[the Transference of the Consciousness-Principle7™]

By The Guide, the highest intellects ought most certainly to be liberated; but should they not be liberated, then while

1,2 See pp. 10-15.

8 ‘These Deities are in ourselves. They are not something apart from us. We are one with all that is, in every state of sentient existence, from the lowest worlds of suffering to the highest states of bliss and Perfect Fnlighten- ment. In this esoteric sense, the Lotus Order of Deities represent the deified principles of the vocal functions in ourselves; the Peaceful represent the deified principles of the heart or functions of feeling; the Wrathful represent, in the same way, the functions of our mentality—such as thinking or reasoning, and imagination or memory—centred in the brain.—Lama Kazi Dawa Samdup. See p. 131}.

6 ‘ The Guide Series’ refers to various treatises offering practical guidance to devotees on the Bodhi Path through the human world and thence through Bardo, the After-Death State, and onward to rebirth or else to Nirvana.

in the Intermediate State of the Moments of Death they should practise the Transference, which giveth automatic libera- tion by one’s merely remembering it.

Devotees of ordinary wit ought most certainly to be freed thereby; but should they not be freed, then, while in the

should persevere in the listening to this Great Doctrine of Liberation by Hearing.

Accordingly, the devotee should at first examine the symptoms of death as they gradually appear [in his dying body], following Self-Liberation [by Observing the| Charac- teristics [of the| Symptoms of Death. Then, when all the

ference, which conferreth liberation by merely remembering [the process ].”

‘transference’ (of the sum-total, or aggregate, of karmic propensities, com- posing, or bound up with, personality and consciousness). The use of the term ‘soul’ being objectionable, since Buddhism, as a whole, denies the existence of a permanent, unchanging personal-consciousness entity such as the Semitic Faiths and animistic creeds in general understand thereby, the translator has avoided using it. But wherever any similar or equivalent term occurs herein it should be taken to imply something akin to ‘consciousness-principle’ or ‘com- pound of consciousness’ as implied by the Tibetan (pho, or else as synonymous with the term ‘life-flux’ as used chiefly by Southern Buddhists.

2 Liberation in this context does not necessarily imply, especially in the case of the average devotee, the Liberation of Mrvdua, but chiefly a liberation of the ‘life-flux’ from the dying body, in such manner as will afford the greatest possible after-death consciousness and consequent happy rebirth. Yet for the very exceptional and very highly efficient yog?, or saint, the same esoteric process of Transference can be, according to the /ama-gurus, so employed as to prevent any break in the flow of the stream of consciousness, from the moment of a conscious death to the moment of a conscious rebirth. Judging from a translation, made by the late Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup, of an old Tibetan manuscript containing practical directions for performing the Transference, which the editor possesses, the process is essentially yogic, and could be em- ployed only by a person trained in mental concentration, or one-pointedness of mind, to such a high degree of proficiency as to have gained control over all the mental and bodily functions. Merely remembering the process at the all- important moment of death—as the text implies—is, for a yogi, equivalent to performing the Transference itself; for once the yogi’s trained mind is directed