Comparison With The Western Experience of Death
One can perhaps attempt to compare the descriptions of the Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State with accounts of Near-Death Experiences. These accounts sometimes mention a "white light", and helpful figures corresponding to that person's religious tradition. According to the Buddhist teachings, there are four different steps and the "white light" is most probably the last of them; then Mahaparinirvana eternal bliss. The divine beings are Buddhas and dakinis that people see as respective figures of their culture or religious belief.
In an introduction to Evans-Wentz' version, Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung summarizes his psychological commentary:
The Bardo Thödol began by being a closed book, and so it has remained, no matter what kind of commentaries may be written upon it. For it is a book that will only open itself to spiritual understanding, and this is a capacity which no man is born with, but which he can only acquire through special training and special experience. It is good that such to all intents and purposes useless books exist. They are meant for those queer folk who no longer set much store by the uses, aims, and meaning of present-day civilisation. — Carl JungRead more about this topic: Bardo Thodol
Famous quotes containing the words comparison with the, comparison with, comparison, western, experience and/or death:
“From top to bottom of the ladder, greed is aroused without knowing where to find ultimate foothold. Nothing can calm it, since its goal is far beyond all it can attain. Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned.”
—Emile Durkheim (1858–1917)
“What is man in nature? A nothing in comparison with the infinite, an all in comparison with the nothing—a mean between nothing and everything.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“Envy and jealousy are the private parts of the human soul. Perhaps the comparison can be extended.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Democracy is the menopause of Western society, the Grand Climacteric of the body social. Fascism is its middle-aged lust.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“Experience is not a matter of having actually swum the Hellespont, or danced with the dervishes, or slept in a doss-house. It is a matter of sensibility and intuition, of seeing and hearing the significant things, of paying attention at the right moments, of understanding and co-ordinating. Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“The things a man has to have are hope and confidence in himself against odds, and sometimes he needs somebody, his pal or his mother or his wife or God, to give him that confidence. He’s got to have some inner standards worth fighting for or there won’t be any way to bring him into conflict. And he must be ready to choose death before dishonor without making too much song and dance about it. That’s all there is to it.”
—Clark Gable (1901–1960)