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

THE NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE: A STAIRCASE TO HEAVEN? 337review. The life-review happens again and again in the neardeathexperience, and demonstrates so clearly the inescapabilityof karma and the far-reaching and powerful effects of allour actions, words, and thoughts. The central message that thenear-death experiencers bring back from their encounter withdeath, or the presence or "being of light," is exactly the sameas that of Buddha and of the bardo teachings: that the essentialand most important qualities in life are love and knowledge,compassion and wisdom.They are surely beginning to see what the bardo teachingstell us: that life and death are in the mind itself. And the confidencethat many of them seem to have after this experiencereflects this deeper understanding of mind.There are also certain, fascinating similarities between thenear-death experience and its results, and mystical states andaltered states of consciousness. For example, a number of paranormalphenomena have been reported by the near-deathexperiencers. Some have precognitive or prophetic planetaryvisions, or "life previews," that turn out to be uncannily accurate;after the near-death experience, some report experiencesof what appears to be the energy of kundalini, 37 others findthey have real and amazing powers of clairvoyance, or psychicor physical healing.Many of those who have come near death speak in a personal,undeniably eloquent way of the beauty, love, peace andbliss and wisdom of what they have experienced. To me thissounds like they have had certain glimpses of the radiance ofthe nature of mind, and it is hardly surprising that suchglimpses should have resulted in true spiritual transformation,again and again. Yet as Margot Grey points out, "We do notneed nearly to die in order to experience a higher spiritualreality." 38 That higher spiritual reality is here and now, in life,if only we can discover and enter it.I would like to make one essential caution: Don't let theseaccounts of the near-death experience, which are so inspiring,lull you into believing that all you have to do in order todwell in such states of peace and bliss is to die. It is not, andcould not be, that simple.Sometimes when people are going through suffering andpain, they feel they cannot bear it anymore; and hearing thenear-death stories might, it is conceivable, tempt them to putan end to it all by taking their lives. This might seem like asimple solution, but it overlooks the fact that whatever we go