Speaker 1: Weird thing happened. Weird, weird, weird.
Speaker 2: Hello, everybody, Welcome to Bledsoe said, so, I want to
Speaker 2: talk about the Tibetan Book of the Dead tonight. And honestly,
Speaker 2: it was just going to be a general episode about
Speaker 2: the afterlife and purgatory and my thoughts and uh beliefs
Speaker 2: on what happens next. And as I started getting deeper
Speaker 2: into this, I realized there was so much intrigue with
Speaker 2: the Tibetan Book of the Dead that I decided I
Speaker 2: wanted to narrow my focus on this, and maybe we
Speaker 2: could even expand more in later episodes about other systems
Speaker 2: of death in the afterlife, like maybe the Egyptian Book
Speaker 2: of the Dead or the Book of Coming forth by day. Also,
Speaker 2: maybe we could look into like the Catholic model of
Speaker 2: death and purgatory and things like the Divine Comedy or
Speaker 2: popularly known as Dante's Inferno, because I think that's a
Speaker 2: very interesting story and we find in that, in my view,
Speaker 2: that there's a relation between specifically the Divine Comedy and
Speaker 2: the description of navigating the circles of hell and what
Speaker 2: it's like being in the layers of Bardo. According to
Speaker 2: the Tibetan Book of the Dead. So as I got
Speaker 2: to digging into this topic, I thought it would be
Speaker 2: one episode, and I realized it could be many episodes
Speaker 2: talking about death and the transition of that passage into
Speaker 2: the afterlife. So I was like, oh, you know, let's
Speaker 2: just start here and see where it goes. And I
Speaker 2: also found I've actually been putting this off for a
Speaker 2: few months. Alex had an idea two or three maybe
Speaker 2: even three months ago that was like, we should do
Speaker 2: an episode on purgatory, and I was like, I don't
Speaker 2: know if I'm ready for that. It's a great idea,
Speaker 2: but I just don't know how it fits right now.
Speaker 2: So I kept pushing it back and pushing it back
Speaker 2: and pushing it back. And I think, Alex, you wanted
Speaker 2: me to more or less at least acknowledge that we've
Speaker 2: been on a generational run since October. I believe where
Speaker 2: I haven't explicitly said this out loud on the show,
Speaker 2: but every topic we've done in the last however many months,
Speaker 2: has been since October. I've very, very intentionally been pulling
Speaker 2: a thread going between these topics with a lot of
Speaker 2: thoughtful consideration. They've not been random like oftentimes in the
Speaker 2: past when we're like, what are we talk about this week?
Speaker 2: I don't know, Star Wars? You know what I mean.
Speaker 2: It's not been random, and it's actually been a very
Speaker 2: intentional thread of things that I've want to discuss that
Speaker 2: I believe lead from one thing into the next. And
Speaker 2: that's why I kept pushing The after or the purgatory
Speaker 2: was how it was first presented, So I kept pushing
Speaker 2: that back for months, maybe since November. I was like,
Speaker 2: I'm just not ready for that. And then a few
Speaker 2: weeks ago I said, wait a minute, but we could
Speaker 2: expand that conversation. It could be about the afterlife more generally,
Speaker 2: and that includes purgatory. So I was thinking, yeah, so
Speaker 2: I'll just focus on the afterlife. And then as I
Speaker 2: started investigating for the first time I ever mind you,
Speaker 2: I've never read the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Once
Speaker 2: I read it today and then started diving it more
Speaker 2: into it, I realized, this is a profound It's every
Speaker 2: bit as profound as they say, but it's another thing
Speaker 2: entirely when you read it firsthand as always of course,
Speaker 2: and I realized, wow, this is perfectly on the thread.
Speaker 2: It's not an afterlife or a purgatory episode, but it's
Speaker 2: deeper than that. It's yeah, yeah, So I guess I'll
Speaker 2: just get into it. But before we start the topic,
Speaker 2: I have a few things that I need to mention.
Speaker 2: Starting off with my friend Melissa Caine from Wisconsin. I'm
Speaker 2: not sure what city she lives in, but she is
Speaker 2: hosting and Delavan Wisconsin the Contact Modalities XPO. This year's
Speaker 2: theme is going to be Harmonic Ascension twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2: There's going to be thirty to forty presenters at the
Speaker 2: very same location as last time. So folks who have
Speaker 2: been there and are in the know, you already know
Speaker 2: that it's this incredible, beautiful cabin resort on Lake Lawn.
Speaker 2: Is that right? That sounds right, Lake Lawn on lake
Speaker 2: something like that. There's fricking hundreds of lakes in Wisconsin
Speaker 2: and they're huge and they're amazing. But the conference is amazing.
Speaker 2: There's going to be multiple sky watches, four to be exact,
Speaker 2: three of which can be accessed three purchasing a ticket,
Speaker 2: and then the fourth one we're going to be doing
Speaker 2: a giveaway, and this is a private VIP SkyWatch where
Speaker 2: the forty exclusive participants will be busted off location to
Speaker 2: a secret area to do a more intimate SkyWatch experience.
Speaker 2: So there's going to be up to four skywatches, with
Speaker 2: the first three being general public, and they handle tiers
Speaker 2: of tickets to pay very careful attention. If you want
Speaker 2: to do the SkyWatch with my dad and with Alex
Speaker 2: and with my siblings, look at the ticket tiers and
Speaker 2: make sure that that benefit is on there. There's going
Speaker 2: to be some other amazing presenters in addition to my dad.
Speaker 2: Alex will be there, my siblings, but very good friends
Speaker 2: of mine and people that I love, like Megan solar Glow,
Speaker 2: She's been on the show. Dahlia Overgone and her daughter,
Speaker 2: they'll be there. Diane Hennessy Powell a friend of mine
Speaker 2: and I'm a huge fan of hers. It goes multiple
Speaker 2: ways there how I consider her a friend, but I'll
Speaker 2: so I consider myself a fan, you know. So I'm
Speaker 2: just saying, these are people that you don't want to miss.
Speaker 2: And there's so many more with things like sound bowls,
Speaker 2: gong baths, DMT, psychedelic experts, chigong practitioners, remote viewing, mindsight
Speaker 2: with Dalia, telepathy with her daughter. It goes on and on.
Speaker 2: You don't want to miss this. Hit me with the website,
Speaker 2: alex Contact Modalities, XPO dot com. Awesome, oh, honorable mention,
Speaker 2: spoon bending, dowsing. I'm a big fan of dowsing and pendulum.
Speaker 2: I'm also a big fan of pendulum. I like to
Speaker 2: use a pendulum for dowsing. Right, they're interchangeable. But anyway,
Speaker 2: and then the last few things I want to talk
Speaker 2: about here, I know is just that you know, we've
Speaker 2: got these things that we got to hit before we
Speaker 2: get on track.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Check us out on Instagram this stay current on our events.
Speaker 2: We are going to be doing that giveaway that I
Speaker 2: mentioned where you can have a chance to win. I
Speaker 2: think there's three winners and you have a chance to
Speaker 2: win a spot at the VIP SkyWatch. On our Instagram,
Speaker 2: we post our social media clips, we post all of
Speaker 2: our upcoming events, SkyWatch schedule, conferences, and you know everything
Speaker 2: that we are doing currently. It's the best place to
Speaker 2: stay live on Bloodso Said So and what we've got
Speaker 2: going on. Check out our website bloodsosaids dot com. It's
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Speaker 2: Bloodso Saidsosphere. You can check out our merch. We have
Speaker 2: some new stuff coming pretty soon. I'm actually really excited about.
Speaker 2: It might even be out by the time this episode
Speaker 2: has aired. Did you just show that when you weren't
Speaker 2: on camera? If you want to do it again, yeah,
Speaker 2: on camera.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I just wanted your blessing before it showed off.
Speaker 4: So dude, it was your idea items here. Well, I
Speaker 4: know it's just a teaser.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so maybe if all things go according to plan.
Speaker 2: I know that a lot of our deliveries on certain
Speaker 2: products were messed up by the snowstorms here in North Carolina.
Speaker 2: But if everything gets here in a timely manner, we're
Speaker 2: gonna hit launch pretty soon on the new design we
Speaker 2: have that I'm very very excited about. So check out
Speaker 2: our website. You can see all of our links, all
Speaker 2: of our social media channels. It takes you to our
Speaker 2: merch and then, last but not least, and very importantly,
Speaker 2: our Patreon, which is a very very profound way that
Speaker 2: you can support the show and even be a part
Speaker 2: of the show by accessing things like extra shows coming soon.
Speaker 2: Right now, we have one extra show, but we have
Speaker 2: another one coming soon. We have our exclusive discord community.
Speaker 2: We have you can have your name in the credits.
Speaker 2: Through the different tiers, you get different levels of merch
Speaker 2: coupon access. And we have more tiers and more benefits
Speaker 2: coming tune that I am a little hesitant to talk
Speaker 2: about until they're out because I don't want to spoil
Speaker 2: this prize. But we have some really cool benefits coming
Speaker 2: at our Patreon very soon. Wow. That was fricking wordy dude,
Speaker 2: eight minutes. I guess we're professional.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: We're getting to that point where I got to keep
Speaker 2: everything wrong with It's getting longer and longer and longer.
