Chapter Seven of the Crazy Commentaries

Wild Rhythms and Sounds of Magic

I’m now assuming that my highly esteemed readers have properly warmed up by now for the subject of dying? Hopefully, by now some translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead is lying around somewhere at your place, or at least one is sitting on the shelf? The living spaces have been almost unnoticed rebalanced and redesigned for their magical qualities. Elves and trolls feel welcome, bloodsuckers, demonesses and frenzy are under control. Perhaps some Tibetan prayer flags are already fluttering in the garden, danced around by exuberant dakinis. And also daily heightened attention to body care and design applies. Morning yoga and far-sighted nutrition in harmony with the environment and location-specific nature. This brings natural joy and quality to life.

So we have made progress. We have opened ourselves somewhat to the gateway of dying. Once peeked inside and even fantasized a bit. Surprisingly, we have all become calmer and cooler in the process, come closer to each other, and certainly less anxious and dishonest with ourselves and others. We won’t immediately become hysterical over a tax audit anymore. We can’t take anything with us anyway. After a flood disaster or in times of drought, we take each other in our arms, stamp firmly on the ground with our feet and begin cleaning up and tidying. An accident with the children? Step by step, we do the best we can in the situation, preferably – though perhaps not always – without panicking. Sometimes children even die before their parents, just think of all the young soldiers currently in the various wars. That’s about the most terrible thing we can imagine, but it really still happens every day. And so there it is again: the terror of dying? The gruesome face of the Grim Reaper, into whose blade a rabbit occasionally slips.

Now we don’t all encounter dying and death in the same way. We, for example, read the Tibetan Book of the Dead and make corresponding observations and comparisons. Basically, the Book of the Dead is a yoga text: Yoga with instructions for dignified dying with all its different aspects, and also even an enchanting yoga for attaining enlightenment, the final union with basic goodness.

But we humans differ significantly from each other, each individual is different. That’s why there isn’t one specific type of after-death experience and thus not one best recipe either. I could always write about after-death bardos instead of after-death, but that seems somehow cosmetic to me – Tibetan cosmetics – and we can’t assume that the after-death mirrors are culturally dominated by Tibetan ideas and rituals, can we?

Over the course of a lifetime, consciousness hardens. It acquires certain imprints, tricks, refinements and orientations, to a considerable extent. This development runs very differently individually according to dispositions, physical prerequisites and also body structure even.

The Vajra Type

There is, for example, the Vajra type or Vajra consciousness. Vajra, originally the thunderbolt of the Hindu deity Indra, was a spiked disc with two layers for hurling that behaved like a boomerang and could destroy up to one hundred enemies with one single throw. We only know such a vajra closed, like two open fists the tips of the fingers of each hand almost touching, connected at the backs of the hands, and then it resembles more of a club and is also gladly called a thunderbolt. In deadly use, however, these fists open and two rows of deadly spikes emerge, like two connected spike discs.

It fits the zeitgeist to begin with lokking at the Vajra consciousness, because currently the whole earth is very vajra-dominated. At least the first half of the 21st century will remain very vajra-influenced either for now.

So: A Vajra consciousness enters death. Vajra people are the particularly intelligent, clever and smart ones. Precision and utility, subjugation and perfection. Sharp. Inquisitv. Blazingly fast, polished and refined.

This is all aggressive, even obviously extremely aggressive, although it might not feel that way to a Vajra person herself. All Vajra people know outbursts of anger and violence. Without exception! Often even totally furious and unfair, and the Vajra type wonders about it themselves sometimes. Vajra people shape and bend, improve and clarify and must constantly make decisions. They are tough! But they are also particularly clever and shrewd. And these super intelligent ones are found not only in science, physics, research, crafts, economics, medicine and the worlds of artificial intelligence. Because even among brilliant musicians, philosophers, painters, poets and well trained yoginis and gurus, such Vajra beings are often found. The highly gifted are usualy Vajra types. They themselves don’t know they’re in a kind of mental frenzy – but people around usualy suffer from it. I’m trying to paint the essential aspects here of the individual types as clearly as possible. So I am somewhat exaggerating to give a clearer picture. The Vajra types analyze and differentiate – incidentally – and this is the problem – with firmly set narrowing blinders and at super speed. The problem is that it is almost impossible to them to see or feel these blinders like military horses.

