hi all
just wondering about peoples opinion about the tibetan book of the dead and if anybody has read it and the effect on your lifes.
i'm currently reading it and it makes a lot of sence. thanks for your thoughts and time!

Hi Psilocybe-

Bardo Thodol is an entire tradition, as well as the name of the core writing of the tradition. Evans-Wentz published a slightly different form than we usually see in his "Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines", along with the Six Yogas of Naropa (etc) from which Tenzin Wangyal probably got the inspiration for his quest and resulting book. If you're really interested in the Bardo Thodol, you might look up a Mahayana Buddhist Rinpoche to initiate you. The rest of your life will be .. er .. different, to say the least. However, it requires taking the Bodhissatvic Vow, and sort of becoming part of the Cosmic Civil Service.

dave

Hi 'Schroom-
Why we aren't more aware?  In the late 1950-1960 era, before LSD and 'shroomns became the subject of legal restrictions, a very large  number of other people went off to investigate the Eastern views. Often through ill-conceived plans of chemical plus meditative investigation. 

The first major discovery was that once we get 100% in touch with our nature, we don't seem to be very nice. We recall things that we have done to others, and when we look into our own selves we find imperfections, needs, desires and attachments that we don't want to give up. If we go a little deeper we get involved with the sense of universal love and unity, at which point, as Ecclesiastes put it, our greatest and most winderful deeds appear as filthy rags, and we feel really bad about our lives. Yoga, whether Bardo Thodol or Patanjali style, requires purification.

Those who survived the trip without going utterly bonkers were the ones who either discounted the entire experience and went into denial, claiming the world to be purely material, or they were the others who adopted an attitude of, "Please fix me so I'll be better." (This is also the way we take on karmic issues in the next incarnation.) They followed the Ram Das kind of path.

As for the rest, after a month or so on major antipsychotic medication, most of them ceased to have schiziophrenic aberrations, and they had no desire whatsoever to ever go back to that place in which they had such terrifying understanding.

Up through the 1950's, people believed that the world was material. It was a major breakthrough in social consciousness for society to come to the awareness that "what goes around comes around". Until 1966, most people simply didn;t believe it. Instead, the preferred denial, that you can be antisocial and selfish and get away with it. This idea remains at the core of commercial ethics and politics even today.

The underlying answer is not that we lack people with sufficient awareness to enter transcendental lifestyles. The problem is that to become saintly means giving up all our bad habits of exploiting one another mercilessly. For example, the government would [prefer that you not have an enlightened attitude, because that makes it hard to attack and bully tiny little nations. Businesses would prefer that you be unenlightened, so that you can run a monopolistic enterprise that bleeds people raw in order to obtain the necessities of life.

It is, in some ways, unfortunate, but you have a well developed spiritual awareness that brings the sensitivity to understand that all of this is an imposition that makes life more difficult, and, as a result, you are going to have to cope with the underlying injustice of it all. There's the Tim Leary path through revolution and social anarchy, the Ram Das path through self development, the Jesus path (that few of us are capable of handling) through sacrifice, the path of dictators and monarchs (and other young and immature souls) who force conformity on a world that resents them for it, yje Dalai Lama's path of ruling through simplicity and infinite compassion, or Mother Thersa's example of total service and love  ... and so on. Good luck.

dave