Speaker 2: You know, It's okay, everybody, every program does this at
Speaker 2: a certain level, all right, Tibetan Book of the Dead.
Speaker 2: So I thought it would be like, I talk about
Speaker 2: it a little bit, here's the you know, the key highlights,
Speaker 2: and then move on to the Egyptian Book of the Dead,
Speaker 2: and if I had time, I'd move on to something else.
Speaker 2: And the more I got into the Tibetan Book of
Speaker 2: the Dead, I realized that it was every bit as
Speaker 2: profound as the hype that I have been hearing over
Speaker 2: the years. And I've always been curious about Tibetan Buddhism,
Speaker 2: but not really having an idea of like where to
Speaker 2: begin and why it's so profound compare to like other
Speaker 2: versions of Buddhism. It's just so new to me and
Speaker 2: unfamiliar because I grew up from a very Western Christian
Speaker 2: lens without any sort of exposure to Eastern mystical practices
Speaker 2: until my adult life. And then looking at that is
Speaker 2: like literally trying to learn another language. It's all words
Speaker 2: and you know, Sanskrit or Hindi or whatever other language
Speaker 2: that I'm like, I don't even know what any of
Speaker 2: this stuff means, but there's something about it that fascinates me.
Speaker 2: Where do I begin? You know what I'm saying. It's
Speaker 2: like you need a Rosetta stone to translate all of
Speaker 2: these things to And then again it's like there's thousands
Speaker 2: of years of history that you don't really learn about there,
Speaker 2: and the creation of these systems and how they offshoot
Speaker 2: into other systems. Long story short, a very good friend
Speaker 2: and a mentor of mine distilled it to me in
Speaker 2: a recent conversation. You know, if you want to expand
Speaker 2: upon your rule of life and up your meditation practice,
Speaker 2: something that you should look into is Vadrayana Buddhism or
Speaker 2: Tantra protocols or what is also known as jog chin
Speaker 2: the rainbow light body, the rainbow body, the light body,
Speaker 2: it's the same thing. I was like, Okay, yeah, these
Speaker 2: are things that I've always thought were interesting, but that
Speaker 2: narrows my focus a bit. So I started diving into
Speaker 2: rabbit holes after that conversation last week, and it took
Speaker 2: me down the path to Shaivism, which I'm not going
Speaker 2: to at length talk about today. I want to do
Speaker 2: a whole other episode about that in Tantra and more
Speaker 2: specifically expand upon Tantra. But what I found very curious
Speaker 2: was this notion that there is a connection between Shivik Hinduism,
Speaker 2: which is basically Shiva as the supreme being. So Shivik
Speaker 2: Hindu Hinduism and Tibetan Buddhist them all being systems of
Speaker 2: Tantric philosophy, either Tantric yoga as is discussed and uh
Speaker 2: Hinduism or Tantrik Buddhism. Right, So I'm like, Tantra, Tantra, Tantra,
Speaker 2: what the heck is this Tantra? So I've had a
Speaker 2: limited I, like many in the past, I used to
Speaker 2: think that tantra was just a sex thing. Right, that's
Speaker 2: I mean, even me, I'm guilty of that. Like earlier
Speaker 2: in the show, I've made jokes about Tantra for shock value,
Speaker 2: because back then I was all about shock value. But
Speaker 2: I've made jokes about Tantra and and tried to you know,
Speaker 2: throw that out there, and and but now I understand
Speaker 2: that that's that's not the complete picture. That the sexual
Speaker 2: art of Tantra does exist, but it's actually a pretty
Speaker 2: small contained portion compared to the whole system and philosophy.
Speaker 2: And then it even gets into the the the creation
Speaker 2: of like the right and the left hand paths of
Speaker 2: tantric uh Yoga and Buddhism, and it's like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: and it's just this. I started the notice this is
Speaker 2: getting more and more complex as I was investigating this
Speaker 2: over the last week. So let's narrow it back to
Speaker 2: to the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: So there's a thread that we've been following on the
Speaker 2: show very intentionally. Alex and I have a hidden council
Speaker 2: where we discuss things and we more or less ponder
Speaker 2: about where we should go next.
Speaker 3: Some people call them meetings.
Speaker 2: It's a it's a it's a directory. You could think
Speaker 2: about like a hidden directory. No, I'm just I'm just
Speaker 2: saying to be clear, we talk about okay, so this
Speaker 2: is going somewhere. Where's this going to go in my head?
Speaker 2: I'm like, all right, Well, for example, I told you
Speaker 2: guys bluntly, I want to do the eger Gore thought
Speaker 2: form episode so that I can expand on that one
Speaker 2: into the way of lights. So we talk about thoughts
Speaker 2: and how the universe is, you know, a psychic model
Speaker 2: or the pan psychic I went out of my way
Speaker 2: to really impress upon the viewer. I've talked about immanation
Speaker 2: theology several episodes back, right, So I've been pulling this
Speaker 2: thread from one episode to the next very intentionally. So
Speaker 2: why does the Tibetan Book of the Dead have anything
Speaker 2: to do with that?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: With egregers, with thought forms, with the toll tech or
Speaker 2: the Templar Knights or Rosicrucians or any of those sort
Speaker 2: of Western alchemical traditions. Rumor has it that rumor being
Speaker 2: purported by members of the Theosophical tradition, namely Helena Blovotsky.
Speaker 2: And I want to give a disclaimer because Helena Blovotsky
Speaker 2: is a very polarizing figure, and I completely understand and agree,
Speaker 2: and I don't quite much like her, But that doesn't
Speaker 2: mean that everything she said is wrong. I think some
Speaker 2: stuff she said, I'm like, I don't agree with that,
Speaker 2: But in general, a lot of her material is not created,
Speaker 2: and she's just doing work synthesizing older material. Right, a
Speaker 2: lot of the stuff she didn't create. So it's not
Speaker 2: right or accurate to say that everything she said is wrong.
Speaker 2: But there's a lot of stuff. I'm like, I don't
Speaker 2: really know if I agree with that, but you know,
Speaker 2: to get to the point. According to that tradition, Tibet
Speaker 2: was the first. If you think of like, for example,
Speaker 2: if I was to say, right now, you know, the
Speaker 2: spirit of America, the spirit of America is still alive today, right,
Speaker 2: you would think like Frickin' bald Eagle, fireworks, Fourth of July,
Speaker 2: you know, guns in the air, the Civil War, the
Speaker 2: Pledge of Allegiance, marching. You know when I say the
Speaker 2: spirit of America, you know what I mean. You have
Speaker 2: a notion in your brain that there is more or
Speaker 2: less some sort of cultural entity of this land. Well, okay,
Speaker 2: so the spirit of Atlantis, so to speak, after the
Speaker 2: fall according to the tradition of theosophy, moved to Tibet
Speaker 2: a long time ago. They say it as like Shangri
Speaker 2: La or Shambala or whatever. And then after so many
Speaker 2: years of it being spiritually Tibet being the center of
Speaker 2: the survival of Atlantean wisdom, at some point after that
Speaker 2: it moved to Egypt. That's a theory. I didn't make
Speaker 2: that up. I'm just saying that it's been suggested that
Speaker 2: the spirit of Atlantis, at one point or another migrated
Speaker 2: after the Fall into Tibet, which is why there's so
Speaker 2: much profound wisdom and practicality to the Betan Buddhist system.
Speaker 2: If that makes sense. And the deeper you pull this thread,
Speaker 2: you begin to realize that the philosophy and the cosmonology
Speaker 2: of Tibetan Buddhism is very similar to everything we've been discussing,
Speaker 2: like the alchemical model of reality, just the whole Western
Speaker 2: esoteric model, that there really is a synthesis between the two,
Speaker 2: and that reality is basically many different layers of thought,
Speaker 2: that reality is empty nothingness that exists within the mind,
Speaker 2: and that the different layers of being are separated by
Speaker 2: bardos Right, bardos, what are Bardos actually wrote the definition
Speaker 2: down because a lot of these terms may seem foreign. Right,
Speaker 2: they did to me, so I'm like, okay, if they
Speaker 2: do to me, they might do somebody else. So a
Speaker 2: bardo is a key concept in Tibetan Buddhism, meaning intermediate state, gap, transition,
Speaker 2: in between, or liminal state. It refers to any transitional
Speaker 2: phase or interval between two states of existence wre things
Speaker 2: are neither fully one thing nor the other, a period
Speaker 2: of potential instability, opportunity, transformation. So mind to wake, body
Speaker 2: of sleep would be a bardo. Yeah between no, yes, yes,
Speaker 2: from wake to sleep yes, in between period yes, yes,
Speaker 2: that's exactly right. Transitional gaps where the familiar dissolves, creating
Speaker 2: groundlessness and heightened potential. Karma, habitual patterns and mindfulness determine
Speaker 2: the outcome. There are three bardowes of the lot of
Speaker 2: the living, and then three bardowes of the dead, so
Speaker 2: there's six total comprising all of reality. We'll go into those, right.