As religious or spiritual adepts, Vajra types have it particularly hard. There are many life descriptions of highly intelligent students of religious masters where extreme and destructive means were always necessary to free them from themselves, like the famous Naropa. And on the other hand, there were famous religion founders – so to speak: Vajra religion founders – even with huge student bodies worldwide and fantasies about supramental and so on, who considered themselves liberated in their Vajra view, but never really made it. Famous leaders? We hope they didn’t really land in their super-supramental, because it takes eternities to find the way out of there again, and it’s pure steely pain. Surprisingly, such masters often have really down-to-earth, honest, upright and wise female students. I won’t mention names…

It’s probably clear that it’s particularly hard for a Vajra consciousness to have to pause at the time of death – after the first super-clear after-death moments. For Vajra people, it’s as if they crashed full force into a concrete wall. Crash – Bang!! The state of clarity at the time of death – „I am now dead“ – stands there as surprisingly as a super jet stopped hard by a giant hand in mid-flight and shatters under insane pain. It’s not as if Superman would simply bring down the plane gently to a standstill in mid-flight. From the splinters and conflagration, memories and fantasies emerge, become ever clearer, sharper and more detailed, then quickly change again and again, and that hurts terribly. Like spikes and heat, past things well up and foam and glow and swell!

Tiny projectiles from precision weapons – a hundred simultaneously – strike into the beautiful, boyish heads of youthful soldiers in spruced-up uniforms. And these innocent heads burst in fountains of blood, brain and dimond splinters. Achievements of the sciences? Brave female soldiers and secret agents explode in conflagrations and their super-small mini-super-weapons burn up, glow white-hot and pour over their shattered and burning hands and bodies.

In its trained and precision-tuned frenzy, the braked Vajra consciousness sees monstrous, unreal, terrifying, multi-headed, blood-sucking, predatory demonesses with super-sharp blades dissect snakes and crocodiles in their retinue and dirty, not sterile liquids and clumps of mud ooze out everywhere. Clumps, foams and feverish, infectious juices and so on and so forth.

I suspect my highly esteemed reader now has an impression of how this most probably might develops for such a Vajra mind? I also fear that these delusions feel eternal and insurmountable. Eternal, intense aggression due to super-competent and fast discrimination abilities. Okay – let’s hope – please-please – that this Vajra consciousness then eventually manages to joke – „Pretty colorful out here…!“ – and distance itself and possibly even remembers her guru and wakes up and then perhaps even finds some peace? But with all goodness and benevolence: for a Vajra consciousness living and dying are particularly hard. So here, as much as possible should be done during lifetime to prepare for death! Vajra types should definitely try to find their guru during their lifetime! Because without a guru, it’s almost impossible for them to see through their own delusion. Everything is just too narrow for that.

But for Buddhists, among whom there are currently even particularly many Vajra spirits, there is of course always a super ray of hope. In this case, it’s the blue meditation Buddha Akshobhya in sexual union with his female side, Buddhalochana. Hopefully the Vajra consciousness seizes the chance and recognizes its own gentle and vulnerable side. We pray for you!!!

Okay, but how does this work? How should I imagine this?

So: Dhyani Buddhas (Dhyani is Sanskrit and means meditation) are as real and existent as circumstances require. (By the way, and in the threshold: it’s always the limitations, the corners and edges of circumstances that determine how things proceed, its never the cores.) As we’ve already understood, a consciousness has acquired certain imprints over the course of life, and the longer it lives with it, the harder and more impenetrable they get. In our description of the first type, it’s about Vajra consciousness. And the matching meditation Buddha – the great chance that incidentally encounters everyone in one way or another in the bardos (you just have to believe me on this) – is Buddha Akshobhya in Vajra consciousness – the Unshakable – in company of Buddhalochana, which means sight and light. These are actually realities for a Vajra person to open for.

