I'm still continuing my recitation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead for RiSe and EunB, although by now I'm under no illusion that it is actually in any way "for" them. I'm not thinking my recitation has had any "real" effect on what is happening to them after death beyond "who knows?". They presumably don't have the background or training to be affected, even if many of the ground assertions in the book of what happens after death are objectively something, somewhat accurate.

I put real in quotes above because real supposedly suggests something concrete. And I don't think anything is concrete. Even science is finding that fundamentally, objective reality is not something concrete, and the more they research, the weirder they find the nature of reality is.

How much more so any description or attestation of the after-death experience, and especially one that purports to be more than the fairly tales offered by subjective moral-driven imaginations of religions.

I do think the Tibetan book is an enlightened template of the after death experience. I don't think it's the only one. I definitely don't think it's a universal description of what happens. I do think a lot of it is more for the reciter, the living, than the dead. Possibly intentionally so.

So when I say I do a recitation of the book on a particular situation, I don't strictly recite what's in the book. If something doesn't feel right for the person I'm concentrating on, I'll change it.

There are portions that describe horrible things that are happening in the bardo, many involving religion-specific imagery, and I wonder if they are unnecessarily negative. I think including those descriptions in the recitation may actually conjure up those images in the bardo experience. Those are for the living to reflect on, but for those in the bardo states, I prefer to keep things positive and not mention anything negative which might conjure negativity. It's a fine line between horrible but simply descriptive and unduly negative.

I do think the book can be written without the distinctly Buddhistic references and replacing them with more general spiritual, energy-centric experiences. The book was written from supposed recollections and resonances of actual enlightened experience, but it was still contextual actual enlightened experience. That context was Buddhism. The context can be removed to offer a more universally compelling description of that experience.