Speaker 2: The most interesting part to me that really jumped out
Speaker 2: about this was in death when you move through those
Speaker 2: three bardowes at every level. So the Tibetan Book of
Speaker 2: the Dead was and it's an actual text that and
Speaker 2: it's still used today. Not only did it have the
Speaker 2: this might be wrong to say, but like the cosmological
Speaker 2: model of death, right like the actual process of passing
Speaker 2: into death. But it's a funerary text in the sense
Speaker 2: that as someone is dying, Tibetan monks would read it
Speaker 2: to them to assist them in passing into the bardow,
Speaker 2: into that first barrow of death. And if you get
Speaker 2: there after death, or you wait until after death, then
Speaker 2: the belief is that there are four days that the
Speaker 2: consciousness is still in this state where you're around the body.
Speaker 2: So what a what A what's the word like a
Speaker 2: why's or a seasoned monk would do is they would
Speaker 2: take this text and they would get close to the
Speaker 2: ear and they would crouch down and they would recite
Speaker 2: the various prayers and mantras into the ear of the
Speaker 2: actual corpse so that the consciousness could hear it and
Speaker 2: be guided in the afterlife to where they need to go.
Speaker 2: So there are the first three bartos. I don't want
Speaker 2: to get ahead of myself. Before I get into that,
Speaker 2: I want to talk about the uh so let me
Speaker 2: back it up just a little bit. I don't want
Speaker 2: to miss anything because I put a lot of detail
Speaker 2: down here right. Vadriyana or Tantrik Buddhism also known as
Speaker 2: Tibetan Buddhism, major branch of Mahayana Buddhism that developed in Tibet,
Speaker 2: incorporating elements from Indian Tantra. We already discussed that a
Speaker 2: little bit and earlier Buddhist schools and local bond traditions.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure what that means. Maybe I don't know.
Speaker 3: I have to look into that.
Speaker 2: Tantra refers to the esoteric traditions within Hinduism and Buddhism
Speaker 2: that emerged around the fifth to seventh century CE in India,
Speaker 2: emphasizing rapid paths to enlightenment through ritual, symbol transformative practices.
Speaker 2: Here we go, This is what I wanted to get to.
Speaker 2: At the core of Tantra and Tibetan Buddhism are several
Speaker 2: interconnective principles to guide practitioners toward enlightenment. So emptiness all
Speaker 2: phenomena lack inherent existence, or one could say this is maya,
Speaker 2: this is illusion right, and are interdependent. Realizing this emptiness
Speaker 2: cuts through the root of suffering revealing the illusory nation
Speaker 2: of separation between self and other. We are not separate, right,
Speaker 2: and this opens up a whole lot of implications, like
Speaker 2: you know, the way of light, the christ Like model, right.
Speaker 2: Because we are not separate, we are one, and that
Speaker 2: is an illusion that we're separate, So we cannot act
Speaker 2: in illusion. We have to act with wisdom, compassion, and kindness.
Speaker 2: This nondual view affirms that reality is beyond opposites, where
Speaker 2: individual and cosmic selves are one. Buddha nature is inherent
Speaker 2: in every sentient being, and you possess the innate potential
Speaker 2: for full enlightenment, described as the primordial radio consciousness, inseparable
Speaker 2: from all of the Buddhas. This is often linked to
Speaker 2: the clear light mind, which we will discuss in a bit,
Speaker 2: the subtlest mental continuum that serves as the basis for transformation.
Speaker 2: Tantra views this as the source of all teachings, emphasizing
Speaker 2: the refinement of body, speech, and mind into their pure
Speaker 2: enlightened forms, the three kayas, the Dharma Kaya, the sambo
Speaker 2: Ga Kaya, and the Normana Kaya, and then the unity
Speaker 2: of wisdom and compassion. Enlightenment arises from uniting passive wisdom
Speaker 2: or voidness right, So that's the feminine. With upaya active
Speaker 2: compassion or skillful means, that's the masculine. For the unification
Speaker 2: of those two opposite forces, the wisdom, the passive principle right,
Speaker 2: the experience, and then the active, skillful use of wisdom, kindness, compassion,
Speaker 2: love towards others brings enlightenment. This is symbolized in Tantric
Speaker 2: art and practice by the union of the male and
Speaker 2: female deities Yab and Yam, representing the integration of opposites
Speaker 2: to achieve great bliss. The tradition venerates feminine energies, such
Speaker 2: as through the dakinis or the spiritual beings and the
Speaker 2: divine shock t that animates all reality. And I'm not
Speaker 2: going to expand too much on the shock Tea here
Speaker 2: because I want to do that further episode talking about
Speaker 2: Tantra in greater detail, about Shaivism being basically Shiva being
Speaker 2: known as the supreme God, the supreme mind right, and
Speaker 2: then shock t being the first manifest form that animates
Speaker 2: the living, breathing world. Sound familiar. Shocked t is the feminine,
Speaker 2: by the way, karma is foundational, influencing rebirth and suffering
Speaker 2: in Samsara Tantra teaches that ordinary experiences, including desires and emotions,
Speaker 2: can be transformed into paths for spiritual growth rather than suppressed.
Speaker 2: This left hand path uses intense methods to awaken energies
Speaker 2: and see the problem there is as the left hand
Speaker 2: and the right hand path is understood in Western esoteric tradition,
Speaker 2: it's basically the same, and it actually comes from Tantra.
Speaker 2: It's the first ever mention of this probably in human history,
Speaker 2: where it's understood that the right hand path is through enlightenment.
Speaker 2: It's through kindness, achieving bliss, serenity, and the awakening of
Speaker 2: the psychic faculties through the way, the Way of light right,
Speaker 2: and then the left hand path is through things that
Speaker 2: are antinomian, which is a very bad thing. It means
Speaker 2: that you're seeking to get there quicker by breaking taboos.
Speaker 2: So that's where you get into explicit sexual stuff or
Speaker 2: you know, eating people or terrible things like that, blood magic,
Speaker 2: all that dark stuff. That's the left hand path. And
Speaker 2: you see a lot of uh tantra just in general
Speaker 2: magic and religious paths being uh what's the word, I
Speaker 2: don't want to say overshadowed, but like being represented by
Speaker 2: this like people think magic, they think, you know, they're
Speaker 2: sacrificing chickens, they're they're you know, they're doing this horrible
Speaker 2: stuff that does happen. But that's not all of it.
Speaker 2: That's one path, that's the left hand path, and then
Speaker 2: you have the right hand path, which is more like
Speaker 2: when we talk about on this show, what what Jesus
Speaker 2: was talking about, what the Rosicrucians are talking about in
Speaker 2: the Templars and the the Toltecs, we're talking about, right,
Speaker 2: we're talking about in the Tibetan monks. We're talking about
Speaker 2: the right hymn path, which is like the christ like
Speaker 2: path or the Buddha path. It's being kind, it's being
Speaker 2: of light.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: I just wanted to make that clear that we're distinguishing
Speaker 2: from the left hand path, and uh, I don't fuck
Speaker 2: with it. So anyway, Tantra employees Mantra sacred sounds, Maudra's
Speaker 2: mandala's deity visualizations to evoke cosmic forces, all to achieve
Speaker 2: enlightenment in the quickest path. It's the unfolding of that
Speaker 2: Buddha within right. This has passed orally from master to student,
Speaker 2: emphasizing initiation and secrecy, and the goal is to recognize
Speaker 2: the divine in the body and in everyday life. Now
Speaker 2: we're going to start getting into some weird stuff here,
Speaker 2: transcending delusions through direct experience. In Tibetan Buddhism, the universe
Speaker 2: is viewed as a manifestation of enlightened mind, rather than
Speaker 2: a separate material realm. The cosmosis scene is animated by
Speaker 2: the divine energies, with all things interconnected and arising from emptiness.
Speaker 2: Mandalas represent this as sacred diagrams of the universe, where
Speaker 2: the practitioner's body mirrors the cosmic structure. So we have
Speaker 2: as above, so below right. We have the notion here
Speaker 2: that the actual body is a microcosm of the universe
Speaker 2: as a whole, which is to be separate from I
Speaker 2: can't remember the name of the Hindu tradition because just
Speaker 2: like in Buddhism, there's like multiple different types of Buddhism.
Speaker 2: There's there's Mahayana, there's Vadreyana, and then there's Theravana. And
Speaker 2: then even in Christianity there's Catholicism, there's been a costal,
Speaker 2: there's you know, there's all these different sects that believe
Speaker 2: different things, but in one of the most popular forms
Speaker 2: of Hinduism, they've got it all wrong. They're like, you
Speaker 2: have to completely reject the body and the physical. It's
Speaker 2: it's bad, you know that, you know, it's the spirit
Speaker 2: world that's the only real thing. And then in Shaivism
Speaker 2: or the equivalent being Vadriyana Tibetan Buddhism, they say, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: the body is not bad. It's a part of this
Speaker 2: whole story that the body is divine and it's actually
Speaker 2: a reflection of the divine, that it's the microcosm of
Speaker 2: the supreme being and the universe. Right, So you're working
Speaker 2: with a lot of subtle body energy in tantra, doing
Speaker 2: meditations to transmute the energies of the subtle body as
Speaker 2: opposed to like rejecting the flesh and trying to be
Speaker 2: ancient and just you know, like empty your mind, empty
Speaker 2: your mind. There's there's benefit to that. But this isn't
Speaker 2: like that. It's it's more so like to me, it's
Speaker 2: more real. The body's not evil, it's it's it's created
Speaker 2: in the image of the divine. It's the microcosm of
Speaker 2: of you know, the supreme.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, that's beautiful.
