the living, its chapters kept intact over millennia by monks in monasteries. Contrariwise, the Egyptian Book of the Dead was preserved by mummies, its chapters scattered piecemeal (even as Osiris was dismembered?) and sealed for millennia in coffins and tombs. The Tibetan was meant to be recited to a corpse by a living undertaker. The Egyptian was meant to be read only by the deceased individual, in the afterlife. In the Tibetan, the soul navigating the afterlife liminality is a human who encounters deities and torments, judgments, and pitfalls, the book serving as a guide map to another incarnation. In the Egyptian, the soul in the netherworld is itself a divinity (indistinguishable from all deities), the book constituting "identity papers" that exempt one from any torments, judgments, or pitfalls on the way not to another incarnation but rather eternal providence. The Tibetan is read in whole and then retained by the living. The Egyptian is unread in fragments (as chapter 64 notes, "This composition is a secret; not to be seen or looked at ... by any man, for it is forbidden to know it. Let it be hidden") and retained by the dead. The Tibetan would have the soul disattach from memories of illusory experiences. The Egyptian soul, as a deity having been disguised as a mortal, is prompted to say, "That which I went in order to ascertain I am come to tell. Come let me enter and report my mission" (chapter 86). The Tibetan calls the soul toward realms indescribable by known language, while the Egyptian promises a perpetuity of familiar worldly food, bodily pleasures, landscapes, climates, planting and reaping, labor and recreation.Clerical (pun intended) errors by Egyptian scribes corrupted the book to the extent that varied copies of the same chapter are wildly discordant. It would seem that over the millennia the copyists did not understand the original texts, the original meanings having been lost at a very early date. The Tibetan, while similarly reproduced, is significantly less adulterated. Because the Egyptian copies were never meant for living eyes, the scribes' attention to detail naturally faltered (in other words, the accuracy of their work went unchecked). It was the opposite situation for the Tibetan scribes. As the Egyptian is significantly bastardized, translators are so often left to conjecture, to either fill or not fill the empty pools of textual lacunae, to baffle over the legitimacy of enigmatic hapax legomena. Yet there's a strange poetry to that — a book of metaphysical mysteries, not meant for living eyes, gathering further unfathomableness over time. (Somewhat ironically, Egyptologists seek "accuracy" of non-literal, possibly deliberately nonsensical esoterica and paronomasia. As translator Peter Le Page Renouf notes, the various chapters of the Egyptian Book of the Dead and other texts prove that "with reference to the details, free scope was allowed to the imagination of the scribes or artists." Though Renouf fastidiously checked his own guesswork, he perhaps needn't have been overly cautious. The Egyptian Book of Dead would seem to be unstuck in time and even unstuck in phraseology, like a text in an hallucinatory dream that morphs as the visionary tries to read it.)In short, the Tibetan (guarded at extraordinarily high elevations) is addressed to human beings, while the Egyptian (preserved at very low elevations) is addressed to gods.P.S. Interestingly, the judgment scenes in both books are so alike in essentials as to suggest a common prehistoric origin. The Tibetan's King of the Dead as judge corresponds to the Egyptian Osiris. Both books have a symbolical weighing. On the scales before the King of the Dead, black pebbles are weighed against white (symbolizing evil and good deeds). Before Osiris, the heart and a feather are weighed (conduct/conscience against righteousness/truth). In both books, a simian-headed figure oversees the weighing (the ape-headed Thoth in the Egyptian, the monkey-headed Shinje in the Tibetan). In both books, a jury of deities looks on, some animal- and some human-headed. The record-board that Thot holds corresponds to the Mirror of Karma held by the King of the Dead. The deceased in both books pleads innocence.
See Books of the Dead, a distillation of twenty-four books of the dead from around the world and across the centuries. Each book’s most intriguing, poetic, and useful revelations are painstakingly gathered.
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I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought –
June 2, 2021 |
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A Contested Prophecy, Literally True?
