“Remember the clear light, the pure clear white light from which everything in the universe comes, to which everything in the universe returns; the original nature of your own mind. The natural state of the universe unmanifest. Let go into the clear light, trust it, merge with it. It is your own true nature, it is home.” ~ Tibetan Book of the Dead
The Bardo Thödrol, or Tibetan Book of the Dead, is the most famous and mysterious book of Tibet, widely known and often begun but seldom read all the way through. Like a high mountain peak, it is widely admired but hard to climb. The intention here is to make the heights more accessible. The Tibetan text describes, and is intended to guide one through, the experiences that the consciousness has after death, during the interval between death and the next rebirth. This interval is known in Tibetan as the bardo. The Bardo Thödrol is one of the treasures or “termas” that Padmasambhava, the Indian teacher who introduced Buddhism to Tibet in the eighth century, hid in caves and also in the minds of future disciples. In it he taught about three of the six bardos or states of samsara, the round of life and death. All six are transitional states, one leading naturally and inevitably to the next unless an occurrence of enlightenment intervenes.
Three of the six bardos are of states of life: the waking state, the sleep and dream state, and themeditative state. These three begin with birth and end with death. The three bardos addressed in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, however, begin with death and end with rebirth. These three bardos of death are called the bardo of clear light or luminosity, the bardo of radiant truth or realizing Reality, and the bardo of becoming. Source