(the Protection Against the Tormenting Furies]

O nobly-born, although one liketh it not, nevertheless, being pursued from behind by karmic tormenting furies,® one feeleth

in the front, and life-cutters as a vanguard leading one, and darkness and karmic tornadoes, and noises and snow and rain

Unformed’—a concept altogether foreign to popular, or exoteric, Christianity and found only in esoteric Christianity, i.e. Gnosticism, which, very unwisely, the councils of exoteric Christianity have officially repudiated as being ‘heretical’.

(and Hinduism, too,) does not postulate eternal condemnation to a state of hell, and is, in this respect, more logical than Christian theology which has in the past postulated it,

and terrifying hail-storms and whirlwinds of icy blasts occur- ring, there will arise the thought of fleeing from them.

Thereupon, by going to seek refuge because of fear, [one

caverns, earth-caverns, jungles, and lotus blossoms which close [on entering them]; and one escapeth by hiding inside [one

thinking, ‘To go out is not good now’. And fearing to depart therefrom, one will feel greatly attracted to one’s place of refuge [which is the womb]. Fearful lest, by going out, the awe and terror of the Bardo will meet one, and afraid to encounter them, if one hide oneself within [the place or womb chosen], one will thereby assume a very undesirable body and suffer various sufferings.

there is a profound teaching. Listen; and heed it:

At that time—when the tormenting furies will be in pursuit of thee, and when awe and terror will be occurring—instan-

hast such, perfect of form, huge of body, of massive limbs, wrathful and terrifying in appearance, capable of reducing to dust all mischievous spirits. Visualize it instantaneously. The gift-waves and the power of its grace will separate thee from the tormenting furies and thou wilt obtain the power to select the womb-door. This is the vital art of the very profound teaching ; therefore bear it thoroughly well in mind.

O nobly-born, the dhyani and other deities are born of the power of Samadhi [or meditation]. Pretas [or unhappy

in the Intermediate State assumed that very shape which they thereafter retained, and became grezas, evil spirits, and rakshasas, possessed of the power of shape-shifting. All

pretas, who exist in space, who traverse the sky, and the eighty thousand species of mischievous sprites, have become

the Lardo-plane].!

1 Owing to having arrived at the false concept that the Intermediate State is a desirable or fixed state of existence, all dwellers therein,—sprites, prefas, demons, and deceased human entities,—becoming thereby habituated to the Bardo, their normal evolution is retarded. According to the most enlightened of the Jamas, whenever a spirit is called up, as in such spirit-evocations as are nowadays common throughout the West, that spirit, through contact with this world and the prevailing traditional animistic beliefs concerning the hereafter, being strengthened in the illusion that the Bardo is a state wherein real spiritual progress is possible, makes no attempt to quit it. The spirit called up ordinarily describes the Bardo (which is pre-eminently the realm of illusion), in which it is a dweller, more or less after what it had believed whilst in the fleshly body concerning the hereafter; for just asa dreamer in the human world lives over again in the dream-state the experience of the waking state, so the inhabitant of the Bardo experiences hallucinations in karmic accord with the content of his consciousness created by the human world. His symbolic visions, as the Bardo Thédol repeatedly emphasizes, are but the psychic reflexes of thought-forms carried over from earth-life as mental deposits or seeds of karma. (See pp- 31-5.) This is said to explain why none but very exceptional spirits when evoked have any rational philosophy to offer concerning the world in which they exist; they are regarded as being merely the playthings of karma, lacking in mental coherence and stability of personality—more often than not, as being senseless ghosts, or psychic ‘shells’ which have been cast off by the consciousness-principle, and which, when coming into rapport with a human ‘medium’, are galvanized into automaton-like life.

It is true that spirit-evocation of a kind is practised in Tibet, as throughout Mongolia and China, by /a@mas who form a class of oracular priests, consulted on important problems of political policy even by the Dalai Lama himself. But the spirits called up are tutelary deities of a low order called the ‘executive-order’ (Tib. bkah-dod—pron. ka-dét, meaning ‘ one awaiting orders’) and never intention- ally the spirits or ghosts of men or women recently deceased. Some of these bkahdods are, so the Tibetans believe, the spirits of /a@mas and devotees who have failed—often through practising black magic—to obtain spiritual enlighten- ment when in the human world, or who otherwise, in the manner described in the text here, have been diverted from the normal path of progress. Thus, in many instances, they have become demoniacal and malignant spirits, whose progress has been arrested not by being bound to the earth-plane through having been called up by ‘ mediums’ soon after their decease, but naturally through very evil karma. Such bkahdods, thus often presenting themselves with ordinary spirits of the dead, are, as obsessing demons, said to do much harm mentally and psychically to the untrained ‘medium’ and clients, insanity and moral irresponsi- bility not infrequently resulting. For these reasons, the /amas maintain that psychic research should be conducted only by masters of the occult, or magical, sciences, and not indiscriminately by the guru-less multitude.

In Sikkim, where our translation was made, necromancy precisely like that now practised in the West has been practised for unknown centuries, as it still

At this time, if one can recollect the Great Symbol [teach-

all things as illusion [or maya]. Even if this be impossible, be not attracted by anything. By meditating upon the Tutelary Deity, the Great Compassionate [One], Buddhahood will be obtained in the Sambhoga-K aya.