Speaker 4: I've begun to think of more and more kind of
Speaker 4: in the ego, but begun to think of the body
Speaker 4: and the ego, which are kind of the two main
Speaker 4: things we have going on here as tools and kind
Speaker 4: of reframing them, at least in my mind, as tools,
Speaker 4: kind of reframes how they should be treated like like.
Speaker 3: And and I'm kind of I kind of.
Speaker 2: Disagree with with the people who are like.
Speaker 3: You need to remove ego.
Speaker 4: No, you need to realize it as a tool to
Speaker 4: use in this reality where you have to refine it
Speaker 4: as in understand and going back to last episode, right,
Speaker 4: the constant self reflection, understanding and separating ego, orfining it
Speaker 4: as a tool and letting it work for you for
Speaker 4: what it was created to do. Yeah, that makes the
Speaker 4: same thing with the body. But like, obviously treat your
Speaker 4: body right, it's a tool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and same with the ego And we're going to
Speaker 2: talk a little bit about that too, and the death
Speaker 2: cycle according to the Tibetan Book of the Dead. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it's not like if you destroyed the ego. And I've
Speaker 2: thought that at one but I think this is a
Speaker 2: very nuanced subject.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I also just don't want to fault anybody if that's
Speaker 4: because like in reflection here, right, we both were team
Speaker 4: get rid of the ego. I don't want to speak
Speaker 4: for you. I was, and along my path I've this
Speaker 4: is where I'm at now. I'm not saying I'm better
Speaker 4: off or worse off or whatever, but it's just become
Speaker 4: it's part of what I've learned and kind of adopted
Speaker 4: as a long journey.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, the ego is something that it's like
Speaker 2: it has to be reduced the the part. Okay, let me,
Speaker 2: let me refine the thoughts that are swirling around in
Speaker 2: my head to say what I actually mean right when unchecked,
Speaker 2: the ego will keep you in delusion that it is
Speaker 2: a part of a system designed to i think, filter
Speaker 2: higher truths and inner realizations and keep you in false
Speaker 2: cycles or as we talk about here, and we're going
Speaker 2: to discuss soon sam Sara, which is the infinite cycle
Speaker 2: of birth and death. According to this system, it's like
Speaker 2: you're just in an endless cycle of birth, death, birth death,
Speaker 2: birth death, and even after death, you're you're in cycles
Speaker 2: in the in the death worlds, and and then if
Speaker 2: you don't you can break the cycle. Here you can
Speaker 2: break the cycle. There the whole point of it, how
Speaker 2: do you do how do you escape samsara? How do
Speaker 2: you achieve nirvana? Or I think they call it moksha
Speaker 2: as well, is you realize your true nature, which is
Speaker 2: you are pure mind, You're you're pure being of divine
Speaker 2: that that you are just here in the illusory world,
Speaker 2: and that you are infinite pure bliss. You realize that
Speaker 2: the mind is illusory, that everything is illusory, and it's
Speaker 2: even deeper than that. Right, So when you die, you
Speaker 2: go through the different layers of bardo. Like I said,
Speaker 2: in life there's three. There's the place, but from from
Speaker 2: when you're born and you take your first breath until death.
Speaker 2: That's the first liminal space. That's the first bardo. The illusion, right,
Speaker 2: the life that you live while you're awake, that's the
Speaker 2: first illusion. The second one is when you dream, and
Speaker 2: they get into practices like dream yoga and learning to
Speaker 2: be awake and aware in the dreams, like the egypt
Speaker 2: all about hey, I'm probably more flexible in my dream. Well,
Speaker 2: it doesn't have to be yoga. The point is, I
Speaker 2: mean the Gnostics practice practice this, the Egyptians practice this.
Speaker 2: It's all about lucid dreaming. It's all about learning to
Speaker 2: be awake in your dreams, right, Two, because even in
Speaker 2: your dreams you can awaken. And then the third one,
Speaker 2: I think is in the deep meditative state which you
Speaker 2: were talking about mind awake, body of sleep, that there's
Speaker 2: the third bardo in the in the living world, which
Speaker 2: is when you achieve certain higher states of consciousness, you
Speaker 2: begin to realize that the world is illusory. And then
Speaker 2: when you pass into death, there's three more bordos.
Speaker 3: So, just to.
Speaker 4: Simplify it from my small mind, alive one, awake while asleep,
Speaker 4: two a sleep wall awake three.
Speaker 2: I guess that's one way you could say it. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's a way of looking at it. And the whole
Speaker 2: point of this, the whole thing is like wake up.
Speaker 2: The reason that the that the the monks would like
Speaker 2: if someone died and they would come and they would
Speaker 2: bring the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Obviously to them
Speaker 2: it's just the Book of the dead. It's not called
Speaker 2: the Tibetan Book of the Dead. But they would bring
Speaker 2: the Book of the Dead, and I think they even
Speaker 2: call it something else, right, but and and they would
Speaker 2: they would read it and they would flip through like,
Speaker 2: oh shit, there's fluid leaking out of his ears. He's
Speaker 2: at this stage, you know, seriously, it goes into all that,
Speaker 2: like down to when he takes his last breath. This
Speaker 2: is what he's seeing in his mind's eye. And there's
Speaker 2: different that are to be read at the different stages,
Speaker 2: because at each of those stages, down to when you
Speaker 2: take your last breath and then your consciousness leaves the
Speaker 2: physical body you go into that you stay around the
Speaker 2: body for a while. And that's commonly believed in other
Speaker 2: systems too, like they say, you know, three days after death,
Speaker 2: you know, I felt their presence stuff like that, right,
Speaker 2: But in this system it's I think it's four days.
Speaker 2: It's said that the body is the consciousness is near
Speaker 2: the body, and that it's there that even there it's
Speaker 2: able to awaken your it being your consciousness, that it's
Speaker 2: able to awaken, it's able to renounce the illusion. And
Speaker 2: then when you pass through into the next bardo. Well,
Speaker 2: I'm getting ahead of myself, but to summarize, it's like
Speaker 2: you enter into the pure state of the clear light
Speaker 2: of the mind. It's like a cloudless sky, and even there,
Speaker 2: at each of these bardoes. It's like a test, even
Speaker 2: even in death. It's like a test, right, And it's like,
Speaker 2: what will you believe because now you're in the astral world,
Speaker 2: they say the Bardo. But I'm a Western guy, right,
Speaker 2: So you're in the astral world, so it's like you're
Speaker 2: not so bound to the laws of the physical universe.
Speaker 2: So you can think and you'll be there. You can
Speaker 2: pass through walls, you can you can uh, you can
Speaker 2: phase through, you can you can check on everybody that's
Speaker 2: near your body, right. But for example, what they would
Speaker 2: do is if there was people in the room crying
Speaker 2: when you died a serious month, they would remove them
Speaker 2: because they know that when your consciousness has left the
Speaker 2: body that it might be very distressed and tempted by illusion.
Speaker 2: If like, for example, your mom is crying over your corpse,
Speaker 2: you might mess with your head, your astral head be like,
Speaker 2: oh God, this is I can't process you know what
Speaker 2: I'm saying. And the whole point was to help assist
Speaker 2: you through the illusion so that you wake up and
Speaker 2: you don't have to reincarnate. So here in a bit
Speaker 2: we'll go into that those layers of bardoes and what
Speaker 2: it's like.
Speaker 4: But so can I ask, like a cultural question kind
Speaker 4: of here, is this for everybody? What I'm talking about
Speaker 4: is when the monk would and I don't know if
Speaker 4: you know the answer, but when the monk showed up
Speaker 4: to do this ritual. Is this reserved for people who
Speaker 4: were on the path? Is this reserved for only monks?
Speaker 4: It's just for everybody?
Speaker 2: Good question. Yeah, that I don't know the answer to. Okay,
Speaker 2: I'll look it up. Yeah, and let me know what
Speaker 2: you find. I would assume it's for everybody, But circumstantially
Speaker 2: it doesn't always happen, right. It's not like it's for
Speaker 2: you know, kings or something. It's this is the process.
Speaker 2: This is And again it's like maybe some people don't
Speaker 2: believe in this process. Maybe this was a loved one
Speaker 2: of this guru or this monk, and they want to
Speaker 2: personally assist them. I don't know. You know, Also, like
Speaker 2: you know, people die in battle or people have a
Speaker 2: heart attack and they're out in the field. This isn't
Speaker 2: always going to be I.
Speaker 4: Was wondering if this is like the cultural equivalent of
Speaker 4: like requesting the priest to the hospital.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, but this is uh, yeah, it's the
Speaker 2: same concept.
Speaker 4: Just an entirely culturally different view of dying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's to pass help people pass through through
Speaker 2: the void peacefully. All right, So the universe is considered
Speaker 2: a manifestation of the enlightened mind. Oh, I think I
Speaker 2: already read this part, didn't I? The cosmosis seen as animating.
Speaker 2: Could you want to crack that door so my cat
Speaker 2: doesn't go crazy? Sorry if you guys hear Delilag going nuts.
