I first encountered The American Book of the Dead while working in a small bookshop in Florida in 1975. At that time I was a student with the Arica Institute, and had recently concluded three ears of experimentation with psychedelic drugs. I had a passing familiarity with the Evans-Wentz translation of the Tibetan manual and had also read with interest Trungpa’s introduction to the version prepared by him and Francesca Fremantle in which he correlated the visions in the bardo to everyday psychic activity. My understanding of the texts was superficial at best.
The American Book of the Dead came as a revelation. The introductory material especially spoke directly to the various experiences I had undergone while using psychedelics, and I was deeply affected by the idea of the Transit state as one which was constantly underlying apparent reality. I began to “hang out” with the book on a regular basis.
The first opportunity I had for using the text occurred when I assisted at an autopsy in 1976. Alone at home afterwards I was unable to shake obsessive thoughts about the experiences. I felt as if I were being haunted by the spirit of the person upon whose remains I had operated earlier in the day. Finally, I lit a candle, and addressed the deceased, reading slowly through the ABD, wishing him the best possible evolution. At the conclusion of this ritual, the obsessive thoughts had ceased and I had the impression that his essence had been pacified.
Over the next several years I had three more occasions to read for people who had died, and in each case I felt a deepening connection, especially after the Revised ABD came out with the instructions printed in the first person singular.
I was by this time reading the ABD as a part of my normal spiritual discipline. Experiences while doing so were many. Most common was a perception of profound silence, as if the world was holding its breath while the readings took place. There were also a number of perceptual changes which took place while reading the “Confrontation with the Clear Light,” a passage I soon committed to memory and could recite without reference to the text. In addition to the “bell jar” effect, objects in the room would glow as though illuminated from within, and my voice would take on a resonance and power quite different from its ordinary tenor. There were also a number of physical sensations, feeling: feeling as if the body were hollow, or an intense pressure in my head as if two large plates of solid material were attempting to pass through one another, and a most unsettling sensation that my chin and my feet were suddenly at the same level.
The most profound effects were manifest in the bardo of the dreamstate. Over the years I had acquired the habit of recording my dreams, and I was astonished at the number of episodes which clearly were various stages of transit, including a variety of locales which I began to recognize as Rebirth Stations. As time went by, and the instruction from the ABD became more familiar to me, I was eventually able to recall them during the process of dreaming. Several times dreams which would normally qualify as nightmares were terminated by realizing that the person or object engendering terror was in actuality the Guide. I learned to move forward instead of away from such manifestations, often actually embracing them in the awareness that they were but projections of my own consciousness. When I did so, the fear and panic would vanish in an explosion of radiant energy and I would wake feeling enormously energized. I also discovered that I could affect passage from some endless labyrinthine maze of hotel corridors or sub-basements by ceasing automatic wandering, keeping still, and gathering the infinite levels of halls or stairways into my awareness simultaneously. Again the maze would dissolve into energy and I would experience the burst of illumination. It has become more and more common in recent years to find myself in one or another dream locale saying, “Oh yes, I know this place. I’ve been here before.”
Over the past twelve years I have discussed the bardo teaching and my experiences with them with my close friends and family. As a result, we have had many deep discussions about the nature of death, the dying process, and the best way to approach the end of one’s life. I was surprised to discover that many of the strange “dreams” experienced by those members of my family who had undergone intensive surgery were bardo experiences. Often I was able to ask questions based on the apparitions of the Second Stage of Transit which allowed them to recall further details. The results of such conversations has been an increased freedom within my family in dealing with death. Each household has a copy of The American Book of the Dead and has been instructed in how to read for the sick and dying.
In December of 1986, after a period of increasing ill-health, my lover of eight years, D, was diagnosed with AIDS. He was hospitalized with cryptococcal meningitis and lingered for four months, bedridden and angry. For much of this time her refused to communicate and towards the end, when rage and denial gave way to acceptance, he was unable to speak. During the initial stages of this process I read the ABD for him at home. It was not until the last two weeks of his life that he allowed me to begin readings with him at the hospital. Each day we would go over the instructions for confronting the Clear Light, and work on various sections of the other states. D was a close follower of the Arica system for nearly fifteen years, and I took particular care to point out similarities between the karmic visions of the Second State and exercise he had done in the course of his training. He was also repeatedly assured that a small group of his close friends would read the Book of the Dead in its entirety after his death, so no matter what he found taking place after passage he should listen for our voices and pay attention.
