to die would be an awfully big adventure: chasing death’s colored light in the tibetan book of the...

7/25/2019 To Die Would be an Awfully Big Adventure: Chasing Deaths Colored Light in the Tibetan Book of the Dead

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Jen ByersJ-Sem Final

May 9, 2012

To Die Would be an Awfully Big Adventure

Chasing Deaths Colored Light in theTibetan Book of the Dead

The Tibetan Book of the Dead, or The Great Liberation Upon Hearing the

Bardo1, has been widely considered one of the greatest guides to death ever written or

created. Largely, this text was brought into Western scholarship in 1919 by Walter

Yeeling Evans-Wentz, and since then, has been studied by multitudes of curious

orientalists and Eastern scholars attempting to figure out what awaits us in the great

beyond. While its no surprise that Western audiences have grasped on to the book

looking for intellectual answers, about both the spiritual and the physical, from the

monolithic, mysterious ~East~, perhaps the true nature of the The Great Liberationmay

be much more physical, functioning almost exclusively as a ritual text, and not a grand

mapping of the afterlifes cosmological structure. Though the texts intentions seem not

as existentially curious as most of its Western interpreters, its guiding power holds

resonance, whether that be for the part of my soul that is presently library-dying and in

need of directed comfort, or for its tackling of a subject so often treated with almost

factual objectification or suffocating sympathy. By following the particular image of

light, I will rage, rage for an intermingled reading, treating the text, neither as the end-all-

be-all to my fear of mortality, nor as a simple, meaningless ritual vessel, but instead a

conduit and summation of Tibetan beliefs about living, dying, and being reborn. In this

paper, I will attempt to delineate the history behind the Tibetan Book of the Dead, first

tracing the journey of its author and cultural climate; move on to a general understanding

1For the sake of being interesting, Im using different variations of the titles of this book throughout this

paper. This is a real stylistic choice, though Im not sure how itll work out!


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of Tibetan Buddhism; and finally focus in on light and its uniquely colored elements.

From this unique understanding of colored light, Ill attempt to extrapolate back out,

comparing the Tibetan Book of the Deadto Susan BlackmoresDying to Liveand

Howard StormsMy Descent into Death, texts written by an Western professors in the

twentieth century, depicting Near Death Experiences. With my comparison, Ill ideally

be able to ask new questions, biological and otherwise, about sensory and intellectual

experiences during dying and after death, and come closer to tenably gripping the great

beyond in all its terror and glory.

Most generally, the Tibetan cultural approach dying is unique, particularly

because of the myth for the creation of dying, or the first death. According to myth,

Tibets first kings came down from heaven on a rope, sticking around on earth until their

firstborn sons reached the age of maturity. After that, the king would climb back up to

heaven, never to be seen again and presumably to live forever as an immortal. Legend

has it that the eighth son in the lineage, fearing his name, which translated into Killed by

the Sword, engaged in a duel. In that duel, his opponent created a dust storm, and in his

confusion, the eighth king cut the line that tied him to heaven, such that his opponent was

able to kill him. After his death, funerary culture developed, with Tibets endemic

religion, animistic Bon, and dead bodies were cut up and fed to birds2. When Buddhism

entered Tibet in the seventh century, it came as an eclectic mix, a combination of

Buddhisms from India, Nepal, China, Kashmir, and Afghanistan. However, Buddhism

did not begin to embed itself in Tibetan culture, really, until the reign of king Trhi

Songdetsen, who intentionally spread Buddhism throughout the country, with the

particular help of Padmasambhava.

2Lives of Great Religious Texts:The Tibetan Book of the Dead, 50


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The Tibetan Book of the Deadwas written by Padmasambhava in 8th

Century CE,

in the Tibetan Buddhism tradition. His name meaning Lotus Guru, Padma was a

bodhisattva, mythically issued from tongue of Amitabha Buddha in the form of a meteor

as an answer to an appeal from Avalokiteshvara to do more good for the beings on earth.

This meteor landed on earth, became a lotus, and from that lotus sprang Padma as a boy,

to be raised by a Brahmin family in Orgyen, Northern India. Later, he was called to Tibet

by the emperor Trhi Songdetsen, in order to proliferate Buddhism through Tibet. It is

said that he hid treasures of knowledge, sutras and otherwise throughout Tibet and the

surrounding areas, placing texts out in nature, to be found later. The most well known of

these treasures was, of course, the collection of bardos, or guides through the

intermediary steps between death and rebirth, which came to be collectively known as

The Great Liberation Upon Hearing the Bardo.

