The-Tibetan-Book-of-Living-and-Dying

280 THE TIBETAN BOOK OF LIVING AND DYING
advanced practice of luminosity, Tögal, can the true significance
of the bardo of dharmata be in any real sense understood.
The bardo of dharmata, then, figures with far less
prominence in other cycles of teachings on death in the
Tibetan tradition. Even in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which
also belongs to the Dzogchen teachings, the sequence of these
four phases is only implicit, as if slightly hidden, and does not
appear there in such a clear and ordered structure.
I must stress, however, that all words could possibly do is
give some conceptual picture of what might happen in the
bardo of dharmata. The appearances of this bardo will remain
just conceptual images until the practitioner has perfected the
Tögal practice, when each detail of the description I am about
to give becomes an undeniable personal experience. What I
am trying to give you here is some sense that such a marvelous
and amazing dimension could exist, and to complete
my description of the whole of the bardos. I also profoundly
hope that this complete description could act perhaps as some
kind of reminder when you go through the process of death.
1. Luminosity—The Landscape of Light
In the bardo of dharmata, you take on a body of light. The
first phase of this bardo is when "space dissolves into luminosity":
Suddenly you become aware of a flowing vibrant world of
sound, light, and color. All the ordinary features of our familiar
environment have melted into an all-pervasive landscape of
light. This is brilliantly clear and radiant, transparent and multicolored,
unlimited by any kind of dimension or direction,
shimmering and constantly in motion. The Tibetan Book of the
Dead calls it "like a mirage on a plain in the heat of summer."
Its colors are the natural expression of the intrinsic elemental
qualities of the mind: space is perceived as blue light, water as
white, earth as yellow, fire as red, and wind as green.
How stable these dazzling appearances of light are in the
bardo of dharmata depends entirely upon what stability you
have managed to attain in Tögal practice. Only a real mastery
of this practice will enable you to stabilize the experience and
so use it to gain liberation. Otherwise the bardo of dharmata
will simply flash by like a bolt of lightning; you will not even
know that it has occurred. Let me stress again that only a
practitioner of Tögal will be able to make the all-important
recognition: that these radiant manifestations of light have no
existence separate from the nature of mind.