If you have enough confidence and insights, visualizing offerings to Buddha and Bodhisattvas has the exactly same effects and merits as a real offering. Exoteric, especially Mind Only Chittamatra, believes that everything that we see, whatever it is Pure Land or hell, is all mind-made, the appearance is only built by one’s heart. Tantra is explaining to the very bottom of this view by its behavior and practice.

[Excerpt from Luminous Wisdom Book Series: The Blessing of Speech]