VIII. The Psychology of the Bardo Visions
Definite psychological significance attaches to each of the deities appearing in the Bardo Thödol; but, in order to grasp it, the student must bear in mind that—as suggested above—the apparitional visions seen by the deceased in the Intermediate State are not visions of reality, but nothing more than the hallucinatory embodiments of the thought-forms born of the mental-content of the percipient; or, in other words, they are the intellectual impulses which have assumed personified form in the after-death dream-state.
Accordingly, the Peaceful Deities (Tib. Z’i-wa) are the personified forms of the sublimest human sentiments, which proceed from the psychic heart-centre. As such, they are represented as the first to dawn, because, psychologically speaking, the heart-born impulses precede the brain-born impulses. They come in peaceful aspect to control and to influence the deceased whose connexion with the human world has just been severed; the deceased has left relatives and friends behind, works unaccomplished, desires unsatisfied, and, in most cases, he possesses a strong yearning to recover the lost opportunity afforded by human embodiment for spiritual enlightenment. But, in all his impulses and yearnings, karma is all-masterful; and, unless it be his karmic lot to gain liberation in the first stages, he wanders downwards into the stages wherein the heart-impulses give way to brain-impulses.
Whereas the Peaceful Deities are the personifications of the feelings, the Wrathful Deities (Tib. T’o-wo) are the personifications of the reasonings and proceed from the psychic brain-centre. Yet, just as impulses arising in the heart-centre may transform themselves into the reasonings of the brain-centre, so the Wrathful Deities are the Peaceful Deities in a changed aspect.
As the intellect comes into activity, after the sublime heart-born impulses subside, the deceased begins to realize more and more the state in which he is; and with the supernormal faculties of the Bardo-body which he begins to make use of—
