It only speaks at the margins of dominant research which is almost entirely polarized towards achieving technological goals and achievements. At that time, the main thrust was directed towards investigating metaphysical themes and the afterlife. Communication with familiar spirits and protective spirits who could help in healing was encouraged from childhood, encouraging these phenomena and thus developing latent faculties in individuals. One of the products of this work is precisely the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which tradition holds was written by Padma Sambhava, the Tibetan Guru par excellence who lived approximately in the 8th century. Tradition holds that during this period Padma Sambhava wrote this text and then hid it together with a set of other texts in anticipation of the political upheavals and Buddhist persecutions that would afflict Tibet shortly thereafter. According to tradition, Padma Sambhava hid and scattered sacred writings throughout Tibet, waiting for someone after the political and religious upheavals to recover the tradition he had concealed. In particular, this Book on the Bar-do or intermediate state was found by the great "treasure discoverer" Karma LingPa in the 14th century.
TIBETAN APPROACH TO LIFE AND DEATH
First of all, to understand the meaning of this text, it is necessary to understand the spirit with which Tibetans related to life and death. The Tibetans of the 8th and 15th centuries lived in conditions very different from ours and with mental conceptions very distant from ours. For example, they did not have cell phones, computers, internet; they lived in a place distant from the world that inclined towards reflection, internalization and spiritual meditation.
• The first fundamental concept for understanding the Tibetan mentality towards death is that in the Tibetan view, each person can die at any moment. Every day, for reasons unknown to us, could be the last, and therefore in their view this life and this reality is not as solid and firm as in our culture. This life with this state of consciousness does not have preponderance over other states or Realms of Existence; it is not more real than other states of consciousness. In the Tibetan Book of the Dead, this world with this state of consciousness is recognized by the characteristic fact that the sky is blue and there is the sun with shining stars. While in other states of consciousness, for example, the sky can be green, leaden, or iridescent with the evanescent colors of the rainbow. We see the blue sky because our consciousness encodes the light waves coming from the sky with this blue perception, but if our consciousness changed the way it interprets these waves, we could see the sky purple, green, rainbow. These colors depend mainly on states of consciousness. For example, to make the deceased aware of being dead in a passage from the book, the guide to the intermediate world tells the deceased to look at the sky with its five colors and says: "Here the sky is of a deep blue" to allow them to notice the difference.
• Therefore ordinary life does not have the absolute value or character that it has in the West. Death can strike at any moment, and when death strikes, all earthly occupations, problems, infinite affairs to be settled, accumulated goods, everything suddenly disappears. It no longer makes any sense, loses meaning. Everything you have, that you have built in the world, that you have cared for as external to you, disappears. It no longer has any meaning. Everything you have, you must be ready to let go in an instant and remain with what you are. Everything loses meaning because it never had real meaning; it was all just an illusion, like a dream from which one awakens and which a moment later no longer makes any sense.
• For this reason, for Tibetans, death assumed a very important meaning, central to their life. The purpose of life in a certain sense was preparation for a good death.
PHENOMENOLOGY OF DEATH
Why is death so important for Tibetans? Because in their conception, death was only a change or passage from one form to another, and only when consciousness dissolved from one form and found itself in an intermediate state between one state and another was it possible for it to obtain total liberation. That is, to abandon the world of Samsara, or "the flaming wheel of life" of beings prisoners of Hatred, Craving and Ignorance, and transfer definitively to the world of Nirvana where spirits live who nourish themselves only on Wisdom, Power and Love.
• This liberation, however, was not so simple because this intermediate state was a very difficult state to master, similar to a dream state. For the Buddhist tradition, at the moment of death the soul abandons attachment to every form and consciousness withdraws into itself, no longer mitigated by the body. Here everything appears in the form of symbols; the forces that swim and live in the individual's consciousness or subconsciousness appear as symbolic forms similar to a dream state and can be luminous forms, dazzling lights and angels in relation to supernatural and transcendent forces that illuminate consciousness, or they can be dark forms, opaque lights and demons for telluric states and forces.
"Oh, noble being, the Great Glorious Watcher-Heruka emerges from your own brain and shines vividly upon you; he is of dark brown color; with three heads, six hands and four feet firmly planted; [...] the body emits radiant flames; the nine eyes are wide open in a terrifying gaze;"