Page:The Tibetan Book of the Dead (1927).djvu/90

40 which is the popular interpretation; and the symbolical or esoteric interpretation, which is held to be correct by the initiated few, who claim not scriptural authority or belief, but knowledge. With respect to Tibet, these few are chiefly learned lāmas who are said to have made successful application of methods like those which the Buddha expounded for remembering past incarnations, and for acquiring the yogīc power of seeing what really takes place in the natural process of death and rebirth. To the devotee, seeking thus to know rather than merely to believe on the authority of priests or books, the Buddha has offered the following guidance:

‘If he desireth to be able to call to mind his various temporary states in days gone by, such as one birth, two births, three, four, five, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, a hundred, a thousand, or a hundred thousand births, his births in many an aeon of destruction, in many an aeon of renovation, in many an aeon of both destruction and renovation [so as to be able to say]: “In that place such was my name, such my family, such my caste, such my subsistence, such my experience of comfort or of pain, and such the limit of my life; and when I passed from thence I took form again in that other place, where my name was so and so, such my family, such my caste, such my subsistence, such my experience of comfort or of pain, and such my term of life; and from thence I was born here—thus I am able to call to mind my various temporary states of existence in days gone by”—in that state of self-concentration, if the mind be fixed on the acquirement of any object, that object will be attained.

‘If he desireth to see with pure and heavenly vision, surpassing that of men, beings as they pass from one state of existence and take form in others—beings base or noble, good-looking or ill-favoured, happy or miserable, according to the karma they inherit—in that state of self-concentration, if the mind be fixed on the acquirement of any object, that object will be attained’ (Lonaphala Vagga, Anguttara Nikāya).

Again in the Brāhmaṇa Vagga, Anguttara Nikāya, where the yogīc method of recovering from the content of the subconsciousness (which—in confirmation of the Buddha’s