ON THE HISTORY AND PSYCHOLOGY OF THE 'DAS-LOGspring, so how can human parents not?" (Rme-ri dge-slong 1974: 9 ff.). In doing
so, parents extenuate their own moral circumstances and collect sin for their
children's sake. Hence they are reborn in all sorts of nasty circumstances and
undergo suffering. Thus, all beings to whom we are simultaneously parent and
child deserve our compassion and our succour. As we, through the cult prac-
tices, become identical with the deity or cult guru, our love for all creatures
becomes as a mother's for her child. Avalokitdvara, in his pacific form, pre-
sents as a highly maternal figure, soft, white, curvilinear, having prominent
breasts, holding a lotus (a specifically feminine sign), and so forth. (Of course,
Avalokita simply becomes a female in China and Japan). As R.A. Paul, in his
superb psychoanalytic venture into Tibetan symbolism has recently shown,
A valokitdvara "as benign savior thus combines the best elements of a compas-
sionate and nourishing but desexualized mother ... and is a model of the mater-
nal imago (1982: chap. iv; see also, 1980), who is highly involved in the
separation anxieties, which, we shall see, are central to our understanding of the
'das-log's experience.
But with all this mother-love about, we must recall that the 'das-log has
already rejected or has been rejected by his mother or closest kinsmen, and has
returned to an unfed, uncomforted transitional child-like state.^34 As we would
expect, the maternal imago is split, the bad, the inattentive mother left behind,
and a hallucinatory wish-fulfilling mother gained. The 'das-log acquires, usually
for the length of his other-worldly journey, and advisor-comforter-companion,
i.e., a mother substitute. Most often they are gorgeous, dazzling white-clad
figures who nourish the 'das-log with nectar, and further allay the stresses that
caused their initial problems to begin with by telling what they want to hear
about their potential human careers. Karmadbang-'dzin's companion tells her (I,
A: 38), "You don't recognize me, but my secret name is Ye-shes-rdo-Ije-ma.
We two are friends; we're linked together like a body and its shadow ... "This
reference may be taken to allude to the blissful state of normal symbiosis, and it
also recalls Rje-btsun Rinpoche' s remark (p. 31) that her early relationships with
her mother were like being in the womb. In the company of the cjakil)l, the 'das-
log travels through limbo and hell, where the former carefully and patiently
explains the circumstances of the scenes they encounter. These have to do in the
main with the inexorable workings of karma, and for the 'das-log the limbo
period is one of relatively calm cognitive achievement, with fears of terrible
happenings and encounters allayed by the companion, just as one might expect
from a nurturant maternal figure. The cjakil)l-mother helps the 'das-log achieve a
mature understanding, instead of a helter-skelter mastery, of the world by pro-
viding the object constancy that was missing in relationships with natural
figures. The terrible visions and monsters which the 'das-log meets are
explained as his own projections. The old ego has been stripped away and is in
the process of gradual replacement by a new identity which replaces mere
attempts at frustrated mastery and the projection of its evil parts as concrete
objects with enlightened understanding.