Crossings on a Bridge of Light, Ptt. 1-2

Contents

#

Part

PP.

1.

"Hallucinations of Sorrow"

5-36

2.

"Passages in the Realms of Life and Death"

37-98

4.

"In the Kingdom of the Heart"

109-56

pp. 1-2 invocation

p. 1

"Words lose meaning. There are no norms. ...

Wisdom is now the lost opinions of the dead."

p. 2

"Grasp the Mu cord that joins heaven and earth.

Grasp the Mu cord that passes through life and death.

Grasp the Mu cord that joins the time of legend with the present."

pp. 7-8 entering, via a whirlpool, into the world of the souls of the dead

p. 7

"a dream ... Gesar’s sister, the goddess Manene appears before him. ...

p. 8

Then Manene reaches up with her right hand, seizes the bright half moon. She turns it over and holds it out to him like a vast silver bowl. Inside is a trembling lake of mercury. The silvery liquid begins to spin and slowly forms a shimmering whirlpool, racing ever faster, roaring and opening downward into the depth of emptiness. As if he were seized by a tornado, Gesar is dragged down into a black pulsing void."

pp. 9-12, 14 description, by Gesar’s mother (her soul in the world of the dead), of her after-death vicissitudes

p. 9

Before dying, she saw the reflection of her face on the ice of a frozen river.

p. 10

"My body, unburied, rotted ... .

My mind ...

Entered that stream and took the form of a rainbow trout. ...

p. 11

A golden eagle soon after ... killed and consumed me.

So, ... I took the form

Of that greatest and most powerful of hunting birds. ...

... I rose

High where there is no longer air

But only light : I fell. ...

p. 12

And on it went through forms and lives ... :

Insect, dog, maiden, horse".

p. 14

"I dwelt in worlds composed of burning gas,

In world of knives, in worlds of flowered scent,

In worlds of crushing density, of jewel light,

In seas".

p. 14 "Gesar loses consciousness. He wakes".

pp. 18, 22-3 description of Vajra-sadhu

p. 18

pp. 22-3

"with a dark red face, eyes pale blue ... .

(p. 22) "face is dark red".

He wears a round red leather hat with a broad brim.

wear the round leather helmet ... Surmounted by the ... gem."

Beneath his ... crimson cape, he wears black armor ... . ...

"crimson cape ... armor".

He rides on a large white goat with twisted horns."

(p. 23) "ride on a turquoise he-goat with twined coral horns".

p. 21 meeting of Gesar with god Vajra-sadhu, in the latter’s palace

"Gesar finds himself standing arm in arm with his host beside a huge iron cauldron and peering at it. A soup ... boils ... . Gesar looks into the ... liquid, and sees a body, which suddenly he recognizes as his own. "Look!" he shouts. "That is my leg. And there, that arm, and the head, and look, the chest : they’re mine too." And the two laugh wildly as they watch Gesar’s dismembered corpse cook in the soup." {This is an instance of gCod.}

pp. 25-7 visions encountred on the way home from the palace of Vajra-sadhu

p. 25

"He is surrounded by

mice and woodchucks asleep in their burrows,

centipedes crawling through tunnels,

ground hornets stirring in their nests,

huge cities of teeming ants."

 

Walking under a "waterfall".

p. 26

Clambering through a "canyon of ice and rock".

 

"His field of vision is filled with sparks flying all around".

p. 27

"mist" of whiteness".

 

"all-pervasive red light."

 

"complete and utter blackness. He can no longer tell is he is experiencing something or not, or even if he still exists."

 

"blazing light fills all the earth and sky and whole of space. There is no center and no edge. This light is awareness itself".

 

"He sleeps and then begins to dream. He dreams of his birth, his childhood, his deeds; he dreams of his teachers, his companions, his consorts, his kingdom, his world, his visions and his journeys." {cf. the world-dream in the Yoga-vasis.t.ha}

p. 38 fiends of the netherworld

"Black demons with crows’ heads, human bodies and iron wings fly past,

carrying naked writhing corpses in their iron beaks.

Phosphorescent green owls with the faces of old women and talons of bronze hoot

as they rip brains out of skulls.

Vultures red as embers with bloody claws at the end of their muscular human arms

pull the entrails from screaming people not yet dead.

