The Rainbow Body

High attainment is more or less typical of monks isolated from economic society, in a manner suggestive of highly focused athletes or elite performers in the arts or in the sciences. Distinctly, monkish attainment involves certain claims on the thresholds both of birth and of death, such as life in the astral plane. The Rainbow Body of pre-Buddhist Tibet is further distinguished by third-person attestation, reminiscent of the miracles following on the crucifixion of Christ, to what appears to be a deep and important reality. Witnesses tend to agree about the facts of the matter, including atmospheric rainbows, gentle, mist-like rain and shrinkage and even wholesale disappearance of the physical body, with the exception of hair and fingernails, after a few days.

Presumably, if a scientific understanding of the Rainbow Body and its transmutations can be reached, humanity will have learned something important about itself, and if, premised on good reasoning, the learning can be unpacked and distributed in a responsible way, the result should be a benefit for the world. In addition to vigorous tantras focused on facility with the body and its heat, elements of language are used in these practices.

We suggest taking systematic sociological steps toward the benign and general atmosphere of tantric attainment, and we think televised conversation is probably the place to begin. If humanity can be made accustomed to the idea that it can function competently on both sides of the threshold of mortality, it will have come to a very different and altogether better conception of itself.

For an interesting discussion of this Blog Post with Inflection AI’s Pi, click here.