In the fourteenth century, a Tibetan master named Karma Lingpa found a text hidden among mountain rocks in central Tibet. This text, called the Bardo Thödol: Liberation Through Hearing in the Intermediate State, is believed to have come from the eighth-century master Padmasambhava, who is said to have hidden many teachings across Tibet for future generations. Tradition holds that Karma Lingpa discovered this teaching while grieving the loss of his wife and child, who died within days of each other. Whatever the details, the teaching that came from his sorrow has since helped many people facing loss, even if they never knew his name.

In the West, it is known as the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

This text stands out in spiritual literature. Instead of being a philosophical treatise, it serves as a manual with clear instructions for facing death and the states of consciousness that follow. Its main goal is to help people find freedom from the cycle of rebirth. At its core, the teaching is simple: death is not just an ending, but also an opportunity to discover something deeper that can lead to liberation.

The Six Bardos, and the Three That Matter Here

The Tibetan word bardo, which means 'intermediate state,' refers to any transition between two states of existence. There are six bardos in total: the bardo of taking birth, the bardo of ordinary waking life, the bardo of dreaming, and three others that this article focuses on—the phases between death and rebirth.

  1. The Bardo of Dying (Chikhai Bardo), when the elements of existence—the body, vital energies, and senses—begin to dissolve.
  2. The Bardo of Dharmata (Chönyid Bardo) is named for dharmata, the ultimate nature of reality. In this stage, consciousness encounters the Clear Light and, if it is not recognised, a series of visionary deities. For most people who do not recognise what is happening in the first two stages
  3. The Bardo of Becoming (Sidpa Bardo) follows. Here, consciousness is no longer connected to a body and undergoes vivid hallucinations shaped by karma, patterns of the mind built up over one or many lifetimes. This phase ends with rebirth.

The Process of Dissolution

The Bardo Thödol and related teachings describe the dying process in vivid physical and visionary detail.

Traditionally, they explain it as the gradual dissolution of the five elements that make up the body: earth, water, fire, air, and space. As the earth element dissolves into water, the body feels very heavy, and a dying person may not be able to lift a hand or their head without help. Inside, it can feel like being crushed by a heavy weight. When water dissolves into fire, the body’s fluids fail, causing drooling, loss of control, and tears. The inner feeling is like drowning or being swept away by a river. As fire dissolves into air, warmth leaves the body, starting at the hands and feet and moving inward. Inside, it can feel like being burned by flames. When air dissolves into space, breathing becomes difficult, fast, or uneven, and it can feel like a strong wind is blowing everything away. Different traditions describe these stages with different inner signs: a shimmering mirage as earth changes to water, rising smoke as water changes to fire, sparks or fireflies as fire changes to air, and the steady, then fading, glow of a butter lamp as air changes to space and then to consciousness.

After this, a more subtle dissolution takes place, which is rarely described outside specialist teachings. A whiteness, like moonrise, moves down from the top of the head to the heart, and with it, anger or aversion disappears. A redness, like sunrise, rises from below the navel to meet it, and with it, desire or attachment fades away. When these two meet at the heart, there is total darkness, and the last bit of mental confusion clears. According to tradition, this is the moment of clinical death: the pulse and breath have already stopped, but something still remains to finish.

The Clear Light

At the moment of this final dissolution, the Clear Light appears. This is the bright foundation of consciousness itself—pure awareness without any content—which the tradition sees as the true nature of the mind. If the dying person can recognize this Clear Light as their own mind and rest in that awareness, the Bardo Thödol teaches that liberation happens instantly. All the years of Buddhist practice are meant to prepare for this: being able to recognize the Clear Light at the moment of death.

Teachers in the Kagyu lineage say that this window for recognition is brief. For those who do not recognize the Clear Light, there is a period of about three and a half days of complete unconsciousness, with the mind fully withdrawn, before any further experience begins.

The Bardo of Dharmata: Peaceful and Wrathful Deities

When conscious experience returns, the Bardo of Dharmata truly begins. In this state, consciousness encounters a series of visions: peaceful deities in the first week and wrathful deities in the second. Traditionally, this process is said to last forty-nine days, during which the Bardo Thödol would be read aloud to the deceased by a teacher or family member. Both types of deities are seen as projections of the mind. The peaceful deities show the natural radiance of Buddha qualities, while the wrathful deities show these same qualities in a more active, purifying way. In some teachings, each element is also linked to a Buddha family and a color: space to blue, water to white, earth to yellow, fire to red, and air to green. This five-part structure matches the elements dissolving during dying and shapes the visions that follow. The instruction for this bardo is the same as for the Clear Light: recognize these figures as projections of your own mind, see the empty brightness that is their true nature, and rest in that awareness. This leads to liberation.

For most people, the Bardo of Becoming appears instead. In this phase, consciousness is no longer connected to a physical body and goes through vivid hallucinations shaped by past karma. This bardo ends with rebirth.

The Text as Preparation

The Bardo Thödol was not meant to be read only at the moment of death. Instead, it was designed to be practiced, studied, and used as a basis for meditation to prepare for the experiences it describes. Someone who has spent years working with these teachings and has learned to recognize the nature of mind in meditation comes to the moment of death with skills that can make a real difference. This is the text’s practical purpose: to train recognition before death so that liberation is possible when it matters most.

The text was also read aloud to the dying person by a trained guide, ideally a teacher who knew them well, to give real-time instruction. In this way, it helped guide the person through the bardo's transitions with clear, compassionate direction. The family or community would continue reading it for up to 49 days on the deceased’s behalf, which is the traditional period between death and rebirth.

Sogyal Rinpoche, in The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, a well-known twentieth-century commentary on the Bardo Thödol for Western readers, described the Tibetan view of dying as the most important moment in a person’s life. It is the time when all the work of spiritual practice is tested, and when liberation, or true freedom from suffering, is most possible.

Dying as Practice

The Tibetan tradition does not see the teachings on death as relevant only for those who are dying. Instead, the bardo experiences are seen as a more intense version of what happens in everyday life: the mind creates its reality from its projections, and the chance to recognize these projections is always present. The difference between recognition and identification shapes the quality of experience. This is why the teaching matters beyond death: it describes how awareness can meet experience in the present.

Some contemporary teachers go further, saying that the bardo does not only refer to the time after physical death. Any moment when the ground we usually stand on, such as an identity, a relationship, or a certainty about life, suddenly disappears is also a bardo in this broader sense. It is a gap or interruption when keeping a stable sense of self becomes impossible. Bereavement is one example. Any sudden loss of the story we have been telling ourselves about our lives is another. The same advice applies in every case: do not run from the groundlessness, but recognize what remains present within it.

The tradition suggests practicing dying every day. This is not meant as a morbid exercise, but as real preparation. It means cultivating awareness that does not depend on any particular experience, that can stay present and awake through change and transition, and that knows itself when it meets the clear light.

This article is part of the Aether series, which explores the Tibetan Buddhist understanding of death and what follows. For a broader look at how different traditions have approached the deathbed as a practice, see Approaching the Great Threshold elsewhere in this series.