the life and death of dimitri

[TooStonedToType]

I read it a while back.  Don't remember too much now. What did strike me as mentioned is the belief that liberation could come from hearing the words alone and/or it "guides a person to use the moment of death to recognize the nature of mind and attain liberation."  At the time, I was thinking in relation to some of my salvia experiences and the possiblities of what could come from recognizing ones nature while still having a viable body to return to...probably would be good to read it again.

[VajraPirate]

Has anyone else here read the Tibetan Book of the Dead?

Have a copy of it sitting on the desk right now, was just returned a few days ago by a fellow enthusiast. It's the Evan-Wentz edition, according to Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup' english rendering.

I could probably use to brush up on it myself. It's been a few years.


Them moment of death is like a second chance for enlightenment, the first being the lifetime that lead up to the point of death, IMHO. Everyone at the moment of death and the days following is given the opportunity, at several points, to gain liberation.

Salvia, for some people can defiantely be a glimpse of this state.

[CJ]

Been a very long time,probably something else I should get back to.

[laughingwillow]

I came upon this passage from the Evan-Wentz translation a little bit ago.

.........

..........forget not these words; and, bearing their meaning at heart, go forwards: in them lieth the vital secret of recognition:

Alas! when the Uncertain Experiencing of Reality is dawning upon me here,

With every thought of fear or terror or awe for all [apparitional appearances] set aside,

May I recognize whatever [visions] appear, as the reflections of mine own consciousness;

May I know them to be of the nature of apparitions in the Bardo: When at this all-important moment [of opportunity] of achieving a great end.

May I not fear the bands of Peaceful and Wrathful [Deities], mine own thought-forms.

Repeat thou these [verses] dearly, and remembering their significance as thou repeatest them, go forwards, [O nobly-born]. Thereby, whatever visions of awe or terror appear, recognition is certain; and forget not this vital secret art lying therein.

................

The similarities between these concepts and that which I've/we've gleaned at certain musical events while under the influence of powerful entheogenic sacraments is interesting, imo.

The amazing part is how well it all fits into a few personal delusions I've harbored for decades. hehe

lw

[Avery L. Breath]

Am thinking it might be interesting to have an audio recording of the entire book read in the tibetan language.  Am sure it's already been done out there somewhere.

(Those darned ethnomusicologists, they have all the fun.)

[space]

I first read the Tibetan Book of the Dead in my teens.  It became a living thing for me in boot camp.

I developed an inner ear infection in basic training.  The infirmary treated the infection with an antibiotic that had already been pulled from the civilian market because it caused the fraying of tendons and ligaments, esp. the major ones.

After several days on the antibiotic I developed pain low in my right leg.  I went on sick call and was told there was nothing wrong with my leg, with an attitude that suggested I was trying to duck out of marching.

My leg pain increased for several days.  I went back on sick call, was again told nothing was wrong, and this time was threatened with a charge of malingering.

A few days later we did a 20 mile march with full field gear--70 lbs. or so, double-timing the last few miles.  The pain was incredible.  I woke up the next morning with my leg so swollen I couldn't even get a sock over my foot, let alone a boot.  I went on sick call again and was told I had a sprained ankle.  They gave me a crutch and told me to walk the two miles to the hospital.  I did.

When I arrived at the hospital a compassionate colonel MD, a good guy, took a close look at my leg and exploded.  He called up the infirmary on the spot and reamed the medic out, asking, "Are you trying to turn this man into a cripple?"  I began to worry.

My Achilles tendon was badly split and frayed.  Several ligaments in my foot were torn nearly in half.  The cast room plastered me up in a non-weight bearing, bent-leg monster that encased me from the hip to the toes.  I was transfered to the Special Training Company, featuring the Sick, Lame, Lazy, and Dumb platoons.  I was expected to be in the cast for three months or so.

