The Tibetan Book of The Dead

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That the living do come from the dead, as Socrates intuitively perceived as he was about to drink the hemlock and experience death, this treatise maintains, not in virtue of tradition or belief, but on the sound basis of the unequivocal testimony of yogins who claim to have died and re-entered the human womb consciously.

If this treatise, bequeathed to the West by Sages of the Snowy Ranges, be as it thus purports to be, it undoubtedly offers trust- worthy guidance at the time of death and in the after-death state into which every one of human kind must inevitably pass, but of which very few of them have enlightened understanding. It is, therefore, of inestimable value.

The exploration of Man the Unknown in a manner truly scientific and yogic such as this book suggests is incomparably more important than the exploration of outer space. To stand in the physical body on the Moon, or on Venus, or on any of the celestial spheres, will add to human knowledge, but only to knowledge of things transitory. Man's ultimate goal is, as the Sages herein teach, transcendence over the transitory.

Today, as during the European Renaissance when Oriental influences inspired a number of remarkable treatises on the Art of Dying (to which reference is hereinafter made), there is an ever- increasing desire to know more of man's origin and destiny. As the recently deceased Great Teacher Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi, of Tiruvannamalai, South India, admonished me when I sojourned in his ashram, each of us should ask ourself, 'Who, or what, am I? Why am I here incarnate? Whither am I destined? Why is there birth and why is there death?"

Strive after the Good before the art in danger, before pain masters thee and thy mind ears its beenness-Kaldas Tanta.

Titz thought of death suggests two questions. The first is: 'How may one avoid death, except when death is desired as in "Death-at-will" (Ichchhamritya)?" The avoidance of death is the aim when Hathiryoga is used to prolong present life in the flesh. This is not, in the Western sense, a yea saying' to 'life', but, for the time being, to a particular form of life. Dr. Evans-Wentz tells us that according to popular Tibetan belief no death is natural. This is the notion of most, if not of all, primitive peoples. Moreover, physiology also questions whether there is any 'natural death', in the sense of death through mere age without lesion or malady. This Text, however, in the language of the renouncer of fleshly life the world over, tells the nobly-bors that Death comes to all, that human kind are not to cling to life on earth with its ceaseless wandering in the Worlds of birth and death (Sangsara). Kather should they implore the aid of the Divine Mother for a safe passing through the fearful state following the body's dissolution, and that they may at length attain all- perfect Buddhahood.

The second question then is: How to accept Death and die? It is with this that we are now concerned. Here the technique of dying makes Death the entrance to good future lives, at first out of, and then again in, the flesh, unless and until liberation (Nirvana) from the wandering (Sangsára) is attained.