The special wisdom on the Vajra level is mirror-like wisdom. The only way for a Vajra consciousness to realize her nature is to look into a mirror! This is funny, because our super intelligent Vajra types constantly fight against the imperfect, unfinished and imprecise out there, and must now recognize that all their objects and achievements are no more real than what we see in mirrors. Mirror images and nothing more. Non existent, but razor-sharp! But these mirror images are not influenced by what we want to see! We must now recognize circumstances we never wanted to know. This can have a liberating effect on an angry Vajra consciousness: the recognition that all insights, inventions, worlds and realities are as empty as the images in a mirror. (Generally, I should perhaps explain at this point that the female companions of all meditation Buddhas always embody very strongly compassionate and seductive aspects.) But a mirror gives no confirmation, no recognition and no success. Sober and cold emptiness. Well, with this insight, a path to liberation may then reveal itself to the Vajra consciousness under certain circumstances and good luck and this truth of the mirror image is conveyed by Akshobhya in unity with Buddhalochana. Honestly, the two simply sit there sexually united and radiate blazing white – a continuose orgiastic big bang of some kind?

Phew… – relief is therefore possible! This seems to me one of the glad tidings emanating from the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Can death actually really be a path to liberation from hate, greed and fear? Of course, a Vajra type could also become familiar with Akshobhya during lifetime, become familiar with mirror-like wisdom and with the gentle beauty and bliss of Lochana, the inner glory and radiance.

So please, dear people! Sit up straight – pause – here and now and just allow to get seduced by warms an romance! This really helps! Pause! Visualize Akshobhya in union with his Lochana. All is bliss! All is bliss!

I don’t want to make things even more complicated. But it’s often more helpful for a Vajra type, in preparing for death, not just to connect with Vajra qualities – like Akshobhya and Buddhalochana – but even explicitly to seek completely different paths. And in particular a Vajra consciousness tends to repress, and therefore a completely foreign perspective might be a good idea even.

Sorry! This sounds complicated, but hopefully you’ll understand this better at the end of these explanations. Take your time with it. You need not go into detail.

Also a Vajra consciousness has wide access to the path of love, compassion or loving kindness – and it’s even urgently recommended! So whenever a pause in the frenzy happens to occur – like being in a hospital not able to move, then please use this as a chance!

In the actual after-death experiences, a Vajra consciousness then still encounters the principle of Akshobhya with Buddhalochana and mirror-like wisdom. If light then opens up after a while of despair caught in the worlds of wrathful beings and appearances – „Thank you, oh Lord!“ – then in the form of Lochana. Of course, the bizarre whirls of personal karma also are part of the game. So: You never know because karma remains unpredictable also after death!

The Buddha Type

One can almost say the opposite of Vajra consciousness is the so-called Buddha consciousness. Note well: This is not about the consciousness of the historical Buddha or an enlightened one. Buddha in this case designates one of the five consciousness types. Classically, one distinguishes between Vajra, Buddha, Ratna, Padma and Karma as images for the personal basic attitudes of the living and dying.

Buddha consciousness is, in the worst case, sluggish, lazy and complaining. Buddha people never became adults. They never took their lives completely and independently into their own hands, remained quasi babies of some kind and never woke up. They have little sense of responsibility. Everything is too hard and too much. Sometimes they forget to wallow even? Ambition rarely occurs in the Buddha type. There’s a tendency to consume cheap stuff in huge quantities.

If you now die with this consciousness, then you simply continue complaining after death: „I’m supposed to be dead? Is there no help here? Where’s the emergency exit? Mommy, Daddy! Help! No social assistance? No health care? I can’t find any support? Where’s my therapist hanging around again? Am I floating? Am I rushing? Where’s my comfort blanket? What’s going on here? Where’s up? Where’s down?“ Well, I am exaggerating again.

