light known as “the reality of the natural creativity of pure presence” dissolves,
upon its disappearance, the bardo of reality gradually dawns.
5.6 THE BARDO OF REALITY
The present gross body that contains the ego, produced from our parents’ sperm
and blood, is abandoned, and the clear light of the universal visionary display
arises in basic pure presence. During this bardo of reality, just as a baby totally
trusts its mother while in her lap, so we should trust the instruction that our
experience has not the slightest substantial existence and is in reality the
envisionment of clear light. Just as a small child, unable to talk and lost in a big
crowd, when later reunited with its mother, climbs confidently and unhesitatingly
onto her lap, due to the closeness of their relationship, so the son clear light, which
was revealed by the nonmeditation praxis introduced to us by the lama, merges
with the mother clear light of unconditioned, intrinsic, basic pure presence. These
two, the mother clear light that is the essence and the son clear light that is the
natural creativity of envisionment in the bardo of reality, are one, like the sun and
its light rays, and with that certainty, we are like the son climbing onto his
mother’s lap. In that instant, the propensities of the twin veils induced by dualistic
perception from beginningless time are instantly purified, and we attain buddha
without any bardo.
If we ask why the basic clear light arises at that time, consider that we have just
become free from the corpse of gross flesh and blood, and that the eighty concepts
relating to visionary effulgence, optimal effulgence, and penultimate attainment
have ceased to arise. At that juncture, therefore, we are free from attachment to
the mystical experiences of bliss, clarity, and no-thought. Then recollection
through memory and the generator of memory that is the ground consciousness
itself seem to dissolve into space, and intrinsic basic presence is utterly without
limit. Here is freedom from all bias and partiality, and empty clarity, free from
veiling obscuration, is now recognized as such. Resting loosely in the natural state
without fabrication, we are powerfully released into the vast inner spaciousness of
alpha-purity as the magnificent reality of the spontaneity of the primordially
released ground of being.
If we are not released at the moment of cessation of inhalation and exhalation,
when external objects normally perceptible to our senses become invisible,
including our own corpse body, we must recognize the clarity of our body of light.
Our field of perception consists of rainbow light rays; visionary appearances
change timelessly so that the animate and inanimate objects such as earth, stone,
rock, trees, forest, sun, moon, and so forth, vanish, and wherever we look, we see
rainbows—all appearance dazzles with a shimmering radiance. At that time, our
degree of training on the Dzogchen paths of Cutting Through and Direct Crossing
determines whether or not we see those light-forms as a liberating catalyst to pure
presence. Those who do not have previous experience will see it only for a
moment, just like a flash of lightning. If we can sustain the visions, knowing that
everything is self-envisionment, in the first moment we have trust in the