In this podcast Professor Thurman talks about the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The Tibetan name of this book — The Bardo Thodol — literally means The Book of Natural Liberation through Understanding in the Between. A being can be liberated in “the between” (the term is often translated as “intermediate state”), the period after death but prior to rebirth. This liberation takes place through hearing and understanding, because the being in the between is said to become nine times more intelligent than when s/he was alive.

After death, fully transformative enlightenment can take place in the between because the patterns that are embedded in the body and in the coarse mind have lost all inertia.

This episode is an excerpt from the lecture “Exploring the Tibetan Book of the Dead with Robert Thurman” given at Tibet House US in New York City, February 12, 1994.