Hindu Medicine c8.4

c8.4

Thus, the devotee of Tantrism conjures up the divine forces which constitute the sum total of his bodily structure and its faculties; in placing the figures of the deities on the parts they inhabit, uttering at the same time the sounds which peculiarly belong to each divine power, he becomes conscious of their beneficent, powerful presence. Through the daily ritual of “nyāsa” he experiences a temporary transmutation of that self of which he is conscious ordinarily, that of the earth-bound common individual, into a secret community of beings, divine in substance and faculties. He visualizes himself as the microcosmic counterpart of the world organism, the manifestation (māyā) of the energy (śakti) of transcendental being. Through the act of devotional magic he transcends, as the Vedic formula puts it, the sphere of purely phenomenal or apparent reality (anṛta), namely his conscious ego-personality, and becomes aware of the essential truth (satya) of his nature.