The Lost Sadhanas Project: Green Tara
A Cosmic Map

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I am the goddess of spiritual exploration. For Buddhists I sometimes inspire the making of maps of the universe. In our sailing ships whose great sai1s bear living mandalas, I chart the course of exploration for both individuals and worlds.

Let us make a map. We begin with the conscious mind, the accessible memory from this life and the inaccessible memories from this and other lives. The inaccessible memories may be shielded by veils of psychological pain and fear, or by the veils that separate one life from another.

If we move beyond this second set of veils, we enter the state of collective human consciousness, a storehouse of ideas and forms that manifest in different configurations at different times and places.

This area has the building blocks for different cultures and personalities, and also the forms through which buddhas and bodhisattvas manifest when they descend into the world of matter and mind. There are different areas of the storehouse for different forms of life.

Above this we have the realms of incarnation of which the six Buddhist worlds shown on the Tibetan wheel of life mandala are a tiny sample. The universe teems with life and only a few worlds are human. But souls move from one to another as plants die and return. It is a great dance of transformation.

Above this we have the heavens of deities or beings of great spiritual power. Some of these deities have their own universes with their paradises and hell worlds. Many of these deities claim to be the One God and have rules for the entrance into and exit from their worlds.

Each of these deity universes is a self-contained system, full of the transformations of souls. But none of these are ultimate.

Beyond these is infinite awareness, not tied to any form or personality. And beyond this, the infinite being that is also non-being, the root of all existence. In this realm, no self remains to perceive it.