The Tibetan Book of the Dead

Padmasambhava (Guru Rinpoche): The Legendary Author

Padmasambhava — known reverentially as Guru Rinpoche ("Precious Guru") — was a semi-legendary tantric Vajra master from Uddiyana (modern-day Swat, Pakistan). A Tantrist affiliated with the Yogachara sect, he taught at the famed Nalanda university in India before being invited to Tibet in 747 CE by King Trisong Detsen (r. 755–797).

His primary mission was to overcome the demonic forces obstructing the construction of Samye Monastery, Tibet's first Buddhist monastery. According to tradition, he exorcised the demons causing earthquakes and supervised the monastery's completion in 749 CE. He then spread Vajrayana Buddhism throughout Tibet, specifically introducing the practice of Tantra.

While his historicity was questioned by earlier Tibetologists, scholar Lewis Doney notes it is now "cautiously accepted." The earliest chronicle source, the Testament of Ba (Dba' bzhed, c. 9th–12th centuries), records his role in founding Samye.

The Terma Tradition: Hidden Treasures

According to legend, Padmasambhava did not write the Bardo Thodol himself. He spontaneously dictated the teachings to his primary student, Yeshe Tsogyal — a Tibetan princess who became known as the "Mother of Tibetan Buddhism" and the first Tibetan to achieve enlightenment. She transcribed the text and then concealed it in a cave high on a mountain in central Tibet's Gampo hills.

Padmasambhava prophesied that the text would be rediscovered more than 500 years later, when it would be most needed. This practice of concealing sacred texts for later revelation is called terma (hidden treasure), and those who discover them are called tertons (treasure revealers). It reflects a distinctive Nyingma Buddhist conviction that certain teachings must wait for the right historical moment.

Historical Timeline

I. The Painful Bardo of Dying (Chikhai Bardo)

The Outer Dissolution: Elements Collapsing

As death approaches, the five elements that compose the body dissolve sequentially. This is not metaphorical in the Tibetan tradition — it describes a phenomenological sequence that the dying person experiences, with both external signs visible to observers and inner visions perceived by the dying.

The Inner Dissolution: Three Appearances

After the outer dissolution completes, the process continues at a subtler level. This inner dissolution involves the movement of "drops" (tigle) through the central channel:

Then: Out of the blackness arises the Clear Light of Death — a brilliant, luminous awareness like the first light of dawn. This is the supreme moment of liberation. (See the Clear Light tab for full details.)

II. The Luminous Bardo of Dharmata (Chonyid Bardo)

If the Clear Light is not recognized, consciousness enters the bardo of dharmata — "the nature of reality." Here, the pure, infinite expanse of the basic nature of reality is experienced directly. Over the following days, consciousness encounters a sequence of visions:

• Days 1–7: The 42 peaceful deities appear, each radiating brilliant colored light associated with one of the five Buddha families. Simultaneously, dim, seductive lights of the six realms of samsara beckon. The text urges: follow the brilliant light, not the dim.
• Days 8–14: The 58 wrathful deities manifest — terrifying, blood-drinking, flame-wreathed forms. The text insists these are the same deities in their fierce aspect, projections of one's own mind. Recognition brings liberation.

The key teaching: every vision is a projection of your own consciousness. The peaceful deities represent your purified awareness. The wrathful deities represent your unresolved mental poisons transformed into wisdom-energy. There is nothing external here — only mind meeting itself.

III. The Karmic Bardo of Becoming (Sidpa Bardo)

If liberation was not achieved in either of the previous bardos, consciousness enters the bardo of becoming — a dreamlike state driven by karmic momentum. Key features:

• Mental body: The consciousness possesses a "mental body" that can travel instantaneously by thought, pass through solid objects, and perceive without physical senses.
• Enhanced faculties: The text claims the intellect becomes "ninefold more lucid." Senses are restored — even the blind can see, the deaf can hear.
• Communication barrier: The deceased can see and hear the living, but cannot be seen or heard in return — causing great distress.
• Mirror of Karma: The Lord of Death (Yama Dharmaraja) consults the "Mirror of Karma," reflecting every deed. No deception is possible.
• Rebirth visions: The consciousness is drawn toward scenes of copulating couples (future parents), flickering lights, and landscapes corresponding to the six realms. The text provides instructions for closing the "door of the womb" and selecting a favorable rebirth if liberation is not achieved.