Speaker 2: The universe is animated by divine energies, right. All things
Speaker 2: are interconnected, like the Force, like the Holy Spirit, like
Speaker 2: the ruoc. It's very The reason I'm so excited about
Speaker 2: this is because there are very, very minute parallels between
Speaker 2: the Western esoteric wisdom traditions and this system. It's like
Speaker 2: they are cognates of each other. The cosmology is more
Speaker 2: or less the same. It's emanation theology. It's the pan
Speaker 2: psychic idealism, it's panintheism. It's the same. The cosmic trinity
Speaker 2: is there, right, They just have a different way, in
Speaker 2: different words and vocabulary to describe things. But everything is
Speaker 2: seen as interconnected and arising from emptiness or you could
Speaker 2: say zero point right, science science terminology. The mandalas represent
Speaker 2: the macrocosm and the microcosm. Texts like the color chakra,
Speaker 2: tantra detail the cosmology, the astrology, and the harmonization of
Speaker 2: the inner and the outer energies. So it's like you're
Speaker 2: trying to unite the macrocosm and the microcosm. You're trying
Speaker 2: to realize the God would then completely awaken the faculties
Speaker 2: so that you can see through the illusion of the
Speaker 2: false world, the false realm right and be liberated. It's
Speaker 2: all about achieving liberation through enlightenment. What is enlightenment What
Speaker 2: you see through the illusion? What is the illusion? The
Speaker 2: physical world? The real world is permanent, it's eternal, it's infinite.
Speaker 2: You are immortal. You never truly die. Death is just
Speaker 2: passage into a new world. It's a You're always in
Speaker 2: a liminal state of evolving until you wake up and
Speaker 2: realize you are immortal and you are one with all
Speaker 2: of the universe.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: There are six realms of existence in this model, which
Speaker 2: I find interesting how they list this God's demi, gods, humans, animals,
Speaker 2: the hungry ghosts. At the beginning of the episode, I
Speaker 2: made a joke about the hungry ghosts and hell beings
Speaker 2: driven by karma. Nirvana is the realization that even these
Speaker 2: six realms of existence are projections of the mind that
Speaker 2: at every level of the Bardo, and remember that includes life,
Speaker 2: at every level of this cycle of Samsara that you're in,
Speaker 2: life and death, life and death, life and death. It's
Speaker 2: all projecting from your mind like a hologram. And the
Speaker 2: way that you even navigate the state in death is
Speaker 2: things like demons and devils and horrifying images, or if
Speaker 2: you were a good man and you had good karma
Speaker 2: and angelic, blissful, beautiful beings, they all project as aspects
Speaker 2: of your psyche to confront you, and you see things
Speaker 2: like a review of your life and the horrible things
Speaker 2: that you've done to other people project themselves to you
Speaker 2: as demons in the second layer of the Bardo, or angels.
Speaker 2: Like I said, it depends on your karma. So even
Speaker 2: this is designed to test you if you can see
Speaker 2: through the illusion. And obviously in that state when you're
Speaker 2: being bombarded with the faces of horrifying demons because you know,
Speaker 2: you robbed people, or you were greedy, or you were
Speaker 2: a glutton and you had an addiction to just eating
Speaker 2: and eating and eating or whatever, vice it is that
Speaker 2: you dealt with in life that that reflects to you
Speaker 2: in the Bardo layer as an aspect of your psyche,
Speaker 2: and you have to recognize and not be afraid that
Speaker 2: it is just an illusion of the mind. And as
Speaker 2: you progress through these layers at Bardo, it gets more
Speaker 2: and more challenging, and the level of alertness and awareness
Speaker 2: and probability you have of achieving enlightenment even in death
Speaker 2: gets slimmer and slimmer and slimmer as you pass through
Speaker 2: the bardoes to where eventually and that third layer, you
Speaker 2: start seeing the rotating images of parents mating and you
Speaker 2: begin the selection process of birth into your new life,
Speaker 2: at which when you don't see through the illusion, then
Speaker 2: even you select the most favorable womb that you desire
Speaker 2: to be born in, and then your consciousness becomes fused
Speaker 2: with the physical body at the fertilization of the egg
Speaker 2: from the couple that you choose, whether it's human, whether
Speaker 2: it's animals, what have you. And then once you fail
Speaker 2: at each level, realizing that it's all an illusion from
Speaker 2: your mind, eventually you complete that third step and then
Speaker 2: your consciousness is molded into a physical being and you're
Speaker 2: reborn yet again failing to achieve enlightenment. But according to this,
Speaker 2: there's six realms you could be born in, and it's
Speaker 2: gods or buddhas, it's humans, animals, demi gods, even the
Speaker 2: hungry ghosts or the hell beings demons basically, And I
Speaker 2: think there's symbolism there that it's not literal that you know,
Speaker 2: maybe it is. Maybe you do incarnate in the spirit
Speaker 2: world as a hungry ghost, and they describe them as grotesque,
Speaker 2: like having narrow necks, tiny mouths, and they're starving and
Speaker 2: they have bloated bellies but they can't eat, and they're
Speaker 2: constantly trying to eat food, but it passes through them
Speaker 2: because they have an astral body, and it makes them
Speaker 2: suffer more and feel feelings of like heat and pain,
Speaker 2: and they're just like wailing and desperate for food. And
Speaker 2: they achieved that state because they were greedy. They caused
Speaker 2: suffering that caused harm to other people. The hell beings
Speaker 2: is like being in a complete total state of torment,
Speaker 2: and that was said to be achieved and experienced by
Speaker 2: people who had extreme anger and violence and were just
Speaker 2: horrible to people. So again I think that some of
Speaker 2: that is symbolic of the life you are reborn into
Speaker 2: based on your choices and your karma. I don't think
Speaker 2: it's that you'll literally be a demon. Will you be
Speaker 2: a demonic disembodied spirit. I don't know if that's what
Speaker 2: it's saying. It could be esoteric, that's all I'm getting at.
Speaker 2: It could be symbolism. A lot of it is symbolism.
Speaker 2: A lot of it is literal, like the Bardo stuff
Speaker 2: what happens at each layer, and then a lot of
Speaker 2: it is symbolism, like seeing you know, uh. I think
Speaker 2: it was yab and Yama or whatever in a tantric
Speaker 2: sexual position. Obviously that's not literal. It's archetypal projections of
Speaker 2: the mind, because the whole point of this all existence
Speaker 2: is the mind of the supreme Being, and we're like
Speaker 2: in a holographic projection of that mind in a little
Speaker 2: cycle and through our mind. We have to wake up
Speaker 2: to this and achieve enlightenment and escape the cycle. So
Speaker 2: it's all just different degrees of trying to see through
Speaker 2: the illusion in our minds and at every level of death,
Speaker 2: passing through the layers of the Bardo. Everything that you
Speaker 2: experience when your consciousness leaves the body is a projection
Speaker 2: of your mind everything that's good and everything that's bad.
Speaker 2: If you're good, it's good. If you were bad, it's bad.
Speaker 2: That's the that's the complete, like synthesis of it. And
Speaker 2: it's way more complex than that. And I find that
Speaker 2: very fascinating because that's pretty much exactly what the Monroe
Speaker 2: Institute teaches, based on their many thousands of times of
Speaker 2: experience with communicating with the dead through various programs and
Speaker 2: channelings and out of body states that it's essentially that
Speaker 2: you know when you die and you leave the physical
Speaker 2: that where you believe you're going to go is where
Speaker 2: you're going to go. What you believe you're going to
Speaker 2: experience is what you're going to experience. That's pretty much
Speaker 2: exactly the same. And they have a whole program doing
Speaker 2: this assisting people crossing over into another place, because, if
Speaker 2: you know, a lot of people are trapped when they
Speaker 2: die and they become ghosts because they don't realize maybe
Speaker 2: they're dead, right, there's waiting around where is everybody. They
Speaker 2: don't know what happened. So they're trapped because they don't
Speaker 2: know what happened. Because they don't know they're dead, they
Speaker 2: don't have the capacity to decide where to go or
Speaker 2: what to do. So very interesting. I thought there was
Speaker 2: a fascinating parallel there between you know, what they talk about,
Speaker 2: what they experience, and then you know what Tibetan Buddhism discusses,
Speaker 2: and and then you know, we'll find later in the
Speaker 2: Egyptian Book of the Dead that it's also pretty similar,
Speaker 2: but instead of it being projections of the mind in
Speaker 2: the form of illusions, they talk about it more as
Speaker 2: like mythological gods, when you pass through the various planes
Speaker 2: of existence after death. So we talked about the six
Speaker 2: the six realms and the six incarnations of being. Nirvana
Speaker 2: is not an escape, but the realization that these realms
Speaker 2: are illusory projections of the mind. Deities, Buddhas and wrathful
Speaker 2: figures embody cosmic forces aiding transformation, and for example, Vira
Speaker 2: Chauna represents the all knowing cosmic Buddha central to many
Speaker 2: other parallel traditions. And then there are the three bodies
Speaker 2: of the Buddha. This is all the cosmological model of
Speaker 2: Tibetan Buddhism and Vadriana right or tantra, you could say,
Speaker 2: the dharma kaya or the truth body is the ultimate
Speaker 2: formuless reality, like the Vadradhara or the source of enlightenment.
