in much the same manner as an infant new-born in the human world begins to employ the human plane sense-faculties—he is enabled to think how he may win this or that state of existence. Karma is, however, still his master, and defines his limitations. As on the human plane the sentimental impulses are most active in youth and often lost in mature life, wherein reason commonly takes the place of them, so on the after-death plane, called the Bardo, the first experiences are happier than the later experiences.
From another aspect, the chief deities themselves are the embodiments of universal divine forces, with which the deceased is inseparably related, for through him, as being the microcosm of the macrocosm, penetrate all impulses and forces, good and bad alike. Samanta-Bhadra, the All-Good, thus personifies Reality, the Primordial Clear Light of the Unborn, Unshaped Dharma-Kāya (cf. p. 95). Vairochana is the Originator of all phenomena, the Cause of all Causes. As the Universal Father, Vairochana manifests or spreads forth as seed, or semen, all things; his shakti, the Mother of Great Space, is the Universal Womb into which the seed falls and evolves as the world-systems. Vajra-Sattva symbolizes Immutability. Ratna-Sambhava is the Beautifier, the Source of all Beauty in the Universe. Amitābha is Infinite Compassion and Love Divine, the Christos. Amogha-Siddhi is the personification of Almighty Power or Omnipotence. And the minor deities, heroes, ḍākinīs (or ‘fairies’), goddesses, lords of death, rākṣḥasas, demons, spirits, and all others, correspond to definite human thoughts, passions, and impulses, high and low, human and sub-human and superhuman, in karmic form, as they take shape from the seeds of thought forming the percipient’s consciousness-content (cf. p. 219).
As the Bardo Thödol text makes very clear by repeated assertions, none of all these deities or spiritual beings has any real individual existence any more than have human beings: ‘It is quite sufficient for thee [i.e. the deceased percipient] to know that these apparitions are [the reflections of] thine own thought-forms’ (p. 104). They are merely the consciousness-content visualized, by karmic agency, as appari-
