The following text was automatically extracted from the image on this page using optical character recognition software:
Anabiosis-The Journal for Near-Death Studies
powers greater than man. More than in other countries, the unusual
environmental conditions of Tibet have been a strong influence on
the philosophy and world-views of its people (Tucci, 1967, pp.
19-24). The nomadic, meat-eating habits of the Tibetans stand in
obvious opposition to the lifestyle of semitropical India. Since fuel
is scarce and boiling temperatures are lower at high altitudes, boiling
is the chief means of cooking, further robbing the Tibetans' limited
diet of needed nutrients. Taken together, a poor diet, severe climate,
lack of oxygen, and frequent bouts with plagues early disposed
Tibetans to take for granted many hallucinatory and paranormal
experiences. This in turn led to their ready acceptance of philosophies
that explained and situated such phenomena in a coherent picture of
the universe. The first of these systematized philosophies was known
as the Bon.
Bon: Pre-Buddhist Tibetan Philosophy and Religion
Like early Chinese philosophies, the Bon religion held that there
were twin spirits in man (pho-lha and dGralha), which cooperate to
protect and govern him, and which depart at death for other realms
(Hoffman, 1961, pp. 17-23). If not properly exorcised and sent off,
the disembodied spirits of man were said to haunt his former habi-
tation shortly after death (Ekvall, 1964, p. 39). Malevolent spirits
of the air, earth, and water were held to cause sickness and death un-
less propitiated by human or animal sacrifices (replaced by effigies
after the advent of Buddhism). After death, the souls of virtuous
people were thought to ascend to Heaven, while wicked souls were
condemned by the lord of demons, rTsiu (Yama), to vividly described
hells (Hoffman, 1975, pp. 94-100).
To assist the soul in its postmortem adventures, the corpse was
carefully buried with clothes and provisions (a striking contrast to
the later Buddhist practices of cremation or dismemberment and
exposure!). The Bon believed that shamans could communicate with
the spirits of the dead through trance-possession and could visit the
world of the dead and return. These ideas persisted, to influence the
Tibetan interpretation of Tantric Buddhism when it arrived (Nenesky-
Wojkowitz, 1956, pp. 414-440).
It would be unfair to dismiss Bon as mere animism. From ancient
times, the Bon religion accorded a central role to death and funeral
ceremonies. Tibetan Buddhism was to continue this theme in a way
quite foreign to Indian Buddhism. The un-Buddhist Bon notions that
there is an intermediate period during which the soul may return, that
4