Evans-Wentz begins the body of the introduction by claiming an “ultimate cultural relationship” between the Bardo Thödol and the Egyptian Book of the Dead: the germ of this teaching has been “preserved for us by a long succession of saints and seers in the God-protected Land of the Snowy Ranges, Tibet” (p. 2). He launches immediately into a discussion of symbolism, claiming that “some of the more learned lamas” have believed that “since very early times there has been a secret international symbol-code in common use among the initiates, which affords a key to the meaning of such occult doctrines as are all still jealously guarded by religious fraternities in India, as in Tibet, and in China, Mongolia, and Japan” (p. 3). It is this supposed code that will allow him to make his most dubious deviations from the Tibetan text. Symbol codes, he notes, are not unique to Buddhists but have been used throughout the world, in Egyptian and Mexican hieroglyphics, by Plato and the Druids, by Jesus and the Buddha. In the case of the Buddha, his disciples have over the centuries preserved teachings of his that were never written down, teachings that form “an extra-canonical, or esoteric Buddhism” (p. 5).
Throughout the introduction, he refers to occult teachings known only to initiates of the esoteric tradition. Again, all of this takes on new meaning when read through the lens of Theosophy, in which symbolism is of central importance. One quarter of the fifteen hundred pages of the 1888 edition of The Secret Doctrine is concerned with symbolism, of which Madame Blavatsky writes, “The study of the hidden meaning in every religious and profane legend, of whatsoever nation, large or small—pre-eminently the traditions of the East—has occupied the greater portion of the present writer’s life.”35 It is therefore easy to see why Evans-Wentz would have sought the esoteric meaning in all that he read. In this pursuit he would even be encouraged by Tibetan lamas, at least the lamas whom Madame Blavatsky claimed to know. In 1894 she published in Lucifer a letter she had received from one of the Mahatmas, “Chohan-Lama of Rinch-cha-tze (Tibet) the Chief of the Archives-registrars of the secret Libraries of the Dalai and Ta-shü-hlumpo Lamas-Rimboche.” In discussing the Tibetan canon, the Chohan-Lama explains (in a passage no Tibetan scholar of the nineteenth century could have written):
Could they even by chance had seen them, I can assure the Theosophists that the contents of these volumes could never be understood by anyone who had not been given the key to their peculiar character, and to their hidden meaning.
Every description of localities is figurative in our system; every name and word is purposely veiled; and a student, before he is given any further instruction, has to study the mode of deciphering, and then of comprehending and learning the equivalent secret term or synonym for nearly every word of our religious language. The Egyptian enchorial or hieratic system is child’s play to the deciphering of our sacred puzzles. Even in those volumes to which the masses have access, every sentence has a dual meaning, one intended for the unlearned, and the other for those who have received the key to the records.36
Evans-Wentz then launches into a discussion of the symbolism of the number seven, for the bardo lasts for a maximum of forty-nine days, seven times seven. The number also has symbolic meaning in Hinduism, in Hermetic writings, and in the Gospel of John. In nature, seven is important in the periodic table and in the “physics of color and sound.” This proves that the Bardo Thödol is “scientifically based” (p. 7).37 In his discussion of the esoteric meaning of the forty-nine days of the bardo, Evans-Wentz refers the reader to several passages from Madame Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine, to which he adds, “The late Lāma Kazi Dawa-Samdup was of the opinion that, despite the adverse criticisms directed against H. P. Blavatsky’s works, there is adequate internal evidence in them of their author’s intimate acquaintance with the higher lāmaistic teachings, into which she claimed to have been initiated” (p. 7 n. 1). Later in the introduction he writes, “In other words, the Bardo Thödol seems to be based upon verifiable data of human physiological and psychological experiences; and it views the problem of the after-death state as being purely a psycho-physical problem; and it is therefore, in the main scientific” (p. 31). His view, then, seems to be that the Bardo Thödol, or at least its esoteric teachings, is most ancient, confirmed by the saints and seers of all the great civilizations of the past. The judgment scene, for example, has parallels in ancient Egypt, in Plato’s Republic, and in “the originally pagan St. Patrick’s Purgatory in Ireland” (p. 37). At the same time the esoteric teachings are also most modern, waiting to be confirmed by visionary scientists of the future. This is a conviction that later exponents of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, especially Leary and Thurman, would reprise in subsequent decades.
As mentioned above, Evans-Wentz’s most creative contribution to the introduction to The Tibetan Book of the Dead, and the point least likely to have been endorsed by “the late Lāma Kazi Dawa-Samdup,” and, most especially, by Dawa-Samdup’s teacher, is the interpretation of the doctrine of rebirth.
