mistybison said:I recently finished reading the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Most people here are likely already familiar with this text, but for those who aren't, it outlines the journey of the soul after death as interpreted by ancient spiritual leaders. Its purpose is twofold: to prepare an individual for the afterlife while they are still living, and to provide guidance for loved ones to assist the deceased by reading specific passages aloud. The book explores existence beyond our physical realm—what many would call the astral plane—which serves as a bridge toward total liberation or reincarnation into the material world. It offers practical advice for navigating encounters with various benevolent or wrathful deities during judgment, ultimately guiding the soul toward choosing its next life if complete liberation isn't achieved.
Reading this book, I have concluded that achieving liberation after death is an incredibly difficult feat, likely reserved only for yogis who have already mastered it during their lifetime. Most people simply drift along, carried by the weight of their good and bad karma, failing to maintain a mind centered in emptiness. For the majority, rebirth serves as the inevitable next step—a second chance to pursue spiritual progress. The Tibetan Book of the Dead suggests that liberation can be achieved (though rarely) in the immediate moments following death if the individual is capable, regardless of their karma. This depends entirely on their ability to recognize that everything encountered while navigating Purgatory is merely a projection of their own mind. Every vision is just a fragment of the deceased's psyche: the peaceful deities represent their divine nature, the wrathful ones reflect their human side, and even "judgment" is nothing more than a dialogue between different aspects of the self. Even suffering is simply a product of a restless conscience. Nothing in the astral realm exists outside the individual's being; the entire experience is shaped by one's karma and personal perception. If the soul cannot realize this, they may attempt to find liberation through prayer and focus on a protective deity. If that fails and they are overwhelmed by the illusions of the external world, their karma will inevitably lead them toward a new birth, whether in human form here on Earth or in some other realm altogether.
What I find most fascinating here is the actual concept of liberation. If everything in the astral realm is just as unreal as the deceased themselves—if it's all merely a mental projection colored by the memories and personality traits of a past life (which arguably applies to our physical reality too, but let's not get sidetracked)—then if the mind is fundamentally formless, void, and uncreated, those memories and inclinations are nothing more than illusions. In that case, who exactly is being liberated, and what is actually gained through such a process? 🤷 That which has always been unborn and uncreated is eternally free. It remains untouched by the shifting shadows and colors of existence—perceptions that are merely illusions destined to dissolve once they recognize their own lack of substance. When these illusions scatter, any perceived cognitive Power dissolves along with them. Everything fades. This isn't an escape into some heavenly realm of bliss (as being reborn into such worlds is just another layer of illusion), which leads me to wonder: is "liberation" even the right word for this process? Perhaps "annihilation" or "vanishing" would be more accurate. If the unborn is inherently free and void, then the illusory self, upon realizing its true nature, simply dissolves in a flash of insight. In reality, nothing truly changes; what was always free remains so, and what was never free never truly existed. The ultimate question remains: to what end?
Doesn't this entire concept seem completely nonsensical? All that spiritual labor, practice, and devotion spanning aeons just to realize we are a "holographic program," living in a "holodeck," and made of uncreated light dust—only to dissolve back into that dust and lose any sense of "self"? It feels a bit absurd, doesn't it?
On an intellectual level, grasping this idea isn't difficult. Modern science provides plenty of support, and beyond that, we have our own personal experiences, intuition acting as a channel to universal knowledge, and the mind's capacity for abstract thought. Actually "achieving" such a state is undoubtedly much harder and requires immense discipline. Perhaps adopting this view of reality could simplify and beautify our lives. But why would anyone set the "annihilation of consciousness" as their ultimate goal? Why would we want to dissolve into the void? Usually, the answer given is to escape the suffering of birth and death. But who is actually escaping it? Once you realize the illusion, the one being born and dying is merely a vanishing act, while that which was never born or died lacks a "self" to begin with. To me, it all looks like a pointless cycle: non-existence, existence, then non-existence again. 🤷
I hope my point comes through clearly in this topic. 😁
There are five types of liberation, and only one involves merging and losing the self into the impersonal Absolute.
Before that, there is the state of Nirvana. A neutral state, a state of the extinguishing (Nirvana means extinguishing) of material existence—its completion. This is very similar to the state of the impersonal Absolute, but at a lower level; a state that isn't quite transcendental to material existence, yet isn't transcendence either, but somewhere in between.
Furthermore, there are spiritual liberations that don't necessarily imply or accept any of those impersonal or intermediate states of existence as the most favorable, ultimate, or natural state of the soul. They simply accept them as real and possible modes of being, just as they accept the physical level of existence as real (though not "true"), even if it's an undesirable and unfavorable way to exist due to the misery it brings—its transience and eventual death. So, to each their own.
I agree with you that it's senseless to strive for a type of liberation that is stripped of individual existence, self-awareness, spiritual diversity, and personal connections through various relationships (intellectual, friendly, parental, marital...). However, I also agree with the necessity of completing material existence, which is contrary to the nature of the soul and the source of constant, terrible misery (illusion, birth, aging, sickness, death, impermanence, decay...). But not by simply extinguishing all individual existence and self-awareness! I agree that it is appropriate to complete or extinguish the existence of the FALSE SELF (the ego, the tainted consciousness where the true self is wrongly identified with something it is not originally or eternally!)—but not the TRUE SELF, the individual soul!
It would be better to be anything at all than to be—nothing!
Choosing to live in Sat-Chit-Ananda is the kind of liberation worth pursuing. A liberation characterized by eternity, truth, knowledge, and spiritual bliss within the spiritual diversity of pure consciousness, filled with all sorts of healthy, loving relationships (friendship, parenthood, marriage... spiritual love).
I think eternity and freedom from material misery are fine, but what's the point of floating around in some sort of eternity without individuality and the diversities mentioned above?
