_ChineseScience and Magic in Ge Hong’s «Baopu-zi Nei Pian»

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Mas-Liao-Waysun

Ming jing (明勁)

Meng Jing 猛勁 Fierce power; see Ming Jing Ming

Jing 明勁 Visible power, the external force of Kung Fu, also known as Bao Fa Jing, Gang Jing, Meng Jing,

and Yang Jing Nei Gong 內功 Internal works; a routine based on the practice of spirit and Qi Nei Jia 內家

Internal martial arts, concerned with spiritual and mental .

The great Xingyiquan master Guo Yunshen (1829 – 1898) classified the energy

developed by Xingyiquan training in three levels:ming jing (obvious energy), an

jing (covert energy), and hua jing (transformative energy). In this section I will discuss

onlyming jing. Some people assume that because this energy is called ‘obvious’ it must

be ordinary physical (kinetic) energy. That is not correct. If ming jingwere the ordinary

energy of physical motion, there would be no need to call it out as a specially named

category in the hierarchy of Taoist attainments upon which Guo’s framework is based.

That would simply be the well understood basis of ordinary Shaolin, Karate, Judo,

boxing, etc.

In any case, ming jing is a type of internal energy. If you train Xingyiquan correctly, you

will begin to reinforce your strikes with this special internal power. Ming jing greatly

adds to the destructive effect on the opponent. It becomes an extra “sauce” on your
physical strikes that amplifies their power. The cultivation of ming jing is the

first attribute developed by Xingyiquan .

Science and Magic in Ge Hong’s «Baopu-zi Nei Pian»

Evgueni A. Tortchinov
(St. Petersburg State University, Russia)

This paper is dedicated to the problem of the attitudes of the great Chinese
alchemist Ge Hong (284-363 or 283-343 CE) towards science within the
frame of his Daoist world view. It is well known that Ge Hong was a
representative of the so called Southern branch of the tradition of the Chinese
Daoist occultism (or the lineage of the Three August Ones – san huang wen).
This lineage was closely related to the heritage of the Han Daoism with its
beliefs in the immortals (xian) and corporeal immortality attainable through
the esoteric practices of alchemy and magic. Ge Hong was well known not
only as alchemist and the Daoist master or Confucian moralist and social
thinker (see his «Baopu-zi wai pian») but as physician and pharmacist as
well. It is quite understandable because the Chinese Daoist alchemy with its
iatrochemical character may be treated as a part of the Chinese medical
tradition (see N. Sivin’s works). So, in Ge Hong’s works (and first of all, in
his «Baopu-zi nei pian»; bellow -- BPZNP) we meet with rather strange
mixture of the beliefs in physical immortality, magical rites and ceremonies,
astrology, medicine and pharmacology. But even more interesting is the fact
that these elements of alchemical occultism are combined in Ge Hong’s
writings with the strong and distinctively articulated inclinations to
skepticism and free-thinking rationalism. He laughs at the folk beliefs and
superstitions, he ardently criticizes the Confucian scholasticism and common
people’s prejudices, etc. Below I will give some examples of such skepticism
with their brief analysis and some preliminary conclusions.

Ge Hong rejects the opinion that only herbal drugs are beneficial for health as
well as for the prolongation of life. In chapter 4th (Jin dan) of the BPZNP he
states that drugs made from minerals and metallic substances are much more
useful than the herbal ones. The herbal drugs are weak and the strong heat
destroys them but minerals and metals are strong and stable: for example, the
heat can not destroy cinnabar which changes itself into the «water silver», or
mercury. After this statement, Ge Hong notes that ordinary people do not
know even such simple things as the origin of the cinnabar (Hg S) in the
mercury. They say that cinnabar is red and the mercury is white and so, it is
impossible that the white substance produces the red one.

The second aspect of this passage is more interesting. Ge Hong declares that
the common people («worldly people», or shi ren) are ignorant even of such
things as the nature of the cinnabar and so, it is not surprising that they do not
believe in such subtle things as the way of immortality. I think that this Ge
Hong’s statement has crucial character for understanding of his attitude
towards the connections between the Daoist «mystics» of immortality and the
«positive» knowledge: for him the Daoist teachings about the immortals and
the practices of the obtaining of immortality and supernatural powers have no
mystical, or irrational characters at all. They have no less «positive» nature
than medicine or chemical knowledge about the composition of cinnabar and
other substances. And if it is true, this knowledge is very different (and even
opposite in nature) from the superstitious beliefs in popular gods and spirits
with their shamanistic bloody and expensive rites and the ways of worship.
And Ge Hong can not do without laughing at these cults and beliefs,
criticizing them with sharp humor and the real sarcasm (see chapter 9th Dao
yi of the BPZNP).

The same idea can be found in the 5th (Zhi li) chapter of BPZNP. Here Ge
Hong describes the healing qualities of different plants and herbs. But, as he
states, the common people do not want to use them and prefer the
superstitious religious methods of healing (such as prayers, sacrifices,
fortune-telling, etc.). They do not believe in the art of the famous physicians
but rely on shamans and sorcerers. And if it is so, it is very naturally that they
do not believe that because of the eating of the golden and cinnabar elixirs
immortality can be obtained. Moreover, they reject even the usefulness of
mushrooms and flowers for the prolongation of life. How can we hope that
they will recognize the truthfulness of the way of immortals?

It is significant that Ge Hong treats the Daoist alchemy with its super
mundane aims in the same terms as the traditional medicine and
pharmacology. Thus, alchemy and the «arts of immortals» for Ge Hong are
not of supernatural, or religious nature; they are «positive» and «scientific» in
the same way as medicine and pharmacology are. The rejection of these arts
certifies the ignorance of the common people preferring the «superstitious»
religious ways to the means of medicine and the Daoist arts which have the
same character as medicine. And this character is quite opposed to the
superstitious nature of purely religious practices.
 One of the arguments of Ge Hong in defense of the Daoist alchemical
methods is the principle of the verification of the relevant precepts of the
Daoist writings:

«Their teachings can be called the highest words but the common people do not
believe them treating them as the empty writings. But if they were only the
empty writings, how was it possible to fulfill nine transformations and nine
changes just for that numbers of days which is given in the precepts? The truths
which were obtained by the perfect persons is not understandable for the
primitive thinking of the common people» (BPZNP, chapter 4).

And here again Ge Hong not only demonstrates the contrast between the
«scientific» knowledge of the sages and the ignorance of the ordinary people
but uses the «positive», or «experimental» contents of the Daoist texts for
support of his Daoist approaches. And here once again the critical approach
of the ordinary people to the Daoist aims becomes the testimony of their
ignorance, and Ge Hong’s beliefs in immortality and alchemy obtain their
«scientific» ground in the empirical and positive sides of the Daoist classics
(jing) becoming the proven results of the real verified knowledge. Thus,
knowledge and experience (not faith, or intuition) were the basis of Ge
Hong’s beliefs in the immortals and in the Daoist methods of the attainment
of their exalted state.

Nevertheless, it is obvious that BPZNP is full of the information about

magical and supernatural events which are for the external observer quite
identical with the contents of the beliefs of the Ge Hong’s opponents. But for
Ge Hong himself they are very different: for him the Daoist beliefs, the
ardent proponent of which he was, had a scientific and positive nature based
on the experimental data and positive knowledge of the sages (being of the
same kind as the data of medicine, etc.), and the beliefs of his opponents were
devoid of such basis, being superstitious and ignorant.

It is possible to note that there were two kinds of Ge Hong’s opponents and
interlocutors: the representatives of the so called Confucian rationalism and
the «superstitious» followers of the folk religious cults. Certainly,
Confucians were rationalistic, but their rationalism was limited with the
scholastic analysis of their scriptural authorities and the field of the
investigations of nature was absolutely alien to them. In this field their
rationalism represented only manifestation of the common sense without any
special approach. They were ignorant of the significance of experience and
the Daoist alchemy and another «arts» of those kind were for them only the
examples of the empty and useless practices. Therefore, it can be said that the
experiential skepticism of Ge Hong was of another nature than the so called
Confucian rationalism. The beliefs of the common people were also alien to
his approach as fruits of faith and ignorance. In this case there appears a
problem of the criteria used by Ge Hong for the distinguishing of the real
knowledge from the superstitious beliefs of the profanes.

