The Buddhist deity Mahottara Heruka

Mahottara Heruka is important to the Nyingma order, whose founder, Padmasambhava, is shown at the upper left of this painting. With his fangs bared and his pointed wings fanning a flame halo, he unites with his female counterpart. The three eyes on each of his twenty-one heads focus their fury at the fundamental fallacy of ordinary perception: the conviction that the subject-object world we know as ordinary reality is “all there is.” He and his consort bear in their many hands mirrors showing reflections of various buddhas and bodhisattvas.

In the famous work sometimes called the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Mahottara Heruka appears during the death process; if the deceased recognize him as a projection of their own mind, they will forthwith attain awakening.