Recognition is the keynote of this whole teaching, but we cannot recognize what we have never met. So its message to us during this life is to get to know all these manifestations of mind while there is still time.

All meditation is about getting to know the mind: first, our individual minds, and then the essence of mind itself.

There is no bardo outside the mind, no gods or demons outside the mind, no existence or awakening outside the mind.

If we learn to know our mind during this life, we shall understand that the same mind continues after death, and that whatever occurs after death also happens here and now.

After the verse for the bardo of existence, the Root Verses of the Six Bardos ends with a final stanza, admonishing us not to keep returning to samsara time after time with nothing to show for it:

Heedless mind without a thought of death’s approach,

Now that the meaningless business of life is accomplished,

To come back empty again this time is utterly deluded!

Recognition is the sacred, divine dharma that you need,

So why not practice divine dharma at this very moment?

Thus have the great siddhas spoken:

If you do not keep your guru’s teaching in your heart

Will you not be a traitor to yourself?

Without the practice that makes recognition possible, it is doubtful that we shall actually see any of the appearances that are described in such detail.

These descriptions are meant for people who are able to retain some level of awareness through death, to clarify what is taking place and remind them of their previous experience.

Others may perhaps be aware of dazzling light and flashing colors, or tremendous waves of sound. They will probably feel buffeted by rapidly changing emotions without understanding their cause. There will be feelings of intense awe, of attraction and desire in one direction, and hatred and terror in another, but above all of complete bewilderment.

Everything the text describes will be present since it is naturally within the mind: the luminosity of our essential nature is there, our innate deities are there, the six realms are there, and the karmic effects of our past actions are there, but we shall not perceive them clearly or know them for what they are.

The events of the bardos are expressed here entirely in terms of Buddhist doctrine and to a great extent in specifically dzogchen terms.

People of other traditions who are able to maintain some awareness at this time may not necessarily experience everything in the same way.

That it is why it is so important to try to understand the inner meaning of the imagery presented here. But, just as we cannot discard the use of language, we cannot discard these symbolic forms.

Until we have fully accomplished the ultimate formless realization, naked reality must remain clothed with imagery.

Thus the inconceivable awakened state ceaselessly plays through the magical phenomena of life, death, and the bardos and transparently reveals itself to the eye of sacred vision.

Source: Based on Fremantle, Francesca. Luminous Emptiness. Shambhala. Kindle Edition. (Italicized emphasis mine)