It is substantial for Ge Hong to have authoritative sources of information

recognized by the Daoist tradition (the knowledge of the lineage of the
holders of the text is also important). Such sources are called by Ge Hong
«The classics of immortals» (xian jing). From the autobiography of Ge Hong
and the 19th chapter of BPZNP it is known that such texts were rarities and
the Daoists spent much time and energy to obtain them. Ge Hong himself
traveled to the North to seek these classics but failed. It is known that
sometimes he protested against the high authority of one or another classic on
the basis of its non authenticity. Thus, in chapter 4th of BPZNP he speaks
about the popularity of «The classic of the mechanism of Dao» (Dao ji jing)
which was considered by many Daoist to be the work of the legendary
disciple of Lao-zi, Yin Xi. It was dedicated to the practice of the «regulation
of the pneumata» (xing qi) and had no information about the great elixirs of
the Daoist alchemy. Ge Hong rejected this text as the contemporary book
written by general Wang Tu and only falsely attributed to the sage of
antiquity.

Not only the origin in the Daoist classics was the testimony of the validity of
the information about the immortals and immortality for Ge Hong. He also
evaluated greatly the witnesses of the Chinese authoritative texts of the
Confucian and historiographical tradition. The notes of such great historians
as Ban Gu and Sima Qian about the techniques of immortality and the
magical activities of the Daoist sages were of the great importance for Ge
Hong. He definitely prefers Sima Qian to Ban Gu because of his Daoist
sympathies completely alien to the author of «Han shu». He even severely
criticizes Ban Gu for his orthodox Confucian approach to the Daoist doctrine
in which Ge Hong recognizes the ignorance of the «common people» (su ren;
shi ren). Nevertheless he does not loose the opportunity to cite «The Han
History» if its materials support Ge Hong’s point of view.

It can be said that Ge Hong recognizes the following criteria of the validity of
the beliefs and different kinds of opinions related to the subjects of science
and religion: 1. The experience; 2. The testimonies of the Daoist classics and
of the well known and highly estimated by the Chinese tradition non-Daoist
texts. The practices and beliefs which had no such scriptural support (as in
the case of the folk beliefs and cults) were rejected by Ge Hong as
 superstitious and excessive. Thus, Ge Hong tries to represent his techniques
of immortality and his alchemical and occult ideas as an integral part of the
«great tradition» of the Chinese culture. For him they are not only equal to
the ideas of the Confucian sages but even higher and more exalted than the
Confucian doctrines (according to Ge Hong’s position Confucianism is the
branch and Daoism is its root).

It is rather clear that Ge Hong greatly evaluates experience and laboratory

alchemical operations. But these operations as such have direct relations to
magic and ritual behaviour. It is impossible to divide technical, magical and
ritualistic aspects of the scientific approaches of Ge Hong. He denies the idea
of the automatic, or mechanical effect of the elixirs, combining the technical
and chemical procedures with fasting, prayers and purification. The passages
from the 4th chapter of BPZNP are extremely eloquent on this point:

«First of all, it is impossible to permit the unbelieving ordinary people to laugh at

the elixirs and blaspheme them. Otherwise there will be no success. Master
Zheng (i.e. Zheng Yin) told that the preparation of this great elixir must be
followed by the sacrifices. The sacrifices must be served to the Great Unity, to
Primordial Lady – Yuan-jun, to Lao-jun and the Mysterious Maiden. These
divinities will come to observe the activities of the adept. If the person who
prepares the drugs did not leave the mundane life for hermitage and solicitude
giving an opportunity for the profanes to obtain the Daoist classics or to observe
the process of the alchemical work then the spirits execute the alchemist. If he
does not follow the restrictions of the Daoist classics permitting the evil doers to
blaspheme the Dao, then the spirits can not help such a person. Then the
malevolent pneuma will enter the substance of the drug and it can not be
completed».
Thus, it can be said that practical character of Ge Hong’s alchemy does not
prevent him from the declaration of highly ritualized nature of the alchemical
doings. Therefore, it bears remarkable (to the mind of a contemporary Westerner,
of course) contradiction between science and magic. And this magic permeates
the very core of Ge Hong’s understanding of alchemy and medicine. But this
magic is of quite another nature than the superstitious beliefs of the common
people: it has its roots in the Daoist stratum of the great tradition of the Chinese
culture being to Ge Hong’s mind supported by the experience of the sages of old
who transmitted their knowledge and methods to the contemporary Daoists throw
the unbreakable lineage from one mater to another. Moreover, this experience of
the ancient sages must not be only a subject of the so called «blind faith»: it can
be verified by the alchemist throw his own laboratory doings. Ge Hong does not
admire the antiquity as such. Like ancient Legalists and his predecessor in the
field of skepticism and empiricism Wang Chong, Ge Hong looks at the antiquity
like on the trace of a giant: the giant has gone away and his trace is not he
himself. Therefore, the ancient witnesses for Ge Hong have their value only
within the frame of the Daoist experimental approach.

If Ge Hong was only a mystic it could be waited for his interest in the
intuitive insights into the hidden nature of the reality underlying the transitory
phenomena. But we can not find such an interest. The passages dedicated to
the meditative practices for metaphysical understanding are very rare in
BPZNP. The only exception is the beginning of the 18th chapter of this work
(Di zhen) dedicated to the contemplation of the True One (zhen yi) which is
the manifestation of the Mysterious Dao (xuan) in the things and in the
physiological structures of the Daoist «subtle body» («the fields of
cinnabar», dan tian). But even this passage relates mostly to the practices of
the «preservation of the One» (shou yi) and not to the insight type
meditations. The aids of these kind of contemplation are protection from the
enemies and illness, the obtaining of super powers throw multiplication of the
body, etc. The metaphysical side of the work of Ge Hong is rather weak. The
1st chapter of BPZNP (Chang xuan) represents by itself a replica to the
opening chapter of «Huainan-zi» ; its stylistics, vocabulary and images have
their origin just in that great compendium of Liu An and his clients (ke). The
first passages in the 9th chapter (Dao yi) also are not the fruits of independent
metaphysical thinking being the poetical reproduction of the common places
of the Daoist descriptions of the highest principle of the Way. The practical
sides of Daoism (the preparation of the great elixir of immortality and
supporting methods) and corresponding to them the doctrines of the
immortals – xian are the principle subjects of Ge Hong’s interests which
directly correlate to his scientific and experiential approaches.

