Visions are very real events for the people that have them. I’d never take that away from anyone. I’ve had a personal relationship, as it were, for many years, with my own yidam, Padmasambhava. He’s appeared in my dreams, and sometimes I’ve heard his voice talking to me. It’s quite extraordinary and meaningful. In the Buddhist tradition, however, the Buddhas and bodhisattvas are not seen as being separate from ourselves. When I’m having an experience of Padmasambhava, my mind is on one level responding as if he is an objective figure, but I know on another level that this is a communication with myself, although not a communication that’s taking place within a limited sense of myself. So these figures are not simply symbolic, since symbols are something external. The Buddhas and bodhisattvas are symbolic, but they’re also much more than that. They’re living presences within the mind, who can teach us. We can feel their love and be guided by their wisdom. And we can, with the eye of wisdom, also recognize that they’re not separate from our own nature.