After Padmasambhva left texts scattered throughout Tibet, monks and

monasteries spent years attempting to recover them. The most famous excavator was a

mystic named Karma Lingpa, who lived in the fourteenth century. In a cave in the

Daklha Gampo mountain range, he discovered a mandala of one hundred deities and the

collection of ritual instructions as to how to guide a dying person through the bardosof

the afterlife. These bardoswere collected by monasteries, whose monks would memorize

and recite the chapters to people on their deathbeds. Typically, the set up of the bardo

recitation would be in the home of the dying person, where the family and friends of the

dying person would sit around the dying persons bed. A monk, guru, or other

spiritually-enmeshed individual who best knew the dying would sit directly next to him,

and recite the bardos into his ear. The dying person would be lying on his right side,


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such that the monk would be able to touch certain spots on his body to guide the flow of

the dying mans vital essence out of his body. This perpetuates a psychophysical

connection, such that the soul is physical, if not corporeal, until the second bardoin

which the individual comes to inhabit an illusory body.

More specifically, the bardois an interval of time after death when the individual

is in transition between the living, dying, and rebirthing worlds. The Tibetan Book of the

Dead, though only compounded as such by Western authors, is supposed to be a

guidebook for the seven weeks after dying, such that it argues the soul takes forty-nine

days to traverse the different bardos. To put it very simply, the goal during this time is

for the individual to stay the course of liberation, follow the correct path, remember his

Buddhist teachings, and exit the world of living, dying, and suffering, orsamsaras cycle

of rebirth. Ideally, the guiding words of the guru will assist and remind the dying of the

particular course to stay, such that the individual will be able to control and meditate

himself intonirvana, the final death. If, at any point, the individual gives into the

suffering or pain in the process of dying, he will be catapulted off the course, into the

realm of a new body and another life of suffering, ignorance, and ultimately, another

death. The power of the bardoseems to come from its liminality, wherein the individual

is placed in an undifferentiated state, such that his actions, more so than in the living

world, and his comportment directly affect his spiritual future. It seems, to some extent,

that transcending this realm has more to do with the individuals ability to be present,

meditative, and cultivated, more so than to be necessarily adherent to specific laws and

precepts.


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The bardoliminal space is thought to last for forty nine days before rebirth, and in

this time the individual is stripped away of all earthly distractions and is capable of

existing exclusively in his own intellect and reality, capable of experiencing the true void

of existence. It is said that,

Hence The Tibetan Book's view that when the dying person experiencesvoidness he is discovering the nature of all reality. And according to The

Tibetan Book, that discovery is possible for most people only during theprocess of dying, for it is only then that the average person is most free.

During his life, he was preoccupied with corporeal and emotionalconcerns; once dead, the habits developed during life will obscure truth

once again, as his disembodied consciousness moves on through thevarious Bardo states. (Cohen, 323)

Thus, the individual can pay attention only to the void and the immediate present when in

the bardostate. Because the soul has no obligations to attend to, and merely a path to

follow, he is capable of acting exclusively as his own consciousness and of demonstrating

his spiritual attunement and ability to follow the directions of the guiding monk. This

unique opportunity seems to prove a test for the individual, and the nature of this text ties

directly in to the way the text was used.

While I mentioned before that the Tibetan Book of the Deadhad only ritual

purpose, I meant to say that it was not used as a textbook or a cosmological marker.

When possible, the text was memorized, as

it is extremely important to train the mind thoroughly in thisLiberation

through Hearing in the Bardo,especially during ones life. It should begrasped, it should be perfected, it should be read aloud, it should be

memorized properly, it should be practiced three times a day without fail,the meaning of its words should be made completely clear in the mind, its

words and meaning should not be forgotten even if a hundred murdererswere to appear and chase oneeven people who have committed five

deadly sins will certainly be liberated if they only hear it; therefore itshould be read aloud among great crowds and spread afar. (Tibetan Book

of the Dead, 71)


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Ideally, the text would be known forwards and backwards, such that an individual could

knowingly guide himself through the afterlife. Though most practitioners were unable to

read the text, it was believed that hearing the text itself could cause liberation (thus, the

titleLiberation Upon HearingThe Bardo.) This type of bardomemorization and

recitation was very much in line with the Chinese Mahayana tradition, and the Tibetan

idea of liberation through senses, which argued that an individual could reach

understanding or enlightenment from exclusively sensory input and experience.

