The Cult of Tara

MAGIC AND RITUAL IN TIBET
My Mother laid out the offerings to the gurus and high patron
deities, the tormas for the dakinis and protectors of the Law, and
the excellent feast for my Diamond Brothers. And before the
assembly my guru appeared as the high patron deities Hevajra,
Cakrasamvara, and Guhyasamaja, as their emblems (vajra, bell,
wheel, gem, lotus, sword, and so on), as the syllables OM AH
HUM, white, red, and blue, as a drop of brilliant light, and finally
disappeared altogether.
These many things Marpa showed, and he said: "These things
I have formed are called magical transformations of the body.
They must never be shown on a spirit of falsehood; but 1 have
shown them now as a parting gift for Mila repa."
Having seen my guru as the Buddha in actuality, I felt immeasurable
joy, and I thought that I too must obtain through contemplation
magic power such as his. My guru said: "My son, did you
see? Did you believe?" And I replied: "I saw, and I could not
help but believe; and I thought that I too must do likewise
through my contemplation."
He said: "My son, that is good. And now you may go. I have
shown you that all events are illusory; so do you experience likewise,
adhering to the rocky wastes, the snowy ranges, and the solitary
forests. ... In these places make evocation your foremost
aim."
. . . And with tears flowing down he said: "My son, we two
shall not meet again in this life. I shall not forget you; do not
forget me. If you do as I have said, surely we will meet again in
the celestial realms."
The Construction of Reality
This concept—that the yogin's imagination can create not only
nonempirical states of mind but also nonempirical states of reality
—is so startling to our own presuppositions that we might well
examine briefly some of the cultural axioms upon which it is based.
Here I propose three models to aid our understanding, based on
Western concepts of schizophrenia, surrealism, and alchemy.
It wad Freud who brought into the mainstream of psychological
thought the idea of the reality of what philosophers had long called
the "imagination," a theory that dominated philosophical thinking
until about 1935, that the imagination is a realizing faculty, "images
tending of themselves to impose on us and presenting themselves a
real" 114
—"real" insofar as they have real effects upon the person
but not "real" as acting in the world. The presumption is alway
that reality as perceived is somehow hard or solid—a metaphor io
"public"—and that the imagination functions only to produ