One of the most interesting religious books that I have read is the Tibetan Book of the Dead. It is ostensibly  a guide book for the dead. It aims to show a person what they will experience when they die, with the purpose of helping them to raise their consciousness so that they will not experience some of the less desirable things that may be experienced by someone who has passed, or at least if they experience these undesirable things, they will have the knowledge to lessen their intensity and shorten their duration.

I am not asking anyone to believe in anything that I have written here. I think that everyone should look into all religious traditions, and keep an open mind while doing so. Suspend your belief or disbelieve and just take it in and consider it.

One basic tenet the TBD espouses is that all phenomena, whether in this universe or any other, are illusory and transitory, and are created by the mind. In this, it doesn’t differ from what I would call basic Buddhism. Another belief the book espouses is that all beings, including angels, gods, demons, and even ourselves, are not really discrete entities with a separate existence, but are merely manifestations of consciousness and there is only one consciousness that exists. This one and only consciousness divides itself infinitely to produce individual beings such as ourselves, our separateness from other beings, being an illusion. All phenomena are caused by the desire of this one consciousness to experience sensation. Each one of us is a fragment of the one consciousness, and our goal it to reconnect with our source, to full realize that we are one with everything. This realization or enlightened state is called Nirvana and is achieved by very few souls on Earth, but until we achieve it, death follows birth and birth follows death in a continuous cycle.

So far, the beliefs I have described are congruent with all forms of Buddhism that I know of. Now I come to where the Tibetan Book of the Dead differs. It purports to describe what a person will experience when he or she dies. The first stages of the death experience as described by the TBD are very similar to the accounts that people give after they have had a near death experience. But the book goes much farther than that. It describes what a soul will experience from the moment of death until the next birth into this world.

According to the TBD, the nature of a person’s experience after they die is entirely determined by every thought they have thought they have thought in their past. If you have created some very bad karma, you will find yourself in a world of fear and pain. If you have created much good karma, you will find yourself in a world of bliss and love. After the initial stages of the death experience you will find yourself in a state of existence that is similar to the dream state. Every thought you have will immediately manifest itself in what seems like a solid physical reality just as real as this world. And it is just as real as this world. The fact that it is created entirely by your own thoughts doesn’t make it any less real. In fact, the whole fabric of this or any other universe is supposedly created entirely by thought. The book describes souls who have been cruel, violent people in their life here on Earth, who find themselves in a world where hideous demons are ripping their body apart, after which, their body immediately reforms itself, only to be ripped apart again. This unspeakably agonizing torture goes on and on until the soul finally realizes that the demons are projections of his or her own mind. That doesn’t mean they aren’t real. But it means that they can be made to disappear by controlling the content of one’s thoughts.

Learning to control the content of your thoughts is an important part of basic Buddhism and is certainly not peculiar to Tibetan Buddhism.  It is part of the eight-fold way. As a person thinks, so they become. Meditation and mindfulness are of paramount importance in learning to control one’s thoughts and urges. Karma is not created by actions. It is created by thought. In fact it is solely created by one’s thoughts because any action a person carries out is preceded by a thought, a decision, to carry out that action.

Even thoughts that do not result in actions, create karma. Thus karma is solely created by thoughts and attitude. That is why it is so important to control our thoughts. In this world there is a time lag between a thought and karmic manifestation of that thought. When you die you may find yourself in a world in which every thought immediately manifests its karmic implications. That can be heaven or hell, depending on the content of your thoughts and your ability to control your mind.

The purpose of the TBD is to give people the knowledge they need in order to understand how to make their experience in the next world better. The crux of the matter is that a person needs to learn how to control their own mind. Each person needs to learn to control their own thoughts, urges, and desires. Doing so will not only make life in this world better, but will make existence in the next realm better.  According to the TBD, and indeed, in most types of Buddhism, meditation and mindfulness will lead to the realization that this whole world is illusory and all things in it are transitory, and there is a greater, all-encompassing reality behind the reality of our world. You may believe this on an intellectual level, but according to Buddhism, enlightenment is not merely believing it, but experiencing on a deep level that this world is a conditional world, real but illusory at the same time, created by thought, and everyone and everything in it, merely manifestations of the one and only true consciousness. When a soul has reached this level, rebirth in this world is no longer necessary. As far as I can see, that is the whole point of Buddhism, Tibetan or otherwise.