The Cult of Tara

WORSHIP 79
plative period until its end—then after that one must go on to
settle one's mind firmly therein, gaining the power to be without
any accidental relapse in body or mind. Then it is no longer necessary
to do things like continually think ' I am the deity,' for once
one has generated a genuine divine ego he is able thereby to cut off
his ordinary ego entirely. For example, suppose someone has fallen
to a non-human destiny: though his mind is troubled thereby, he
does not impose upon his experience the mental construct ' I am a
non-human'; but rather, as long as he experiences his karma, the
concept 'Once I was a human' simply does not arise." 110
We may easily see the soteriological thrust of this evocation: the
practitioner acquires a divine ego, the total cessation of any merely
human personality, accompanied by the actual re-creation of the
world as a divine mansion for his dwelling. Even in those rituals of
evocation whose intent is manipulatory, wherein the power of the
deity is applied to specific, even worldly, ends (as when the practitioner
visualizes, say, a person whom he wishes to subjugate as bound
naked before him, to be dominated by the mantra), we find the introductory
phrase, "Having grasped the ego of the deity ..." The permanent
acquisition of this ego during the lengthy self-generation in
the deity's prior ritual service is a prerequisite to following this instruction,
and possession of this ego is necessary for the magical
manipulation of the divine power before one: to exercise a godlike
power over reality, one must indeed be a god. To quote Tsongk'apa
one more time: 111
When one grasps the mandalas of residence and residents and the
ego thereof, then one is able to exchange that ego for one's own,
as explained above, as long as there are no accidental relapses.
And when one vividly visualizes those two mandalas—visualizing
their "vivid appearance" as vividly as one can, and thereby nullifying
the "ordinary appearance" of one's True Mind—one effectively
nullifies both "ordinary appearances" and clinging to "ordinary
ego." But it is insufficient for one merely to be able to
nullify those for a little while; it is necessary that this be made
quite firm. And when a Diamond Master (who has properly
performed his prior ritual service by a method such as this) performs
for example a protection ritual against hindering demons
... he genuinely generates the deity and his ego when he
recites "Glorious Vajradhara ..." If he has not done so, he gains
an ego of mere words, and hence it is said that prior ritual service
is of the utmost importance.