Specifically,

Liberation through the senses comprises all these religious practicesand the sacred things they are related tohearing, sight, taste, smell, and

touch, coupled with the belief that coming into contact with a sacred thing(a monument, a painting, a mandala, a stupa, a holy man, a tree, a

mountain, a book, etc.) inspires hope or even guarantees liberation.(Tokarska-Bakir, 69-70)

Almost counterintuitive to the emotionally placid monk one commonly thinks about

practicing Buddhism, this school of thought believed that a very sensory experience

could take an individual to enlightenment, as a great sensory experience mimicked the

emptiness or lack of self necessary to understanding Buddhism. It seems that the line

between what would be considered hedonistic, indulgent sensory experience and fruitful,

spiritual sensing comes both from the sensory experience itself and the application or

motivation the sensory experience incites. A famous myth tells the story of Indra, sitting

in his jeweled palace, simply looking beautiful and playing his drums, such that people

on Earth could hear his music and be enraptured by his appearance, so that they would be

encouraged to become as cultivated as him3. Endemic to both Indras myth and The

Great Liberation Upon Hearingis their spiritual, and not basely tantalizing, nature.

3Tokarska-Bakir, 74


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Physically, the act of memorizing reciting the text, it is also argued, can hammer

in the nature of the self as an illusion. By focusing on the specific words and watching

them dissolve into syllables, prayer and repetition can serve as a method for

demonstrating the deletion or dissolution of the self.4 In that sense, then, theLiberation

Through Hearing could also be considered theLiberation through Reciting and Breaking

Language in such a way that emptiness can overcome the individual.

Another aspect of the book is the intensely internal and individualized

psychodramatic aspect of it. In line with the general philosophy of Buddhism, The Great

Liberationargues that the entire text and experience occurs inside the head of the dying

individual. Perhaps in the tradition of Buddhisms expedient means, the fact that the text

is not used as a cosmological marker may make sense. Instead of proposing a road map

for a true future, its possible that the text simply forces the dying, and the living who are

hearing the text recited, most directly understand that they have never allowed

themselves to realize that without the creative activity of their own minds and the

illumination coming from their own consciousness there could be no cognitive activity of

any kind, such that individuals may perhaps learn from the text that the world is an

illusion (Cohen, 324).5 Thus, the text attempts to strip away the individuals cognizance

4Cohen, 327

5More specifically, the text focuses on the transparency or falseness of attached emotions and the belief inegoistic, singulary individuality. The Great Liberationdocumentary places the texts warnings and goal

most poignantly, I think, saying people make hell realms out of their own anger they make worlds out of

passion, out of envy, or complacency. We project our emotional states and then believe it is the real world.

But no matter what, everyone longs for compassion, everyone wishes to be awake, so the best thing is todevelop genuine compassion for all beings, an for ourselves, too. And our compassion should extend

beyond our friends and family and the people that we like; it must extend to all people and all living beings.

Somehow it seems that if we can never truly care for others, we can never know our own minds. (Reed,

Video)


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of his own ego, revealing and attempting to embed the sense of emptiness that will

ultimately lead the individual out ofsamsaraand into the realm of nirvana.

From now on, Id like to zoom in on one specific aspect of the Tibetan Book of

the Dead: its treatment of light and color. Upon dying, one of the first things the

individual sees is a Clear Light. Very directly, this light is naked consciousness, or the

force of the individuals pure intellect (Evans-Wentz, 97). The monk tells the dying to sit

face to face with the light, and to follow it, though this first light dies out within about a

meals time after death. After that, though, once the individual has entered into his

illusory body, a second light will appear,

When thy body and mind were separating, thou must have experienced aglimpse of the Pure Truth, subtle, sparkling, bright, dazzling, glorious, and

radiantly awesome, in appearance like a mirage moving across a landscapein spring-time in one continuous stream of vibrationsThat is the

radiance of thine own true nature. Recognize it. From the midst of thatradiance, the natural sound of Reality, reverberating like a thousand

thunders simultaneously sounding, will come. That is the natural sound ofthine own real self. (Evans-Wentz, 104)

While the first light comes from being strictly the individuals consciousness, this second

light seems to represent the individuals greater nature, as the individual is more

separated from his body, and thus the lived world. For the bulk of the text, the goal is

to chase, find, follow, and understand this light and its variations. Thus light, effectively,

is truth, and coming to grips with it allows the individual to enter nirvana.