To my mind, Ge Hong was not a mystic or a seeker of intuitive insights but

an investigator, researcher of nature with pragmatic attitude (the obtaining of
physical immortality), and experimental and skeptical thinker. The abundance
of magic in his writings was a result of an essential character of the
traditional science which included in itself magic and magical attitudes (e.g.
the idea of the universal sympathies, Chinese "tong lei") not only in China
but throughout the world until the time of Newton, Galileo Galilei and
Descartes.

presented at the 8th International Conference on the History of Science in

China. Berlin, August 23 – 27, 1998
 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<

The Bardo State

A general historical and comparative review of

the various philosophical, religious and esoteric-
occult conceptions of the nature of the after-
life.

g
6

Two types of power are used in Ba Gua and the other internal arts; both meth-ods
are called "internal." Fundamentally, internal power begins with
physicalmechanics or

mingjing, which translates as "obvious force." With correct train-ing, students

naturally progress from obvious force to
anjing,
"hidden power"and ultimately,
huajing,
"mysterious power."
9
Mingjing,
literally "bright" or "observable" power, is the term used forphysical
mechanics of the internal. Instead of "throwing" a punch in the con-ventional
manner, the internal artist learns to move in ways that coordinate andbalance
the body up and down, front to back. A vertical axis throughout thebody is
maintained instead of horizontal swing common to most external stylesand boxers.
10
Efficient movement oriented toward balanced, counteropposingmuscle groups
replace physical tension. Smooth efficiency is used instead of the raw power and
torque found in most other styles of strike-based martialarts. Training is
based on efficiency and coordination with relaxed movementsthat allow
qi
and blood to circulate optimally. This category of training, becauseit does not rely on
torque, heals the body through harmony and balance.
When
mingjing
is
correctly
practiced, thestudent naturally begins todevelop
more advanced "internal" levels. It is a process of tuning oneself to a once com-
mon state reminiscent of deep connections to nature, where mankind
walkedwith a fluid, natural gait, effortlessly developed by walking
on natural, not arti-ficial, terrain. Our bodies were designed for uneven ground,
not smooth, flatsurfaces. Variable pressure resulting from the foot stepping on
uneven groundhas a profound impact on health and power because of the way the body
receivesand responds to the force of the step. This is the basic principle
behind footacupressure and various other foot therapies in the present day. Even today
peo-ple who live close to nature, climb trees, and walk on unpaved ground
naturallydevelop the connected power of
mingjing.
To regain natural power, "civilized"
anjing
6

Internal Power and Internal Martial Arts

people must relearn it. Learning to create variable pressure in the body
thatimitates the design of nature, and learning not to create and carry
unnaturaltension and "lock up." The effects brought about by this type of training
arepowerful. When the student is successful in developing this type of power, itallows a man
or a woman the ability to defend themselves with minimal efforteven into their later years
when advantages of agility and youthful strength areno longer present. This is one of the
great secrets of all internal arts.As illustrated above,
mingjing
type of power is not something exclusive tothe internal arts. Some sports use internal style
mingjing
more than others. Thegolf stroke is a good example of this type of power. In this sport
natural balanceis of primary importance when the
forward and upward momentum
of a golfer
performing a strong golf drive is matched by his
downward force
pressingagainst
the earth as he swings through. For an effective swing, the shoulders are relaxedand
the waist directs the power forward with mechanics that adjust to force withequal
backward and downward pressures. One of my teachers, Ho Shen-Ting,described
this principle as "100 percent forward, 100 percent backward," bywhich he meant
that internal power has a bidirectional internal movement of muscle groups within
the body.Correctly applied, internal
mingjing
power is invisible to the eye of anuntrained observer. In fact, the performance may even
appear "soft" or weak,although in reality it may be surprisingly powerful. Internal
power like this isrelaxed and doesn't require foot stomping or added torque to achieve
effect any-more than the pro-golfer needs stomping or added torque while
performing aswing. Controlled relaxation is important and tension, especially
that which ischaracterized by "grunting" and the appearance of excessive muscular
tension,is antithetical to the development of this type of power.
Mingjing
as a science of movement is based on Taoist yogic practices orig-inating almost two
thousand years ago. Designed to stimulate energy centersand open energetic
pathways, the effect of this type of training is especiallystrong in opening the
eight extra meridians associated with Taoist yoga.
11
The mechanics of
mingjing
just described stimulate the meridian and ener-getic system of the body and encourage the
development of
huajing,
or "hid-den power."
Huajing
is unique to internal martial arts and is based on Taoistyogic alchemy. It involves the
movement and transformation of the body's
qi.
For the student,
huajing
is an exciting stage of development since it is wherehe or she learns to feel the flow of
internal energy in his or her body. Mostreport that it feels like currents of heat,
pressure, and/or electricity. It is devel-oped and controlled through Taoist
breathing exercises,
qi gong
posture, and
qigong Ho Shen-Ting
7

BA GUA
,^. the will,
"yi.
" When someone first develops this "hidden power" they can be
yi
quite dangerous, since the expression of power will not feel like anything spe-cial, and since
the skill is not yet consistent and the pugilist doesn't yet recog-nize the subtle cues
as to when he or she is "on." Occasionally students havehad to be cautioned when
coming into this power to be very careful since their"lightly touching" another
student in a demonstration may result in the part-ner being dropped to the ground
and possibly hurt. Senior instructors breathemuch easier when the students
coming into this power start to figure out the
cues.
Energy systems
Once the correct mechanics and other precursors of the internal arts have taken,the student
will make progress at an ever-increasing rate. The evolution of aninternal artist
moves toward direct personal experience of the internal energymoving within his or
her body. Knowledge of how to move correctly, how tobreathe correctly, and how
to stand correctly become less abstract and increas-ingly experiential as the student
detects the flow and blockages of
qi
in the body.This involves the sensation of
qi
in the body becoming a type of biofeedback signal. Sensations of electric-like
tingling and/or heat traveling throughout thebody will be noticed. With sensitivity and
personal experiment, presence of the"signal" informs the student if he or she is
correct, where absence of the signalindicates that a particular movement is "off."
Through this method the studentperceiveswhensomethingisoutofbalance.Say,forexample,
theshouldercom-plex tends to be held tightly instead of released when the student lifts his or
herarm. The student who has evolved to the point of sensing the movement
oiqi
in the body will notice pressure or a trapped heat feeling in the shoulder. Theability
to directly sense energetic flow ensures greater success in correcting theproblem. During
the student's experimentation with the angle variation of hisor her arm he or she has
access to another set of criteria compared with the stu-dent who does not have direct
experiential feedback. Students who sense
qi
inthe way just described are on the path to mastery and more.

Introduction - M. Alan Kazlev

Alternative After-Life Hypotheses - Arvan Harvat
The Egyptian After-Life - Multiple Souls And Multiple After-lives - M. Alan Kazlev
The Middle Eastern And Mediterranean After-Life - The Cessation of the
Personality With Bodily Death - M. Alan Kazlev
The Hellenistic (Later Mediterranean) After-Life - The Ascent of the Soul through
the Celestial Spheres - M. Alan Kazlev
The Chinese After-Life - Yin And Yang Souls - M. Alan Kazlev
The Tibetan Afterlife - The "Bardo" Or Intermediate State - M. Alan Kazlev
The Kabbalistic After-Life - The Three Souls - M. Alan Kazlev
Multiple after-life states - a preliminary summing up - M. Alan Kazlev
Contemporary Spiritualism And Theosophy - The Astral Plane - M. Alan Kazlev
The psychodynamics of after-life existence
Reincarnation - The Oriental view refurbished as a simplified theosophy - Arvan
Harvat

The following is the htmlised version of a book I attempted to

write many years ago. Here is the table of contents for the final
(still incomplete) draft.

The process of converting a print-specific document to web

page involves a transformation of ideas as well as of media.
 So what had previously been a self-contained book now
includes links to other pages on my site, giving it a broader
emphasis than was originally projected. This however is not
necessarily a bad thing.

I have also added a few contributions by my friend, Arvan

Harvat

AFTER-LIFE EXISTENCE - AN OCCULT ANALYSIS

INTRODUCTION

On these pages an attempt has been made to deal with is the nature of the
human personality after physical death. This subject evokes a host of
questions - questions that are traditionary the province of religion.

What happens to us when we die? In what form, if any, does consciousness

and the personality survive? Is there a spirit world? A heaven and hell? Can
the deceased communicate with the living, through mediums and seances, as
Spiritualists suppose? Do we meet personally the God of religion,
as Christians and others assume? Is there such a thing as reincarnation, as
the Eastern religions and many esoteric philosophies teach? And if so, why
don't we remember our past lives?

We are dealing here with very important questions, of relevance, obviously,

to each and every one of us. This is a topic which, as I have said, is
traditionally the province of religion. But how complete, if at all, is the
understanding of the various religions on this matter?

I would suggest that the understanding of the official or exoteric (outer,

doctrinal, ecclesiastic) religions, although always containing some truth, is
more often incomplete than complete when it comes to dealing with these
vital questions. It is incomplete because it is bound by the dead letter of
dogma, rather than living intuition.

