Page:The Tibetan Book of the Dead (1927).djvu/96

46 And this theory, when amended with certain necessary modifications, helps to illustrate the symbolical or esoteric interpretation of the Bardo Rebirth Doctrine.

In further illustration, applicable to the higher Hinduism as to the higher Buddhism, advocates of this interpretation point out that even before the final dissolution of the human body of the moment of death there is incessant transmigration of the bodily atoms. So long as the body is the receptacle of the consciousness-principle, it is said to renew itself completely every seven years. And even as the constituents of the physical man thus transmigrate throughout all organic and inorganic kingdoms and the mind remains unchangedly human during the brief cycle of one life-time, so, normally, it likewise remains human during the greater evolutionary cycle—i.e. until it reaches the end of all sangsāric evolution, namely, Nirvāṇic Enlightenment.

The esoteric teaching concerning this may be stated literally: That which is common to the human and to the sub-human worlds alike, namely, matter in its varied aspects as solids, liquids, and gases, eternally transmigrates. That which is specifically human and specifically sub-human remains so, in accordance with the law of nature that like attracts like and produces like, that all forces ever follow the line of least