For the first five days, the color of this light changes, shifting from blue to white

to yellow to red to green, with each of those colors representing something unique. The

blue light is introduced first, and is the light of the Tathagata. Its described that

The Wisdom of theDharma-Dhatu, blue in color, shining, transparent,

glorious, dazzling, from the heart of Vairochana as the Father-Mother, will


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shoot forth and strike against thee with a light so radiant that thou wiltscarcely be able to look at it. (Evans-Wentz, 106)

Each of the colored lights are described as such, though with the white light representing

the Vajra-Sattva, Mirror-like Wisdom; the yellow light the Ratna-Sambhava, Wisdom of

Equality; the red light Amitabha, Discriminating Wisdom; and the final green light as the

Wisdom of Perfected Actions. It is the deads objective to follow these lights, though

they may be afraid of the light. Every light also comes with a corresponding dull light.

With the blue light, there will also shine a dull white light from the devas, which will

strike against thee in thy front. (Evans-Wentz, 106) Each of these dull lights presents a

place for the individual to run to, a tempting home, though a home that ultimately leads

back to rebirth. Individuals, wanting to get rid of their suffering and fear, will run to

these dull lights initially, which later become the wombs of rebirth. The order of the dull

light, and their corresponding temptation goes as such: white, devas; green, asuras;

yellow, humans; blue, brutes; red,pretas; smoke-colored, hell, such that the final dull

light, the smoke-colored light, just leads the dead individual directly to hell (Evans-

Wentz, 124).

The type of fear an individual feels after or during an encounter with the bright

light is dependent on the specific light and its characteristics. As each light represents a

certain kind of wisdom, and absence of that wisdom will make the dead fear the light

more. For example, thereupon, because of the power of bad karma, the glorious blue

light of the Wisdom of theDharma-Dhatuwill produce in thee fear and terror, and thou

wilt [wish to] flee from it. (Evans-Wentz, 106) Thus, the worse a persons karmais, the

more he will want to run away from the blue light. This fleeing sends the dead towards

the dull light, or the path ofsamsara. As the first five colored lights test the individuals


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wisdom resolve, the bardosfor the first five days are the longest, such that the monk

must acclimate the individual to the realm of dying and the activity of facing his own

fears, ignorance, and self. This very aspect, Id like to argue, is the most important part

of the light. It seems that the light, in all its different incarnations, represent

manifestations or elements of the self. While this may seem paradoxical given

Buddhisms anatman tradition, theBook of the Deaddescribes terror coming from facing

or encountering the self. While I dont mean to jump to comparison too quickly, this

reminds me of Sartres nausea, or the feeling that an individual experiences when they

come to understand that the world is inherently meaningless and empty. Like the dying

Tibetan, the existentialist may either run away into the dull light of bad faith, or they can

conquer their fear, look the light (or abyss) in the eye, conquer death, and come into their

own existence, free of suffering.

On the sixth day, The four colors of the primal states of the four elements [water,

earth, fire, air] will shine upon thee simultaneously, and forty-two perfectly endowed

deities, issuing from within thy heart, being the product of thine own pure love, will come

to shine. Know them. (Evans-Wentz, 119, 121) After the initial colors are known, they

are played with for the rest of the text, manifesting in different deities, demons, and

lights. Collections of Buddhas, specifically Amitabha, are introduced in a halo of

rainbow-light, such that the whole piece is visually stunning and imaginative, depicting

colorful, wondrous images of transcendence and Buddhahood (Evans-Wentz, 115). The

text keeps reminding the dying to put thy faith in the bright, dazzling, five-colored

radiance, and follow the brilliance of the light, fighting fear or terror (Evans-Wentz,

130). This emphasis on sensory information, when combined with the liberation through


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senses idea makes sense,6in that the bombardment of the individual with ideas, colors,

and visually ungraspable or ineffable things would create the sensation of an out-of-body,

or at least out-of-self experience, not unlike the stammering intoxication of beauty. This

sensory appeal necessarily treads a line between earthly revelry and spiritual

transcendence, such that the emotionally powerful blow can be dealt without veering into

the realm of hedonistic attachment. At this point, I think, is where the individuals choice

comes in, and the necessity of mind cultivation and a good guide becomes relevant. As

in the myth with Indra, the sensory experience itself is neutral, and its potency is in how

it is delivered and received. If an individual sees the lights and has a poor, frightened

reaction, he is sent back tosamsara, but if he simply experiences the light and his

possibly negative reaction to it, and chooses to follow the brilliance, the experience is

ultimately spiritually positive.