On the day D died his family and I were with him continuously during the last eight hours. At regular intervals I read the instructions for recognizing the symptoms of death and those for confronting the Clear Light. Pointing out the symptoms observable by the dying person was particularly useful since during his life D was a practitioner of traditional Chinese acupuncture and the stages were couched in the terms of the five elements he knew so well from his practice. His family, although of a fundamentalist Christian background, accepted that these readings were something that D desired and, while having little grasp of what we were doing, did their best to not interfere. The hospital staff, having been forewarned by us of what we would be doing (following the advice given in the ABD) was very cooperative and agreed to let us have at least an hour undisturbed with the body.
When, at 9p.m. that evening, D breath stopped, I pressed the channels in the neck and delivered the instructions for the moment of death and confronting the Clear Light slowly and distinctly. His family was then invited to join us in a Christian prayer. While they had their grief, D’s friends and members of his spiritual community held meditative vigil and periodically recited the Clear Light Confrontation. After two hours we cleaned and prepared the body for its journey to the hospital morgue.
It was D’s instruction that he be cremated the following day, so when we went to identify the body at the funeral home we again reiterated the first stage instructions, adding that the time had come for him to abandon all attachment to the body, and listen for the voices of those who loved him as we read the instructions for the bardo. The following day four of us cleaned and purified a room and, seated with candles, incense, and the urn containing D’s ashes, read The American Book of the Dead slowly in shifts, repeating the invocation prayers in unison.
There is one final story that I would like to share from this process. Around the third month, when the frustration and craziness had reached peak level, I had a rather remarkable experience. I had spent the previous period in a state of “hyper-cope,” shunting aside my own emotional needs and reactions while dealing with those of the people around me.
One morning after a night of casual drinking with a friend who had come from out of town to lend support, I awoke with a strange feeling as if I might be getting ready for a slight hangover, a possibility I discounted due to the minimal amount of alcohol drunk the night before. Everything in the visual field had a slight skew, as thought he room, particularly at the edges, was tilted; when I checked my vision carefully, however, everything seemed fine. A similar sensation manifest in the kinesthetic/spatial sense. While talking with M, it seemed that the room contained too much space, and the sound of our voices was too rich, too resonant. A vague sense of anxiety lurked just at the edges of my awareness, so that finally I sat down and asked myself, “Just what is going on here?” The answer chilled me. I carefully called M and said “I have the oddest sensation that I am dead. My heart is pounding and I’m having trouble catching my breath. I’m very afraid. Do you remember in The American Book of the Dead where it says that the dead person attempts to project ordinary life onto the Transit state as if nothing has happened? I feel that this is what has happened to me, and as I talk I can feel everything going flat.”
Quietly M asked me what I wanted to do.
What I wanted to do was make it stop. At the same time I knew this was precisely the wrong approach, even though the idea of surrendering to the sensations brought on tremendous fear and panic. I replied that I was going to go into the experience, closed my eyes, and allowed the feelings to wash over me. There was a rippling in my guts, and I imagined that I was losing my mind and was about to go completely insane. Sinking from the couch to the floor I stretched out in the corpse asana, let go of the desire to keep my mind from falling apart and internally recited the Confrontation with the Clear Light. No sooner had I begun that I felt myself whirling through a vast space and the terror vanished completely . After a moment I sat up and opened my eyes and said, “Whew!” Afterwards, as I got dressed to go to the hospital to see D, I had difficulty in recognizing items of clothing that I had owned for years. It was only with tremendous effort that I could say these things were mine; they were no more familiar to me that if they had come from the closet of a stranger.
Sitting by D’s bedside that afternoon, I suddenly experienced a feeling of something expanding within my chest. I started to weep and cried for the next four hours: for D, for myself, but most of all from an awareness of how hard the business of dying was. The fear and isolation I had felt earlier stayed with me as a taste of what D and the others on the ward were going through, indeed of what all of us must go through at the hour of our deaths. Without the ABD I have no idea what I would have made of the opportunity for this opening of the heart, but I cannot doubt that it would have been very different.
I cannot begin to express how important The American Book of the Dead has been to me throughout this experience. While D grappled with accepting his condition and fate, I found myself involved with his family , none of whom knew of his homosexuality and were extremely unhappy with my role and that of his friends and community members. In a very real sense, I found myself in transit as well, having to deal with implacable entities who mirrored back and reflected my own fears, anxieties, and uncertainties. I owe what little grace and elegance was manifest during this awkward and difficult time directly to my experiences with psychic projections as learned from the ABD.
I am grateful for The American Book of the Dead and the part that it has played in my life. I appreciate its teaching, its clarity, and very much its superb sense of humor. I can say without exaggeration that everything I have known of spiritual and psychological growth in the last decade has been a gloss on its principles. I look forward to the new edition, certain that it will continue to illuminate my life and my death as have its predecessors.
S B