What I have attempted in these pages is in contrast an esoteric - an inner,

intuitive, mystic, occult, "heretical" - explanation of existence after bodily
death.
What is being attempted here is an (obviously incomplete) synthesis of
previous human knowledge on this subject. Over the past thousands of years,
countless priests, occultists, sages, healers, Seers, and, in the last few
decades, even doctors and counsellors, have contributed to an ever-growing
store-house of knowledge on this subject. I have taken some of that vast
body of material (those few aspects of it that I have been able to assimilate)
and brought it all together.

But such a perspective is only possible through the widespread availability of

such material. This availability in turn depends on two historical quirks of
the present age and society - the printed (and now the electronic) word and
the secular and non-totalitarian government. For the printed word makes
knowledge universally available at an almost negligible cost, and the Internet
has added further to free dissemination of information. And that even rarer
and more precious commodity, the secular non-totalitarian government
ensures that such knowledge, being available, will not be repressed through
religious or ideological reasons (which is not to say the always present
menace of censorship will not be constantly be rearing it's ugly head!).

Yet every synthesis is also a new creation. Thus, the conclusions arrived at
here are my own, and are certainly not intended as hard and fast dogma. It is
hoped that the conclusions I have drawn will trigger the reader's own
intuition, inquiry, and individual understanding.

Chapter 2: The Egyptian After-Life

Multiple souls and multiple after-lives

"The dead man is at one and the same time in heaven, in the god's boat, under
the earth, tilling the Elysian fields, and in his tomb enjoying his victuals"

The Great Egyptian Civilisation

Of all the great civilisations known at the present time, only ancient Sumer,
which developed in the Mesopotamian basin in the fourth century before
Christ, exceeds in age that of ancient Egypt.
Egyptian civilisation as it is known began when the King (or Pharaoh) Menes
unified the separate Upper and Lower Kingdoms along the Nile in 3100
B.C.E. Menes founded the first of thirty-one dynasties (this is the traditional
number, according to the enumeration of the late (4th Century B.C.E.)
Egyptian priest Manetho. The precise number of dynasties - especially some
of the minor ones - has however been disputed by modern scholars) of an
empire that was to last until Alexander the Great's conquest in 332 B.C.E., a
period longer than that of any other known empire (see table 2-1).

From the sixth century before Christ onwards, during which time this mighty
civilisation had already been in decay for several centuries, Egypt served as
the source of spiritual and occult wisdom for the more intellectually
sophisticated world - the Greek civilisation of the North-West Mediterranian -
much as today the more sensitive people of the materialistic and
technological West look to India as the source of spiritual nourishment.
Philosophers, historians, and teachers - Pythagoras, Herodotus, Plato, to
name just the better-known - journeyed there to learn the ancient wisdom and
sciences, where they looked upon a civilisation as ancient then as the
Classical Greek and Roman period is to us today, and returned to the
Hellenic world with their knowledge.

But the knowledge we are concerned with here - gleaned from the
hieroglyphics of tombs and papyrii - dates from even before this period of
Greek contact; from the time when Egyptian civilisation was still at its
height. In a fertile strip of land barely 20 kilometres (12 miles) at its widest,
and 500 kilometres (300 miles) in length, nourished by the waters and
nutrients of the life-giving Nile, the Egyptians built pyramids and temples to
extraordinarily precise proportions - a precision that would be remarkable
even with today's technology - and developed an incredibly sophisticated
occult knowledge of the after-life state.

It is indeed no exaggeration to say that no other civilisation devoted as much

care and attention to their dead as did the ancient Egyptians. Their
magnificent tombs, their elaborate funeral rites, their painstaking
mummification technology, and their voluminous literature concerned with
after-life existence, all stand as mute witness to this fact.

The literature itself can be divided into three periods, according to its mode of
inscription. First were the Pyramid Texts (ca. 2500-2300 B.C.E.), so called
because they were inscribed on the interior walls of pyramids, which date to
the fifth dynasty. Then came the Coffin or Sarcophagus Texts (ca. 2300-
2000 B.C.E.), of the sixth and the succeeding short dynasties of the First
Intermediate Period. Finally, the great eighteenth dynasty, with which
commenced the New Kingdom period in the sixteenth century B.C.E., down
to the end of the last remnants of Egyptian civilisation in the early Christian
era, Papyrus scrolls were used, a copy of which was usually interred with the
deceased to guide him the after-life; these were the famous "books of the
dead". It should be pointed out that the title "Book of the Dead" is a modern
scholarly one; the actual title usually translates as something like "Book of
the Coming Forth into Day, to Live after Death".

For the earlier period of Egyptian civilisation, it was apparently believed that
only the Pharoah and his family continued after death, and became gods.
Hence the massive pyramids constructed during the fourth and fifth
dynasties. By the end of the Old Kingdom (sixth dynasty), post-mortem
existence had been expanded to include nobles as well. Finally, with the cult
of Osiris, the slain and resurrected god, and a figure equivalent in many ways
to the Christian Christ, which appeared during the upheavals of the First
Intermediate Period, the democratisation of post-mortem existence was
complete, and all were assured of an after-life existence. During this period,
the deceased were first given the title "Osiris", a term which meant both the
"soul" or surviving consciousness principle, and simply the departed person,
like "the Late Mr Smith". Thus the custom-made "Book of the Dead" papyrii
address themselves to Osiris So and So (e.g. "Osiris Ani").

Egyptian After-Life Metaphysics: A Study In Obscurity

With all the attention they paid to after-life existence, one would expect the
Egyptian metaphysics to be clear and understandable. But instead one finds a
bewildering array of different psychic and spiritual principles, each of which
appeared to a have a separate existence after death, and even during life. Just
consider the following (brackets describe the ideogram used):

 KHAT or KHA - (a fish) - the physical body.

 SAHU - (a mummy and a seal) - the "spiritual body"; a body which has
obtained a degree of knowledge and power and has thus become
incorruptible.
 AB - (a vessel with ears as handles) - the "heart", the source of good and
bad thoughts; the moral awareness of right and wrong.
  KA - (a pair of upraised arms) - the double, image,character, disposition, or
individual ego, which is created with, or even before, the physical being.
Originally the daimon or genius or spiritual double of the pharaoh, which
guided him in life and protected him in death; it later became the human
presence which remains in tomb, and partakes of food and other funerary
offerings.
 BA - (a human-headed bird) - the "soul", which ascends to the paradisical
and the heavenly realms and enjoys an eternal existence there, but can
also return to the tomb and partake of the funerary offerings.
 KHAIBIT - (a fan; an object which intercepts the light) - the "shadow"; like
the Ka and Ba it partakes of funerary offerings; and is able to detach from
the body. References to the Khaibit are infrequent, and the meaning
usually obscure.
 AKH, KHU, or AKHU - (the ibis or phoenix) - the "spirit"; the radiant shining
one; the transfigured dead which ascends to heaven and dwells among the
gods, or among the immortal pole stars which never set.
 SEKHEM - the power or form; generally the references are obscure.
 REN - the "name", which exists in heaven. In any psychically (as opposed
to spiritually) based magical philosophy, to know the secret name of a
person or entity is to have power of that being.

This bewildering confusion prompted one despairing writer to complain:

"The precise meaning of ka, ba, ach (akh), `shm (sekhem), and so on is no
longer clear to us. Well-meaning scholars try again and again and again to force
the Egyptian idea of the soul into our traditional categories without enabling us
to understand even a little of it any better"
[J. J. Poortman, Vehicles of Consciousness - the Concept of Hylic Pluralism, vol 1,
p.108, (The Theosophical Society, Utrecht, 1978, Adyar-Madras)]

The reason for this lack of understanding is not only the absence of esoteric-
occult knowledge on the part of the scholars, but also the fact that we are
dealing with a civilisation that spanned several thousands of years.
Throughout that long period, it is obvious that meanings would change, and
new ideas and multiple schools of thought develop, so that the same word is
used in a totally different context. Compare for example the modern use of
the words Soul, Spirit, Mind, Consciousness, and Psyche. These words are
given totally different meanings today than they - or their counterparts - were
given 2000 years ago. What is more, different religious, philosophical, and
psychological writers, give widely differing meanings to the same term.
Even in contemporary occultism and esotericism, where one would expect a
greater degree of precision, the meaning of technical terms such as astral,
etheric, mental, causal, and Soul, varies dramatically. Obviously, the
situation was the same with the Egyptians. So we would have a situation
where the same term seems to describe several different realities, or
alternatively where two terms describe the same thing.