In standard Buddhist doctrine one finds descriptions of a cycle of birth and death, called saṃsāra (wandering), which consists of six realms of rebirth: gods, demigods, humans, animals, ghosts, and hell beings (although sometimes the realm of demigods is omitted). The entire cycle of rebirth in which the creations and destructions of universes are encompassed has no ultimate beginning. The realms of animals, ghosts, and hell beings are regarded as places of great suffering, whereas the godly realms are abodes of great bliss. Human rebirth falls in between, bringing as it does both pleasure and pain. The engine of samsara is driven by karma, the cause and effect of actions. Like other Indian religions, Buddhist doctrine holds that every intentional act, whether physical, verbal, or mental, leaves a residue in its agent. That residue, like a seed, will eventually produce an effect at some point in the future, an effect in the form of pleasure or pain for the person who performed the act. Thus Buddhists conceive of a moral universe in which virtuous deeds create experiences of pleasure and nonvirtuous deeds create experiences of pain. These latter are often delineated in a list of ten nonvirtuous deeds: killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, divisive speech, harsh speech, senseless speech, covetousness, harmful intent, and wrong view. Buddhist texts include extensive discussions of the specific deeds that constitute these ten nonvirtues and their respective karmic weights.
These deeds not only determine the quality of a given life but also determine the place of rebirth after death. Depending on the gravity of a negative deed (killing being more serious than senseless speech and killing a human more serious than killing an insect, for example), one may be reborn as an animal, a ghost, or in one of the hot or cold hells, where the life span is particularly lengthy. Among the hells, some are more horrific than others. The most torturous is reserved for those who have committed one of five heinous deeds: killing one’s father, killing one’s mother, killing an arhat, wounding a buddha, and causing dissent in the community of monks and nuns.
Rebirth as a god or human in the realm of desire is the result of a virtuous deed, and is considered very rare; the vast majority of beings in the universe are said to inhabit the three unfortunate realms of animals, ghosts, and the hells. Rarer still is rebirth as a human who has access to the teachings of the Buddha. In a famous analogy, a single blind tortoise is said to swim in a vast ocean, surfacing for air only once every century. On the surface of the ocean floats a single golden yoke. It is rarer, said the Buddha, to be reborn as a human with the opportunity to practice the dharma than it is for the tortoise to surface for its centennial breath with its head through the hole in the golden yoke. One is said to be reborn as a god in the realm of desire as a result of an act of charity: giving gifts results in future wealth. Rebirth as a human is said to result from consciously refraining from a nonvirtuous deed, as when one takes a vow not to kill humans. The greater part of Buddhist practice throughout Asia and throughout history has been directed toward securing rebirth as a human or (preferably) a god in the next lifetime, generally through acts of
charity directed toward monks and monastic institutions.
For Evans-Wentz, however, this is only the exoteric teaching; the esoteric doctrine is quite different.38 “In examining the Rebirth Doctrine, more particularly as it presents itself in our text, two interpretations must be taken into account: the literal or exoteric interpretation, which is the popular interpretation; and the symbolical or esoteric interpretation, which is held to be correct by the initiated few, who claim not scriptural authority or belief, but knowledge” (pp. 39–40). He concedes that the exoteric view, “accepted universally by Buddhists, both of the Northern and Southern Schools—as by Hindus,” is that consciousness can be embodied in a subhuman form in a lifetime after, even immediately after, embodiment as a human. This view is based on “the untested authority of gurus and priests who consider the literally interpreted written records to be infallible and who are not adept in yoga” (p. 42). That “the brute principle of consciousness in its entirety and the human principle of consciousness in its entirety are capable of exchanging places with each other” is, for Evans-Wentz, an “obviously irrational belief.” Yet this, he concedes, is the view that the Bardo Thödol conveys, when it is read literally.
The esoteric view, “on the authority of various philosophers, both Hindu and Buddhist, from whom the editor has received instruction,” is quite different. The human form is the result of evolution, as is human consciousness. Thus, just as it is impossible for an animal or plant to devolve into one of its previous forms, so it is impossible for “a human life-flux to flow into the physical form of a dog, or fowl, or insect, or worm” (p. 43). Thus, “man, the highest of the animal-beings, cannot become the lowest of the animal beings, no matter how heinous his sins” (pp. 43–44). Such a view was believed by the esotericists to be quite unscientific (p. 48). (Note here Colonel Olcott’s rendering of Buddhist doctrine in his 1881 The Buddhist Catechism: “143. Q. Does Buddhism teach that man is reborn only upon our earth? A. As a general rule that would be the case, until he had evolved beyond its level.”) There can be gradual progression and retrogression only within a species. Only after ages of continual retrogression would it be possible for a human form to revert to the subhuman. Evans-Wentz claims that this was the view of the late lama, and he quotes him speaking of “a mere faded and incoherent reflex of the human mentality,” an utterance difficult to imagine from a Tibetan lama, whether in English or Tibetan. What Evans-Wentz found particularly remarkable, however, was that the lama “expressed it while quite unaware of its similarity to the theory held esoterically by the Egyptian priests and exoterically by Herodotus, who apparently became their pupil in the monastic college of Heliopolis” (p. 45).
