Third Bardo – "Five Years Ahead of My Time" (1967)

I’m living somewhere in a new dimension

I’m leaving everyone so far behind

Don't waste any time

Step inside my mind

I’m five years ahead of my time!

You’re probably asking yourself the same question I’m asking myself: “How could a song written in 1967 so perfectly describe 2 or 3 lines – which didn’t exist until 2009?”

The answer to that question can be found by taking a trip to the third bardo – the mysterious place that is the namesake of the group that recorded today’s featured song.

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The book commonly known in the West as The Tibetan Book of the Dead describes and guides the reader through the experiences that the consciousness has after death in the bardo – which is the interval between one’s death and one’s reincarnation.

There are three phases one passes through while in the bardo.   The third of those phases – the sidpa bardo or “bardo of rebirth,” is characterized by karmically impelled hallucinations which eventually result in rebirth.

Those hallucinations typically consist of yab-yum imagery depicting men and women amorously entwined.  From Wikipedia:

Yab-yum [is] depicted as a male deity in union with his female consort through the similar ideas of interpenetration or “coalescence.”

The male figure represents compassion . . . while the female partner represents insight. In yab-yum the female is seated on the male’s lap. There is a rare presentation of a similar figure but reversed, with the male sitting on the female’s lap, called yum-yab.

I’m a yab-yum guy myself.  But I wouldn’t be averse to a little yum-yab every once in a while.

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The very short-lived Third Bardo attended exactly one recording session, which produced only six tracks.  “Five Years Ahead of My Time,” which was one of those tracks, became the group’s only single.  It got some radio airplay before the powers that be decided it was persona non grata because it seemed to be about drugs.

I don’t know why the Third Bardo broke up shortly after that one recording session.  What I do know is that their breakup is probably the greatest musical tragedy of my lifetime.

“Five Years Ahead of My Time” may be the greatest psychedelic record of all time.  It certainly comes close to The Last’s “She Don’t Know Why I’m Here” – the record that inspired me to give birth to 2 or 3 lines in 2009.

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Click here to listen to “Five Years Ahead of My Time.”

Click here to buy the record from Amazon.