In spite of all this, the Ancient Egyptian conception reveals great insight and
sophistication concerning the nature of personality-existence after physical
death, so much so that many of their ideas could be used to form a framework
of understanding that is still valid today. In this book I have attempted to do
just that; to apply the occult knowledge of the Egyptians to a modern-day
under-standing of the nature of after-life existence.

2-iii The Egyptian Souls - An Interpretation

Perhaps the best way to begin would be to focus only on those soul-principles
which are readily comprehensible. For whatever their meaning may have
been to the Egyptians themselves, the Sahu (Spiritualised body), Khaibit
(Shadow), Sekhem (Strength), and Ren (Name) have little to indicate their
meaning to us today. But concepts such as the KA, BA, and AKH are of
much usefulness, if we give them a specific meaning. By Ka we could
assume to mean that aspect of the disincarnate personality which remains
connected with physical existence, especially through the medium of the
tomb. The Ba would be the somewhat more refined aspect which can
maintain its existence apart from the physical world, and, passing through
many obstacles, finally attains to heaven. It could perhaps be compared with
the "astral body", the subtle vehicle of consciousness, of modern popular
occultism. The Ab or "Heart" - equivalent to the "Mind" or consciousness in
the psychological sense - would constitute what the great early twentieth
century psychologists such as Freud and even more so Jung would call the
Ego, the principle of self-consciousness. Finally, the Akhu is the principle
which ascends into the celestial cosmos. Admittedly this still sounds rather
confusing, but hopefully the situation will be clarified in the following pages.
 It should be emphasised that the above list does not refer to the successive
stages a single soul passes through, as say the Spiritualist would assume, but
rather the simultaneous after-life of the multiple principles that together in
life make up the human personality. As one Egyptologist puts it:

"The dead man is at one and the same time in heaven, in the god's boat [Re, the
sun- god's, celestial barge], under the earth, tilling the Elysian fields, and in his
tomb enjoying his victuals"
[Lionel Casson, Ancient Egypt, p.81 (Time- Life Books, 1966)]

This concept of a multiple and simultaneous after- life follows naturally from
the assumption, clearly held by the ancient Egyptians, of man/woman as a
compound being. Obviously, if the individual person is a compound being,
and if these separate "pieces" survive death, it follows that each "piece" will
have its own unique after-life fate. This is in fact the central thesis of a
number of different afterlife ontologies

see also Egyptian Page

The Middle Eastern And Mediterranean After-Life Conception

The cessation of the personality with bodily death.

"(Better) to serve as the hireling of another, of some portionless man whose
livelihood was but small, than to be lord over all the dead that have perished."

Homeric Pessimism

In contrast to the optimism of the Egyptians, the majority of civilisations that

developed in and around the Mediterranean basin and the Middle East in the
centuries before Christ took a dim and pessimistic view. The ancient
Babylonians, Hebrews, and Homeric Greeks (by "Homeric" is meant the
viewpoint of the great poet Homer 8th century B.C.E.) and his public), saw
the after-life state - the Underworld, Sheol, Hades - as a dark, miserable,
quasi-existence; the dead being but a pathetic shadow of their former living
selves.

A graphic literary illustration of this is given in Homer's account of the

meeting of Odysseus with the shade of Achilles, the greatest and most
 renowned of all the Greek heros. Odysseus, descending to Hades in order to
consult the dead seer Teiresias concerning the circumstances that prevented
him from returning home, encounters Achilles, and congratulates him
regarding the honors and fame he had won through his part in the siege of
Troy. Achilles rejects Odysseus' words with a devastating reply:

"Nay, seek not to speak soothingly to me of death....I should choose, so I might

live on earth, to serve as the hireling of another, of some portionless man whose
livelihood was but small, rather than to be lord over all the dead that have
perished."
[S. G. F. Brandon, The Judgment of the Dead, p.82 (Weidenfeld and Nicolson,
London, 1967)]

In a society which saw martial glory and honours as the highest of all values,
even that is not compensation for the miserable state of after-life existence.
Better to be the most pathetic beggar alive than the King of all the
Underworld. What a contrast to the magnificent and multi-faceted Egyptian
afterlife!

The Conception Of The Soul As Breath

According to the Old Testament Hebrews, man was a kind of holistic unity of
body and soul; there was no conception of a soul separate from the body, as
the Egyptians and the Greek Platonists had. After death the body returns to the
earth, and the life - the ruah or breath breathed into Adam's nostrils by God -
returns to God. Thus the "soul" is identified with the life of the body, and the life
with the breath (nefesh, ruah); an idea that survives in the modern expression
"breath of life".

Nor was this belief confined to the people of the Old Testament. It formed an
essential part of the entire Middle Eastern and Meditteranean religious and
cultural milieu. G. A. Barton, in his article in Hasting's Encyclopedia of
Religion and Ethics, tells us that

"Only gradually did (the ancient Semites) come to think of (the soul) as an entity
that could exist apart from the body. In all the Semitic dialects the soul was
designated by a noun derived from a root meaning "breathe".
Thus in Akkadian-Assyrian, napasu = "be wide", "breathe"; napistu = "breath",
"life", "soul". In Hebrew naphash = "take breath"...; nephesh = "breath", "soul",
"life", "person". In Arabic... tannaffus = "to fetch a deep breath"; nafs = "breath
of life", "soul", "self". In Aramaic naphsha = "soul"; ettapash = "breathe". In
Ethiopian nephsa = "breathe"; nephes = "soul"."
[G. A. Barton, "Soul - Semitic" in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, ed by
James Hastings; (T & T Clark, Edinburgh, 1908, 2nd Impression 1925), p.749]
And we see this identification not only among the Semites of the Middle East.
Consider the Greek word pnuema ("air", "spirit") and the Latin spiritus, from
which latter we derive the English "spirit" and "inspiration" (literally "to breath
in"). Even that classical word for the soul, psyche, can be related to psychein =
to breath [Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the
Bicameral Mind, p.270 (1976, Penguin Books)].

In the Indian and Tibetan traditions there can likewise be found reference
to Prana (breath or vital force) and Vayu (air or wind, equated in
Tibetan Tantric Buddhism with Prana), and the nature and yogic activation of
this life/breath principle was explained in great detail. The Chinese also had
a great deal to say regarding the Ch'i or vital-force, its various modes and
currents. But unlike their less perceptive Mediterranean brethren, whose
formulations of ruah, nefesh, psyche, and spiritus all confuse (a) physical air
or breath, (b) vital force, and (c) mind or psyche or soul, the Far Eastern
yogis and occultists consistantly recognised Prana, Vayu, and Ch'i as
constituting a principle distinct from the mind or soul. It was only later that
there appeared in the West a similar recognition of the distinction between
life-principle and soul.

Man - A Holistic Being Dependent On The Physical Body

The common Mediterranean perspective therefore was that man is a holistic

unity of body and soul or life-principle, and death of the body therefore
meant death of the personality as well. For Homer and his readers, man is
regarded as being made up of three parts: the body, the psyche (life-
principle), and the thymos (conscious self). With the dissolution of the body,
the thymos was merged with the air, and the psyche descended into Hades as
a shade or ghost, the eidolon ("image").

