The Cult of Tara

94 MAGIC AND RITUAL IN TIBET
and the yogin's body is the magical simulacrum not only of the
deity he has become but also of truth, bliss, freedom, creation, and
dissolution. As the Hevajra Tantra says [I.i.12]:
Great knowledge abides in the body,
free of all constructs:
it is the pervader of all things,
but though abiding in the body it is not born of the body.
The aim of all contemplative manipulation is the power to control
the mind, the breath, the universe. Power is the key, and the source
of power is the deity; just as the yogin may use his vivid visualization
as a simulacrum for events, he uses it as a simulacrum for
knowledge. To cieate and become the deity is to "own" the deity
in one's person, to be master even of the deity's enlightenment. And
it is, finally, only as a ramification of this divine power—built up
through constant contemplative feedback, growing in each contemplative
period—that the yogin is able to control the appearances of
all his realities; he must first be a god to act with the power of a god,
for only the deity has the understanding of reality which grants
omnipotence.
Here too we see the central place of the mantra in Tantric practice:
"visualization and recitation" form an irreducible unity of
magical technique, for the mantra too is the divine power, crystallized
into its sonic image. Tantra is thus the "quick path"
whereon control is synonymous with power; to control the divine
appearance, mantra, and ego is to act with the deity's body,
speech, and mind, and to control the mind and body is to own
the world.
Thus the evolution of reality is of great importance to the Tantric:
his contemplation will be its magical reenactment, a simulacrum for
the entire world of being; he will dwell in a realm where the world is a
divine mansion filled with gods, where effigies are persons, where a
lotus is a stage to enlightenment, where a web of colored threads is
a gateway to paradise. And the correspondences we see between
the philosophical theory and the contemplative evocation form for
the yogin himself the magical substratum for this total interpenetration
of the human and the divine.
The most authoritative description of the appearance of the
world from primordial Emptiness is found in a short text called
On Distinguishing the Extremes from the Middle, 11
* written by Maitreya
and/or Asanga and commented upon by Asahga's half brother