The bardo teachings describe the interval after death — up to forty-nine days — as a sequence of opportunities. First the clear light of reality appears, and a practitioner who recognises it is free immediately; most do not, and then peaceful and then wrathful deities arise, each of them explicitly identified in the text as a projection of the dying person's own mind, each a further chance to recognise and be released. Failing all of them, the consciousness is drawn toward a rebirth. The text is read aloud to the dead or dying, which is what makes the Tibetan Book of the Dead a liturgy rather than a treatise, and the practice of rehearsing the sequence while alive is the point: you cannot learn to recognise your own mind for the first time while dying.