Beneath them, smoke-colored jackals race across the iron floor

carrying bits of flesh in their grinning mouths, while

copper-colored serpents with bland pale human faces undulate, twisting and

crushing the bodies of children and women in their coils."

pp. 38-9 description of Yama-antaka & of his animal-mount

p. 38

"His huge black body throbs, radiating intense heat but covered in beads of ice-cold corpse-sweat. With flashes of lightning, his steel mesh robe swirls around him, but does not conceal his erection with its burning red tip. He wears an iron belt from which hang hundreds of freshly severed heads of men young and old, beautiful women, crones, adolescents, and infants.. At the to of his neck, ... his bull’s head glows like molten bronze. ... Molten lava oozes from his nostrils. His great horns are steel and freezing cold. ... His three eyes ... roll madly ... . ... In his right hand he brandishes a huge iron mace surmounted by a huge laughing skull. In his left hand, he holds coils of iron chains with razor hooks.

p. 39

The Lord of Death stands on a great red bull that is copulating with a beautiful dark-haired giantess. As the King of Death’s obsidian toenails rake the bull’s back, it bucks and bellows, tearing into the flesh of the giantess below. But she, insensible to the mutilation of her own body, writhes and moans in delirium."

pp. 39, 41 self-characterization by Yama-antaka

p. 39

"I am the iron gate that closes time : ...

I am the cauldron of cause and effect : ...

I am the mirror of your hidden face".

p. 41

"Cause and effect are my heartbeat, and

cyclic existence is my breath.

I am myself the domain of life and death. ...

I pervade all of time and space."

p. 42 entry into the sight [p. 41 "center eye"] of the Lord of Death

"Gesar rises in the saddle on the horse of wind. The two suddenly shrink to the size of a gnat. ... They approach his huge bloodshot eye which seems as vast [as] s stormy sky, and they enter the opening ... which looms before them as great tunnel lined with molten lava."

p. 47 dream by Todon, as told to his wife Kurzar Sartok

"A dream ... . I stood on a mountain peak that rocked and swayed {earthquake}, and all around me, mountain ridges shook like storm-tossed seas. Thunderclouds swirled all about and sheets of lightning struck the earth in deafening crashes. ...

‘Show yourselves!’ I cried, and suddenly I was in the midst of a dazzling bright void. All at once a great raven with wings as black as night, a beak of onyx, and eyes like depthless mountain pools flew up in front of me. He hovered before me and ... in a voice ... blared like a battle trumpet ... ... But then the crow lit softly on my shoulder {cf. the 2 pet ravens of O`dinn} and now in a beautiful melodic voice sang to me."

p. 52 colors of disks of light within the body of Vajra-sattva

level in body

color of disk

head

blue

throat

green

heart

golden yellow

navel

"rainbow"

"secret"

red

p. 53 entry into Hell-realms via whirlpool

"Below them, the six realms turn and shimmer like a great inverted whirlpool of light ... . The light at the narrow summit of the whirlpool is clear and bright; but at its wide distant base, dim ... . ...a deep throbbing pulse, like the deep humming of a great beehive, fills the space within the Lord of Death. ... They fall head over heels through the dark roaring air. ... And as if they woke from fainting, they find themselves in the Realms of Hell at the level of the Lord of Death’s secret center."

pp. 54-6, 59 adventures in the Hells

p. 54

"Gesar and the Miracle Horse ... soar above volcanic mountains {Bellephon rode his flying horse Pegasos to the Khimaira : mt. Khimaira "(‘goat mountain’) was also the name of an active volcano near Phaselis in Lycia (Pliny : Natural History ii.106 and v.27)" (GM 75.6).}

and between ravines of red-hot iron.

They skim ... seas of boiling molten copper ... .

They rise ... above the glacial plains".

p. 55

"Furiously he draws his great crystal sword and hacks at the serpents feasting on the struggling corpses".

p. 56

"The miracle horse, a trail of sparks falling from his steel hooves, rises high into the air until they hover in a still place as if they have found the eye of a tornado above the very center of hell."

p. 59

"All the firelights in all of Hell fuse together before him into a single mirror-like surface that slowly cools. It becomes ones vast reflective surface, glowing with still, clear, white light of unchanging, all-pervasive mirror-like awareness."

GM = Robert Graves : The Greek Myths. 1955.

pp. 60-1, 63 events in the Realm of Preta-s

p. 60

"Below them, under a flat yellow sky is a beautiful land of ... orchards ... . ...