Even in this final bardo, liberation remains possible. The text provides multiple "escape routes" at every stage, reflecting the Buddhist conviction that awakening is always available.

The Moment Everything Depends On

At the culmination of the inner dissolution — after the white, red, and black appearances have passed — there arises what Tibetan Buddhism calls the Clear Light of Death ('od gsal). This is described as a brilliant, boundless luminosity, like the sky at dawn, utterly empty yet radiantly clear.

This moment is considered the single most important point in the entire Bardo Thodol. If the dying person can recognize this light as the fundamental nature of their own mind — not as something external, not as something to fear, but as what they have always been — liberation is achieved instantaneously. The consciousness merges with the dharmakaya (the "truth body" of enlightenment) and the cycle of birth and death ends.

Levels of Liberation in the Bardos

The Zhitro Mandala: 100 Forms of Mind

The Zhitro (Tibetan: zhi khro, "Peaceful and Wrathful") mandala comprises 100 deities — 42 peaceful and 58 wrathful — located in the heart, throat, and crown chakras. They manifest to the deceased during the bardo of dharmata as luminous visions of extraordinary intensity. The central teaching: these are not external gods. They are the purified and energized aspects of the meditator's own psychophysical aggregates, sensory processes, and mental states.

The Five Buddha Families (Heart of the Mandala)

The five central Buddhas represent the transformation of the five primary delusions into the five primordial wisdoms:

Complete Structure of the 42 Peaceful Deities

The 58 Wrathful Deities

After days of peaceful visions, the mandala transforms. The same enlightened energies now appear in their wrathful, terrifying aspect — blood-drinking, flame-wreathed, weapon-wielding. The message: what you could not accept gently, you will now face fiercely.

Jung's Psychological Interpretation

Carl Jung read the peaceful and wrathful deities as archetypes — universal patterns embedded in the collective unconscious. In his framework, the peaceful deities represent the archetypes when consciousness can accept them in their benign form. The wrathful deities are the same archetypes when consciousness resists — when the ego's defenses transform wisdom into terror.

"Not only the 'wrathful' but also the 'peaceful' deities are conceived as samsaric projections of the human psyche." — Carl G. Jung, Psychological Commentary

The entire bardo journey, in Jung's reading, is a confrontation with the contents of one's own psyche projected outward into visionary form — parallel to the process of individuation, the quest for psychological wholeness.

What the Lama Must Do

The Bardo Thodol is not a philosophical text to be read in solitude — it is a liturgical manual with specific performance instructions:

• Begin before death if possible. The recitation should start as the dying person enters the dissolution process, ideally while they are still conscious enough to hear and reflect.
• Read close to the ear. The text specifies: the reader shall put his lips close to the ear of the dying person and repeat the instructions distinctly, clearly, impressing it upon the dying person so as to prevent his mind from wandering even for a moment.
• Continue for 49 days. Recitation does not stop at death. Monks read the text daily, accompanied by mantras and sacred chants, for the full 49-day period of the bardo transition.
• If the body is absent: A ritual image (jangbu) — a picture of the deceased on white paper attached to a stick — is placed on the altar before the lama, and the consciousness is "summoned" to receive the instructions.

The 49-Day Recitation Schedule

The bardo journey is traditionally divided into seven-day cycles, each corresponding to different phases of post-mortem experience. Scholar Bryan J. Cuevas notes that "the length and frequency of recitation and ritual performance is dependent largely on the wealth of the family" — wealthier families could afford more elaborate and sustained ritual support.