To this consciousness, being after dying appears full of hieroglyphs. Beings dance on two legs but additionally have wings, heads of sheep, cows and bulls, birds or even pigs. But you have no eyes that could be closed – and likewise no body that could be turned away. You search in vain for security and warmth. These wild, screeching, demanding and bleating beings come toward you and bite and peck their beaks into you, but you are helpless and paralyzed? You cannot escape this and are repeatedly gnawed and devoured anew. Loneliness in oblivion! Left behind – and there also appear flabby, overweight monsters and demonesses with huge tits, with many very different oversized heads simultaneously and with double chins dripping with fat and pus and blood. They roll around on you and crush you. You suffocate? You can’t even complain. Can’t even cry? What should I lament with? My monsters laugh at me, become ever bigger and more heavy and dig their claws and teeth into the flesh of my phantom body. No one hears my screams because I lost my voice? I am helplessly and nakedly exposed. Far in the distance there are goddesses drinking champagne. But they don’t see me, are unreachable and seem ice-cold, heartless, sharp and clanging? Ice-cold, perfumed goddesses? I freeze and am rigid. Plowshares with sharp knives roll over me and tear deep furrows in my just-acquired phantom body, which – by the way – strongly resembles my body during lifetime.

After infinities of lamentation, cold and torment, I then hopefully recognize a spark of the white meditation Buddha Vairochana. Vairochana is like a sun! He is in sexual union with Dhatvishvari, the indescribable vastness. In them manifests purest Buddhist wisdom, the Dharma, the teaching, Buddhism. The simple words of the Buddha. From ignorance shines sun-like in union with immeasurable vastness the Dharmadhatu wisdom, the world of wonderful Buddhist wisdom teachings. It actually seems to be the case that the highest recognition of reality awakens most directly and clearly from immeasurably boundless ignorance, and not from highest intelligence. And quite certainly, surprisingly, access to the highest recognition of reality and liberation from suffering is much easier for a Buddha consciousness than, for example, for a Vajra or Karma consciousness.

At this point you might start to realize that the meditation buddhas and their consorts bear the main character of the problem but pacified and enlightened. Review the above and think about it. Have a break!

The Ratna Type

Let’s come to the Ratna consciousness type. Ratna is Sanskrit and means jewel. Here the sense for wealth, material security, beauty and being important-important has hardened. For a human lifetime, consciousness has developed in showing off and in recognizing and devising material security and prosperity. Gold, jewels and securities hold our attention captive, and with it also the feeling of being something very special. Who has the most expensive wristwatch, who the most noble tailored suit and tie?

You are immeasurably rich. Your name already stands in many places in the land registry. You got your own jet even. But it’s never enough. You are the best, and you brag about it! Being a millionaire means nothing to you anymore, you must become a billionaire. Your safest garages in the world, with the most valuable vehicles, are distributed across many different nations. Maybe I am exaggerating here somewhat again, but this way it is easier to understand the ratna consciousness types. Showing off to the front, and seeking even more prosperity to the back. Recognition and security! The function of other beings, children, husbands, girlfriends and lovers became more and more to show off, became jewels in the growth process of a Ratna type. Even the husband is only there for showing off: „Get yourself some more noble slippers, high quality slippers please, darling!“ – Phew…!

Of course, the Ratna consciousness first experiences lack of jewelry and cheap filth as deepest pain after death, or being invisible and insignificant oneself. Milky corridors. In the distance it shines and glitters, but you can’t reach it anymore and meanwhile sink into dirt yourself? Everything is lost. There applaud abominable monsters and creatures. „Hello – here I am!“ the Ratna consciousness tries to sit up, but it finds no direction any more. Even the multi-headed, grey monsters frighten the Ratna consciousness little, as long as they just show some attention. And it must be said that black, blue, green or red gleaming heads, the more precisely you look, really repel and irrationally frighten. They are all of very cheap quality! And you can no longer touch anything, nothing is concrete. These monsters accidentally clumsily simply trample right through you. The phantom body in which a Ratna type moves through the after-death worlds is like an ugly avatar. It’s not solid. This grey or even poison-green body has no substance and also is of cheap quality. No touch can take place. There’s nothing permanent, nothing solid, no confirmation but for sure everything is extremely ugly. Your previous life was only a beautiful, deep, glorious dream. Nothing more. Even if you were President of the USA. Have they already forgotten me? It´s me! It´s me!