Speaker 2: The sambo ga kaya or the enjoyment body manifests in
Speaker 2: the pure lands for advanced beings, and the normana kaya
Speaker 2: or the emanation body appears in the world like the
Speaker 2: historical Buddhas, like Siddhartha. This is the trikaya system that
Speaker 2: reflects the emphasis on the different levels of reality or
Speaker 2: emanations from subtle mind to what like spirit world basically
Speaker 2: or astral too gross manifestations, meaning you know, the physical world.
Speaker 2: And now we're going to actually get into the Tibetan
Speaker 2: Book of the Dead, because that was all just kind
Speaker 2: of talking about it, right, but I pretty much hit
Speaker 2: the most of it, so I'll see if I can
Speaker 2: move through this. But the big emphasis here and it
Speaker 2: even just like I read the book today, right, the
Speaker 2: whole thing, and I took note. I was listening to
Speaker 2: it on audiobook, And what's interesting is I took note
Speaker 2: it was like maybe five times in the actual text
Speaker 2: that by word it basically says that if you were
Speaker 2: a practitioner of tantra in your daily life, that the
Speaker 2: passage into the Bardo will be easier and more pleasant
Speaker 2: that the practitioner of it also said, I'm pretty sure
Speaker 2: it said joke chin, which is light body.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: It's a form of meditation in Tibetan Buddhism or Vadriyana
Speaker 2: or tantra. Basically, they said that if you were a
Speaker 2: practitioner of this, that you would have an easier death,
Speaker 2: that you would be more adept at the faculties of
Speaker 2: the mind in that state to be able to awaken
Speaker 2: to the illusion.
Speaker 4: Because again, I'm going to keep on this track of
Speaker 4: over simplifying all this stuff, because by practicing this, you're
Speaker 4: essentially trying to get to a Bardo state, Yes, exactly.
Speaker 4: Therefore you spend more time there. Therefore you're more skilled
Speaker 4: skilled in that state. It's not as shocking to you.
Speaker 4: It's not as well.
Speaker 2: No, you just have experience.
Speaker 3: It just.
Speaker 2: Jeez, you have experience. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's exactly it.
Speaker 2: But it's it's.
Speaker 4: Oversimplifying prayer, meditation, Monroe meditation. Yeah, this is all spend
Speaker 4: it aiming to spend time in these states, is what
Speaker 4: it's saying. Yes, or do you think it's literally No,
Speaker 4: That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, cool, it's saying that to the one who walks
Speaker 2: this path in life, death will be easier because you'll
Speaker 2: be adept, You'll be able to navigate the mind. Navigate
Speaker 2: the mind, yes, and the worlds of the mind. Exactly.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right, that being in this state in life
Speaker 2: prepares you for the next life. I'm telling you. That's
Speaker 2: what I texted today. I was like, there's a connection here, man.
Speaker 4: Five minutes a day for the rest of your life,
Speaker 4: it mounts to quite a few hours.
Speaker 2: Yeah, true, Yeah, but that's crazy. You could see why
Speaker 2: I texted you today.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I was like, dang, dude, we are on a thread here,
Speaker 4: a generational tear. Yeah, through a rift in the voice.
Speaker 4: I'm very proud of our last few episodes. Yeah, well
Speaker 4: more than a few. But you get what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: So that is integral to the whole thing. That the
Speaker 2: point is the one who is who doesn't practice anything
Speaker 2: like especially dare I say, you know, and we're not
Speaker 2: even talking about like a horrible, horrible person who has
Speaker 2: bad karma. Forget the karma, just like what what what
Speaker 2: is your what is your belief? What is your practice
Speaker 2: for the for those who don't do anything to better
Speaker 2: themselves than to to work on this path. Uh, they
Speaker 2: have it very difficult in the next life because they
Speaker 2: don't have the faculties to uh notice the illusions of
Speaker 2: the mind, which presents itself as scary imagery right sometimes,
Speaker 2: And that's how to me like an anxious thought on
Speaker 2: the day to day basis, you know, I think about
Speaker 2: think about the skill of meditation and prayer because you
Speaker 2: could say that they're the same thing if you use
Speaker 2: it correctly. You know, think about how that can help
Speaker 2: with anxiety. You see what I'm saying that there's a
Speaker 2: real benefit to implementing this practice.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I think of it. Like again, I feel
Speaker 4: like I'm the king of analogies here. But uh, if
Speaker 4: someone told you because just because the Winter Olympics are
Speaker 4: on and what I find super fascinating is this the
Speaker 4: long jump, like the ski long jump where they fly through.
Speaker 3: The air like a squirrel.
Speaker 2: Yeah's cool.
Speaker 4: But imagine if someone came to you and was like,
Speaker 4: you are going to do this in like and whatever
Speaker 4: timeframe is right, like this is going to happen.
Speaker 3: Wouldn't you like want to practice?
Speaker 4: Yeah, because I've never done that and I don't really
Speaker 4: want to go flying off that hundred foot jump without
Speaker 4: ever doing it before, right, you know, so scare me
Speaker 4: to death a little.
Speaker 2: Like.
Speaker 4: So, yeah, basically, like there's a time around all of us.
Speaker 4: Don't you kind of want to practice?
Speaker 2: Like I don't know, yeah, and maybe I just want
Speaker 2: to be good at everything. No, that's logically true, but
Speaker 2: so many people experience existential dread and they don't know
Speaker 2: what to believe. And they think when they die they
Speaker 2: go to nothing or they think if they just believe
Speaker 2: a certain way, you know, they go to heaven or hell.
Speaker 2: And it's not that simple, it's really not.
Speaker 4: I mean, I've been in the camp of nothing for
Speaker 4: a long time, so I don't mind pulling that thread
Speaker 4: from experience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just you know, this is kind of like
Speaker 2: the greatest mystery in all of our existence, like what
Speaker 2: happens when we die? I don't know, never thought about
Speaker 2: it really.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean?
Speaker 4: Like I think about it all the time, that's right,
Speaker 4: And you're wondering if there's something wrong with me.
Speaker 2: Because I'm thinking about it all the time. Yes, it's
Speaker 2: like what's gonna happen? You know, something's gonna happen. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go somewhere right, let's figure this out.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, But to be serious, like, I just think there's
Speaker 2: a lot of people that don't think about it and
Speaker 2: it scares them and they don't want to think about it.
Speaker 2: So why would they think, Oh, I'm not gonna prepare
Speaker 2: for that, that's morbid. No, I think it's practical. And
Speaker 2: it's not about that. It's it's it's not about that,
Speaker 2: it's a it's about when you realize the truth that
Speaker 2: every every level of existence is illusion, that you're always
Speaker 2: in a liminal state being rendered like a hologram in
Speaker 2: the present, whether you're in biological life or you're in
Speaker 2: spiritual life. Uh, you know, you're you're in a liminal
Speaker 2: state of transition to the next thing, and you're always
Speaker 2: progressing upwards on this uh evolutionary path of the mind.
Speaker 2: And then of eventually you hit a certain level of
Speaker 2: realization where you don't need to be in this form anymore,
Speaker 2: that you become transcendent, that you return to that immortal state,
Speaker 2: whether it's you know, you have to reincarnate again because oh,
Speaker 2: you know, you were a thief in this life, so
Speaker 2: now next time you got to come back, maybe you
Speaker 2: got to be robbed. Maybe you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 2: and that's simplifying it, But it's it's cycles of experiencing
Speaker 2: things from many different perspectives, feeling every emotion on the
Speaker 2: spectrum being dark, being light. You come back here and
Speaker 2: you experience everything till eventually you realize, all right, it's
Speaker 2: time to go home. I don't need this experience anymore.
Speaker 2: I've learned everything that I could learn from this place.
Speaker 2: Then you die and you go into the and then
Speaker 2: it's like, well where do I go from here? Do
Speaker 2: I need to go back? I haven't seen through the
Speaker 2: greed of that life. That's why it's like you become
Speaker 2: hungry ghost if you were greedy in this life, and
Speaker 2: then you die, and you know, in that transitional state
Speaker 2: the bardos are, it's like purgatory basically.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: That's why I was like, this is going to be
Speaker 2: a parallel to what you want to talk about, right,
Speaker 2: because it's like you're in this purgatory liminal state of
Speaker 2: these three layers of bardow before you ultimately launch off
Speaker 2: into immortal existence. Or it's like you keep failing the
Speaker 2: tests and then you know you you come back. But
Speaker 2: even then, even in death, it's like we have the
Speaker 2: chance to awaken, right, so I'm going in circles. Now,
Speaker 2: let me get back on it, right.
Speaker 4: I think that's where the practice comes in because if
Speaker 4: you have another chance in death and to reach the goal,
Speaker 4: then you know, becoming familiar. But if becoming familiar in
Speaker 4: that bardo space of death also benefits your life greatly,
Speaker 4: now you know, it's kind of like a win win
Speaker 4: in my mind. You know, if it could ease some
Speaker 4: of that things. If I'm just saying prayer meditation is
Speaker 4: actually benefiting one in one's daily life.
Speaker 2: I mean, it benefits you now, it benefits you then period,
Speaker 2: it benefits you always, right.
Speaker 4: To be in contemplation. I also think there's a thread
Speaker 4: here of the power of your mind going back to
Speaker 4: good thoughts, good words, good deeds. You could even go
Speaker 4: into manifestation a little bit, because if what you're believing
Speaker 4: at the time of death or throughout your entire life,
Speaker 4: because you know, I'm a big kind of believer in
Speaker 4: muscle memory, right, Like when that moment of stress hits,
Speaker 4: you're we're gonna go to muscle memory. So even if
Speaker 4: you're believing one thing in death and you know in
Speaker 4: your maybe fortunate or unfortunate enough to know that you
Speaker 4: are dying, you are probably.