Evans-Wentz: The Flawed Pioneer (1927)

Walter Yeeling Evans-Wentz (1878–1965), an American anthropologist, published the first English translation of the Bardo Thodol through Oxford University Press in 1927. The actual translation was performed by Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup (1868–1922); Evans-Wentz credited himself as compiler and editor.

Evans-Wentz deliberately titled it "The Tibetan Book of the Dead" to mirror the Egyptian text published in 1867 — a marketing decision that would shape Western perception for a century. But his interpretation was deeply problematic. Scholar John Myrdhin Reynolds identified fundamental distortions:

Evans-Wentz's interpretation was "fundamentally neither Tibetan nor Buddhist, but Theosophical and Vedantist," incorporating Hindu-derived terminology and theosophical concepts rather than Buddhist frameworks. — John Myrdhin Reynolds, scholar of Tibetan Buddhism

After Dawa-Samdup's death, Evans-Wentz extensively reworked the translations, basing his interpretive conclusions on the Spiritualism of Madame Blavatsky and the neo-Vedantic views of his guru Swami Satyananda. The result was "truly idiosyncratic and impressionistic" — yet it introduced an entire civilization to Tibetan Buddhism.

Carl Jung: The Psychologist's Reading (1935)

Jung contributed a Psychological Commentary to the third edition that would prove enormously influential. He wrote: "For years, ever since it was first published, the Bardo Thodol has been my constant companion, and to it I owe not only many stimulating ideas and discoveries, but also many fundamental insights."

Key elements of Jung's interpretation:

• The bardo journey is a map of the unconscious, not a literal afterlife itinerary
• Peaceful and wrathful deities are archetypal projections from the collective unconscious
• The text operates from "both-and" thinking, allowing deities to be simultaneously psychological and metaphysical — a paradox Western logic struggles to accommodate
• He cautioned against wholesale Western adoption of Eastern practices, warning of "dangers for western man"

"The Bardo Thodol began by being a 'closed' book, and so it has remained. For it is a book that will only open itself to spiritual understanding, and this is a capacity which no man is born with, but which he can only acquire through special training and special experience." — Carl G. Jung

Timothy Leary: The Psychedelic Adaptation (1964)

In 1964, Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert (later Ram Dass) published The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Aldous Huxley had introduced the text to Leary.

They reinterpreted the three bardos as phases of a psychedelic session:

In 1966, John Lennon purchased Leary's book and drew directly from it for the Beatles' song "Tomorrow Never Knows" on Revolver. The opening lyrics — "Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream" — paraphrase Leary's instructions for navigating the first bardo. This is perhaps the most famous cultural artifact of the Bardo Thodol's Western journey.

Gyurme Dorje (2005)

The first complete translation of the entire text cycle, published by Penguin Classics with the Dalai Lama's opening words. Dorje (PhD, Nyingma specialist), working with Graham Coleman and Thupten Jinpa, translated nine previously unavailable chapters, presenting the Great Liberation by Hearing in its full and most authoritative form for the first time in any Western language. Deemed a landmark in Buddhist studies.

Remarkable Convergences Across 1,200 Years

When Dr. Raymond Moody published Life After Life in 1975, coining the term "near-death experience," he was already aware of the Bardo Thodol and found it "astonishingly cognate" with the 100+ NDEs he had documented. Since then, researchers have catalogued a striking set of parallels between modern NDE reports and an 8th-century Tibetan text — parallels that span cultures, centuries, and belief systems.

Point-by-Point Phenomenological Comparison

The Delok Tradition: Tibetan NDEs

Tibet has its own tradition of near-death experiences, centuries older than Moody's research. The delok (Tibetan: 'das log, "returned from death") were individuals who apparently died, remained seemingly lifeless for hours or days, then revived and reported detailed accounts of otherworldly journeys.

