The Body of Incorruption

No understanding of this extraordinary book is possible unless we try to see it through Buddhist eyes. We must understand, to begin with, that the supreme heresy is to believe that phenomenal appearances are real. The phenomenal world of name, form, time, place, and causation is not the real world for our Tibetan lamas and their followers, any more than it is the real world to St. Paul. We must look beyond it, to that which is imperishable.

Again, we must remember that all the earlier books of the Vedic sages—from which the present work undoubtedly derives—have an esoteric as well as an exoteric meaning. All the great teachers of the world have spoken in parables, particularly the rishis. They did so to preserve a certain body of knowledge for the benefit of the elect. They believed knowledge was a dangerous tool in the hands of the ignorant ( and who would be so bold as to deny it to-day ?), and did not cast their pearls before swine ; we must therefore approach their work with caution and due consideration of the effect it was intended to produce in the mind of the reader.

A full comprehension of this book would be possible to not more than half a dozen men in the West, versed in the practice as well as the theory of Yoga, but this need not deter us from considering its literary and imaginative qualities. There is little probability that this guide-book for ghosts will be of personal use to our readers. None the less, it well rewards perusal. It consists, then, of the translation of an ancient Tibetan manuscript called the Bardo ThOdol, made by the late Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup, who when he died was a Tibetan Professor in the University of Calcutta, and who had pre- viously served a long discipleship under a guru in Bhutan. Dr. Evans-Wentz in his turn was a disciple of the late Lama's, and has edited the translation, contributing a learned intro- duction and valuable notes. Finally, Sir John Woodroffe, the greatest English authority on Tantrik Yoga, has written a brilliant preface, partially digesting for us the rather strong meat of the "science of death" which follows.

The first part of" The Profound Doctrine of the Emancipat- ing of the Consciousness by Meditation" provides a very minute description of the moment of death. I give here only a paraphrase because without a study of such books as The Serpent Power and Nature's Finer Forces the allusions in the text to the various centres of consciousness would be difficult to follow. When the expiration of breath has ceased, the vital force is considered to have passed to the heart and to rest there for a few instants. During these moments, the Clear Light pf Reality (to which mystics of both East and West so often refer) will flash on the mind of the physically-dead. But tied as is the ordinary individual to the world of appearances, his vitality will turn inward to the body instead of outwards to liberation. In normal circumstances this occurs about twenty minutes after death.

The transition state is one of extreme importance at the deathbed, and as in Catholic and Hindu ritual for the dying there is constant prayer and repetition of sacred names, so also in Tibet does the officiating priest prepare the mind of the moribund by prayer. But the lama is charged with what would appear to us as the ultra-sacerdotal function of directing the vitality as well as the imagination of the patient on its proper path. When breathing is about to cease the patient is turned over on to his right side and his jugular arteries are pressed so that his consciousness shall be "unable to descend from the brain" and shall leave his body from the higher centre, the sahasrara padma, or thousand-petalled-jewel-of-the-lotus, identified by some (but very likely wrongly, for these psychic centres need have no exact physical equivalents) with . the optic thalamus, whence the soul emerges by the foramen of Monro, to begin her discarnate wanderings.

Those who in this life have achieved the firm and tranquil state of meditation (dhyana) will see the Clew. Light for longer than those of unsound nerves or evil life, for whom the state will endure "only so long as would take to Snap a finger or the time taken for the eating at a meal," .But soon or late, unless the patient is a yogi, trained to hold his mental pathway serenely towards Reality, his spirit passes out of the region of the Illimitable Mind and instead of being freed from the cycle of birth and death it begins to long again for life on earth. Few of us, in Tibet or Tooting, recognize the Clear Light when it shines. "Even in the after-death stage the deceased imagines that he has a physical body though he has been severed from it by the high surgery of death."

