TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD

The Tibetan Book of the Dead, aka The Great Liberation Upon Hearing the Intermediate State, examines exactly that; the intermediate state.

In the text, the different "bardos" or states of reality are examined. I listened to it on an audio tape (that had an accompanying book), but I have also done some research online.

The Bardo Thodol teaches that once awareness is freed from the body, it creates its own reality as one would experience in a dream. This dream occurs in various phases (the "bardos") in ways both wonderful and terrifying. Overwhelming peaceful and wrathful visions and deities appear.

(from this website)

This reminds me, however vaguely, of the idea of lucid dreaming. Being somebody who is quite in touch with my dreams, I understand that lucid dream is the Eeden concept of knowing one is dreaming while the dream occurs. The idea that within the bardos, ones own surrealist reality is created, reminds me of lucid dreaming. I wonder if it has this quality of being able to come into contact with this "reality" consciously, despite having entered a 'superconsciousness'.

I'm not sure where I cam across this idea of the superconscious, or a superstate; I can't find it anywhere. I remember thinking about it quite a while ago, so it must be something I heard as a child. Maybe somebody just made it up.

I think of the superconscious as the height of consciousness reached in death; when reality is no longer a factor, all that is 'real' is this heightened consciousness and state of being.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead really challenged this notion of the superconscious; the state between life and death. I'm not sure if I was supposed to get some deeper meaning out of it; perhaps my mind is so deeply clouded by the world I have created... with these thoughts of a superconscious reality.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead also gave me insight into the idea of the soul needing time to leave the body. I do not think that death happens instantaneously, I think it is a gradual process. For all you know, I'm dying right now. In my reality, the soul, body and the mind are separate states of being which human beings can channel at will. They do not all have to operate simultaneously, and perhaps none can function to their full extent with the others in play.

Perhaps the reason we do not reach this "bardo" state, this superconsciousness until we die is because our mind and our body get in the way. In some ways, I welcome death.

I've done a lot of studies into various cultures and religions; you know, why people feel the need for religion, why they feel the need to seek (or perhaps fabricate) an afterlife. Like it's all some ridiculous coping mechanism.

I wonder if that's what I have done - if I actually believe it or if I know, deep down, I've made it all up. I guess I won't know - and that void between the conscious and the subconscious, so often paralleled in this idea of death and soul - is the best way I can illustrate the overarching idea of this void. Maybe I will never know what parts of my life I fabricate; but perhaps that doesn't mean it's not real.