There I vegetated for a couple of months.  One day I started to have shaking chills alternating with sweats.  Off to sick call--where I was diagnosed with pneumonia.  I was admitted to the Advanced Respiratory Disease ward and started on IV antibiotics.  I did not improve.  My fever climbed to around 105.  I began to convulse.  A nurse came to sponge my body down to help lower my temp, and as she leaned over me, she put her hand on my cast and said, "My!  Your cast is hotter than you are!"

In short order the cast was torn off.  A marching blister on my heel had abscessed; the cellulitis had climbed up my leg, into the damaged tendon, and past that into the calf muscle.  My leg was green, yellow and reddish brown up to the knee.  A huge pouch of pus hung from my leg.  The surgeon said, "We're going to give you a GI anesthetic."  That turned out to be two orderlies holding me down while he scraped out the abscess on my heel.  

My calf was so damaged by the gangrenous infection that the colonel feared an incision would cause my entire leg to split like a rotten melon, possibly spilling some of the infection directly into my bloodstream.  So the giant pus sac on my leg was to be treated with an hour on/hour off application of moist heat to encourage spontaneous rupture and drainage.  A nurse put the moist heat on that afternoon, then never came back to remove it:  the constant heat helped drive infection into my lymphatic system, and I spent the night quietly convulsing in the dark.

That night I realized they were going to kill me.  I had arrived at Ft. Knox in great shape and perfect health, but a series of blunders by incompetent people was going to kill me.

It was winter in the hills of Kentucky, a beautiful place, the birthplace of my mother.  By the moon I could see it was snowing.  For the first time without the aid of an entheogen, I had an out of body experience.  

At first I was terrified:  I knew I was dying, and I didn't want to:  the young body fights so hard to live  Then I remembered the Book of the Dead, and I thought about Huxley tripping on LSD as he died, and I knew I didn't want to die in panic and fear.  I centered myself within the experience, just being there, accepting, as I had learned to do in meditation and with massive doses, at peace with my passing and feeling a sort of rapture that I was at last going to discover what-comes-next.  

Away from the fire burning up my body, I glided out over those gorgeous hills, trees filigreed in ice and moonlight, each gust of snowy wind moving me first this way, then that, totally surrendering to the great liberation, my heart as free and light as a feather.

I glanced back at the hospital window and saw that twitching body as though it was someone else, filled with poison, burrning, soaked in sweat, and I felt a tremendous pity.  A voice as light and clear as wind chimes whispered, "You can help."  I telescoped back into the room and hovered over the hospital bed, breathing clean, crisp cold down onto that poor boy like an angel of ice.  At some point all consciousness dissolved into dreams of snow...

On morning rounds the colonel found the heat pack still on my leg and ripped it off, furious, shouting...  In the night the pus sac had opened and drained more than a pint of foul smelling stuff.  It would be six months before I would walk without crutches again, a few years before I walked without a limp.  The colonel studied me silently for a moment, then said, "Son, you are mighty hard to kill."

Still feverish, I told him the old Tibetans in the snow had saved me.   He shook his head and walked away.

[CJ]

"That night I realizied they were going to kill me."

      That wasn`t prescience,or the magic you later experienced.That comes off as a very realistic assessment of what 'they' were  doing to you. Sad, I have seen things go that way,as if obeying their own positive marching orders.

     Glad that it became the backdrop for a better set of occurences.

[Jupe]

check out  "the Spirit Molecule by Rick Strassman" :wink:

[Avery L. Breath]

WoW, thanks space........ good read.

[Avery L. Breath]

Never read the tibetan book of the dead myself.  I wonder if it's anything like the egyptian book of the dead.  I see it often these days it seems...... death that is.  The whole gambut.  Everything from the wholly tragic to the better off to the far too soon.  Some people wear the veil of it weeks before they die it seems.  I remember I came home one day a couple months ago and I walked into my bedroom knowing instantly my grandfathers cat had passed away on my bed.  I just stood there in awe of the empty vessel.   It bugged me for weeks, how I knew the cat was dead intuitively.  But on the subject of dimitri and death, I figured if I could ever choose the method of my own, I'd want it to be a horrible, agonizing, lucid death such as space narrowly escaped.  I want the whole show.  To sqeeze every last bit out of it.  Fully experience it.  

