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Tibetan Book of the Dead - Visualising rebirth 1
Identifier
010707
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
This is part of a very long description which constitutes an exercise in understanding what rebirth can entail. It has been interpreted by some I think as a description of what happens on death, but the only way the sages would have known this was to have assumed that what happens on rebirth happens on death and I am afraid that logically we cannot assume this. So this is not death, it is a description of a rebirth experience.
A description of the experience
Amidst an expanse of light in the eastern channel branch of one's skull,
[Stands] Gauri, white in colour, holding a human-corpse cudgel and a skull;
Amidst an expanse of light in the southern channel branch of one's skull,
[Stands] Cauri, yellow in colour, shooting an arrow from a bow;
Amidst an expanse of light in the western channel branch of one's skull,
[Stands] Pramoha, red in colour, holding a crocodile victory-banner;
Amidst an expanse of light in the northern channel branch of one's skull,
[Stands] Vetali, black in colour, holding a vajra and a blood-filled skull;
Amidst an expanse of light in the south-eastern channel branch of one's skull,
[Stands] Pukkast, red-yellow in colour, clutching and devouring entrails;
Amidst an expanse of light in the south-western channel branch of one's skull,
[Stands] Ghasmarl, green-black in colour, stirring a blood-filled skull with a vajra;
Amidst an expanse of light in the north-western channel branch of one's skull,
[Stands] Caldali, pale-yellow in colour, [clutching] a human corpse and eating its heart;
Amidst an expanse of light in the north-eastern channel branch of one's skull,
[Stands] SmaSant, blue-black in colour, tearing apart the head and body of a bloated corpse.
OM AH HUM
To you, the Eight Matarah, beginning with Gauri,
[Who are embodiments] of the [eight] classes [of consciousness],
I bow down, make offerings, take refuge, and pray:
As soon As we die and begin to transmigrate,
At that very moment, when the visions of the intermediate state of reality dawn,
And we roam [alone] in cyclic existence[driven] by deep-seated confused perceptions,
May the four Matarah, beginning utith Gauri, draw us forward,
Leading us on the path of light,
Which is [the vibrance of] the sounds, lights and rays [of the eight classes of consciousness].
May the four Matarah, beginning uith Pukkasi, support us from behind,
And thus [encircled] rnay we be rescued
From the fearsome passageway of the intermediate state,
And be escorted to the level of an utterly perfected buddha.