Whats perhaps surprising is that this sensory bombardment technique is not

unique to the Tibetan Book of the Deadalone, and is present in much Buddhist art and

writing. Most grandiosely, giant golden statues of Buddhas can be found in temples.

Theyre large and shimmering, such that the natural reaction to encountering one is

reverential awe. As another trope, light, for example, is present in many Buddhist sutras,

as the Buddha smiled, and a golden light shone from his mouth to the innumerable

Buddha-fields of the ten quarters, illuminating them all brightly. Returning, it circled his

body three times, and entered through the top of his head, or Amithaba's Light covers

everything and makes it look like one uniform color of solid gold. Contradictions are

human and logical. Amithaba knows of no logicalness nor of illogicalness. He transcends

contradictions. (Pratyutpanna samadhi sutra, 50;Infinite Light, 7) Here, light comes

6Pun!


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from the top of Buddhas head, to serve as physical and intellectual enlightenment

almost as a beacon for people to gather around but also a marker of extreme

understanding. Almost universally, light serves as a very basic metaphor and unifying

device in the Buddhist scriptures, as a metaphor or synecdoche for Buddha and all the

wisdom and understanding he entails. Particularly, Amithaba, the Buddha from the Pure

Land, is specifically the Light Buddha, and is said to be able to dispel confusion and

ignorance with his sheer physical presence. In the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Amithaba

is presented surrounded by a rainbow halo, which is likely a reference to the rainbow

body, or a metaphorical sign of the end of self, in which, upon enlightenment, certain

individuals emit rainbow colored lights around them, not unlike the Buddhas golden

light (Tokarska-Bakir, 110). Id like to almost argue that the psychophysical nature of

Buddhism would make viscerally-minded art and text possible or sensible. If the mind-

body unity is thoroughly believed in, then it makes sense that an idea contained in art or

text would be believed to be able to elicit a universal emotional response, such that a

physical, emotional interaction with light could indicate or stir an intellectual

enlightenment.

Perhaps, then, that begs the question as to how, physically, light would stir that

enlightenment. One of the unique aspects of light is that its all penetrating and all

encompassing, capable of interacting in places and levels of existence and life. For

example, in theLotus Sutra, Buddha

emitted a ray of light from the tuft of hair between his eyebrows, one ofhis characteristic features, lighting up eighteen thousand worlds in the

eastern direction. There was no place the light did not penetrate, reachingdownward as far as the Avichi hell and upward to the Akanishtha heaven.

From this world one could see the living beings in the six paths ofexistence in all of those other lands. (Lotus Sutra, 6)


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This passage directly demonstrates that light is capable of crossing physical realities,

throughout the lived world and between heaven and Hell. The physical nature of light

makes sense with this, as its physical presence is obviously detectable, but also physically

intangible. Light is almost liminal, except its full and present, almost diametrically

opposed to Buddhisms doctrine of emptiness. While Im not sure where precisely this

leads to, it seems that light serves as the direct mirror for emptiness; to understand

emptiness, the individual must receive, follow, and understand light. The paradox occurs

in the idea that following something full and bright and overwhelming will lead you to a

belief and understanding in absolute nothingness, and perhaps the only way I can make

sense of this is that the hyper-sensory experiences provoke a self-explosion; the self

becomes hyper-stimulated such that it breaks, explodes, and comes to be nothing.

However, the unique part of the Tibetan Book of the Deadis not just its use of

light, but its use of colored light. Color is ever-present in Indian Buddhist texts,

presented in the form of gems and flowers. For example, ThePure Land Sutradescribes

lotus ponds, and in those lotus ponds grow lotus flowers. Some are blueintensely

blue, or with a blue sheen, or with a tinge of blue. (Shorter Sutra, 17) This passage

repeats for yellow, red, white, and multicolored flowers, dazzling the senses just as the

Lotus Sutras depiction of gemmed buildings, where people should

..Make offerings to the relics,

raising ten thousand or a million kinds of towers,using gold, silver, and crystal,

seashell and agate,carnelian, lapis lazuli, pearls

to purify and adorn them extensively,in this way erecting towers; (Lotus Sutra, 38)


