Delog: journey to the realms beyond death

THE TIBETAN WORD DELOG (DAY-loak) refers to one who has crossed the threshold of death and returned to tell about it. For Delog Dawa Drolma, a woman renowned as one of the great realization holders of Vajrayana Buddhism in this century, being a delog meant that she lay without any vital sign of breath, pulse, or warmth for five days. During that time the link between her mind and body was released and her consciousness journeyedtootherrealmsofexperience.

What she saw then, recounted in these pages, engendered in her a limitless compassion for sentient beings. She experienced the almost unimaginable contrast between existence within the pure display of enlightened mind and existence within samsaric delusion and ignorance.

“The delog experience is extraordinary, marvelous, even within the esoteric context of Tibetan schools of Vajrayana Buddhism. Yet Delog Dawa Drolma’s account has the power and immediacy of direct experience, and I trust that those who read it will find that the phenomena of the realms correspond to aspects of their own mind’s experience. May her words inspire the higher spiritual attainment, may they guide whoever reads them to the dominions of the victorious ones.
-His Eminence Chagdud Tulku