Tibetan Book of the Dead
The Tibetan Book of the Dead caught my fascination when I was watching “Quantum Activist.” In the movie, Amit Goswami, theoretical nuclear physicist, says he heard a voice in his head say that he should prove the Tibetan Book of the Dead. And his response was, pretty much, what the fuck? What does this have to do with physics?
The Tibetan Book of the Dead and quantum physics share the view that individual perspective shapes reality. It’s a bit of a paradox because, ultimately, all is one. There isn’t good. There isn’t bad. There is experience. In the Tibetan Book of the Dead, if you can totally accept unity – yourself as Ultimate Reality without personalizing experience you’re free from the cycle of incarnation. Most people self-guilt, need a God figure to judge them, or seek other forms of separating and judging themselves. The Christian idea of heaven is viewed as a temporary state, and, therefore, not the most desirable change possible.
There is another reason why the book caught my fascination in that documentary. Dr. Goswami talks about a myth or story – I don’t really remember the exacts – but a lover waiting at the edge of hell for their beloved. The lover would rather stay behind than move on to paradise without their beloved. The story’s point being that ultimately there is no singular ascension. We all ascend together or not at all.
In a psychic state, I watched someone I love identify with the demons around him and descend further into hell. I don’t like that as a possibility. I don’t want to say that’s possible or true. That’s what I experienced. So it seems to me, we are all dead already. We can choose to identify with the horrors around us, explain their presence, justify our own discontent, tolerate the abuse, or we can transcend to the Ultimate Reality. The difference between material life and immaterial life is that the material engagement gives us a chance to sort out our reflection, our ideas, our karma. There’s work to be done here. The dead don’t get to make slip covers, invent gadgets, re-experience themselves and whatnot.
Life is a power position. Demons, evils, injustices cannot live without our efforts to keep them alive. And even with all that power to sort out heaven and hell, life is still in the business of dying – collapsing into the one Ultimate Reality.
So what are the tools we have to die with? People make so much of love. Even, sadly, Dr. Goswami talks about the power of the heart chakra as key to ascension. But we have seven chakras for a reason. Not everything around us is loving. We are here to use all seven chakras. They’re designed for a reason. We’re here to fight for our own Ultimate Reality. And not everything and everyone can be set straight by love alone.
That was my painful love lesson. Even God can’t step in between a person and their own self-judgment. Free will isn’t a joke. That’s the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Maybe one day, society will be able to know it as fact.




