Free Tantric Techniques by Jeffrey Hopkins Page A

addition, an internal transformation is enacted in a process that begins with a step much like Jung’s description of assimilation of unconscious complexes, not through identification,

    a ’khor ba , sa ṃ s ā ra .
    b See, for example, H.V. Guenther’s Jewel Ornament of Liberation (Berkeley, Calif.: Shambhala, 1971), 56-62, and Khetsun Sangbo’s Tantric Practice in Nyingma (London: Rider/Hutchinson, 1982; Ithaca, N.Y.: Snow Lion Publications, 1983), 65-72.
    Tantric Mode of Meditation 55

    but through confrontation. Jung says: a
    The supreme aim of the opus psychologicum is conscious realization, and the first step is to make oneself conscious of contents that have hitherto been projected.
    Recognition of the needy and unpleasant beings to be helped by the beneficent rain constitutes confrontation with one’s own tendencies and predispositions. It is interesting to note that the transformation is not an instantaneous transmutation into divinity but be-gins with first satisfying the needs of the deprived and depraved contents. b Also, oral explanations from lamas indicate that the rain of ambrosia gradually leads these beings (psychological contents) to higher and higher levels through providing opportunities for practice, teachings, and so forth. The sense of quasi-otherness under the guise of which this practice is done has, as its basis, the same wisdom as Jung’s warning to assimilate unconscious contents through confrontation, not through identification, in order to avoid being taken over by them, as will be discussed in the next chapter. The step of healingly transforming these contents after recognizing them proceeds a step beyond Jung’s confrontational assimilation in that these forces, once confronted, not only lose much of their autonomous power but also are transformed.
    Although only Highest Yoga Mantra mirrors in its deity yoga the afflicted processes c of (1) death, (2) intermediate state, and (3)

    a The Collected Works of C.G. Jung (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971, second printing 1974), vol. 16, para. 471 (the last number refers not to the page number but to the paragraph number, which is used for coordination between editions).
    b See the description of a similar practice done in the Vajrasattva meditation and repetition of mantra in Khetsun Sangpo, Tantric Practice in Nyingma, 149-150.
    c Tsong-kha-pa gives this opinion in his explication of Yoga Tantra in the Great Exposition of the Stages of Secret Mantra:
    Cultivation of deity yoga in the pattern of the stages of production of [a life] in cyclic existence [mimicking the process of death, intermediate state, and rebirth]—the thoroughly afflicted class [of phenomena]—is not set forth in any reliable text of the three lower tantra sets; consequently, such is a distinguishing feature of Highest Yoga Mantra. However, [in the three lower tantra sets] there is a cultivation of deity yoga in the pattern of the very pure class [of phenomena], for the cultivation of the five manifest enlightenments [in Yoga Tantra, for instance] is said to be meditation within assuming the pride of such and such [stage] in
    56 Tantric Techniques

    rebirth by (1) mimicking the eight signs of death, a appearing (2) as a seed syllable, and then (3) as a deity with a physical body, it strikes me that these stages of gradual appearance as a deity in Action Tan-tra mirror, in pure form, an ordinary, uncontrolled process of appearance—the imitation being for the sake of gaining control over it. Given the selfishness of ordinary life, there must be a phase in the process of awakening after sleep opposite to the compassionate emanation of myriad helpful forms. In ordinary, selfish life, the corresponding psychological structuring of our relation to the environment would be the emanation of forms similar to ourselves for the sake of warding off anyone who would interrupt our pleasure, making sure that disease visits others and not ourselves, wreaking havoc on