Speaker 2: Going to revert back to what you truly.
Speaker 4: Believe, not what you're trying to tell yourself you believe.
Speaker 4: And so you know, that plays all into it, right
Speaker 4: in the experience you'll have after death, according to the
Speaker 4: Tibetan Book of the Dead.
Speaker 2: But what I'm saying is is your mind has the
Speaker 2: power also to influence your daily.
Speaker 3: Life, you know.
Speaker 4: And that's right, same tools prayer, meditation, as manifested manifesting
Speaker 4: tools for life and death. It seems like, yeah, as
Speaker 4: above so below. I mean, we're kind of like, you
Speaker 4: get so deep, you get back to the top.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you could see why I was texting you
Speaker 2: today like wow, we you know, this is really it's cool. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm I'm enjoying this one.
Speaker 3: I'm intrigued.
Speaker 2: Alex showed up and I was like, I think I
Speaker 2: changed the episode today. It's just going to be about this.
Speaker 2: We discussed it was gonna be about something else, and
Speaker 2: then you know, in three or four hours in I
Speaker 2: realized this is actually where we were supposed to be,
Speaker 2: you know, talking about this stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Ryan says, let me cook, I stand back, what
Speaker 4: I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Well, another key thing in this whole system, and this
Speaker 2: is discussed in the Book of the Dead too. I
Speaker 2: think think that this is a very important function of reality.
Speaker 2: And you were talking about the ego earlier, and I
Speaker 2: was waiting until we got to this part in my notes.
Speaker 2: If you recall a few weeks ago, we talked a
Speaker 2: little bit more about Rudolph Steiner and I read Passages
Speaker 2: from the Way of Initiation.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Something that I find interesting that jumps out in many
Speaker 2: different systems is the notion that you face your inner
Speaker 2: demons and they are projections of In the Eastern terms
Speaker 2: we say karma, right, but or in the West we
Speaker 2: would say probably psyche, that they're manifestations of your karma
Speaker 2: and your psyche. So it says when you die, when
Speaker 2: you go to that second level of the bardo, demons
Speaker 2: jump out at you, and even then it just comes
Speaker 2: from your mind. They're not real demons trying to eat
Speaker 2: your soul or whatever that they're They're coming from you,
Speaker 2: and it's an illusion from that that place of uh,
Speaker 2: you know, am I going to wake up? Am I
Speaker 2: gonna pass the illusion? And that's so fascinating because if
Speaker 2: you've done anything like d MT or very heavy mushroom dose.
Speaker 2: What happens your ego completely breaks down because you become
Speaker 2: overwhelmed with thoughts, feelings, images that are so powerful and
Speaker 2: so intense that it completely just basically destroys your ego.
Speaker 2: And that's that's not a bad thing. It's it's basically
Speaker 2: it's humbling your consciousness. It's forcing you to address the
Speaker 2: aspects of your psyche and your soul that are challenging you,
Speaker 2: that that are controlling you, even that that you have
Speaker 2: to overcome. And dare I say this, Okay, we know
Speaker 2: I don't like Alister Crowley, but even he says a
Speaker 2: similar thing. He talks about an entity I think he
Speaker 2: calls it Koranson, that you hit a certain point where
Speaker 2: it challenges you. And you know Steiner talks about this,
Speaker 2: it's experienced in DMT. They talk about this. There's somewhere,
Speaker 2: oh in the Egyptian Book of the Dead that when
Speaker 2: you die, it's like you face demons basically Egyptian myth
Speaker 2: demons that are serving as guardians of the depth of
Speaker 2: the celestial heavenly realms to prevent the unworthy from passing
Speaker 2: into those places. And even in the Egyptian system. We'll
Speaker 2: talk more about this later, but it was so focused
Speaker 2: on the heart. They believed that your consciousness was not
Speaker 2: in your brain, but it was in your heart. And
Speaker 2: they would take this metal thing and they would put
Speaker 2: it in an they would heat it up, and then
Speaker 2: they would put it up your nose, and they would
Speaker 2: melt and liquify your brain and extract it from your nose,
Speaker 2: and they would throw it in the trash, and they
Speaker 2: would preserve the heart in the body. They would mummify
Speaker 2: you with the heart, because they believed so profoundly in
Speaker 2: the magic of the heart and that it is the
Speaker 2: seat of your soul and your consciousness. And they had
Speaker 2: all kinds of different rituals and initiation practices and spells.
Speaker 2: And in the Egyptian system it's known as heca, which
Speaker 2: is word magic. That's where the word hex comes from, right,
Speaker 2: the idea of a cursor, a spell with your mouth.
Speaker 2: But they had systems to prepare your soul or your
Speaker 2: believe it's called the the co to turn into an
Speaker 2: ak which is a mortal celestial soul that would pass
Speaker 2: into the heavenly realms and become a star upon death,
Speaker 2: or another way that they would interpret it is your
Speaker 2: heart is weighed against an ostrich feather in the Hall
Speaker 2: of Maat, and if it's as light as the feather,
Speaker 2: then you would pass on to the paradise in the
Speaker 2: field of breeds. But it was a similar system to
Speaker 2: where when you die, you're challenged by these scary, hellish demons,
Speaker 2: and it's to confront you from the sins that you
Speaker 2: lived in your past life. And then it starts over again.
Speaker 2: You come back, you come back. You know, there's the
Speaker 2: reincarnation element, So I think there's Oh. And then the
Speaker 2: other thing I wanted to say was the Gnostics. The
Speaker 2: Gnostics talk about this many different times. And there's a
Speaker 2: really cool text called Zostrianos, which I intend to eventually
Speaker 2: do an episode on, or at least discuss in part.
Speaker 2: And in Zoustrianos, he uh he ascends through the through
Speaker 2: the layers of reality, seeking to communicate with the God
Speaker 2: above God, the true God. And I find z Austriano's
Speaker 2: extremely fascinating because he is allegedly he's either like a
Speaker 2: descendant of a Zoroastrian priest or he's a descendant of
Speaker 2: Zoroastri It's something like that. But I find it really
Speaker 2: cool because it's another fascinating historical connection between the Persian
Speaker 2: magi and Jesus Christ and the you know, the Christian system.
Speaker 2: If you consider gnosticism part of the Christian system, it's
Speaker 2: part of the body of you know, texts about Jesus Christ.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: To me, it's just as Christian as the Bible. But anyway,
Speaker 2: so I find that very fascinating, right, that connection was Austrianos,
Speaker 2: the Zoroastrian Persian magi and Jesus. There was some sort
Speaker 2: of connection with the magi and thees scenes, which we
Speaker 2: know Jesus was anes scene. He was a Nazarene, which
Speaker 2: means he was anes Scene.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: It wasn't born in Nazareth. Allegedly he was born in Bethlehem,
Speaker 2: but he was a Nazarene because the Nazarenes were Essenes, right. Anyway,
Speaker 2: that's a side topic. In the text known as z
Speaker 2: Ostriano's it describes that he goes on a heavenly ascent
Speaker 2: through the realms, and in various parts there's like a
Speaker 2: guardian of the threshold that seeks to prevent you from
Speaker 2: passing through to the next level of reality, and the
Speaker 2: Gnostics and multiple texts. They talk about having to like
Speaker 2: hide from these arconic forces and like bypass them to
Speaker 2: ascend through the heavenly realms. So there's some sort of
Speaker 2: thread here across all these different systems where there's like
Speaker 2: this arconic or demonic imagery. Whether it's an illusion of
Speaker 2: your mind, maybe they have it right, whether it's some
Speaker 2: force I don't know, some external force I don't know,
Speaker 2: but there's there's some sort of there's some sort of
Speaker 2: importance to the way you live your life, karma and
Speaker 2: how you treat others, and how you project your thoughts
Speaker 2: into the world, and even the thoughts that you experience inside.
Speaker 2: There's an importance with all of that, and then how
Speaker 2: you experience the spirit world. They are one. They cannot
Speaker 2: be separated. Your actions in the physical world have a
Speaker 2: consequence in the spiritual right. That's undeniable. Nihilism, hedonism, any
Speaker 2: sort of philosophy that doesn't encourage you in some way
Speaker 2: to be a better person. They're evil, they're illusion, they're false,
Speaker 2: they're destroying you. They are convincing you to do harm
Speaker 2: to the immortal part of your being, and in the
Speaker 2: long run, in the you know, however, many thousands or
Speaker 2: millions of years. It takes. You'll eventually figure it out.
Speaker 2: So and the very high level non human perspective like, ah,
Speaker 2: you'll be fine, but really, I mean that's like, you know,
Speaker 2: do you want to experience the hard way, which is
Speaker 2: you know, trial and error and just stumbling through the
Speaker 2: dark and you know, being miserable in each incarnation. It's suffering, I.
Speaker 4: Mean, not even worse than trial and error, like blind.
