Cyd Ropp, Ph. D.

Copyright 2022; all rights reserved

This week I’ve been reviewing the Bardo Thodol, known in the West as the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The full title of the Bardo Thodol can be translated as “Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State.” The Bardo Thodol is actually part of a larger volume called “The Profound Dharma of Self-Liberation through the Intention of the Peaceful and Wrathful Ones.”  You may wonder why we are talking about this book because you may not consider it to be a gnostic text.

Here at Gnostic Insights, I look at gnosticism as the truth that comes from the Father and spreads out universally. Gnostic wisdom doesn’t have to come through what are considered to be historically Gnostic sources. A lot of people look at gnosticism as simply an historical sect and, because they think of it in historical terms, they only want to consider texts such as the Nag Hammadi scriptures or the Qumran scrolls. These are your traditional Gnostic texts. Here at Gnostic Insights, I have already shared with you some of the Tao te Ching, which is Chinese wisdom that also reflects the same universal truths that we look at in Gnostic scriptures. Here today I’d like to look at the Tibetan Book of the Dead in the same way to see what gnosis we can mine there.

The Bardo Thodol presents universal truths that have come through the Father and the Fullness by way of Tibetan Buddhism. However, one needn’t be a Tibetan Buddhist to appreciate the wisdom that has been shared through the Tibetan Book of the Dead. It is interesting to note that, according to Tibetan tradition, the book is thought to have been written in the 8^th century and then buried in the Gampo hills of central Tibet. Similar to our Nag Hammadi and Qumron scrolls, the Book of the Dead was buried and resurrected out of the ground centuries later. The same thing happened with the Tao te Ching, buried around 200 BC in two tombs and unearthed in the 1970’s.  It is almost as if these wisdom books needed to be buried and resurrected, perhaps to instruct the Demiurge by way of direct contact with his earth. Looking at these texts with modern eyes rather than through tradition allows us to examine their applicability to our current times. In any event, their burial and resurrection is reminiscent of the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth—a fractal historical event.

You know that I say “onward and upward” when I sign off these weekly podcasts. That is because I think it’s extremely important to remember to go forward and look up. Thinking about onward and upward is something you can easily put into practice. You can think and say onward and upward many times a day. When you look backward and down, you are wallowing in fears, negative memes, and pain. Backward and down is historical; it has already passed and there’s nothing you can do about it here and now. The only way to correct your current circumstances is by moving forward and looking up toward the Father and the Fullness. That is the direction that allows you let go of negative memes and vices and embrace uplifting memes and virtues in their place.

I came by that expression many years ago while reading the Tibetan Book of the Dead. I found the book to be highly repetitive as it describes numerous realms of death, or what the Catholics would call Purgatory. A bardo is defined as that realm where souls go between incarnations. It is a liminal space, like a doorway, where one passes through on their way to somewhere else. In Tibetan Buddhism, one’s experience in the bardo after death affects your karma and the memes you will carry forward into the next life. If your life has been noble and righteous you will experience a positive bardo populated by helpful deities. If your life has been carnal and egoic, you will find yourself bouncing around from one hellacious bardo to the next on your way toward your next incarnation. The reason there are 14 such layers is because if one doesn’t go onward and upward, then you fall back and down into increasingly unpleasant bardos.

In order to assist the dying or recently deceased person to navigate the bardos, a loved one or cleric sits beside the person and reads the Bardo Thodol out loud. This serves a dual purpose of instructing the dead and also gives comfort to the reader. More spiritually adept people study the Bardo Thodol throughout their lifetimes in order to assure themselves of a good passage through the bardo and a more enlightened reincarnation. 

The Book of the Dead continually presents to the dying and deceased person what they are about to experience unless they realign themselves to go onward and upward. There are many detailed descriptions of both helpful and terrifying deities that inhabit the various bardos, but I noticed in my reading that the bottom line to escaping the negative bardos is always some version of onward and upward. Each of these bardos is basically resolved by remembering and moving towards the great white light of the Father, otherwise you find yourself falling back and down and it gets worse and worse and scarier and scarier with each level of descending bardos.