These accounts contain elaborate descriptions of Buddhist afterlife landscapes, judgment scenes, and encounters with Yama Dharmaraja — experiences that match the Bardo Thodol's descriptions with remarkable specificity. While skeptics note that cultural conditioning could shape these reports, the delok tradition provides indigenous Tibetan evidence that the Bardo Thodol's descriptions were not purely theoretical but were grounded in reported experiences.

Scholarly Assessment

Carl Becker (Kyoto University), in his 1985 paper "Views from Tibet: NDEs and the Book of the Dead" (Anabiosis: Journal for Near-Death Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1), argued that Tibetan Buddhist philosophical idealism has the potential to explain some previously inadequately understood NDE findings, including personal and cultural variations in the experience.

The question remains open: do these parallels indicate that the Bardo Thodol is describing something real about the dying process? Or do both traditions — ancient Tibetan and modern NDE — reflect common neurological processes in the dying brain, interpreted through different cultural lenses? The convergence is striking enough that neither explanation can be dismissed.

Two Fundamentally Different Ontologies

The Tukdam Phenomenon: Where Frameworks Collide

Tukdam is a meditative state said to occur after clinical death in advanced Vajrayana practitioners. The body shows minimal signs of decomposition, retaining a lifelike appearance for days or even weeks — despite environmental conditions that should accelerate decay.

The Scientific Investigation

The Tukdam Project, a collaboration between the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Tibetan monastic universities, has produced two major findings:

The Paradox

The tukdam research presents a genuine scientific puzzle: the brain shows no detectable activity, yet the body resists decomposition in ways that have no established explanation. Tibetan Buddhism says the practitioner is "still dying" — a subtle consciousness remains. Western science says they are dead but cannot explain the delayed decay.

Researchers are careful to note: while neuroscience does not support the 49-day bardo timeline, recent studies on post-mortem brain activity in non-meditators also suggest that some level of neural function may persist briefly after clinical death — adding complexity to the binary alive/dead distinction that Western medicine has traditionally assumed.

What Is Phowa?

Phowa (Tibetan: 'pho ba; Sanskrit: samkranti) means "transference of consciousness." It is a Vajrayana Buddhist practice that aims to eject consciousness through the crown aperture (brahmarandhra) at the moment of death, bypassing the bardo states entirely and transferring directly to a Buddha-field — most commonly Sukhavati, the Pure Land of Amitabha Buddha.

It is considered the "fastest way to obtain an enlightened state" and represents an alternative to the bardo navigation described in the Bardo Thodol. Where the Bardo Thodol guides consciousness through the bardos, phowa aims to skip them entirely.

Lineage and Transmission

The primary phowa lineage derives from the Six Yogas of Naropa, one of the most important practice systems in Tibetan Buddhism:

The Drikung Kagyu school historically celebrates the "Great Drikung Phowa" festival every twelve years. The practice requires initiation, oral transmission, and direct instruction from a qualified lineage holder — it is explicitly warned that practicing without proper authorization is dangerous.

Ethical Dimension

"We have to choose the right time to transfer our consciousness; we're not allowed to do it at the wrong time because that becomes suicide." — Thubten Yeshe, Tibetan Buddhist teacher

Phowa is not simply a technique — it carries a strict ethical framework. Premature application (before death is imminent) constitutes taking life. Accomplished practitioners can also perform phowa on behalf of others who have died, acting as a pho-debs lama (consciousness-transference specialist).

Phowa vs. the Bardo Thodol: Two Strategies for Death

In Dzogchen teachings, phowa is described as serving those of "lesser faculties" who cannot achieve awakening during the bardo through direct recognition. It is the emergency exit when the main door fails.

Why the Comparison Exists

The comparison was built into the text from birth. When Evans-Wentz chose the title "The Tibetan Book of the Dead" in 1927, he was deliberately evoking the Book of the Dead (Egyptian: Pert Em Hru, "Book of Coming Forth by Day") first published in English by E.A. Wallis Budge in 1895. Evans-Wentz detected structural parallels: both texts describe stages through which the deceased must travel before their fate is determined.