Speaker 3: Trial and error.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, you'd be fine, you got fsent all
Speaker 2: your classes, it'll be okay. You just won't get admitted
Speaker 2: to college. You know, you won't be admitted to higher learning.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, that's a stupid metaphor. I'm not a big
Speaker 2: fan of college, but and I went anyway. So the
Speaker 2: demonic spirit thing, I think is really fascinating how there's
Speaker 2: some sort of barrier and again like they're not all demonic,
Speaker 2: they just appear that way to scare you. And then
Speaker 2: like in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, it's like, hey,
Speaker 2: it's all an illusion of your mind and it's a test,
Speaker 2: and if you realize that, it changes and you become enlightened.
Speaker 2: And even in that state, you can become enlightened. It's okay.
Speaker 2: You know you're gonna be scared by scary demons. Don't
Speaker 2: let it fool you. Basically, so we talked about the
Speaker 2: six bartows. I'm gonna kind of blow through this part,
Speaker 2: but we have birth to death, every day, waking existence,
Speaker 2: current life, your habitual patterns, your opportunities for practice, meditation,
Speaker 2: subtle transition into the different thoughts and emotional states. It's
Speaker 2: the most important borrow for spiritual training. You have the
Speaker 2: borrow of dreams, the state between falling asleep and waking up.
Speaker 2: Dreams are seen as illusory projections of the mind. Obviously,
Speaker 2: that's like, nobody's disputing that, and you have an opportunity
Speaker 2: here to even become awake in your dreams Samadi right.
Speaker 2: Or the bartow of meditation. This is the state that
Speaker 2: you enter during deep meditation when the ordinary conceptual mind
Speaker 2: dissolves and then pure awareness can shine through. So there's
Speaker 2: again we already went on and on about that, that
Speaker 2: was pretty obvious. There's the bardow of dying, which is
Speaker 2: the Cheekai bardow step one, that's the first layer of
Speaker 2: bardow after death, and it's the actual process of death itself.
Speaker 2: It's when you're dying and you're passing from the physical
Speaker 2: body to the afterlife, down to the dissolution of your
Speaker 2: consciousness and to the clear light and the moment that
Speaker 2: you take your final breath and your heart stops speeding.
Speaker 2: This is the greatest So according to the after death burdows,
Speaker 2: this is like the most potential for liberation and enlightenment
Speaker 2: can be achieved in this stage. Somebody who spent their
Speaker 2: whole life being a monk die and they will get
Speaker 2: to this stage and they'll say, oh, I'm dead all right, time,
Speaker 2: you know, time to move on, and they would be fine.
Speaker 2: Somebody whose consciousness is riddled with guilt and fear and negativity,
Speaker 2: you know, they would struggle here just like they struggled
Speaker 2: everywhere else in life because they were always miserable, and
Speaker 2: they would struggle through the next few phases and they
Speaker 2: would I mean, they could in theory figured it out,
Speaker 2: but they probably have to come back uh the Bordo
Speaker 2: layer two after death of Darmata, the luminous visionary phase
Speaker 2: after death were the peaceful and wrathful deities, which are
Speaker 2: the projections of one own one's own mind appear, and
Speaker 2: this the whole point of this is to recognize them
Speaker 2: as illusion right that they are. They are parts of you.
Speaker 2: It's your karma and your psyche uh or as they
Speaker 2: would say, your scan does, which is the bundles of
Speaker 2: being that constitute your being and personality.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: And then there's the Bardo of becoming or the Sidpa Bardo,
Speaker 2: and this is the one that final phase where you
Speaker 2: basically choose the womb and you're reborn. So the first
Speaker 2: bardo after death is pretty cool because it talks about
Speaker 2: this is when the monk would be reading the passages
Speaker 2: and he'd be saying in your ear and there's like
Speaker 2: dozens of prayers that they would choose based on a
Speaker 2: certain condition, and they're reading them to you so that
Speaker 2: your consciousness won't be scared and confused on the passage
Speaker 2: of death and that maybe you would hear this and
Speaker 2: you would realize, oh, I'm dying, Okay, I have to
Speaker 2: wake up. I can't be tricked by the illusion. But
Speaker 2: when you pass into this first bardo, you enter in
Speaker 2: a place that's like a cloudless, clear blue sky and
Speaker 2: it's serene and it's peaceful, and it's just like beautiful light.
Speaker 2: It's the luminosity and the emptiness of the mind. You
Speaker 2: enter into the clear void of the mind, which is
Speaker 2: this He's full bliss and stillness. And here either you're like, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm dead, this is it, or you're like, what's happening?
Speaker 2: What's happening? And if you don't wake up, then you
Speaker 2: move to the next one. Right, what's the next one?
Speaker 2: This is where uh, stuff starts getting scary. It's where
Speaker 2: they basically the demons like I've talked about over and
Speaker 2: over and the heavenly beings. If you were good, they
Speaker 2: start popping out at you. And this is where you're
Speaker 2: freed from your physical form, at the point where the
Speaker 2: consciousness has fully left the body. So they have levels
Speaker 2: of time like days, but it's subjective because they're in
Speaker 2: days spent in the bardow like in the astral world,
Speaker 2: so obviously they're not real Earth days. So they say
Speaker 2: it's like x number of days than in this state.
Speaker 2: And you could basically perceive yourself as a luminous thought
Speaker 2: form uh. And wherever you think you go, and the
Speaker 2: more negative your karma, the more wrathful and terrifying the entities,
Speaker 2: and some of them even can look like uh. I
Speaker 2: mean some of the images that were described in the
Speaker 2: Book of the Dead were kind of scary. It was
Speaker 2: like it was it was like, uh, I don't even
Speaker 2: know how to say it, dude, like flesh like like
Speaker 2: chainsaw massacre stuff, you know what I mean. Like if
Speaker 2: you're a really bad person, like you're gonna be tormented
Speaker 2: from your own psyche by you know, horrifying visions, things
Speaker 2: just like pots of blood and just like there was
Speaker 2: some really dark visions, and there's peaceful ones too, of
Speaker 2: angels and you know, these godly that there's Ami Taba,
Speaker 2: which is this We've talked about Ami Taba really briefly
Speaker 2: one time on the show before, but it's like one
Speaker 2: of the highest buddhas love compassion. So really it just
Speaker 2: depends how you were in life. It can appear as
Speaker 2: sounds and a great thundering clouds, and you know it's
Speaker 2: it's all illusion, and the point of all of it
Speaker 2: is for you to recognize that. And then there's that
Speaker 2: final version. I kind of covered a lot of this
Speaker 2: before I got here in my notes, so I'm just
Speaker 2: kind of wrapping it up now. But the final version
Speaker 2: is you know, the one where you pick your life
Speaker 2: and you see like vignettes.
Speaker 3: It could.
Speaker 2: So what's really interesting about this is based on what
Speaker 2: you see, is based on your karma and where you're
Speaker 2: like destined to going to the next life according to
Speaker 2: this system. Do I think this is literally true?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: I think that it's probably really close. And the point
Speaker 2: is we reincarnate. How could we know unless we've died
Speaker 2: and come back with perfect memory exactly how it goes? Right?
Speaker 2: But it's interesting, and they say that you see like
Speaker 2: rotating images of it's either humans literally populating, or it's animals,
Speaker 2: or its archetypal imagery of the masculine and feminine deity,
Speaker 2: or it's like devils. And depending on what you see
Speaker 2: and are attracted to, is the realm you'll be born in,
Speaker 2: whether it's the human realm, the demon realm, the god realm.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying, Like, what you see is
Speaker 2: where you're gonna go, but you're not aware of that
Speaker 2: in the moment. You're an illusion. You know you're you're dead,
Speaker 2: You're like, if you're at this point, you're still under
Speaker 2: the illusion, you're like kind of hypnotized. Basically, I forgot
Speaker 2: to mention that in the second realm, that it's the one.
Speaker 2: It's like you begin to see a smoke. It's like
Speaker 2: a smoke that appears. I thought this was interesting too.
Speaker 2: And if you see like a white, radiant smoke, you
Speaker 2: have a good karma and you're gonna move into a
Speaker 2: positive destination. But if you see this like dark, scary,
Speaker 2: fuzzy smoke, move into like a negative dimension. But I
Speaker 2: think I've hit it pretty hard. That about wraps it up.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I didn't expect to go that long. But
Speaker 2: what'd you think?
Speaker 3: Oh, great job. I really enjoyed listening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, eventually I'd like to do one on
Speaker 2: the Book of the Dead too, because I find that
Speaker 2: I mean the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Obviously, Yeah,
Speaker 2: let's do it, and maybe not necessarily the very next episode,
Speaker 2: but I want to circle back and come, like within
Speaker 2: the next few weeks back to that one, and then
Speaker 2: maybe we could do like Divine Comedy. We've been talking
Speaker 2: about that for years. Anyway, that could be cool, and
Speaker 2: I've never actually fully read it, so that'll give me
Speaker 2: the opportunity. Cool. All right, Well, we love you guys,
Speaker 2: thank you for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this one.
Speaker 2: I hope it wasn't too off the wall, and uh,
Speaker 2: you know we appreciate you. We couldn't do it without you, guys,
Speaker 2: and we'll see you next week. Weird things happen in
Speaker 2: the backyard to let the houses.
Speaker 3: The arden let now houses.
Speaker 1: Just so weird we're no aware.
Speaker 3: Wow.