Observations placeholder
Mircea Eliade - On Tibetan rebirth experience
Identifier
003855
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Mircea Eliade – Shamanism Archaic techniques of ecstasy
Tibet has a tantric rite named chod which is clearly shamanic in structure. It consists in offering one’s own flesh to be eaten by ‘demons’ – which is curiously reminiscent of the future shaman’s initiatory dismemberment by ’demons’ and ancestral souls.
R Bleichsteiner [L’Eglise Jaune] describes it as follows;
‘To the sound of the drum made of human skulls and of the thighbone trumpet, the dance is begun and the spirits are invited to come and feast. The power of meditation evokes a goddess brandishing a naked sword, she springs at the head of the sacrificer, decapitates him and hacks him to pieces; then the demons and wild beasts rush on the still quivering fragments, eat the flesh, and drink the blood.
The words spoken refer to certain Jatakas, which tell how the Buddha, in the course of his earlier lives, gave his own flesh to starving animals and man eating demons. But despite this Buddhist colouring’, Bleichsteiner concludes, the rite is but a ‘sinister mystery going back to primitive times’
The source of the experience
Tibetan BuddhismConcepts, symbols and science items
Concepts
Spirit helperScience Items
Activities and commonsteps
Activities
Overloads
Frenetic exerciseListening to sound and music
Overwhelming fear and terror