through the Brahmanic aperture.[1] Now the real setting-face-to-face is to be applied.
At this moment, the first [glimpsing] of the Bardo of the Clear Light of Reality, which is the Infallible Mind of the Dharma-Kāya, is experienced by all sentient beings.
The interval between the cessation of the expiration and the cessation of the inspiration is the time during which the vital-force remaineth in the median-nerve.[2]
The common people call this the state wherein the consciousness-principle[3] hath fainted away. The duration of this state is uncertain. [It dependeth] upon the constitu- tion, good or bad, and [the state of] the nerves and vital- force, In those who have had even a little practical experience of the firm, tranquil state of dhyāna, and in those who have sound nerves, this state continueth for a long time.[4]
- ↑ See pp. 18, 873, 215. If non-distracted, and alertly conscious, at this psychological moment, the dying person will realize, through the power conferred by the reading of the Thödol, the importance of holding the vital-force in the median-nerve till it passes out thence through the Aperture of Brāhma.
- ↑ After the expiration has ceased, the vital-force (lit. ‘inner-breath’) is thought to remain in the median-nerve so long as the heart continues to throb.
- ↑ Text: rnam-shes (pron, nam-she): Skt. vijñāna or, preferably, chaitanya: ‘conscious-principle’ or ‘object-knowing principle’.
- ↑ Sometimes it may continue for seven days, but usually only for four or five days. The consciousness-principle, however, save in certain conditions of trance, such as a yogī, for example, can induce, is not necessarily resident in the body all the while; normally it quits the body at the moment called death, holding a subtle magnetic-like relationship with the body until the state referred to in the text comes to an end. Only for adepts in yoga would the departure of the consciousness-principle be accomplished without break in the continuity of the stream of consciousness, that is to say, without the swoon state referred to.
The death process is the reverse of the birth process, birth being the incarnating, death the discarnating of the consciousness-principle ; but, in both alike, there is a passing from one state of consciousness into another. And, just as a babe must wake up in this world and learn by experience the nature of this world, so, likewise, a person at death must wake up in the Bardo world and become familiar with its own peculiar conditions. The Bardo body, formed of matter in an invisible or ethereal-like state, is an exact duplicate of the human body, from which it is separated in the process of death, Retained in the Bardo body are the consciousness-principle and the psychic nerve-system (the counterpart, for the psychic or Bardo body, of the physical nerve-system of the human body). (Cf. p. 1613.)
to the outgoing of the consciousness in the process of death,’—Sj. Atal Bihari Ghosh.