We don’t need to go through the frightening bardos if we remember to look up and go forward. As a Gnostic, you can go directly onward and upward when you shuffle off this mortal coil. When you die, your spirit carries on, your soul carries on, but you no longer have the material shroud surrounding you and, once the hylic material drops away, you’re able to see and discern more clearly. After the death of the material body, you are able to rise above the confusion and distractions of your entanglements with the Fallen world. However, people who, after death, continue to look backward at their life and continue to look down at their body with sorrow, regret, anger, and whatnot, can’t move onward and upward. They keep falling back and down until it becomes so uncomfortable and so frightening that they either run around looking for a new body to quickly inhabit so they can escape the bardos and return to the material plane, or they recognize the light, reverse course, and move onward and upward.

The goal of the Book of the Dead is to liberate souls from the wheel of earthly manifestation, because they prefer that we be up in Heaven or in one of the layers of Paradise rather than having to come back to Earth to be reincarnated again. One of the differences between Buddhism and Gnosticism is that Buddhists aspire to reach a final Heavenly realm where one’s personal identity disappears and their big S Self is fully absorbed back into the Father. Our Gnostic Gospel does not say that our identity will disappear after this material existence. After all, even the Aeons named themselves and sorted themselves into positions, ranks, and duties. We Second Order Powers appear to retain our sense of personal identity and we carry it with us into the next, post-material economy. The next economy to come is patterned from the Aeon’s dream of Paradise, and it is there we expect to land after liberation from this fallen world, with redeemed egos intact.

So why do we keep falling back and down? According to the Tibetan Buddhism way of thinking, if you get all the way to the 13th or 14th bardo and you still haven’t seen the light, you may find yourself reincarnating into a dog or a horse or some other creature even, rather than a human, depending upon your karma and what meme burdens you’re carrying. Although, between you and me, I don’t see why we should look upon other animals as lesser beings than humans; we are all Second Order Powers. No need to insult dogs and horses by calling their incarnation some kind of punishment! In the kind of Gnosticism that I’ve been teaching you, we also have karma, which are the consequences of your actions in the world. Karma is what comes from the things you do, and you can’t get away from it. So, if you commit some sort of terrible error in this life, then the karma of that error will attach to you, because you have created badness or sadness in the world. Your actions have enabled the delusion of the Demiurge that much more, and so that is a negative weight on your karma.

Fortunately for us Gnostics, we also have our One Self, capital S Self, to mitigate the effects of our karma. In Tibetan Buddhism they would refer to this as your inner Buddha, your enlightened soul, and we know that our Self is that One Self that we all share. Our Self is a fractal of the Fullness of God, all condensed down into our Self. So we always carry the gnosis with us. We always have the potential for gnosis, for reuniting with the Father through the Son. We always carry that inside of us, and we only need to realize that.

Here is what the Tripartite Tractate says about these things:

“Now the promise possessed the instruction and the return to what they are from the first, from which they possess the drop, so as to return to him, which is that which is called “the redemption.” And it is the release from the captivity and the acceptance of freedom. In its places, the captivity of those who were slaves of ignorance holds sway. The freedom is the knowledge of the truth which existed before the ignorance was ruling, forever without beginning and without end, being something good, and a salvation of things, and a release from the servile nature in which they have suffered.”

Interestingly enough, even though Tibetan Buddhism is an entirely different line of wisdom, located in a different part of the world, embedded in different historical and cultural traditions, they believe many of the same things that we Gnostics do. For example, Tibetan Buddhism believes in the Trinity. They happen to call it different words, but it is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and the process of attaining salvation or Buddhahood and not having to reincarnate into the material world is the same. It’s the gnosis of having come from the Father; it’s the gnosis of recognizing the Aeons of the Fullness. It also requires the same act of stepping outside of your ego and letting go of the things that you hold near and dear in this world that you’ve been living in.

The Book of the Dead is relevant to our gnostic studies, because the only way to go onward and upward is to remove your egoic soul and your collection of memes that you hold near and dear—to remove those from the center of your being and re-enthrone the One Self. The Buddhists would call it putting the Buddha on the throne, enshrining your own personal Buddha. Throughout the Book of the Dead, they are expecting that the person who has died will have had some sort of spiritual education. They will have a guru or teacher that they follow. They will also have chosen a personal god, because they believe there are many different gods. They will have a teacher and it is expected that during the period of dying and then during the first couple of weeks after death, their teacher, or an enlightened person such as a monk from a local monastery, will sit with them and read the Book to them.

In our Western tradition, we would say it would be your guru or your minister or a friend that you trust implicitly and that you know to be a righteous person. It is expected that someone will sit with the dying person and then with their corpse and read the entirety of the Tibetan Book of the Dead out loud to the person, face-to-face and directly in their ear, so that the wisdom therein can be transmitted to the soul as it wanders around the bardos seeking redemption.

