Tukdam: Between Worlds (2022) | online streaming:
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The Yogis of Tibet (2002) | online streaming:
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Thukdam (Tib: ཐུགས་དམ་) is an honorific meaning “one engaged in meditation”, a phenomenon in which accomplished meditator’s consciousness remains in the body despite its physical death.
"When somebody is in tukdam, means that person died in meditation… that person was doing meditation practice all their life."
[High Lama Tai Situ Rinpoche; Tukdam: Between Worlds (2022); 00:22:17]
One in such state, although declared clinically dead, shows no signs of decay and is found to remain fresh for days or weeks without preservation, even in hot, subtropical environment. Typically it lasts two or three weeks[
01]. There are different methods to determine if someone remains in tukdam. Pinching the skin is one of them. If retracts like in alive person then it’s a good indicator.
"This very often you can see in many good practitioners. When most of the people die, after die your face changes, yellow, pale and when you do the pinching of your skin, mostly it will stay there. But a real practitioner who has meditated, when passing, they continue their state. When you pinch in here, it’s like now, immediately going back. And also they have heat or warmth in the heart center. Also, the face is like in life. And a very unusual one happened too, one story, just one year ago in Bhutan, one local master, Jedun Rinchen. So he’s dead more than one month, and never changed."
[His Holiness Chetsang Rinpoche; The Yogis of Tibet (2002); 00:48:41]
Also placing hand around heart would give sense of warmth, although it’s not supported by science in sense of measurable evidences.
"So there's the warmth around the heart, and there were four cases during the time that I was involved, and we only got clear thermal imaging data one of the times, and they were stone cold. You could see very clearly in the thermal imaging that there's the wall and then the body, and everything is all the same color. There was no variation whatsoever. Every day a group of devotees would come in and would carefully inspect the person, and they would feel carefully with the back of their hand, and they would be commenting on it, and then they would agree that the person was still in tukdam. The hardest to explain is if all these people are not crazy at all, they are in fact legitimately putting their hand there, and they really sincerely are experiencing the feeling of it being warmer than it should be, and the camera is not malfunctioning, and it really is definitely showing that from the point of view of physics, the thermal vibratory energy is the same in the body and the wall. When the Tibetan tradition talks about tukdam, they don't have thermal imaging cameras, so when they say the body stays warm, the specific statement that the tradition is making is that when you touch the body around the heart, you experience the feeling of warmth. Everything that I've ever experienced is completely consistent with the idea that people experience tukdam exactly the way the tradition says that people experience tukdam. Nothing that I've observed has contradicted that at all. The more time that I spent on this project, the more striking was the contrast between as long as you weren't trying to do a whole bunch of hard science with equipment, everything looked one way. And then as soon as you start bringing the equipment in and trying to nail everything down and take a bunch of physical measurements, then it all falls apart."
[David M. Perlman; Tukdam: Between Worlds (2022); 00:52:08]
It is said that death is being conducted in a consciously controlled manner as a opportunity to become fully enlightened, but also as ability to self govern the process of transition from one life to the next[
02].
"This is my teacher, Kyung Ga Rinpoche. He invited all the students… he told he is going to pass away. No illness, no sign of death, he’s just normal, he gets up, does his prayers, and he told his attendants to make a good tea, and then he makes the tea over and over again until he’s satisfied, and he says all these prayers together. And when he gets to the completion state, he says „This is the time for me to pass away.” And just like he’s falling asleep, like a Buddha, he put his right hand under his cheek and lay down and looked at each person… you know, he’s doing prayers for each person to benefit in the future and then he passed away."
[Lama Drupal Samptan; The Yogis of Tibet (2002); 00:50:38]
When the body becomes sloppy, loses hue, and emits excretions or smells, the person is said to have woken from tukdam[
03].
Research on the subject is currently being conducted by two independent groups, from USA and Russia, sharing results and findings with each other[
04]. The first, supervised by Dr. Richard J. Davidson (founder of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin–Madison), run under the name “The Thukdam Project”, and the second one, supervised by Prof. Svyatoslav Medvedev of the Russian Academy of Sciences (founder of the Institute of the Human Brain, St Petersburg).
References
[01] -
TRICYCLE - The Thukdam Project
[02] -
Tukdam: Spiritual Practice
[03] -
Tukdam: Spiritual Practice
[04] -
Discussions with Participants in Russian Research Program December 13, 2019
Tukdam: Between Worlds (2022) | online streaming:
BitChute
The Yogis of Tibet (2002) | online streaming:
BitChute
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