15. april 1956 fikk den engelske forleggeren Fredric Warburg en telefon fra en venn som lurte på om Warburg var interessert i å utgi en tibetansk lamas merkelige selvbiografi. Fjorten måneder etter utgivelsen fikk Warburg sitt livs sjokk. En privatdetektiv avslørte at Lobsang Rampa var identisk med engelskmannen Cyril Henry Hoskins, som aldri hadde vært utenfor Storbritannias grenser. Da burde historien om boken vært ute, men ikke helt...

Det har versert en rekke teorier om den skandaleomspunne boken. Er Cyril Hoskins et av vårt århundres mest begavede channelling-medier - et talerør for en avdød, tibetansk mystiker? Selv påstår Hoskins at han i løpet av 1949 overlot sitt fysiske legeme til en tibetansk lama, etter at han hadde skiftet navn til dr. Kuan Suo i februar 1948...

Boken inneholder fortellingen om Lobsang Rampas prosess for å øke sine klarsynte evner. Han forteller om en operasjon som kalles åpningen av det tredje øye. Hvordan han har fløyet gjennom luften på en stor drage. Om sine møter med yeti - den avskyelige snømann, og om en mystisk opplevelse, kjent som levende død.

Er han en sjarlatan? Les boken og døm selv.

210 sider. Pocketbok. 1989.

Innhold:
Forord
Min tidligste barndom
Slutt på barndommen
Mine siste dager hjemme
Foran tempelets port
Læretid
Livet i klosteret
Det tredje øyet blir åpnet
Potala
I "Rosenhekken"
Tibetansk tro
Trappa
Urter og drager
Mitt første besøk hjemme
Jeg bruker mitt tredje øye
Langt mot nord
Lama
Min siste innvielse
Farvel, Tibet!

"Forord til den engelske utgaven
Jeg er tibetaner. En av de få som har satt sine ben i denne underlige, vestlige verden. Setningsbygningen og grammatikken i denne boken er på mange måter mangelfull, for jeg har aldri lært engelsk på skolen. Jeg fikk min undervisning i en japansk fangeleir, der jeg lærte språket så godt jeg kunne av kvinnelige, engelske og amerikanske fanger, som jeg pleiet. Jeg lærte å skrive det ved hjelp av "forsøk og feil".

Mitt elskede land er blitt overfalt av kommunistiske horder - som forutsagt. Av den grunn har jeg vært nødt til å skjule mitt virkelige navn og mine venners. Jeg har motarbeidet kommunismen så sterkt at mine venner i kommunistiske land ville få svi for det, hvis min identitet ble røpet. Jeg har vært i hendene på både kommunistene og japanerne, så jeg har personlige erfaringer om tortur, men det er ikke om tortur jeg har skrevet denne boken. Det er om et fredselskende land, som i så lang tid har vært misforstått og baktalt.

En del av det jeg forteller vil sikkert ikke bli trodd. Men det blir Deres sak, for Tibet er et land som er ukjent for resten av verden. Den mannen som fortalte fra et fremmed land at "innbyggerne red på havet på skilpadder", ble gjort til latter. Det samme var tilfelle med dem som hevdet at de hadde sett "levende fossiler" av fisk. Men nå er disse fossilene oppdaget, og en prøve er ført til Amerika med fly for å bli undersøkt. Disse menneskene ble ikke trodd. Men senere viste det seg at de hadde fortalt den rene sannhet. Slik vil det også gå med meg.
Skrevet i "Skog-fårets" år (1955) - T. Lobsang Rampa"

Tuesday Lobsang Rampa was a writer who claimed to have been a lama in Tibet before spending the second part of his life in the body of a British man. Cyril Henry Hoskin (8 April 1910-25 January 1981) described himself as the "host" of Tuesday Lobsang Rampa. The name Tuesday relates to a claim in The Third Eye that Tibetans are named after the day of the week on which they were born.