Later, as with the Hebrew nefesh and ruah - both of which terms, as we have
seen, originally meant "breath", or "soul as the breath of life", and later came
to mean "(immortal) soul" - the psyche became the conscious principle or
"soul". As for the eidolon or "image", I will have more to say concerning
this later.
 The post-Homeric Hellenic thinkers polarised into two distinct camps when it
came to explaining whether or not consciousness continued after death.

On the one hand there were the sages and mystics, such as the Orphics,
Pythagoras and his students and followers (the Pythagoreans), Empedocles,
and Plato and his students and successors (the Platonists), who all held that
the conscious principle or soul (psyche) was an immortal spiritual essence,
and transmigrated from body to body.

On the other hand there were the more mundane and pragmatic, this-worldly
philosophers and thinkers, such as Aristotle and his successors (the
Peripatetics), Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, and Epicurus and his followers
(the Epicurians), who held with Homer that consciousness or intellect is only
possible whilst the physical body continues to function. The Stoics For
example were of the opinion, much in the manner of the modern physicist,
that fire (=energy) was the fundamental principle of the universe. According
to them, after death the soul

"decomposes along with the physical body and returns to...the ether....(The)
higher elements in man, such as the Fire of Reason,...also dissolves back into its
universal source, leaving no individuality to experience any posthumous state..."
[Jocyln Godwin, Mystery Religions, p.70]
Here we see of course a repeat of the Homeric and Hebraic position, according to
both of which bodily death means the return of the component personality
aspects to their respective sources.

Origin Of The Belief In Resurrection

For the most part, the Babylonians, Hebrews, Homeric Greeks, Stoics, and
Epicurians, like modern materialists and sceptics, nobly accepted their lot.
Indeed, we even have the expression "Stoic acceptance". But it is a natural
consequence of the strivings of the human spirit that it could not be satisfied
with a such a limited existence.

Consider the ancient Hebrews. Their henotheistic / monotheistic Yahweh cult

induced in them a strong sense of morals and justice, as indicated by the
Mosaic Ten Commandments. And their god was very much a god of justice,
even if this was originally and unfortunately only the crude vengeance of a
tribe of savage desert warriors. But under reformers like the prophet Isaiah
(8th century B.C.E.), this brutal Yahweh was replaced by a more morally
elevated Yahweh, perhaps the first expression of "God" as the term is
understood today. Yet all the while the problem remained: how can one
speak of righteousness and justice when we have all around us the evidence
that the wicked flourish and the good go to their graves unrewarded? It was
through pondering questions like this that the problem of theodicy, the
paradox between Divine Justice and the existence of evil, came into human
consciousness.

The Hebrews eventually solved this problem the only way they knew how. If
good and evil are not rewarded or punished by God during this life, it follows
that there must be a post-mortem existence where they are. The shadowy
existence in Sheol must therefore be replaced by something fuller.

Thus the later Hebrews, who had come into contact with Persian-
Zoroastrian beliefs during their Babylonian Exile (6th Century B.C.E.),
adopted the Zoroastrian idea of bodily resurrection. In the Judeo-Christian
tradition, this first clearly appears in the Book of Daniel (173 B.C.E.). The
reason for the popular appeal of the Resurrection belief is obvious: granted
that the personality or consciousness depends for its existence on the body, if
there was some miraculous way the body could be restored, the personality
and individual existence would also be restored. The hope of a supernatural
resurrection provided this.

Thus we can see that the entire Judeo-Christian emphasis on the

"resurrection", and the Christian idea of Christ's resurrection as the guarantee
for "eternal life", is based in very large measure on the inability to
comprehend any after-life existence apart from the physical body.

The Zoroastrians and Jews therefore, and following the latter

the Christians and Moslems, got around the problem of personality
disintegration with bodily death by constructing a myth, a sort of fairy tale,
which said, "Yes, it is true that your body will die and your consciousness
cease. But if you believe in our religion there will come eventually a
miraculous moment when your physical body and therefore your
consciousness and personality as well, will be restored, and you will live in a
paradise on Earth."

But this is, after all, only a fairy tale. For if the body has decayed and long
since become dust, how can all the scattered elements possibly come together
again? There comes a time, when faith becomes too absurd, when one must
take a more realistic look at things. And here we can consider once again
those extraordinary Egyptians.
Unlike the believers in the bodily resurrection myth, the Egyptians had valid
occult knowledge; knowledge which the Babylonians, Hebrews, Greeks,
Christians and modern materialists lacked or lack.

The Egyptians had the idea that it is society (the religious community, family,
etc) that should safeguard the deceased's continued personal afterlife
existence. Hence the great emphasis they placed on mummification, funerary
rites, providing for the welfare the deceased, and so on. Along with this there
were presumably also various initiation rites, whereby the individual while
still living was put in touch with the spiritual-Divine realities that would
guide him or her to the heaven worlds or the enlightened state after death.
Such initiation was also a central part of Mithraism, Tantric Buddhism, and
the Anthroposophy of Rudolph Steiner.

Juda
ism
and
life
afte
r
deat
h

Chapter 4: The Hellenistic (Later Mediterranean) After-Life

The ascent of the soul through the celestial spheres

The Hellenistic-Roman Era

The military campaigns of the Macedonian king Alexander the Great creating
an empire that stretched from Italy and Libya in the West to Northern India in
the East. After his death in 323 the cultural and religious melting pot
remained, and became what we know as the Hellenistic Civilisation. This
civilisation survived and flourished throughout the Roman era until the
coming to power of political Christianity with the conversion of the emperor
Constantine in the early fourth century.
 Chaldean-Platonic Cosmology
This long period saw the coming together, and popular practice, of the different
religions, philosophies, and occult conceptions of Egypt, Persia, Syria, Greece,
and Asia Minor, into a single all-embracing cosmology. This cosmology was
basically an astrological one, and appeared to originate from a synthesis
of Platonic, Syrian/Babylonian/Chaldean, and Mithraic Persian elements. It was
based on the idea of the Earth as the centre of the universe, around which were
the successive celestial or planetary spheres. Beyond these was the sphere of the
fixed stars, and beyond that, the pure spiritual-Divine world itself. It is from this
supracelestial world that the soul in its purity originates, and to which it returns.

This cosmology tied in the person's pre-natal and post-mortem existence to

the cosmos as a whole; to a process of descent or involution of the soul, the
pure Divine essence, and its subsequent ascent. The "spheres" the soul passes
through are both physical and non-physical, and indeed, pre-scientific man
did not distinguish between the two. For on the one hand, the celestial
spheres are each identified with the physical planets, but on the other hand
they also represent psycho-spiritual zones; "planes" of existence to use the
modern Theosophical-occult term. Each sphere is ruled by a god, and these
gods exert their astrological influence upon the terrestrial world; this being
what we call "fate". The descent through the spheres into the body is a kind
of fall, which traps the soul here; the subsequent ascent a purifying process; a
return to the true spiritual realm.

The concept of many levels of self

Central to this conception was the triad of Body, Soul (psuche), and Divine
Mind (nous); with sometimes a further element, vital spirit (pnuema), added
as an intermediary between the physical body and the soul. These various
individual principles have their cosmic correlates. As Walter Willi explains:

"Man consists of spirit, soul, and body. The earth gave him his body, the moon
his soul, the sun his spirit (or Nous). When a man dies, that is his first death...
(which) separates soul and Nous from the body....Every soul, after leaving the
body, must wonder for a time between earth and moon and finally, after
vicissitudes (depending on its spirit nature and its life on earth) reaches the
moon...Here...the souls finally die their second death; the Nous, yearning for the
sun, separates from the soul; sovereign and free from all passions, it seeks the
sun and unites with the primal spirit. The soul, parted from the spirit, remains on
the moon and ultimately dissolves into the moon."

