Opus 3.14

All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts.

RENUNCIATION:
Get thee away from the life-lust, from conceit,
From ignorance, and from distraction’s craze;
Sunder the bonds; so only shalt thou come
To utter end of Ill. Throw off the Chain
Of birth and death—thou knowest what they mean.
So, free from craving, in this life on earth,
Thou shalt go on thy way calm and serene.

‘If you started in the wrong way,’ I said in answer to the investigator’s questions, ‘everything that happened would be a proof of the conspiracy against you. It would all be self-validating. You couldn’t draw a breath without knowing it was part of the plot.’

‘So you think you know where madness lies?’

‘My answer was a convinced and heartfelt, “Yes.”’

‘And you couldn’t control it?’

‘No I couldn’t control it. If one began with fear and hate as the major premise, one would have to go on the conclusion.’

‘Would you be able,’ my wife asked, ‘to fix your attention on what The Tibetan Book of the Dead calls the Clear Light?’

I was doubtful.

‘Would it keep the evil away, if you could hold it? Or would you not be able to hold it?’

I considered the question for some time. ‘Perhaps,’ I answered at last, ‘perhaps I could—but only if there were somebody there to tell me about the Clear Light. One couldn’t do it by oneself. That’s the point, I suppose, of the Tibetan ritual—somebody sitting there all the time and telling you what’s what.’

It may be argued that nobody can talk about death with authority who has not died; and since nobody, apparently, has ever returned from death, how can anybody know what death is, or what happens after it?

The Tibetan will answer: ‘There is not one person, indeed, not one living being, that has not returned from death. In fact, we all have died many deaths, before we came into this incarnation. And what we call birth is merely the reverse side of death, like one of the two sides of a coin, or like a door which we call “entrance” from outside and “exit” from inside a room.’

* * * *

It is much more astonishing that not everybody remembers his or her previous death; and, because of this lack of remembering, most persons do not believe there was a previous death. But, likewise, they do not remember their recent birth—and yet they do not doubt that they were recently born. They forget that active memory is only a small part of our normal consciousness, and that our subconscious memory registers and preserves every past impression and experience which our waking mind fails to recall.