What is happening when you die? When you stop breathing, there is a period of time before you experience full brain death. It is at least six minutes after the last breath before the brain no longer has enough chi to function. This is when the chi withdraws from your channels.

As the chi begins to withdraw, you first experience the dissolution of the elements. When you reach the Bardo of Dharmata, after the dissolution of the elements, you arrive at the luminosity. Some people rest in that luminosity. They may remain there for a week or two.

Actually, there is no real time in that state. The sense of time is created by the karma of those around the person. When you are in the luminosity, you are outside the time-space continuum. For an ordinary person, this luminosity may last about as long as it takes to eat a meal. For a yogi, it can last ten days or even longer. 

At this point, you have gathered yourself into your central channel. You come down and are encapsulated in the red and white drops. You remain as that encapsulation. In the second Bardo, you no longer have your channel body. 

Here there is no experience of time. Time only passes outside of it. From that perspective, it lasts forever. However, if you experience impatience within that timeless state—if your urge to exist is still strong enough—you will knock yourself out of it and into the next stage, the Bardo of Remembering. In this stage, you stand in clarity and see your corpse, your family, and even things like your clothes being taken to Goodwill. All of this can disturb you, because it was your life, and now it is gone.

You are simply standing there, aware that you are dead.

This is why, in that moment, you have free will. You are no longer prey to karma, and you can choose a pure land. That is the purpose of the pure lands at this stage. If you have the key—the mantra—you can choose to go there. This is why it is worthwhile to practice at least one Pure Land mantra as a backup. There are many pure lands, perhaps the blissful pure land, Dewa Chen, may be appropriate simply because it is the easiest pure land to enter.

If you do not choose a pure land at that point, your channel body begins to recreate itself. As it does, visions arise. The next Bardo, the Bardo of the Dhyani Buddha, begins with the squeaking of the channels reinflating. They literally squeak when they fill again, and this causes sensations in the six sense organs.

That is what you are feeling: the channels reinflating and squeaking. If you run from these sensations, you fall into the karma that leads to rebirth in one of the realms. Which realm depends on which color frightens you most. The colors correspond to the elements: blue is space, white is water, green is air, yellow is earth, and red is fire.

These elements reform around you into a Bardo body. There are many sensations when this happens, because the process is occurring inside you.

Guide to the Bardos

Bardo of Dying: Dissolution of the Elements

This is the active process of dying, separating body and mind.

• Earth element: vision soft, dark, heavy, echoing silence.

• Water element: sound of rushing water coming closer and then moving away. Vision like looking at sunlight through a sheet of rippling water.

• Fire element: vision of sparks becoming less.

• Air element: sound of winds in the trees and mountains, sound of your breath, dizziness, swirling, breath stops.

• Space element doesn’t absorb here, as it’s always present.

As you die, the elements absorb and your chi pulls into the central channel. The fire of tummo comes up the central channel melting the dutsi and the red and white come together in the heart chakra encapsulating your channel pattern as a seed. Your channel pattern is what thinks you are you. While it’s a seed, you are not in the body, not affected by the body. You are not even thinking. The red and white seed is tudom for an hour or two, up to 10 days for advanced masters. The entire universe is encapsulated in that seed. Form must reinsert itself. Else you will stay in nothingness. If the seed exits the head, you will go to the pure realms or god realms. Out the mouth or nose, other places. Don’t go out the butt! 

Dying will happen. There is nothing you can do to change this process of dissolution. You can only become familiar with the process so you are not afraid. Even conceptual thoughts will be useless here. So practice at the level of felt experience so you can not be overwhelmed. But the door to enlightenment is just around the corner. So let go, and trust in the process. Relax, let go, and leave it be. 

First Bardo: Bardo of Dharmata (all that is and all that is not) luminosity arises. You will be there forever till you get restless or don’t. There is no time there – the fourth time. This is the body of clear light, just light with no center or edge. No body, only light. No conceptual thinking even. Just relax, there is nothing that needs to be done. When you get restless you will go to the next bardo.

Second Bardo: Bardo of Remembering. Starts when restlessness occurs and you feel like you wake up in your own home (or place you are habitually familiar with) and own body, but you cannot touch anything – your body passes through matter. No one can see or hear you. Can last three days. Emotions and thoughts are volatile. You go everywhere you think. Things seem to get faster and faster till you pass out from the fastness. Here you can use a pure land mantra to go to the pure lands, if you recognize you are dead and in the bardo. The practice is to recognize you are dead, and use the mantra of the pure land to go there. “I remember the Blissful Pure Land of Buddha Ӧpagmé – Victor Buddha Immeasurable Limitless Light. The key is OM MA TRI MU YÉ SA LÉ DU.” If you don’t recognize you are dead and go to a Pure Land you will get dizzy from all the fastness, and go on to the next bardo.

Third Bardo: Bardo of the Dhyani Buddha. Here overwhelming sensations start. Overwhelming colors such as the blue of space, the white of water, yellow of earth, red of fire, and green of air arise. Colors and intensities arise in the six consciousnesses. Your skandas are reforming. When you are utterly overwhelmed with such intensity that you pass out, you go to the next bardo. The practices of working with perception and working with emotion can be very helpful during the overwhelming emotional intensity of the five lights. For those skilled with the Dzogchen method of working with the five lights --uniting mother & son luminosity-- there is the opportunity here to enter the door of clear light liberation.

Fourth Bardo: Bardo of the Yidam Archetypes. Peaceful and Fierce archetypes arise filling your channels. This is caused by the channels filling up after reforming. 42 peaceful, 58 wrathful archetypes. You're in darkness and these brilliant monstrous gigantic loud archetypes are coming towards you. If you recognize your yidam as inseparable from you –nondual– then you merge with it, join with rather than turn away in fear or confusion. And in that merging, you are liberated. You have to trust your yidam enough to become it, merge with it, and embrace it. That trust comes through a lifetime of yidam practice with a full sadhana. This is why in Yidam practice we are trying to become the yidam on a daily basis. Sadhana practice is the practice where we train to become the yidam, to see ourselves as none other than the yidam. To be able to become one with and unionize with the yidam. When you are utterly overwhelmed with fear of such intensity that you pass out, you go to the next bardo.

Fifth Bardo: Bardo of Becoming. Wild karmic winds, no free will. Every week it dies or is killed and reborn based on the karma. Birth in one of Six Realms is inevitable. You become more and more different than you were. At the end of 49 weeks, it’s like your new body you will be born into. There is no stopping rebirth at this point, so just relax, accept it, and go with the flow into the next life. May you have a good rebirth to benefit all beings!

The Practice

The practice is to die, and die often. Lie down in your bed and die. Lie down in the soft grass in the park and die again, and again, and again, until you really are familiar with this pattern. To do this, imagine yourself going through these five bardos described above. Below is a link to a guided meditation that takes you on a journey through these bardos. Use it until you have the journey memorized.

Do many sessions a day. Do a session in the AM before the sun comes up. Two sessions between breakfast and lunch. After lunch rest. Do a session before you go to bed.

For daily life: Do this practice once a day for three months to really allow it to sink in. You really need to practice this every day continuously for months.

You don’t know what condition you will be in when you die. What sort of situation will spark what sort of feelings and emotions. So there is no guarantee for any of us, no matter how good we think we are in our practice. This is why we want multiple backup plans. You need to have the kyrim practice clear. Just in case, since you just don’t know. Don’t let your ego interfere with the process. When you think you are too good, that is ego. When you think you are not good enough, that is ego too. So just relax, and let the process go the way it goes.