A closer look

Achieving the "Jalü" or Rainbow Body is the ultimate mic-drop of Tibetan mysticism. Practitioners of Dzogchen spend decades realizing the empty, luminous nature of reality. At death, instead of rotting, their physical flesh supposedly converts back into the five elemental lights. Witnesses report the sky filling with rainbows while the corpse physically shrinks day by day, leaving only the impurities of hair and nails behind for their bewildered disciples.