Books of the Dead

The "art of dying" and the posthumous journey of the soul have been the subject of extensive literature and visualization in many cultures. "Dying before dying", or practice in dying, has been sought throughout human history, not just to overcome fear and give help at the moment of death, but actually to transfigure the quality of life. Stanislav Grof considers some of the most striking and important of the works known collectively as the "books of the dead": the ancient Egyptian funerary texts; the Tibetan Bardo Thodol; Maya and Aztec myths of death and rebirth. And from medieval Europe come the Christian visions of the soul's journeys, the danses macabres and dialogues with death, and meditational imagery of mortal decay that recalls Tibetan practices.