But even in this area there’s a faithful helper, the green Dhyani Buddha Ratnasambhava – the Buddha with a beautiful jewel nature – in sexual union with the warm and moving maternal Mamaki – purity. The Ratna consciousness has, so to speak, when awakening after immeasurable torments in the after-death states, the possibility to see through its pride and weightiness, and can thus even attain the transcendental wisdom of equanimity? This is theoretically possible. And it is also practically possible. But that is up to you. It’s always possible to develop virtues and insight from the greatest vices. Because even every evil contains a magic and basic goodness?

Self-Reflection

I’m almost certain that my highly esteemed readers are now wondering which consciousness type they can identify with themselves? I must explain: There is of course no pure, hundred-percent Ratna consciousness or Vajra consciousness or Buddha consciousness! Each of us has portions of several of the five basic types. In the Book of the Dead, principles are rather revealed here and one can therefore prepare somewhat for what’s going to happen after the physical end. Patterns are shown here that can help to differentiate and also to recognize and see through these patterns as such.

Yes – I myself also wonder in which of the five Buddha families I see myself most? But I urgently advise you, in these considerations, to always lean back again and again and question and sense further and deeper: What am I? And even if one consciousness type always dominates, a second consciousness type always stands out clearly alongside it. Actually in each of us. And this second strong tendency and hangup can become even more important after death. But to generally start contemplating the Buddha families can be very effective and opens us for insights and adjustments. So it’s quite possible that we transform and surprisingly a completely different consciousness type shows up and might even start to dominate? This is not uncommon.

The Padma Type

So, now we come to the consciousness type Padma, the lotus blossom and love, purity, sublimity, lust, desire and passion. The zeitgeist of 2025 has changed so much regarding love, lust, relationships and sexuality that it’s difficult for me to write about it in connection with after-death experiences. The zeitgeist seems to me to be racing or tumbling in this regard at the moment?

Recently a friend visited me with whom I’d had no contact for over twenty years. We used to know each other very well connected through our interest in Japanese culture, religiosity and Tibetan Buddhism and I hosted him several times for many weeks whenever he needed help. So he arrived at my place recently, entered my apartment and almost the first thing he said was: „A few years ago in China I lived together with a twenty-one-year-old girl for over a year!“ He said this as if he even expected applause? He then continued to tell what he had experienced since our last contact, but actually he only spoke about his various relationships, partnerships and divorces in different parts of the world. And then the jokes! Maybe earlier, when he was at my place, I always found his elaborate, dirty and multi-level sex jokes kind of amusing. But he was still telling the same old dirty jokes. And I – at this point more or less a hermit living on a kind of lost ship – wondered whether relationships and sex had become the determining topics of conversation out there? That’s so terribly boring? I could not even grin anymore? Therefore, my compassionate highly esteemed readers will hopefully forgive me if I don’t go too much into details on the topic of passion and lust. I simply don’t trust myself currently to find the right tone. Perhaps I simply don’t know enough about it.

So let’s again assume there’s a strongly lotus-influenced consciousness. That means there’s the longing, search and lust for satisfaction, which of course can never be reached. With each felt satisfaction, lust grows further and also fantasizes more excessively. If we pluck one of the beautiful, pure, white petals from a lotus blossom – a Padma blossom – then immeasurably many petals remain and even more grow out from the inside quickly. Such a lotus flower cup is inexhaustible. If now the devouring of lotus petals is suddenly, harshly interrupted by death, then the lust fantasies might simply continue racing, and desire is finally felt as unbearable pain. Oversized sexual organs foam over, explode, a whirl of maggots, pus, decay and makeup cases in groaning pain.

But precisely here the red Buddha Amitabha – who is immeasurable light – the Buddha of pure love and kindness, flashes. Incredible! His companion is Pandaravasini – the White-Clothed One. The pure white of Pandaravasini shouldn’t be underestimated, like the color white of a cool and gentle lotus petal that incidentally never gets dirty, never takes on dirt. But it’s equally the white of white heat, and I didn’t just make that up out of the joy of fabulating! The wisdom of both is clearly discriminating wisdom. Precise, unbiased, unprejudiced looking. Coolness. That’s the chance for recognition. But this is white-hot at the same time, but you shouldn’t let that deter you. White heat leaves no ash.