Here we see, alongside the Platonic separation of soul and body, and rational
(here, "spirit") and irrational ("soul") psychic principles, the distinct Chaldean
(Babylonian) element of the return of the soul to the sun, from which it is
said to have arisen in the first place. [Franz Cumont, Oriental Religions in
Roman Paganism, (Dover Publications, New York, 1956 [original edition
1911]) p.133-4]

So, according to this Chaldean-Platonic cosmology, the various levels of Self

originate from the corresponding Cosmic levels ("The Earth gave man his
body, the Moon his soul, the Sun his Nous"), and it is to them that they
successively return. We have a sort of celestial expansion of human nature.
Man is not an isolated little being, but connected in subtle ways to the entire
cosmos. This was in fact a standard belief-system during the Hellenistic
period of the ancient mediterranean world (4th century B.C.E. to 4th century
C.E.).

The "second death"

Another interesting thing about this cosmology is the concept of the "second
death". After the normal physical death, there is followed sometime later a
second or psychic death, and the consequent release of the Nous.

----------------------------------------------------
Sun/Spiritual world <---- Nous -----|
| .................................|...............
| Moon/Psychic World <----Soul -|
| | [Second Death]
| | |
| | Soul + Nous
| ......|..........................|...............
| | Earth/Physical <- Body -|
| | | [Death]
| | | |
\-------\=========\ ====> Body + Soul + Nous
----------------------------------------------------
 The Cycle of Existence: Self and Cosmos according to Xenocrates and
Plutarch

Now, the idea that the psyche is mortal and can die, and indeed does die in
the normal course of things, is one which will doubtless be rather disturbing
for the dualist, who accepts only the simple dichotomy of body and soul. But
the esoteric-occult perspective replaces the simple two-fold metaphysic with
a multi-fold one. So just as the Psyche or personality is the "soul" of the
body, so there would be a further "soul" within the personality, the Nous.

Chapter 5: the Chinese after-life

Yin and Yang souls,

and the disintegration of the embodied personality

"After death, when this small troop of colourless spirits [that make up the
personality] was dispersed, how could they possibly be gathered together and
reformed into a unity?"

The Taoist conception of post-mortem personality fragmentation

The Chinese Taoists, like the ancient Egyptians, were greatly concerned with
ensuring the survival of the individual after physical death. Their
metaphysics was based on the ancient Chinese conception of the polarity of
Dark and Light, Negative and Positive, Yin and Yang; the two fundamental
principles in the Cosmos.

According to the Chinese, just as the Cosmos consists of and comes about
through the interaction and interchange of Yin and Yang (as superbly
illustrated in that magnificent Chinese Oracle, the I Ching - pronounced "Yee
Jing"), so, in a similar way, the human personality consists of and comes
about through two principles or "souls", a Yin soul and a Yang soul, which
are welded together during life, but separate at death. Their separation means
the end of the personality as such, even though the Yin and Yang principles
survive. One Jungian writer, Cary Baynes, summarises the matter as follows:

"In the...bodily existence of the individual...are...two... polarities, a p'o soul (or

anima) and a hun soul (animus). All during the life of the individual these two
are in conflict, each striving for mastery. At death they separate and go different
ways. The anima sinks to earth as kuei, a ghost-being. The animus rises and
becomes shen, a spirit or god."
[Cary Baynes, ed.; Richard Wilhelm and C. G. Jung, The Secret of the Golden
Flower, (Harcourte Brace Jovanovich, 1962), p.64]

and likewise also in Confucian thought

Ts'ai-wu said, "I have heard the names kuei and shen, but I do not know what
they mean."

The Master said, "The [intelligent] spirit is of the shen nature, and
shows that in fullest measure; the animal soul is of the kuei nature,
and shows that in fullest measure. It is the union of kuei and shen
that forms the highest exhibition of doctrine.

"All the living must die, and dying, return to the ground; this is
what is called kuei. The bones and flesh molder below, and,
hidden away, become the earth of the fields. But the spirit issues
forth, and is displayed on high in a condition of glorious
brightness. The vapors and odors which produce a feeling of
sadness, [and arise from the decay of their substance], are the
subtle essences of all things, and also a manifestation of the shen
nature."

Book of Ritual 21.2.1

from Readings from World Scriptures - by Prof Andrew Wilson

So we have two fundamental principles: the lower, instinctual, dark principle

which after death becomes a ghost or evil spirit ("the conscious spirit which
after death is nourished on blood", as Lu-tsu puts it [p.28, Ibid]); and a
higher, light, spiritual principle, which after death becomes a daimon (shen).

Sometimes the Chinese sages used other pairs of terms, such

as shin and kwei [J. J. Poortman, Vehicles of Consciousness - the Concept of
Hylic Pluralism, vol 1, p.274]. And sometimes, as with the Egyptians, they
postulated a multiplicity of principles; as many as three superior or yang
souls (hun), and seven inferior or yin souls (po).

Yet for all this, the Chinese philosophers often had a rather pessimistic view
of post-mortem existence. As one writer, speaking of the multiplicity of
souls, explains:
 "In life, as in death, these souls were most indefinite, vague, and feeble. After
death, when this small troop of colourless spirits was dispersed, how could they
possibly be gathered together and reformed into a unity? ...(T)he body is unique,
and serves as the dwelling place of all these spirits...."
[Henri Maspero, Le Taoism, Paris, 1950, p.17, quoted in D. Howard Smith,
"Chinese Concepts of the Soul", Numen, V, p.177]

Here we see the contrast between the Egyptian and the Chinese position. For
the Egyptians, bodily death means the release of the separate soul-principles,
all of which maintain their identity. Thus the person has not one but half a
dozen simultaneous after-life existences. But for the Chinese, although death
likewise means the release of the separate soul-principles, this constitutes the
end of the person as such, for "how could they possibly be gathered
together...into a unity?"

But the problem is not one of contradiction but complementarily. Both say
the same thing; they only approach the matter from a different direction; the
Egyptian from the perspective of the after-life, the Chinese philosopher
and Yogic Taoist from the perspective of this life.

Taoist efforts towards personality-immortality

The ancient Egyptians considered the preservation or continuation of the

personality of the deceased as a social function. The deceased family would
provide offerings to ensure the departed one's continued existence, whilst the
state, in the form of the priesthood, would provide the religious impetus:
prayers and in some cases, initiation. Thus everything was provided from
without.

The Yogic Taoists on the other hand approached the problem from within. As
with the Buddhists, they felt that one should rely on no-one except oneself.
One's only hope lies with whether one can transforming the personality while
one is still alive, to "crystallise" it so to speak, so it no longer would
disintegrate at death. In this way, they developed techniques to attain
immortality by constructing a kind of immortal spirit body, some-times
referred to as the "Immortal fetus". These techniques involved the retention
of the vital force (ch'i), or "circulation of the light", and various other
processes of spiritual transmutation.
But if we assume that the Higher Self is immortal in any case, it could be
supposed that what these Taoists were striving for was the immortality of the
personality; which is presumably the same thing as the Sufi-taught Russian-
Armenian Sage G. I. Gurdjieff taught.

Gurdjieff's teaching was that man is not immortal, but man can attain
immortality, and that this can be done either on the physical (or etheric) level
- "the way of the fakir" - the emotional level - "the way of the monk" - the
intellectual level - "the way of the yogi" - or all levels simultaneously; the so-
called "Fouth Way".

In the Yogic-Taoist and the Gurdjieffian paths there is no reference to Divine

guidance from without, as the individuality is now developed to the degree
that it can survive unaided in the after-life environment.

Chapter 6: The Tibetan After-Life

The "Bardo" or Intermediate State

The Bardo Thodel - The "Tibetan Book Of The Dead"

Like the Egyptians, the Tibetans had their "books of the dead", which were
not only guidebooks for the deceased, but also magnificent spiritual writings.

The Bardo Thodel, or "Book of the Intermediate State" (popularly but

inaccurately known in the West as "The Tibetan Book of the Dead") is widely
and traditionally attributed to Padmasambhava, the legendary Indian Tantric
master who was said to have introduced Buddhism to Tibet in the middle of
the eighth century, conquering and converting all the native demons and
deities in the process.