We Gnostics do not have to pass through layers of Hell in order to find redemption. Remember that the figure called the Christ has brought redemption to all of us. The Christ in our Western gnostic tradition is our guru and our personal deity, as they call it in the East. So you don’t have to feel as though this is some sort of pagan ritual where you have to find a God of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and pray to them. That’s not necessary, just like we don’t need to memorize names of Aeons or ritualistic incantations and practices in order to become enlightened or to know God or to rejoin the Elect after death. None of that is necessary.

All you need to know, if you wake up some day and find yourself in a bardo of the afterlife, is remember the Father and remember the Fullnesses, remember the Son and the Christ, and that memory will pull you in the upward and onward direction. So what I would recommend is that continually, as you are living this life day-to-day and hour by hour, think upon and remember the Fullness and the Father, or think upon and remember the redemption of the Christ and how it frees you from the delusions and attachments of this world.

You can abstract the Christ if you feel the need to. I don’t abstract the Christ. I am happy to believe in Jesus because I am from that Western tradition. So for me, my personal deity would be Jesus, the Christ. No harm, no foul, to believe in Jesus Christ. But you don’t necessarily have to believe in Jesus as the Christ. You can directly believe in the Fullness and the Son and the God Above All Gods, but realizing that Christ is the one that has saved you and pulled you out of the cycles of rebirth.

Do remember that it is not through our act but through the Christ’s act that we are saved. So that is why we have universal redemption. The Christ has done its job; all Second Order Powers will return to the heavenly realm above. We are all redeemed. We will all return to some form of Paradise, but it may take you a while to get there if you don’t believe that.

If you hate the Christ, if you hate the God Above All Gods, then you’re going to fall down down down down through those domains of Hell and your karma and meme shroud will require you to come back into this fallen world. It isn’t God doing it to you, it is your ego not recognizing the Self that resides within you; it’s your own ego rejecting the Fullness and the Father.

So let’s look at this now in terms of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and see what it’s like. Keep in mind that all of this material is being read out loud to a person who is dying, and then it is repeated to the dead body between three and seven times every day for the next couple of weeks, to continue their instruction in case they are wandering around the bardos. If the corpse is immediately taken up to Paradise, that isn’t necessary.

The Book says that the highest intellects ought most certainly to be liberated. But should they not be liberated, then, while in the intermediate state of the moments of death, they should “practice the transference which giveth automatic liberation by one’s merely remembering it.” Our definition of the highest intellects, those would be the Gnostics. In this case, intellect stands for gnosis, not intelligence.

Carrying on, “devotees of ordinary wit, ought most certainly to be freed thereby. But should they not be freed, then, while in the intermediate state, during the experiencing of reality, they 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, allowing self liberation by observing the characteristics of the symptoms of death. Then, when all the symptoms of death are complete, he should apply the transference which conferreth liberation by merely remembering the process. If the transference hath been effectually employed, there’s no need to read the remainder of this book. But if the transference hath not been effectually employed, then this tool, which is the teaching, is to be read correctly and distinctly near the dead body.”

This passage shows us that we can observe the process of our own death and rather than feeling fear and clinging to memories and loved ones, we may contemplate our return to the Father and the Fullness. We may also count on redemption as promised by the Christ. This remembrance is what liberates us so that our Self may ascend, meme free and focused on God. Remember that the Second Order Powers is also called “those of the remembrance.”

In the Eastern tradition, the person speaking to the one who is dying says this: “Nobly born,” so-and-so, [use their name here]. So, for example, someone would say to me: “Nobly born Cyd, the time hath now come for thee to seek the path in reality. Thy breathing is about to cease, thy teacher hath set thee face-to-face before with the clear light, and now thou art about to experience it in its reality. In the bardo state, wherein all things are like the void and cloudless sky and the naked, spotless intellect is like unto a transparent vacuum without circumference and without form, at this moment know thou thyself and abide in that state. At this moment, the first glimpsing of the bardo, of the clear light of reality,” and, by the way, to us Gnostics, we would call that clear light of reality the Father, “the clear light of reality, which is the infallible mind of the dark. This is experienced by all sentient beings, in those who have led an evil life and in those of unsound nerves. The above state endureth only so long as it would take to snap a finger again. In some it endureth as long as the time taken for the eating of a meal.”