But the title masks profound differences. These are not two versions of the same document — they are products of radically different civilizations, cosmologies, and views of consciousness.

Comprehensive Comparison

Key Similarities Despite the Differences

The Deepest Divergence

The Egyptian Book of the Dead operates within a framework where the afterlife is real and external — the gods exist independently, the Field of Reeds is an actual place, and the soul must navigate real terrain. The Tibetan Book of the Dead operates within a framework where the afterlife is a projection of mind — the deities are aspects of one's own consciousness, the bardos are mental states, and liberation comes from recognizing this fact.

In Egypt, you survive death by proving yourself worthy to external judges. In Tibet, you transcend death by recognizing that the judges, the terrain, and the self being judged are all manifestations of the same mind.

Primary Texts & Translations

1. Evans-Wentz, W.Y. (ed.), trans. Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup. The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Oxford University Press, 1927.
2. Fremantle, Francesca & Chögyam Trungpa. The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Shambhala, 1975.
3. Thurman, Robert A.F. The Tibetan Book of the Dead: Liberation Through Understanding in the Between. HarperCollins, 1994.
4. Dorje, Gyurme, Graham Coleman & Thupten Jinpa (eds.). The Tibetan Book of the Dead: First Complete Translation. Penguin Classics, 2005.
5. Sogyal Rinpoche. The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. HarperSanFrancisco, 1992.
6. Leary, Timothy, Ralph Metzner & Richard Alpert. The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. University Books, 1964.

Scholarly Works & Commentary

1. Jung, Carl G. "Psychological Commentary on the Bardo Thodol." In Evans-Wentz, 3rd edition, 1935. Collected in Collected Works, Vol. 11.
2. Cuevas, Bryan J. The Hidden History of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Oxford University Press, 2003.
3. Reynolds, John Myrdhin. Self-Liberation Through Seeing with Naked Awareness. Snow Lion, 2000.
4. Becker, Carl B. "Views from Tibet: NDEs and the Book of the Dead." Anabiosis: Journal for Near-Death Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1, Spring 1985.
5. Becker, Carl B. "Death, Intermediate State, and Rebirth in Tibetan Buddhism." Journal of Near-Death Studies, 1989.
6. Becker, Carl B. Breaking the Circle: Death and the Afterlife in Buddhism. Southern Illinois University Press, 1993.
7. Doney, Lewis. The Zangs gling ma: The First Padmasambhava Biography. Lumbini International Research Institute, 2014.

Scientific Studies

1. Lott, Dylan T. et al. "No Detectable Electroencephalographic Activity After Clinical Declaration of Death Among Tibetan Buddhist Meditators in Apparent Tukdam." Frontiers in Psychology, Vol. 11, January 2021. PMC7876463
2. Tidwell, Tawni et al. "Forensic Documentation of Tukdam." Forensic Science International: Reports, May 2024. (Center for Healthy Minds summary)
3. Moody, Raymond. Life After Life. Mockingbird Books, 1975.
4. Van Lommel, Pim. "Near-Death Experience in Survivors of Cardiac Arrest." The Lancet, Vol. 358, 2001.

Web Sources Consulted

• Bardo Thodol — Wikipedia
• Tibetan Book of the Dead — World History Encyclopedia
• Zhitro (Peaceful & Wrathful Deities) — Wikipedia
• Phowa — Wikipedia
• Padmasambhava — Wikipedia
• 100 Bardo Deities Thangka — Enlightenment Thangka
• NDE Similarities — Daily Grail
• After Death States — Andrew Holecek
• Egyptian vs. Tibetan Comparison — Difftween
• Tibetan Book of Living and Dying — Wikipedia
• The Psychedelic Experience — Wikipedia
• Tomorrow Never Knows — Wikipedia
• Jung on the Bardo Thodol — Carl Jung Depth Psychology
• Tukdam Field Study — Center for Healthy Minds
• Padmasambhava — Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Becker, "Views from Tibet" — UNT Digital Library