This is particularly important at the point of death and during the transitionary stage before the next rebirth. Our stream of consciousness at this stage will perceive (depending on our religious indoctrination) gods and Buddhas, angels and Bodhisattvas, horned devils and blood-drinking Herukas. These are projections emerging from the mind.
Therefore, know them as mental projections, recognise them as such, and attain liberation from the cycle of birth, suffering and rebirth, the book urges again and again.
Now, the truly scary problem for me is this: Whether in a dream or watching a movie, I am always held enthralled by the scene before me. I am unable to recognise whatever appears before me as mental projections. So, when I am dead and my consciousness has become even more bewildered and unstable than in a nightmare, I will be far less able to remember and recognise.
The secret to liberation after death, is to study and internalise the instruction of the Dharma (including the Book of the Great Liberation), and practise Insight Meditation regularly while there is still life in me. Study, meditation and living an ethical and a compassionate life, according to the Five Precepts (no lies, no alcohol, no fornication with strange women, no stealing and no hurting or destroying another life) can strengthen and calm the mind so that I am mentally prepared to meet the projected terrors of the bardo after death.
The text in the Great Liberation admonishes us:
"It is extremely important to train the mind thoroughly in the Liberation through Hearing in the Bardo, especially during one's life. It should be grasped, it should be perfected, it should be read aloud, it should be memorised properly, it should be practised three times a day without fail, the meaning of its words should be made completely clear in the mind. Its words and meaning should not be forgotten even if a hundred murderers were to appear and chase one."
Several translations of the Great Liberation are available at Amazon.com. I have profited and motivated by an audio-cassette version, read by actor Richard Gere, well-known for his adherence to the Dharma as taught by the great lamas.
FLYING vampires, howling werewolves, and even Dracula himself are as scary as what computer graphics artists and technicians can make them.
So, in the movie, Van Helsing (screened May 2004), with technology and a lot of patience, you can make vampires flap their wings like manta rays by dressing them in blue motion-capture suits and guiding their movement across a blue stage, says Scott Squires, the visual efects supervisor.
In a phone interview from his Industrial Light & Magic studio in California, he tells me that from the neck down the vampire's body was all superimposed animated graphics. The castles, too, were miniatures and the lightnings hand-painted onto the computer.
When I saw the movie, however, the scenes looked real and downright terrifying. There wasn't the slightest hint that they were only effects, and that it was my mind that made them "real".
Most amazing was actress Josie Maran. As the vampire queen (pictures above), she was the ultimate nightmare. But when I saw her photo as the Maybelline girl, I was stunned by her beauty.
Beauty or nightmare, what I saw in the movie were just visual effects. So also in real life. The Tibetan book of The Great Liberation through Hearing in the Bardo (often translated as the Tibetan Book of the Dead) explains that every sight and scene before us in whatever phase of life we are in (the bardo), is no more than the projection of our mind.
Actress Josie Maran "flew" in a motion-capture suit, assisted by a technician. An animated graphics vampire body with flapping wings was then attached to her neck. Bottom: Josie the face of Maybelline.
Projected
terrors
