Psychonauts

In his introduction, Thurman also notes Evans-Wentz's misnomer but calls his translation The Tibetan Book of the Dead. And like the Evans-Wentz version, about half of Thurman's work is taken up with his own commentary and glossary. Part of the commentary is taken up by Thurman's interpretation of the Bar do thos grol, a Nyingma text, in light of the antic theory of the great Geluk master, Tsong kha pa (1357-1419). But much of Thurman's introduction is reminiscent of Evans-Wentz. For Thurman, Tibet was a unique civilization. while the West has devoted itself to the investigation and conquest of the material world and outer space, Tibet was an inwardly directed society the produced generations of mystical adepts who studied spiritual technologies and became "Inner world adventurers of the highest daring" he calls them psychonauts" who "personally voyage to the furthest frontiers of the universe which their society deemed vital to explore: the inner frontiers of consciousness itself, in all its transformations of life and beyond death." As a product of this society, The Tibetan Book of the Dead is not a Buddhist approach to death and dying but a scientific description of the death process, derived from the research of Psychonauts. The Tibetan views of death are no more or less religious than modern Western views on the structure of the solar system. In the preface of the third edition, Evans-Wentz had written that the book "reveals to the people of the Occident a science of death and rebirth such as only the peoples of the Orient have heretofore known"

In the 1990 film Jacob's Ladder, a Vietnam Veteran experiences disturbing hallucinations, and the viewer, like the protagonist, is unable to distinguish reality from illusion. In the end, it is revealed that the entire film has been the visions of an American soldier in Vietnam as he dies on the operating table. He is finally led to a light be a child. The director Adrian Lyne explained in interviews that the film had been inspired by The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

(p251-252) The Tibetan Book of The Dead ~ Afterword: Psychonauts
 — with Donald S. Lopez Jr