Now stepping in to make a comment, I recognize this phrase from the Tripartite Tractate, that, to those who have rejected the Father upon death, the coming of the light is frightening and like lightning striking and only lasts for a moment.

Carrying on, “Nobly born, that which is called death is coming to thee. This is now the hour of death. By taking advantage of the death, I will so act for the good of all sentient beings, peopling the illimitable expanse of the heavens so as to obtain the perfect Buddhahood by resolving on love and compassion towards them and by directing my entire effort to the soul perfection, shaping the thoughts. Thus, especially at this time when the image of the clear light in the state after death can be realized for the benefit of all sentient beings, know that thou art in that state and resolve that thou wilt obtain the best boon of the state of the great symbol in which thou art. Even if I cannot realize it yet will I know this bardo and mastering the great body of the union in bardo will appear in whatever shape, will benefit all beings, whomsoever I will serve all sentient beings, infinite in number, as are the limits of the sky. Keeping thyself unseparated from this resolution, thou shouldst try to remember whatever devotional practices thou wert accustomed to and to perform them during thy lifetime. In saying this, the reader shall put his lips close to the ear and shall repeat it distinctly, clearly, impressing it upon the dying person so as to prevent his mind from wandering even for a moment, and say thus: ‘Reverend Sir, now that thou art experiencing the fundamental, clear light, try to abide in that state which now thou art experiencing nobly born. So-and-so listen, now thou art experiencing the radiance of the clear light of pure reality.’”

When my best friend was passing away in the hospital, she was an atheist and didn’t want to hear about God. So, how I put it to her was, “Lou, you might soon find yourself tumbling in a place as if you had been out body surfing in the ocean, and you’ll find yourself tumbling around and you’ll be lost. You won’t know which direction is up or down. But open your eyes and look for the light above the water. Look for the sun above the ocean. Raise your eyes and look for the light and swim upward, to it, swim upward. Remember this, look for the light and swim upward.” This would be an acceptable type of Western interpretation of the Buddhist instructions.

Back to the Book of the Dead. They say: “Now thou art experiencing the radiance of the clear light of pure reality. Recognize it, nobly born. Thy present intellect is in nature void, not formed into anything as regards characteristics or color, naturally void. This is the very reality. The all good. Thine own intellect, which is now void, yet not to be regarded as of the voidness of nothingness, but as being the intellect itself unobstructed, shining, thrilling and blissful is the very consciousness. The all good Buddha. Thine own consciousness not formed into anything in reality. Void and the intellect shining and blissful. These two are inseparable. The union of them is the state of perfect enlightenment.”

In gnostic terms we would say that this perfect enlightenment that they’re speaking of, your voidness, is the pure Self sitting on your throne of consciousness now because your ego has been stripped of its meme shroud.

Again, reading on, “Thine own consciousness, shining, void and inseparable from the great body of radiance, hath no birth nor death, and is the immutable light. Knowing this is sufficient. Recognizing the voidness of thine own intellect to be Buddhahood,” or as we would call it Self or the Fullness of God, “and looking upon it as being thine own consciousness, is to keep thyself in the state of the divine mind of the Buddha. This will cause the naked consciousness to be recognized as the clear light, and thus recognizing that these are one and the same, you will become permanently united with the Father, and liberation will be certain.”

This is the essential message that the Bardo Thodol holds for us Gnostics. Most of the book and the reading to the dead is for the benefit of those who do not remember the gnosis of the Father and the Fullness. The remainder of the Book speaks of terrifying karmic-induced illusions, and the sound of wailings and sights of frightful apparitions of the Lords of Death. The reader of the Bardo Thodol continues to remind the corpse that, at any moment during these terrifying experiences, one need only remember to divert and go onward and upward toward the Father and the Fullness.

There are many horrifying descriptions and they go into great detail about each of the bardos as they get worse and worse and more and more frightening. They come to resemble the depictions of Hell that we Westerners are familiar with—paintings from the Dark Age, and the wrathful preaching of clerics who try to coerce people into righteousness. And that, of course, doesn’t work. But, at any time you realize the Hell you are in, you can turn your eyes upward and you will escape the torment.

When you go down down down into more and more terrifying and disturbing realms of the bardo, this is like our life, is it not? Are these bardos not a reflection of this creation, this demiurgic world in which we find ourselves? We can live in an enlightened, ascended state, in the midst of love and compassion, or we can strengthen our egos instead of our Self through the acquisition of worldly or demiurgic memes. This is how many people find themselves in extreme distress, extreme despair, even bouts of hallucinations of the same sort of visions that assail the dead in the lower domains of the bardos. Many people find themselves in those extreme forms of Hell even while they are alive.

