pure presence and gain release.
Those who possess such a key instruction as given above need not depend upon
the certain and gradual threefold dissolution of the sense faculties of the body-
mind and the vision of pure presence. They attain nirvana by means of the
bodhisattva’s method of breath transference.
Those who, when death comes to them, do not have much confidence in such
instruction should know the stages and process of the threefold dissolution. But
first let us consider the process of generation: during the sexual union of our
father and mother, the father’s white seed and the mother’s red blood commingle,
and, driven by the wind of karma, consciousness enters the embryo. At the outset,
the elements’ materiality-producing tendencies of energy, moisture, heat, and air
coalesce, creating a body that emerges out of the five elements; then, by stages, the
gross sensory organs—the eyes and so forth—appear.
At the end, at the time of dissolution, it is the five senses that dissolve first. Then
the body separates into the five elements, and each of the five elements dissolves
first into itself and then into oneself. That unity separates into its white and red
elements, consciousness separates from them, and the three stages of dissolution,
the three visions, occur: the effulgent light of vision, an increasing intensity of the
effulgence, and the penultimate stage of dissolution.
Let us first look at the sequence of dissolution of the senses. At the time of our
death, if there are lamas, monks, relatives, spouse, or friends close by, and if,
when we try to hear their recitation of texts or their talk, we find them inaudible,
this indicates cessation of our auditory sense. Or, perhaps, whatever is spoken
cannot be heard because it seems to us as if the words come from very far away.
Even though we hear some sound, we cannot make out the words. Likewise, when
we look at things, we no longer see them properly, indicating cessation of our
visual sense. In like fashion, our olfactory, gustatory, and tactile senses cease. This
is the sequence of the loss of the external senses.
Once when I was at Yelhung, I observed the death process of a woman. She said,
“What is happening? I cannot see properly.” Then, she said, “Please raise the
pillow a little higher,” when she was trying to rise up from under the sense of a
weight of earth pressing her down. I was witnessing the sequence of the
dissolution of the senses and the four elements. At that time, if there is a guide
available, then it is the right time for him to start. If there is someone to perform
the consciousness sublimation, then it is also time for that.
In The Superrefined Oral Instruction, Pema Lingpa says,
As the element earth dissolves into the water element, we feel heavy and
cannot stand; as water dissolves into fire, the nose and mouth dry up; as fire
dissolves into air, heat is lost; as air dissolves into consciousness, inhalation
ceases but exhalation is smooth, and we will feel as if pressed down by a huge
weight, engulfed in darkness, or as if thrown from a cloud: all visions
approach with the sound of the whistling wind.When our flesh dissolves into the element earth, and the element earth into the
element water, we feel heavy, as if cast into a pit or pressed down by a mountain,