Sometimes, as they are about to eat fruit or grain, it withers at their touch and turns to dust before they put it into their mouths. {fruit of the o:sher (according to Robertson) : "fruit ..., on being pressed or struck, it exploded, ... leaving in the hand only... a few fibres." fruit of Sdom (according to Iosephos) : "fruits, ... on being plucked with the hands, are dissolved into smoke and ashes." (ETKA, p. 64)} At other times, fruit turns to stone and grain to sand."

p. 61

"In the center of the Preta realm, sprawled on a granite mountain, lies the Queen of the Hungry Ghosts, larger than all the rest. ... . ... she sings this song :

By day, I bear five hundred body,

By night, five hundred girls.

I eat them all before they cry".

p. 63

"And slowly all points of light, ... the essence of the Preta realm swirl together, fusing into a plane of scorching red light ... . ... All ... become the all-pervasive red light of Discriminating Awareness Wisdom".

ETKA = An English Translation of King Alfred’s Anglo-Saxon Version of the Historian Orosius. (THE WHOLE WORKS OF KING ALFRED THE GREAT, Vol. II) 1852. http://books.google.com/books?id=GjtaAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA64&lpg=PA64&dq=

pp. 64, 66-7 events in the Realm of Animals

p. 64

"Beneath a dull green sky, ... live many kinds of animals."

p. 66

"Then, ... diffuse ... clouds covering the sky. ... Slowly all these clouds ... swirl together, blending into a vibrant stream of rainbow light ... . ...

p. 67

At that same moment, for an instant ..., all beings in the Animal Realm experience complete liberation."

pp. 68, 72 events in the Realm of Humans

p. 68

"Below a pale blue sky, terrain and landscape differs from that of the animal realm only in the many alterations which humankind has made."

p. 72

"all ... are absorbed ... into this expanse of dense, radiant golden light."

p. 70 substances composing the palaces in S`ambhala

feature

its substance

walls

cinnabar

pillars

gold

roofs

quartz

pp. 73, 75 events in the Realm of Asura-s

p. 73

"There, below a wine colored sky, ... the realm of the Asuras extends from the highest mountain flanks gown into the deep canyons beneath the seas. ... Some of their cities stand on inaccessible snow peaks, others ..., those of the Nagas Kings, lie beneath the rivers and seas."

p. 75

"suffused with the dark green light that precedes a hurricane. And like a tornado ... becomes a surging hurricane tearing through their realm."

pp. 78, 80 nature of denizens in the Realm of Deva-s

p. 78

"the Gods of Form ... have no heed of bodies nor palaces ... . Free of desire, they live in the limitless absorptions of pure perception, contemplating the ...

sounds of the vowels and consonants; ...

the elemental shapes of triangles, spheres and cubes."

p. 80

"the Formless Gods ..., not considering themselves to be alive or dead or capable of alteration, live endlessly through eons. ... Here subject and object are experienced as one, and there is no conception of other in any form. ... These gods ... are themselves the pristine qualities of mind and space itself."

pp. 85, 87 omen; dream

p. 85

"spheres of red lightning shook behind banks of gray clouds."

p. 87

Tas`an Denma "dreams he sees Gesar sitting on a bearskin upon a golden throne supported by eight golden lions."

p. 88 gifts from Nakchen Gyatso

gift of __

for __

"bolts of silk brocade"

Sec^an Dugmo

"a large uncut ruby"

Odkar Gyaltsen

"sword of meteoric iron"

general Chopa Tonden

p. 88 horse of Nakchen Gyatso

"My swift running horse has a magic eye :

He sees through solid walls.

My swift running horse flies like a ghost".

p. 95 description of Kalapa, capital-city of S`ambhala

"Shambhala is an eight petalled lotus made of gold.

On its crystal anthers lies the capitol of Kalapa.

In the center of Kalapa is the Kalapa Court, With crystal roof and gold pillars,

Lapis [lazuli] portals and ruby doors,

It is adorned with jeweled ropes, jade trees ... . ...

Here the Rigden Kings sit on the eight lion throne.

Here the Rigden Queen presides from the antelope throne."

Douglas J. Pennick (transl.) : Crossings on a Bridge of Light : the Songs and Deeds of Gesar, King of Ling, as He Travels to Shambhala through the Realms of Life and Death. Mill City Pr, Minneapolis, 2009.