In actual fact, compilation of the Tibetan Books of the Dead involved a

number of authors, working over several generations. The present corpus, of
which the popular "Tibetan Book of the Dead" is only the best known and
most accessible of a large number of writings (mostly mantric and magical),
dates from the 14th or 15th centuries [Detlef Ingo Lauf, Secret Doctrines of
the Tibetan Books of the Dead, pp3-4, (Shambhala, Boulder, 1977)].

It is obvious that the genuine occult knowledge in the Bardo Thodel has been
obscured by Buddhist Tantric iconography and symbolism: the appearance of
the various Buddhas, their precise iconographic attributes, and so on. This is
not to depreciate the profound knowledge of Tibetan Buddhism, but only to
regret that two valid fields of knowledge could not have been retained in
separate purity, rather than being mixed in an unfortunate jumble.

The Bardo-States

Central to the Tibetan concept of after-life existence is the Bardo. The word
means literally "intermediate state". According to Tibetan esotericists,
steeped as they are in Buddhist learning, all existence is nothing but a series
of alternating transitional states, or "bardos". Waking, sleeping, meditating,
dying, wandering in the spirt world, reincarnating; all these are bardos.
Generally however, the term is used to designate the period from physical
death to physical rebirth. And, just as waking existence can be divided into
bardos (such as waking and sleeping), so can the afterlife existence.

Basically then, the Bardo Thodel describes a distinct sequence of states

(bardos) through which the individual passes through between death and
rebirth. There are three distinct stages, which are as follows:

(1) The Chikai Bardo (or hChi-kha Bar-do - a number of Tibetan letters are
silent) or Intermediate period of the moment of death. This includes the
process of dying; and the dissolution of the elements (earth, water, fire, and
air) that make up the physical body. During this period one experiences the
"Clear Light", one's own innate Buddha-nature. This is therefore a very
favourable moment for the attainment of Enlightenment and liberation from
the wheel of rebirth.

The Tibetan account of the Chikai Bardo shows striking parallels with the so-
called "Near Death Experience" of people who have died, experienced
themselves floating out of their bodies, and so on, and then been revived.

(2) The Chonyid Bardo (or Chos-nidd Bar-do) or Intermediate period of

visions of deities. This refers to the state where one experiences visions of
deities, Heaven and Hell, Judgment, and so on. Modern writers have been
struck by the parallels with the psychedelic and psychotic states, and
experiences of "astral travelling" and the "astral plane"

(3) The Sidpa Bardo (or Srid-pa'i Bar-do) or Inter-mediate period of rebirth.
During this bardo the consciousness descends and chooses a new body to be
born into. (Buddhists do not accept the existence of a single continuing
entity which "reincarnates", and refer instead to the "rebirth" of the
consciousness-stream in a new body).
The number of days given in the Tibetan Book of the Dead - 49 - is obviously
symbolic, although the Tibetans themselves, like all people (including
Westerners) who are immersed in a particular religious tradition, take it in a
literal context.

Now, it is interesting to compare the Tibetan with the Egyptian, Taoist,

and Kabbalistic conceptions. The latter three speak of the personality or soul
as compound, and separating into its component parts with physical death;
each part going to its own world or fate. The Tibetans only have a single soul
- "consciousness" would be a better word, in view of the Buddhist denial of a
single persisting entity that could be termed "soul" or "self" - but have this
principle passing through a number of different experiences. In other words,
the Egyptians, Taoists, etc speak of a plurality in the being, but not in time,
the Tibetans of a plurality in time, but not in the being.

Of course, this is putting it rather simplistically, since the Egyptians did have
a "Judgment" just as the Tibetans did, and in both cases this is a temporal
stage one has to pass through. But basically the above generalisation holds
good.

Tibetan and Hellenistic conceptions - contrasts

The psychologist Carl Jung, in his "psychological commentary" to the Evans-

Wentz edition (the first English translation) of the Tibetan Book of the Dead,
has observed that in this text, unlike the corresponding Western position, the
sequence of states begins with the highest, the Clear Light (representing the
Absolute Reality or Dharmakaya), since the moment of death is considered
the highest state of consciousness. The conscious-ness then becomes
progressively degraded, finally resulting in a new physical birth. What we
have, as Jung points out, is an initiation process in reverse, describing the
descent of the soul into the body, rather than, as in Christian eschatology, the
ascent of the soul to God [Carl Jung, "Psychological Commentary", in W.Y.
Evans-Wentz, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, p.xlix (Oxford University Press,
1960].

It seems then that the Tibetan and the Platonic-Chaldean-Mithraic Hellenistic

conceptions of after-life existence are the inverse of each other.

Both speak of consciousness progressing through successive stages, but for

the Tibetans this is in the form of a descent from the highest state of
consciousness, the Clear Light or Dharmakaya, which is experienced at the
moment of death (Chikai bardo), through the Secondary Clear Light, the
Peaceful Deities, Knowledge-holding and then Wrathful Deities (Chonyid
bardo), the various unpleasant psychic experiences, such as the Judgment,
and finally the Choosing of a body (Sidpa bardo) in preparation for Rebirth.

In contrast, in the Platonic-Chaldean-Mithraic schema, physical existence is

the lowest state of existence, and one has to painfully fight one's way up
through the various successive psychic spheres or zones, until finally one
attains the Celestial or Supra-celestial paradise among, or above, the Fixed
Stars. Thus the goal of the Hellenistic after-life is equivalent to the initial
state of the Tibetan after-life; and the final state of the Tibetan bardo
equivalent to the initial state of the Hellenistic conception: the proximity with
the physical body.

The Tibetan guidance to the dead is primarily yogic; one has to realise this
initial Clear Light as one's own True Nature, and by so doing merge with it,
thus attaining salvation. Failing this, one steadily slips lower and lower. The
Hellenistic, especially the Mithraic and the Gnostic, guidance is Magical: one
uses specific "pass-words" to get past the Guardians at each psycho-celestial
zone or sphere. Succeeding in this, one slowly ascends higher and higher.

In a sense the Tibetan perspective is idiosyncratic and totally unique;

practically every other conception of after-life existence and guidance agrees
with the Hellenistic esotericists in speaking of a series of stages or barriers
one must pass through in order to attain one's final goal.

Further comments
by
Andy Weisberg

I agree that the philosophy of the Bardo Thodol does seem to support the
singularity of personal consciousness, and its continuity is what is being
addressed in the "Book". While that might imply that a separate Divine Soul,
(which I also support as something differentiated from the personal
consciousness or Ka), is somewhere else, I believe that the Tibetans approach
this with the notion that they are part of the same thing, as the constant
exhortation to the individual is to realize that everything they encounter --- all
aspects of the their unravelling personality and ego --- are all parts of the
Clear Light/Void/True Essence, and that they should make every effort to
remember this and merge with it.

So it seems to be an important difference if we, on the one hand, imagine the

Ka going on its way and the Divine Soul going off somewhere else, more
Divine and Holy, and, following one line of philosophy or another they meet
again, (or do not); or on the other hand we imagine that they are always
connected and part of the same thing that is realizing and understanding itself
in its true nature. It's a critical distinction for me, as the work then, (in aiding
one's departed loved ones as well as consciously taking part in our own
awakening), is to realize and experience the reality of that truth, and escape
the wheel of birth, life, death and rebirth, as opposed to just placating a
separate "personality" for an undetermined period of time with an Ancestor
Altar in Mahikari

A passage from the American Book of the Dead translated as "Confronting

the Clear Light" at the moment of death: "...Realize that nothing is
happening, and nothing ever has happened, or ever will happen. Your present
consciousness is in reality unformed and void, having no qualities or
characteristics. Your real nature is the Clear Light itself, and you are the Clear
Light..."

Books and Links

Secret Doctrines of the Tibetan Books of the Dead by Detlef Ingo Lauf

Tibetan Book of the Dead by W. Y. Evans-Wentz (Editor)