therefore, obviously dependent upon at least some elementary explanation of Yoga, such as we have herein given. The Clear Light, so often referred to in our text—to take but one of the outstanding yogīc doctrines—is best interpreted from the standpoint of the devotee of Yoga, though for all mankind alike it dawns at the all-determining moment of death. As such, the Clear Light symbolizes the visual condition in which one finds oneself at the moment of death and afterwards in the Intermediate State. If the vision be unclouded by karmic propensities, which are the source of all phenomena and apparitional appearances in the Bardo, the deceased sees Reality as the Primordial Clear Light, and, if he so wills, can renounce the Sangsāra and pass into Nirvāṇa, beyond the Circle of Death and Rebirth.
Such clarity of spiritual insight is, of course, extremely rare, being the fruit of innumerable lifetimes of right living; nevertheless, the aim of the Bardo Thödol teachings is to attempt to place every one, when dying or deceased, in the Path leading to its realization. Unless, through the practice of mental-concentration, complete control over the thinking process be achieved, so as to arrive at Right Knowledge ere death, in virtue of having experienced Illumination (i.e. recognition of the Clear Light in an ecstatic condition while still in the human body), the lāmas maintain that comprehension of the nature of the Clear Light is quite impossible for the unilluminated.
II. Tantricism[1]
The Bardo Thödol being itself a work more or less Tantric,[2] and consequently largely based upon the Yoga Philosophy, some general acquaintance with Tantricism, as with Yoga, is
- ↑ General references (also for Sections III and IV following): A. Avalon (Sir John Woodroffe), Tantra of the Great Liberation (London, 1913), Introduction; and The Six Centres and the Serpent Power (London, 1919), passim; Sir John Woodroffe, Shakti and Shâkta (London, 1920), passim; also Rama Prasad, Nature's Finer Forces (London, 1890), passim.
- ↑ To define what is and is not a Tantra is not easy. According to its Tibetan etymology, Tantra (Tib. Rgyud—pron. Gyud) literally means 'treatise', or 'dissertation', of a religious nature, usually belonging to the School of Yoga called Yogā-cārya Mahāyāna (see p. 2121). Religiously considered, there are two