It appears that Evans-Wentz held to the conviction throughout his life that in Buddhism rebirth as an animal is impossible, referring readers of his 1954 Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation and his 1958 Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines to this exposition in The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Commenting on an incident in the life of Padmasambhava in The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation in which Padma Tsalag is reborn as a fly, Evans-Wentz explains, “While the many, the exotericists, may accept this strange folk-tale literally, the more spiritually advanced of the Great Guru’s devotees interpret it symbolically, as they do very much else in the Biography as a whole, the fly being to them significant of the undesirable characteristics of the unbridled sensuality associated with Padma Tsalag.”39
But if this is the true teaching, why does the Bardo Thödol appear to teach otherwise? “The Bardo Thödol, as a Doctrine of Death and Rebirth, seems to have existed at first unrecorded, like almost all sacred books now recorded in Pali, Sanskrit, or Tibetan, and was a growth of unknown centuries. Then by the time it had fully developed and been set down in writing no doubt it had lost something of its primitive purity. By its very nature and religious usage, the Bardo Thödol would have been very susceptible to the influence of the popular or exoteric view; and in our opinion it did fall under it, in such manner as to attempt the impossible, namely, the harmonizing of the two interpretations. Nevertheless, its original esotericism is still discernible and predominant” (pp. 54–55).40 Thus, it seems that even the sacred teachings of the lamas, preserved for centuries in Tibet (Evans-Wentz argues, in contrast to Govinda, that the essentials of the text are pre-Buddhist in origin [pp. 73, 75], perhaps deriving from the Atlantean age), were subject to degeneration when the esoteric knowledge was committed to writing; the higher teaching of the Bardo Thödol is confused, perhaps, “because of corruptions of text” (p. 58). But the true meaning is still accessible: if the “Buddhist and Hindu exotericists re-read their own Scriptures in light of the Science of Symbols their opposition to Esotericism would probably be given up” (p. 57).41
Thus, the Bardo Thödol is a reshaping of ancient teachings handed down orally over the centuries, recording the belief of countless generations concerning the postmortem state. Once written down, corruptions inevitably crept into the text, such that it cannot be accurate in all details. Yet it remains scientific in its essentials. “In its broad outlines, however, it seems to convey a sublime truth, heretofore veiled to many students of religion, a philosophy as subtle as that of Plato, and a psychical science far in advance of that, still in its infancy, which forms the study of the Society for Psychical Research [which had condemned Madame Blavatsky as a fraud]. And, as such, it deserves the serious attention of the Western World, now awakening to a New Age, freed, in large measure, from the incrustations of medievalism, and eager to garner wisdom from all the Sacred Books of mankind, be they of one Faith or of another” (pp. 77–78).
The book ends with his opinion that “the greater part of the symbolism nowadays regarded as being peculiarly Christian or Jewish seems to be due to the adaptations from Egyptian and Eastern religions. They suggest, too, that the thought-forms and thought-processes of Orient and Occident are, fundamentally, much alike—that, despite differences of race and creed and of physical and social environment, the nations of mankind are, and have been since time immemorial, mentally and spiritually one” (p. 241).
This sentiment engendered a reincarnation of The Tibetan Book of the Dead not forty-nine days but thirty-seven years later (in 1964) in the form of The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, by Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert (later to become Baba Ram Dass). It was their claim that the oneness, both mental and spiritual, that Evans-Wentz had proclaimed could now be confirmed through the use of psychotropic drugs. Thus their book is a guide to the use of hallucinogens in which the various stages of death, the intermediate state, and rebirth described in the Bardo Thödol are transposed onto the stages of what at the time was called an “acid trip.” “If the manual is read several times before a session is attempted, and if a trusted person is there to remind and refresh the memory of the voyager during the experience, the consciousness will be freed from the games which comprise ‘personality’ and from positive-negative hallucinations which often accompany states of expanded awareness.”42 Their book has generally been forgotten, invoked perhaps only by collectors of Beatles esoterica who might remember that the opening lines of “Tomorrow Never Knows” on the 1966 album Revolver come from this book: “Whenever in doubt, turn off your mind, relax, float downstream” (p. 14).
The book’s premise, now well-worn and easily dismissed but perhaps exciting in 1964, is stated at the outset:
A psychedelic experience is a journey to new realms of consciousness. The scope and content of the experience is limitless, but its characteristic features are the transcendence of verbal concepts, of space-time dimensions, and of the ego or identity. Such experiences of enlarged consciousness can occur in a variety of ways: sensory deprivation, yoga exercises, disciplined meditation, religious or aesthetic ecstasies, or spontaneously. Most recently they have become available to anyone through the ingestion of psychedelic drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, DMT, etc. . . .
Here then is the key to a mystery
which has been passed down for over 2,500 years—the consciousness-expansion experience—the pre-mortem death and rebirth rite. The Vedic sages knew the secret; the Eleusinian initiates knew it; the Tantrics knew it. In all their esoteric writings they whisper the message: it is possible to cut beyond ego-consciousness, to tune in on neurological processes which flash by at the speed of light, and to become aware of the enormous treasury of ancient racial knowledge welded into the nucleus of every cell in your body. . . .
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