The shape of the defunct—a real shape as the Tibetana believe with astral nerves and astral brain still functioning,

although without the possibility of physical expression— wanders about for forty-nine days in the twilight of the gods and demons. By about the fifteenth day, the past life of the ghost has become dim and if he has not been previously liberated by merging with the cosmic consciousness, be begins to seek re-birth. His future is indicated by certain premoni- tory signs which represent the first movements of desire towards fulfilment. His character and actions on earth may lead him to suffer pains of hell in a subtle body which cannot be injured or destroyed, but in which he may suffer atrocious pain. On the other hand the beauty that he made, or that he served on earth may return to him now for his solace. He may hear the beat of far-off seas, know the tenderness of twilight, the jubilance of dawn, sense again the pageant of his trans- muted senses, attuned to rhythms he never reached in flesh. But unless desire for actions be dead and the mind resting in that smooth stream which is nirvana, the astral body will sooner or later be whirled and swirled towards the banks of earthly life again. From the river of re-birth the disembodied soul shall see visions of flesh and blood and urgently desire a form thereof, to express itself once more in the world of men. Still we may attempt to close the gate of the bodY; and turn the soul back from its re-descent into a material envelope. Three methods are given for this closing of the gate of the body waiting to receive a soul. If they fail, as they generally do, and the desire of another life prevails, even then we may choose a fit body to receive us. We are responsible therefore, according to this philosophy, for our own birth. There is no use quarrelling with our family. We chose it, if we could only remember.

Dr. Evans-Wentz does not believe that the higher lamaic teachings turn towards migration into sub-human lives. Indeed, it is fairly clear that these doctrines are little different from what science and psychology teach to-day in but slightly different form. There is a vast subconscious field below the threshold of consciousness in every human being. Character moulds destiny. Actions continue indefinitely like the ripples in a pond. The child is largely the outcome of its heredity. Here we have just what the Tibetan lamas have been teaching for thousands of years, rather more picturesquely put than Herr Jung's essays in the same direction, but hardly less definitely.

As Huxley said long ago (long, that is, for the little span that the West has given to the consideration of such things), the moral and intellectual essence of a man

"does verily pass over from one fleshly tabernacle to another and does really transmigrate from generation to generation. . . . In the new-born infant, the character of the stock lies latent, and the Ego is little more than a bundle of potentialities. But, very early, these become actualities ; from childhood to age they manifest themselves in dullness or brightness, weakness or strength, vicious- ness or uprightness ; and with each feature modified by confluence with another character, if by nothing else, the character passes on to its incarnation in new bodies. The Indian philosophers called character, as thus defined, karma. . ; ."

In this brief notice my aim has been to present, however crudely, the salient features of an interesting and important Tibetan book in the simplest possible language. Time; which mellows all things, seems to me to have flavoured and enriched

these philosophies of our early ancestors. They may be read and re-read, revealing always new facets of truth and modern- ities which are sometimes startling. Orientalists and students of comparative religion will find a mine Of knowledge in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and it is good news that Dr. Retina- Wentz hag another translation Of his kite gtiru in"stere for us. Compered to the Western psych'ologists these ftiOs appear to be professionals. They have experimented on their own brains and bodies instead of theorizing froni-

and have even arrested their heart-beat and consciousness, so as to come as near as may be to that final mystery of which we know so little. Their reports, therefore, are of things seen and felt and nearer the Truth, it seems to me, than much of what passes for psychology in Europe and America. Ours is a baby science of psychology after all ; scarcely out of its nursery half-century. In India it has grown with the tradition of 5,000 years. Guinea-pigs may tell us the secrets of the soul, but I would back the Brahmins.

• A word to the reader who knows nothing of Eastern philoso- phies, for this book is for him also. Let him read Sir John Woodroffe's preface first, then Dr. Evan-Wentz's addenda at the end of the book, especially the sections on Yoga, Tan- tricism, and Reality. Then let him turn to the book itself, beginning on page 85. My advice to him would be to read the Introduction last.

We of the feverish West have something yet to acquire which cannot be snapshotted or typed or card-indexed or displayed as a specimen or administered by doses. We need not go to Tibet, of course, for this precious provender of the soul ; but for those of us who like to travel in mind as well as body, there is much to learn from that quiet and remote people of the Himalayas who have carried down in unbroken tradition from lama to disciple, in singular purity, and for unknown thousands of years (long before we had emerged from savagery at any rate, or the Jews from flirtation with Baal), a body of thought which still contains some of the loftiest expressions of the spirit of man.

F. YEATS-BROWN.