The goal of Gnostic Insights is to help you raise your eyes upward and follow the light, the same light that would pull you out of these bardos if you were dead. Why not pull yourself out of these bardos here and now? The expression “to know thyself” is quite true, and the Self is the big S Self. That is what puts you in alignment with the Fullness and the Father. It’s best not to wait until death to discover your gnosis. This is the actual reason to pursue gnosis or to meditate upon the Father or to pray to the Son or to your personal deity, Jesus Christ. You prepare to transcend death while your body is still alive.

It isn’t a matter of studying and remembering the names of deities and angels or performing certain rituals, or making sure that you’re baptized before you die. That is all irrelevant. All that you need to know is to look upward. Remember the Fullnesses, remember the Father, and remember the Son. At the very least, remember your personal deity. If that is Jesus Christ, you remember Jesus and that he has promised that he will take you by the hand and lead you upward to the Father. This is what we need to accept now, on a daily basis, on an hourly basis, because if we are practiced in this while we are alive, we won’t have to learn it the hard way.

If you are curious about the torments of Hell, then go ahead and look up the Tibetan Book of the Dead. You can find a PDF of it for free on the internet and you can read all the details about all these bardos. I don’t recommend it because I know that many of the listeners to Gnostic Insights have embraced a form of Gnosticism where they feel like they have to immerse themselves into all of the variances of the archons and the inner workings of the Demiurge. No, you don’t. It is that kind of thinking that leads you into misery.

Once you become aware of these types of ethereal planes that are working on us at all times, the good bet is to repent and be redeemed now, sooner rather than later. Live out the remainder of your life in joy, recognizing your true Self is the reflection of the Fullness of God. Pray to your personal deity, mine being Jesus, pray on a regular basis that you might be freed from delusion.

For the souls that continue to resist and that don’t drop their earthly attachments or hold on to their ego itself, the Bardo Thodol says they will find themselves in the worst bardo, surrounded by blood drinking deities and being hacked to bits by swords. It says to offer up this prayer. So see.  Even then, one only needs to look onward and upward. Here is one of the last chance prayers: “Alas, when I am wandering in abandonment to fright, fear, and awe … When the divine bodies of the peaceful and of the wrathful are shining here, may the assurance of fearlessness be obtained and the bardo be recognized. When, by the power of evil karma, misery is being tasted, may the teaching deities dissipate that misery, when the natural sound of reality is reverberating like a thousand thunders, may they be transmuted into the sounds of these six syllables.” And those six syllables in Buddhism are om mani, padme hum, which means, “The Jewel Is In The Lotus.”

So in other words, what he’s saying is: don’t be afraid of the cacophony of the thunderous fear, but separate into these six godly syllables that every good Buddhist would already know.

“I beseech the gracious, compassionate one to protect me when suffering miseries of karmic propensities. May the blissfulness of the clear light dawn. May the five elements not rise up as enemies, but may I behold the realms of the five orders of the enlightened ones. Thus, in earnest faith and humility, offer up the prayer whereby all fears will vanish and Buddhahood undoubtedly will be won.”

Even those people who have fallen so far in their lifetime as to commit what are considered unforgivable sins, will be forgiven if they turn to the clear light of the Father upon death. It is a good thing to be reminded of right action and right thought, but even then, in my opinion, the thing that is most important is to turn your gaze directly upward to the Fullness of God, because we carry the Fullness of God within us and, according to Gnostics, we can achieve gnosis and we can achieve redemption and salvation through the Christ by simply remembering it.

Remember the Father always. Remember the Fullness of God. Take every opportunity that you can every single day to turn your eyes upward, and this will dispel fear and misery and despair. And that is one of the big lessons of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Turn your eyes upward, go to the good light.

We are nearing the end of this Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel. I need to hear from you now if you are confused over anything in this Simple Explanation; perhaps I can clear it up in the next episode before closing out the series. If you have questions or comments for me, please use the comments form that you will find at gnosticinsights.com  

Until next time, onward and upward, and God bless.

p.s. I am in the process of switching my donations buttons from Paypal to a new service called Alignpay, in response to Paypal’s new policy of fining users for the sin of wrong-think. If you are a supporter of Gnostic Insights, I will be contacting you soon and asking you to switch your donations to Alignpay. Not yet; still setting up the service.