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This depiction, like the Buddhas light is sensorialy overwhelming, creating worlds of

colors more beautiful than anything possible in reality. An element of reality, however,

may play a part in the colorfulness of Indian Buddhist sutras in particular. As Tibet is

situated directly between Chinas Bronze Land and Indias Gem and Flower Garden, it

received sutras from both places. Geographically, India is far more color, having caves

full of gem stones and precious metals, and a warm, wet climate, favorable towards the

growth of flowers and the evolution of bright animals. The color, perhaps, in the lights of

theLiberation Upon Hearingcould be a sense homage to the physical surroundings and

climate of the place where the text was written. Simply, if life is colorful, then death

must be, too.

Most simply, the Tibetan Book of the Deaddepicts the journey of a dying man

through layers and weeks of colored lights, bright and dull. Hes instructed to follow the

most brilliant sensation and told to overcome fears that only represent moral failings on

his own part. This journey through the liminal bardosallow every person the same

opportunity to follow the path to nirvana, stripping people down to just their base

consciousness, self-control, and awareness. Most simply, the bright light is quite

obviously a reference to the clear light of death, the most fundamental of reality itself,

as light represents the origin of consciousness, living, and dying (Cuervas, 43). The color

and sensory background present an overwhelming experience, and the overall project

seems to argue for the possibility of a deeply sensory feeling to provoke a profound

emotional and intellectual response. This unity, of the body and the mind; of the senses

and the intellect; of the light and the emptiness, places death as a nexus point, embedding


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the individual entirely in the reality that his consciousness is both entirely unique, and

entirely empty.

Comparison

After tearing apart and making the Tibetan dying light significantly strange, Id

now like to bring it to comparison, thrusting the multi-colored lights against Howard

Storms Gods dying light. In attempt to unite and pick apart this comparison, Ill also

draw heavily from Susan BlackmoresDying to Live, a compendium of information

about near death experiences with a biological and psychological basis. Ideally, Ill raise

the issue of the possible biological human universal, or the idea that the physical, visceral

experience is something universally translatable, to some extent, across cultural contexts.

For background, in 1985, American Professor Howard Storm had a near death

experience in a Parisian hospital, in which he apparently floated out of his body and then

into a darkness where he was attacked by demons. From that attack, something in him

cried out a prayer, and he was surrounded by what he describes as Gods white light. For

likely the first time in his life, he felt overwhelmingly loved and cradled in divine hands.

Through the happiness, though, he was sent back to earth, composing the bookMy

Descent into Death, which depicted his experience.

Susan Blackmore is an English writer interested in Near Death Experiences

(NDE) and, currently, the transmission of memes. Her interest in NDEs came from what

she believe was an out of body experience in 1987. Through studying the possibilities of

astral projection and afterlife, she ultimately decided that death is just the end.


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Both authors, of course, come from modern, Western frameworks. Storm, at the

time of his experience considered himself somewhat of a grumpy, self-righteous atheist,

though his NDE converted him to become a Pastor in the United Church of Christ, and

currently believes in an afterlife. Blackmore, it appears, was a New Ager-turned-

skeptical scientific materialist after immersing herself in the study of NDEs.

First, Ill tackle Storms NDE. His depiction of the death light is not particularly

unique or exciting, and seems to fall in line with the Western traditions view of the

light at the end of the tunnel. He writes,

Far off in the darkness I saw a pinpoint of light like the faintest star in thesky. I wondered why I hadnt seen it before. The star was rapidly getting

brighter and brighter. At first I thought it might be some thing, notsomeone. It was moving toward me at an alarming rate. As it came

closer, I realized that I was right in its path and I might be consumed by itsbrilliance. I couldnt take my eyes off it; the light was more intense and

more beautiful than anything I had ever seen. It was brighter than the sun,brighter than a flash of lightening.[The light turns out to be God/Jesus.]

(My Descent into Death, 25)

In his vision, he equates the light to God, depicting the overwhelmingly sensorial

experience of a light that grows larger and larger until it fully encompasses him,

physically and spiritually. The all-consuming nature of the light, it seems, gives Storm

the impression that the light is God, who is able to touch him physically, emotionally, and

intellectually. One of Storms most important points, is the sheer reality of his

experience. He spends most of his text, almost desperately or evangelically, attempting

to convince that his experience

was tooreal. In some ways I was more aware and sensitive than I hadever been. Everything that was happening couldnt be possible, yet it was

happening. This was not a dream or a hallucination, but I wished that itwere. Everything I had experienced before this compared to the way that I

was now experiencing reality. I was frightened, exhausted, cold and lost.


