ABSTRACT
Before embarking upon the psychological commentary, the author should like to say a few words about the text himself. Metaphysical assertions, however, are statements of the psyche, and are therefore psychological. To the Western mind, which compensates its well-known feelings of resentment by a slavish regard for "rational" explanations, the obvious truth seems all too obvious, or else it is seen as an inadmissible negation of metaphysical "truth." The most common of all mental illnesses consists essentially in a marked abaissement du niveau mental which abolishes the normal checks imposed by the conscious mind and thus gives unlimited scope to the play of the unconscious "dominants." The Bardo Thodol, fitly named by its editor, Dr. W. Y. Evans-Wentz, "The Tibetan Book of the Dead," caused a considerable stir in English-speaking countries at the time of its first appearance in 1927.