The Karma Type

There remains the Karma consciousness. Karma here not in the sense of consequence, fate or result, but Karma always means first of all action, activity, creativity, productivity. We come closest to understanding this when we deal with the mandala principle – the great whole. „Dancing at all weddings simultaneously“ – that’s what the Karma type tries. You stumble from one project to the next and leave questions, shards and confusion behind, but of course also enormous amounts of inspiration and millions of good ideas. You complete nothing, but constantly initiate new things in all directions. Colorful creativity. But you touch and talk about everything and never finish anything. You are in desperate search for perfection, but are never able to finish even one single project. You set up a kitchen, and whenever you’ve almost finished the last detail, a new flaw appears that you hadn’t noticed before. Everything must go out and be renewed? And this can continue forever. The Karma type is also the one who always drives the oh-so-holy scientific research further. Micro-physics? Micro-biology? Quantenphysics? Macro-worldview? Mega-vision? Microscopes? Definitions? Universe-Milky Ways? And so on…

This all belongs to the realm of Karma consciousness, and when such a Karma type is braked by death, then it naturally rages, splinters and crashes accordingly in multiple ways. When such a creative and research drive has solidified and deepened over decades, then in the after-death states there’s overwhelmingly much that’s imperfect, ugly, loud, faulty, disgusting and colorless and and did not work out and so on. The demonesses chasing you here have various heads of unseen animals, are imprecise, only half-finished and grubby, are not simply made of skin or horn, but pitch-black, or screaming and stinking red, and the million eyes are huge, bloodshot-milky, piercing, desperate gazes. The monsters eyes look and search alive and separately from each other, each goes its own way, and more and more new eyes keep appearing and rolling around everywhere on floors. Looking and searching.

And which meditation Buddha rushes to help you here – if fate allows it? Well, he’s called Amoghasiddhi in this case, which literally means infallible magical power. The green Amoghasiddhi is united with the green Tara. Tara means savior, and there are different colored Taras. Within the green Tara, gentle compassion, friendliness, patience and care are dominand. The fifth of the wisdoms – the wisdom on the level of Karma, so to speak – is the all-accomplishing wisdom.

This is funny when you imagine how such a Karma person raced around their whole life and was always driven to start something new again. Always new brilliant ideas and plans but also the restlessness and open ends and processes everywhere – and the wisdom that brings peace at this point is the all-accomplishing wisdom! And so you can imagine that calm and rest might show up here.

Conclusion

Five groups are distinguished, and now it’s really important – as preparation for your own death – to look at yourself and search and engage with the individual consciousness types and compare.

Now I come to the end of the seventh crazy commentary. I will write down a few short, powerful poems in an appendix, of which one or two should be recited by heart several times daily as one of the preparation for the afterlife.

Buy yourselves a rosary or mala!

Basically, we imprint certain habitual patterns over our lives, and it could be quite helpful if after death you have, so to speak, a sacred bardo liberation aid with you – a tool – in the form of a Dhyani Buddha with consort, a poem or magical formulas and mantras. But of course they have to be already at least somewhat internalized. We should know the wisdom songs by heart so that they’re available to us, and at this point it should be remembered that our brain – where we presumably store texts at least – is out of operation after death. So, something like this should already resound from a further and deeper level than the idea of a biological brain or a biological heart.

OM MANI PADME HUNG HRIH!

If during lifetime you’ve become closely acquainted with a Bodhisattva – whether male or female – by regularly conducting rituals for them, for example, erecting and dissolving mandalas, having pictures and statues of them in your apartment and garden, if you’ve learned and internalized prayers and songs to Kshitigarbha or Lasya, Vajrapani or Gita, Yeshe Tsering, Manjushri and Gandha or for example also the Archangel Michael (!), and you really love, feel and perceive them, then they might stand even closer to you than the Dhyani Buddhas of the five Buddha families, and possibly might take their place. All the better! That’s naturally wonderful! But building such a relationship takes time and effort, just like any interpersonal relationship! A few feelings at Easter or Christmas time aren’t enough. A pilgrimage could be very helpful and deepening, for example! It’s never too late!

Grab your rosaries and set off!

Hey Ho Hi Hi Ha Ha and Ho – Swaha!!!