The Third Eye

In November 1956 a book called The Third Eye was published in the United Kingdom. It was written by a man named Lobsang Rampa, and purported to relate his experiences while growing up in a monastery in Tibet after being sent there at the age of seven. The title of the book is derived from an operation similar to trepanation in which a third eye is drilled into Rampa's forehead, allegedly giving him the power of clairvoyance. The book describes the operation as follows:

“ The instrument penetrated the bone. A very hard, clean sliver of wood had been treated by fire and herbs and was slid down so that it just entered the hole in my head. I felt a stinging, tickling sensation apparently in the bridge of my nose. It subsided and I became aware of subtle scents which I could not identify. Suddenly there was a blinding flash. For a moment the pain was intense. It diminished, died and was replaced by spirals of colour. As the projecting sliver was being bound into place so that it could not move, the Lama Mingyar Dondup turned to me and said:" You are now one of us, Lobsang. For the rest of your life you will see people as they are and not as they pretend to be." ”

During the story, Rampa meets yetis, and at the end of the book he encounters a mummified body that was him in an earlier incarnation. He also takes part in an initiation ceremony in which he learns that during its early history the planet Earth was struck by another planet, causing Tibet to become the mountain kingdom that it is today.

The manuscript of The Third Eye had been turned down by several leading British publishers before being accepted by Secker and Warburg for an advance of £800. Prior to the book's publication Fredric Warburg met "Doctor Carl Kuon Suo" who was apparently linked to the author of the work, and was intrigued by his personality. Warburg sent the manuscript of the unpublished book to a number of scholars, several of whom expressed doubts about its authenticity. Nevertheless, the book was published in November 1956 and soon became a bestseller. The Times Literary Supplement said of the book: "It comes near to being a work of art."

The explorer and Tibetologist Heinrich Harrer was unconvinced about the book's origins and hired a private detective from Liverpool named Clifford Burgess to investigate Rampa. The findings of Burgess' investigation were published in the Daily Mail in February 1958. It was reported that the author of the book was a man named Cyril Henry Hoskin, who had been born in Plympton i Devon in 1910 and was the son of a plumber. Hoskin had never been to Tibet and spoke no Tibetan. In 1948, he had legally changed his name to Carl Kuon Suo before adopting the name Lobsang Rampa. An obituary of Fra Andrew Bertie, Grand Master of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, claims that he was involved in unmasking Lobsang Rampa as a West Country plumber.

Rampa was tracked down by the British press to Howth in Ireland and confronted with these allegations. He did not deny that he had been born as Cyril Hoskin, but claimed that his body was now occupied by the spirit of Lobsang Rampa. According to the account given in his third book The Rampa Story he had fallen out of a fir tree in his garden in Thames Ditton, Surrey while attempting to photograph an owl. He was concussed, and on regaining his senses had seen a Buddhist monk in saffron robes walking towards him. The monk spoke to him about Rampa taking over his body and Hoskin agreed, saying that he was dissatisfied with his current life. When Rampa's original body became too worn out to continue, he took over Hoskin's body in a process of transmigration of the soul.

Rampa maintained for the rest of his life that The Third Eye was a true story, and in the foreword to the 1964 edition of the book, he wrote:

“ I am Tuesday Lobsang Rampa, that is my only name, now my legal name, and I answer to no other. ”

Lobsang Rampa went on to write another eighteen books containing a mixture of religious and occult material. One of the books, Living With The Lama, was claimed to have been dictated to Rampa by his pet Siamese cat, Mrs. Fifi Greywhiskers. Faced with repeated allegations from the British press that he was a charlatan and a con artist, Rampa went to live in Canada in the 1960s. He and his wife San Ra'ab became Canadian citizens in 1973.

Lobsang Rampa died in Calgary on 25 January 1981.

The Third Eye (1956)
My Visit to Venus (1957, but see note below)
Doctor from Lhasa (1959)
The Rampa Story (1960)
Cave of the Ancients (1963)
Living with the Lama (1964)
You Forever (1965)
Wisdom of the Ancients (1965)
The Saffron Robe (1966)
Chapters of Life (1967)
Beyond The Tenth (1969)
Feeding the Flame (1971)
The Hermit (1971)
The Thirteenth Candle (1972)
Candlelight (1973)
Twilight (1975)
As It Was! (1976)
I Believe (1976)
Three Lives (1977)
Tibetan Sage (1980)

My Visit to Venus is based on work which Lobsang Rampa did not approve for publication and was published some years after it was written. It describes how Rampa meets the masters of several planets during a trip in a spaceship.