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It was clear that the help these terrible beings had first promised was just aruse to trick me into following them. (My Descent into Death, 16)

Though he provides sensory depiction, recall, and understanding, his writing

emphatically recalls the realityof everything, as he confirms over and over again the

truth of his experience. While Im not particularly sure Storm can offer much in the way

of philosophical insight, Ill leave his story in this trust, handing off the bulk of the

scientific-philosophical proof-discussion to Blackmore, hoping her NDE research can

elucidate Storms affectations.

To narrow my focus back to the beginning of this paper, I think it would be

relevant to compare Robert Thurmans interpretation of the Tibetan Book of the Deads

main, clear light against Storm and Blackmores collection of light descriptions.

Thurman attempts to translate the idea of the Clear Light, saying that in the Tibetan

tradition, it

indicates the subtlest light that illuminates the profoundest reality of the

universe. It is a light like glass, like diamond, like the predawn twilight,

different from the lights of the sun, moon, and Rahu, the planet ofdarkness. It is an inconceivable light, beyond the duality of bright anddark, a light of the self-luminosity of all things. Hence transparency is a

good rendering, as is clear light, as long as clear is understood astransparent and not bright. (Thurman, 251)

The light here, is not of a particular color, or, if it is a color, its not a color we

particularly have a name for. If it were simply transparent, it would just be black, or the

color of whatever tunnel background it shone against. Thurman notes that the power, or

perhaps the ineffability, of the light is the most important part about it. Somethingabout

the light is very much recognizable and potent, but the specific element of that potency is

illusive. As Storm focuses more on the lights brightness, but not color, similarly,

Blackmore has problems quantifying or describing the light, as it is often described as


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warm and loving, or bright, or goldenother colored lights are very rare. (Dying to

Live, 91-92) Immediately, color is not what comes to mind, and the lights atmosphere or

emotional-physical power is the main resonant. While Blackmore doesgive it a golden

hue, she also describes that gold is the best guess, such that the light is not precisely

gold, white, yellow, or silver. As children are taught very early color differentiations,

while emotions are often still unclear jumbles for most peoples lives, its interesting the

feeling of love is so consistent, while no one can agree upon a definitive color swatch.

Tying this ambiguity with Storms very definitive belief in the divine love he felt,

Im lead to wonder about the nature of the nature of light as substance and the origin of

the light. For this, Ill first turn to Blackmores collection of Near Death Experiences.

Her collection, most usefully, includes a list of elements common to most NDEs;

specifically,

Ineffability, Hearing the news, Feelings of peace and quiet, The noise, Thedark tunnel, Going out of body, Meeting others, The review, The border or

limitSeeing the light, entering the light. (Dying to Live, 24-25)

By taking surveys of NDEs from around the world, Blackmore has attempted to breech

the problem of context, though she perfectly sums up the problem of comparison on this

level, saying

You cannot find the real thing underneath by stripping [experience andcontext] away. If there is no one there, only the experience, then little can

be said about it beyond dealing directly with the accounts of suchexperiences. So we should not seek to peel off layers of culture and find

the core beneath. Rather we must accept that all the accounts come fromreal people living at different times and places and try to learn what we

can of human nature as it expresses itself in these different but relatedexperiences. (Dying to Live, 20)

Such that, even though the Tibetan Book of the Deadshares many of the elements of

Blackmores study or Storms experience, the point should not be trying to find a real


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foundation, since the question of reality is questionable, if not irrelevant, out of the

specific context of the society and time period in which the experience is being had.

Strangely, though, the Tibetan Book of the Deadgoes through many of the phases

Blackmore indicates, though predominately only in the first bardo. Specifically, I was

able to find five out of the eight components of Blackmores NDE within the first day of

the death. With the exception of the feelings of peace and quiet, the dark tunnel, and the

border or limit, I was able to find:

Ineffability: When the consciousness-principle getteth outside [the body,it sayeth to itself,] Am I dead, or am I not dead? It cannot determine.

