The Cult of Tara

WORSHIP
private images. "The mentally ill," one author typically says, "are
for the most part people who are living in the realm where ideas have
the value of reality." 115
Studies in psychedelic "imagination" have
tended to affirm this presumption even while doubting it: 116
The perceptual changes were not changes in perception of the external
world but rather changes in the quality of internal imagery.
Imagery, however, is too mild a word for the Ss experiences, as
it connotes something less intense than perception of external
qualities, less "real," yet for the Ss their internal perceptions were
in no way less real or less vivid than their ordinary sense-perceptions.
They were also much more vivid and real than their usual
imagery. Further, the "sensory" qualities of the internal imagery
were often more vivid than ordinary sense perceptions.
A schizophrenic, it is felt, creates a reality, much as does the yogin,
but it is a personal reality of terror and exclusion, unshared and
therefore imaginary. R. D. Laing reports how a patient named
James evoked a magical universe: 117
His "self", as it was only partially real-ized even in and through
relationship with others who shared his views, became more and
more caught up in, and itself a part of, the world of magic. The
objects of phantasy or imagination obey magical laws; they have
magical relationships, not real relationships. When the "self" becomes
more and more a participant in phantasy relationships,
less and less a participant in real relationships, in doing so it loses
its own reality. It becomes, like the objects to which it is related,
a magical phantom. One implication of this is that, for such a
"self," everything and anything becomes possible, unqualified,
as even every wish must be sooner or later, by reality, necessity,
the conditioned and finite. If this is not so, the "self" can be anyone,
be anywhere, and live at any time. With James this was
coming to be the case. "In imagination" the conviction was growing
and gathering of having phantastic powers.
In a very real sense, it is in this world of magical omnipotence and
private freedom that a Tibetan practitioner lives; he is the master of
a divine reality created by his own imagination. Even on this level,
however, where psychologist and yogin agree on the privacy of the
experience, there is a difference. The yogin goes forth to add a reality
to his repertoire of awareness; he does not create one universe in
frightened retreat from another. For the schizophrenic, says Laing,
omnipotence is based on impotence, freedom operates in a vacuum,
and activity is without life.