Skeptics cite Jesus’ promise that “this generation” will see the end of days as a failed prophecy, yet — extraordinarily — in the light of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, we can see Jesus’ words as very literally true. We’ll touch upon this, as we’ve not seen the insight discussed elsewhere. Mark 13:24-30 quotes Jesus as predicting that the sun and moon will be darkened, the stars of heaven will fall, the powers of heaven will be shaken, the Son of Man will appear in the clouds with great glory, angels will gather from the four winds, and — crucially — “this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done.” How can such a statement be literally true? It was literally true for each individual of that generation upon his or her death, for what Jesus described is parallel to the death experience detailed in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Skeptics don’t seem to see the individual trees for the forest. One at a time, human beings face the end of the[ir] world upon death. Light is extinguished and the soul navigates the turbulent “afterlife” environment of the Bardo, featuring terrifying winds and deafening thunders and deities and angels in the clouds.
Jesus makes an analogy four verses later of a man leaving his house and taking a far journey, and that, too, is parallel to the first day in the afterlife as described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. (“Thou wilt see thine own home, the attendants, relatives, and the corpse, and think, ‘Now I am dead! What shall I do?' and being oppressed with intense sorrow, the thought will occur to thee, ‘O what would I not give to possess a body!’ And so thinking, thou wilt be wandering hither and thither seeking a body” [Book II, Part I]). Indeed, Jesus’ prophecy of the future can be understood as fulfilling itself for one person at a time, upon death. As the Tibetan Book of the Dead explains, when one’s earthly nervous system shuts off, the light of the sun, moon, and stars are no longer visible; only the “astral light” would be detectable to the deceased’s etheric being. In Book II, Part I of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, we learn that in the post-death Bardo realm, “The fierce wind of karma, terrific and hard to endure, will drive thee onwards from behind, in dreadful gusts. Fear it not. That is thine own illusion. Thick awesome darkness will appear in front of thee continually.” Yet “the embodiment of all that is wise, merciful and loving” will appear “as clouds on the surface on the heavens or a rainbow on the surface of the clouds.” It is the father of heaven (whom the Tibetans call the Manifester of Phenomena, who has dominion over worldly existence) appearing in the center of the sky, seated in a lion-throne (Book I, Part II), attended by angelic Bodhisattvas shining amidst a rainbow halo of light. Those not versed in comparative religion might be surprised to learn that Tibetans acknowledge that one might see Jesus in the afterlife. The Tibetan Book of the Dead explains that the “Great Body of Union ... will appear in whatever shape will benefit all beings whomsoever,” meaning that the godhead will take the form most appealing to the individual, such as Jesus to a Christian.
As a final note, concerning the overlap between Tibetan Buddhism and Christianity, Philip K. Dick explored at length in his Exegesis the “perpendicular path” to salvation that Christianity offers, and this same “Great Straight Upward Path" to enlightenment is made explicit in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. (Dick, conversant with both philosophies, preferred Christianity’s.) Both feature the peculiar doctrine of instantaneous spiritual emancipation without further suffering, and this doctrine underlies the entire Tibetan Book of the Dead. “Faith is the first step on the Secret Pathway,” explains a footnote in the Tibetan text, “Then comes Illumination; and with it, Certainty; and, when that Goal is won, Emancipation.” As in the ancient Egyptian symbolism of the sun-god Ra, it is the “hook” (as on a fishing line) of the “rays of grace” that catch and drag one perpendicularly from the dangers of the Bardo (Book I, Part II).
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Hindpsych: Erstwhile Conjectures by the Sometime Augur of Yore –
March 30, 2020 |
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How the Mysteries of The Prisoner Series
Are Clarified by The Tibetan Book of the Dead
Though there are seemingly infinite theories to explain the cult TV series The Prisoner, we would suggest that the most elegant, comprehensive understanding is that the series deliberately illustrates the soul’s journey through the “Bardo” liminal state after death, as depicted in The Tibetan Book of the Dead. In the netherworld, when one is about to initiate a new birth, The Tibetan Book of the Dead’s first instruction for closing off a womb is to tranquilly meditate upon one’s tutelary deity until the deity melts away into clear light (Book II, p. 176). The Prisoner, in this still, is confronted by a choice: an egg or a Buddha.