Always liked that book, Tuesdays with Morrie.

[judih]

The Tibetans for whatever else they are doing, have saved a life. Bardo trekking (can anyone relate to a walk-about?) and back again.

 Space, you have given rise to renewed faith in the power of releasing fear.

[dendro]

amazing space, how sweet the sound...

"don't know what to do...I'm so glad!"

Jack Bruce and Cream, "I'm So Glad", Fresh Cream, 1967

[space]

amazing space, how sweet the sound...

 

I was born into a dirt poor family...withdrawn, solitary, dreamy...so slow to talk I was labelled retarded but then was plucked up by a Fed-sponsored school for gifted children, shocking the shit out of everybody who knew me...  The psych who evaluated finalists for the program was the first to learn that I was secretly reading high school textbooks under the blanket with a flashlight at night when I was five; they took my flashlight away; I chopped branches off the tree outside my bedroom window so I could read by the corner streetlight.  I learned early that if you acted smart, somebody wanted to kick your ass.  I kept quiet.

Unfortunately, the school was Sputnik-panic inspired (you kids know about Sputnik? beep  beep   beep ...scared the hell outta America), and the program was intended to incubate rocket scientists, nuclear physicists, etc.:  they wanted science warriors.  I wasn't interested:  "But you could be anything you want!" the teachers and counselors would wail.  "I am," I'd answer.

l didn't want to specialize in anything. Instead, I wanted to see and experience as much of everything that life had to offer as possible.  I couldn't imagine doing one thing all my life and decided to take every risk in the name of extraordinary adventures.  

Well, I'm happy to say I had those adventures, extraordinarily good and extraordinarily bad.  Ran away with Kerouac and Timothy and Huey and Abby and Buddha to road houses and temples and witches and communes and...  Managed to survive getting shot, stabbed, beaten and burned; got torn down, eaten up, spit out, and carried on.  I hit the road in my mid teens and by my early 20s I had carried hod, cleaned bricks, dug ditches, picked fruit, built trucks, lumberjacked, farmed da kine, stole a few cars (oops), made candles and baked bread.  Then I survived the Army, stayed in Asia and made a living by my wits, writing for magazines, rambling all over that part of the world before going back to school at 30:  tore up the summa cum laude track and studied poetry on graduate fellowship with a Nobel Prize winner, but walked away from the po-biz because it was, as it turned out, just another biz (my last innocence lost).  I met my perfect lady there (after two failed marriages) and settled down a bit and taught myself computer programming to earn a respectable living because stability makes her happy.  Now most (but not all ) of my adventures are in the mind and heart.  

Life is good.  I've had a helluva run.  

Now, as I near spine surgery and keep having to sign papers saying, yes, I know I could die or end up wishing I had, I've been trying to get more of that run on paper, just in case.  I have sons and grandsons who have no idea about those years I spent rolling loaded dice on crazy tables, and one of those grandsons has this look in his eye...

[judih]

you know, when i went to see Graham Seidman, an amazing photographer who spent time with Ginsberg and Corso at the Beat Hotel in Paris, i was pissed at myself for depending on my memory writing down the stories he'd told.

tape it. That's what i would wish your progeny - your voice relating the stories.

Writing is great, wonderful and you're skilled, but the addition of a voice is worth so much.

Video is also cool, but that demands production, associates, accomplices. If you're soloing, a tape recorder is great.

And man, good luck on your spinal surgery. Have 2 friends who just underwent spinal procedures and both of them are just fine! Doing well.

judih

[space]

That's a great idea, judih...funny it didn't occur to me:  we have dozens of hours of tapes recorded in the last few of my grandmother's 107 years, everything from when the first plane she saw spooked her horse to when a wagonload of farm girls rode into town together to face down the men folk and vote.

This is space, signing on