(Evans-Wentz, 98)Hearing the news: It seeth its relatives and connexions as it had been

used to seeing them before. It even heareth the wailings. (Evans-Wentz,98)

The noise: From the midst of that radiance, the natural sound of Reality,reverberating like a thousand thunders simultaneously sounding, will

come. (Evans-Wentz, 104)Going out of body: About this time [the deceased] can see that the share

of food is being set aside, tha the body is being stripped of its garmets.(Evans-Wentz, 101)

Meeting others: Peaceful deities, Amithaba

The review: Judgment of lightsSeeing/Entering the light: The Clear Light of Reality

While perhaps some of these are confusing, and I dont wish to be too vague, the

similarities line up nicely. Given that the goal of the first bardois for the individual to

shed his physical body, and move into the spiritual realm with his illusory-body, I

wonder if the elements shared between The Great Liberationand Blackmores study do

have to do with physical death (Evans-Wentz, 100). If this link were verifiable, that

could give some biological basis to death.

Blackmore argues that these experiences are caused by the release of endorphins

as the bodys response to the stress of the brains asphyxiation, and the dying. While she


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does not desire to reduce the body to sheer meaningless scientific materialism, she argues

for a solidly psychophysical connection of brain chemicals and experience.

The real thing comes from God, from another plane, from something

way beyond complex molecules interacting with brain cells. Well does it?Of course I think not. It is my contention that this real thingNDEs,mystical experiences and indeed everything encountered on the spiritual

pathare products of a brain and the universe of which it is a partIt isour longing for something more that leads us astray...And as far as I can

tell we are creatures who feel intense pleasure when endorphins arereleased inside our brains. (Dying to Live, 111)

By linking the spiritual part of the Near Death Experience to the body, she, in some

respects, mirrors the treatment of sensory data by the Buddhists. In believing that certain

physical stimuli will universally create the same emotional trigger or response, she

almost scientifically speaks to the Buddhists treatment of art or visceral color response.

If, perhaps, we take her analysis one step further, and claim that colors are physical

experiences, perhaps this link between color and mood is not set up exclusively as a

system of symbols (as, for example, in our culture, red means stop,7) but perhaps

psychophysical markers. I wonder if there is some essence in the colors, as there seems

to be some essence in Buddhist artfor example, the giant golden statues, as a similar

color to the golden dying light. As the Buddhist paradigm seems to argue for a colorful,

visceral connection between the outside world and enlightenment, Blackmores text

seems to argue for something similar. However, instead of the light of the Buddhas

enlightenment, Blackmore points out the possibility of brain asphyxiation and death.

This idea of psychophysical liberation through senses seems, in a lot of ways, to

speak to a previously cavernous divide between Eastern and Western metaphysics. In

7Complete and utter side note: I find it really, really interesting that red, the color of sexuality, anger, and

generally passionate emotions is used to note stop in our highly emotionally repressed culture.


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attempt to explain the Tibetan Book of the Deads sheer presence and experience as a

means of liberation, Joanna Tokarska-Bakir argues that,

Liberation through the senses is the example of cognition-not-through-

discursive-consciousness. It is striking how we can object to this term andeven more to the term cognition through unconsciousness. We might betouching upon one of the major European prejudices that associates

cognition exclusively with consciousness while equating unconsciousnesswith ignorance. (Tokarska-Bakir, 73)

Perhaps the unique message to be taken from the Tibetan Book of the Deadis not that,

one day we will be able to choose our next wombs, but that processing or understanding

can happen on a level that is not organized or controlled by ourselves or our minds.

Perhaps the ineffability of the light and the experience is what the text is arguing for, as

the experience of enlightenment in death, the great liberation, turns out to be less

intellectual and more physically or sensorially based. Im not surehowto argue for

massive paradigm shift, but I feel that, ultimately, this comparison and these texts speak

of unityif not a unity of human experience outside of context, but of sensory and

intellectual evidence, of the possibility that the senses may not need to be radically

controlled and mastered by the mind, since, in their natural state, they can profoundly

affect and contribute to intellectual experience and understanding.

If I may make an extreme claim, perhaps the doctrine of nirvanaand the ultimate

transcendence of Buddhism is just the revelation thatsamsarais a delusion, not in the

sense that the whole world is a delusion, but in the sense that the idea of rebirth is only a

comfort for those who are incapable of not fearing death. Treating rebirth as a comfort

tool means running away from deaths light and into the womb of delusion, avoiding the

one, true fact that surrounds, haunts, or follows all of us: were going to die, and thats it.


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to die would be an awfully big adventure: chasing death’s colored light in the tibetan book of the...

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