The Prisoner repeatedly resists fertilization throughout the series, prolonging his time in the liminal state until his true awakening. The green dome of Number Two’s office symbolizes a womb, and it also grandly depicts Tibetan cosmology: “Each universe, like a great cosmic egg, is enclosed within [an] iron-wall shell, which shuts in the light of the sun and moon and stars, the iron-wall shell being symbolical of the perpetual darkness separating one universe from another” (W. Y. Evans-Wentz, in the introduction to The Tibetan Book of the Dead).
In turn, the dome contains a smaller womb (symbolic of nesting rebirths) in the form the Ball Chair by Finnish designer Eero Aarino. Here we even see the womb chair holding an egg:
By the end of the series, the Buddhist cycle of rebirth calls so strongly that the Prisoner is sealed into a womb made of steel:
The beneficent and wrathful deities one encounters in the netherworld are, according to The Tibetan Book of the Dead, generated by one’s own psychology. “Fear not the bands of the Peaceful and Wrathful, Who are thine own thought-forms” (p. 204). In these stills, the Prisoner confronts his greatest enemy and warden, “Number One,” the numeral 1 doubling as the first-person pronoun. He removes the mask to discover himself.
From the first episode, the Prisoner has been dead—he even goes down the classic long tunnel seen in near-death experiences:
And the events of his former life flash before his eyes:
However, he is not conscious of being dead. The externalized aspects of his mind, the “wrathful deities” in control of his netherworld prison, ceaselessly confront the Prisoner with his condition. Their eternal question, “Why have you resigned?” translates as “Why are you dead?” (In Tibetan as in Celtic lore, “no death is natural, but is always owing to interference by one of the innumerable death-demons,” as W. Y. Evans-Wentz notes in his introduction to The Tibetan Book of the Dead). Here is an explicit example of the Buddhistic understanding of the cycle of rebirth, with “resign” being a euphemism for “die”:
Throughout the series, we find the Prisoner being reminded that he is in the Bardo:
When the Prisoner becomes attached to this illusory existence, he is chastised in this Buddhistic way:
There’s a very subliminal hint in the title sequence of the series that the Prisoner’s entire journey takes place within his own consciousness: as he enters the subterranean parking garage to announce his resignation, there’s a flash of a sign: “headroom.” He’s confronting the underworld of his own headspace.
In this underworld described by the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the pangs of the deceased’s conscience rise up as a Good Genius and Evil Genius, personifications of a human being’s lower and higher natures:
The Lord of Death, who consults the Mirror of Karma (the memories of one’s good and evil deeds in life) is confronted repeatedly in the series. Here he is in one of his stern aspects:
Perhaps the primary guidance of the Tibetan Book of the Dead is which netherworld lights to avoid and which to follow. A dull yellow light lures one back into the world of humans, and such a light attempts to snare the Prisoner repeatedly:
A blue light lures one into the “Brute world” of stupid mentality:
A dull red light lures one into the realm of “hungry ghosts” who suffer insatiable addictions worse than humans do:
A green light lures one into the world of jealous warriors, the Titan-like “Asuras”:
A dull white light lures one into the worlds of angel-like “Devas”:
A smoke-colored light leads directly to the Hell-world:
No matter what, the Tibetan Book of the Dead promises that “the All-Good Mother … will come to shine … from eternity within the faculties of thine own intellect” (Book I, pp. 121-22):
As the Buddha says in “The Immutable Sutra,” “the phenomena of life may be likened unto … a shadow”:
As an aside, a near-subliminal detail in the title sequence recalls an insight by Philip K. Dick in his Exegesis. Behind the car of the Prisoner’s pursuer there is a dumpster that says “St Mary’s.” As Dick put it, "Lowly trash ... match folders ... tawdry commercials—therein lie the divine messages. … Therefore the right place to look for the Almighty is … in the trash in the alley."If you’ll be back, we wish you many happy returns …
… until you find your Way Out:
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Original Content Copyright © 2026 by Craig Conley. All rights reserved.
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