The Lost Sadhanas Project: Green Tara
The Attraction to Spiritual Worlds

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Another way to escape the conflicts and difficulties of embodied life is to remove the passions and attachments by redirecting them. Rather than returning to the origins of awareness, here the attention is directed to alternative [inner] worlds. As the perception of spiritual worlds becomes clearer and more vivid, the soul is attracted to them, and attachment towards unhealthy [outer] situations is lessened.

How does this process work? How do people have inner worlds become real? First the person must become aware of the territory. This is the area of inner space, the arena of potential. It is a space that is beyond both dream and imagination. It is not seen in the beginning, only realized. It helps if it has a name such as sambhogakaya, the heaven of Amida Buddha, or the spiritual Kailash [mountain] of the god Shiva. The person senses that there is a place to go before he or she knows where it is.

Then there are various paths. Should they be traveled waking or sleeping? If awake, is the heaven above the world or within the self? Is it found through a particular sacred [or religious] space or is it universal, reached from anywhere? Is the gateway to it in the world or in the mind? Most gateways have locks and keys depending on the spiritual path. Who will give the key and say where the path goes?

The seeker may break through universal gateways with yogic powers or psychedelic assistance, but few people have such abilities without training. It can be done but it tends to expend the person's [psychic] energy and exhaust them. Then they may be subject to distorted ideas and repressed desires.

Going by a path with a guide tends to work better for there are many distractions and dangers to be avoided. Religions may give guides, or specific teachers may share access to their own guides. Or guides may come of their own accord depending on the person's maturity and karma.

The guide will begin by giving a mantra or prayer of protection to the seeker. Safety comes first. If there is any sort of trouble, the novice must have a way to deal with it. Then there are practices to strengthen concentration and disciplines to control random impulse. Most followers are taught visualization exercises, along with mantras to steady the mind. These are ways to slowly open up inner worlds.

Visualization creates expectation. Imagined offerings become more and more real. Each visualization is laid upon the previous one, a series of two-dimensional images that become thick enough to create a third dimension. The [visualized] lamp or flower or mandala [offering] has layer upon layer of imagined surfaces which becomes bright and deep, an echo in the person's mind of their spiritual original.