The Tibetan Book of the Dead or The After-Death Experiences on the Bardo Plane, according to Lama Kaszi Dawa Samdup’s English Rendering

Compiled and edited by W.Y. Evans-Wentz. Oxford University Press, New York, 1960.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead is a guide for the living and the dead. It presents detailed instructions on how to face experiences encountered after death and see them as projections of the mind in order to attain liberation or auspicious birth.

The Evans-Wentz version includes a psychological commentary by Dr. Carl Jung, and forewords by Lama Anagarika Govinda and Sir John Woodroffe. This version, which is the definitive edition, is invaluable for scholars.

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The Mirror of Mindfulness: The Cycle of the Four Bardos

 By Tsele Natsok Rangdrol. Translated by Erik Pema Kunsang. Shambhala, Boston, 1989.

This book presents the Tibetan Buddhist teachings on the four main bardos, or intervals, of life, death, afterlife and rebirth. The goal of the teachings is to assist the practitioner in achieving liberation from the cycle of rebirths and in attaining enlightenment for the welfare of others.

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Meetings at the Edge: Dialogues with the Grieving, and the Dying, the Healing and the Healed

By Stephen Levine. Doubleday, New York, 1984.

This book consists of the edited transcripts of telephone conversations with twenty-three individuals who called in to a free consultation hotline for the “terminally ill and those working closely with death.” One goal of the phone service was “the exploration of death as a means of spiritual awakening.” Stephen Levine relates his insights in commentaries on the dialogues. “These stories are not of others but of us all in the process of purification and growth, coming into some deeper sense of being.”

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Who Dies? An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying

By Stephen Levine. Doubleday, New York, 1982.

In this book, Stephen Levine, drawing upon his extensive work with the dying, discusses a spectrum of issues relating to the subject of death and dying. For example, chapter titles include “Grief,” “Dying Children,” “Working with Pain,” “Suicide,” “Funerals” and “Conscious Dying.” Several guided meditations are also included. It is useful for both the living and the dying and for anyone working with them.

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Death: The Final Stage of Growth

By Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1975.

In this volume, Kubler-Ross, a leading contemporary writer and workshop leader on death and dying, considers differing views of death and dying from various faiths, including Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Alaskan Indian and Christian. The central idea of the book is that the experiences of death and dying are key aspects of personal growth.

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From the Winter/Spring 1990 issue of Inquiring Mind (Vol. 6, No. 2)