Lobsang Rampa: previous posts

Before moving my newletters to Substack, I wrote a couple of posts about Lobsang Rampa. For your convenience, I have posted them both below.

Unseen photographs of Lobsang Rampa

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 22 MAY 2021

A couple of years ago I received an email from someone wrapping up a deceased estate.  No, not a lawyer in Nigeria or Dubai.  This one was from a man whose family member, a couple of generations ago, was literary agent to the enigmatic Lobsang Rampa.  Among the few remaining items to be disposed of was a collection of cassette recordings and photos sent by Lobsang Rampa to his agent.  Would I like to have them?

As I told the diligent trustee, although many of us have reason to be grateful to Lobsang Rampa for the interest he stimulated in mystical practices during our much younger years, what he wrote about in the 1960's and 70's didn't really have much to do with Tibetan Buddhism. (You can find my previous blog on this subject below).   I suggested that the trustee contact a website promoting the work of the good Dr. Rampa, assuming the site would be run by devotees who would appreciate mementos of their teacher.

Months later, the trustee was back in touch.  He had indeed contacted the website – and received an unexpected reply: “We are not interested as they are all fakes, end of conversation.”  How exactly they had been able to determine the authenticity of items they hadn’t even seen was a mystery.

None of this helped the trustee who, not wishing to destroy something that might be valued by others, offered the items to me again.  Understanding his position, I agreed to provide a second pair of eyes.

Weeks later, a well-packaged cardboard box arrived by courier.  As I was working towards a publishing deadline, I didn’t have a chance to open it immediately.  Besides, I had become genuinely curious about what the mystery package might contain, and wanted to give its contents my proper attention.

(Above, Lobsang Rampa with one of his Siamese cats, a crystal ball and Tibetan prayer wheel)

Would it perhaps include a photograph or cryptic reference to someone who would cast a new light on the real inspiration of Tuesday Lobsang Rampa?  Might I discover references to teachers, advisors or colleagues which helped understand where he was coming from?  A clue, at least, about his own inner life?

Just as the trustee had told me, when I opened the box I found cassette tapes, slide boxes, photo albums and a stereo camera.  The latter had been a source of fascination to the author, and is inventive even by today's standards, enabling a person to take and view photos in 3D (see photo below).  Many of the photos taken with it were quite speckled, as you can see from a couple I include in this blog.

It was a strange sensation, going through a time capsule that seemed to have remained virtually untouched for the last four decades.  Buying a cassette tape player, as well as a special battery for the slide viewer, I went through the miscellany of items wondering what I may discover.

Lobsang Rampa’s cassette messages to his agent and agent’s wife, were a prosaic account of the life of a retiree in Canada, where he lived in his latter years with his wife and adopted daughter.  I didn't listen to them all the way through, but I did skip through each one in case he turned his attention to a subject such as writing, spiritual activities or conversations he might have had with others.  He had a strong, Devonshire accent and spoke very slowly - one entire tape was devoted to a harrowing journey he made across Canada in an aircraft that didn't have a pressurised cabin - the only one available, apparently, to a man travelling in a wheelchair.

(The keen photograper - he enjoyed using the latest technology)

The tapes were a reminder of how times have changed.  Throughout, he refers to his listeners as “Mr.” and “Mrs.”  And when his adoptive daughter, Sheelah Rause says a few words, she refers to “Dr. Rampa.”  All curiously formal by current standards - and interesting that even those in his inner circle referred to him by his assumed persona, rather than his real name of Cyril Hoskin.

(The Habitat apartment complex in Montreal. At the time an advanced concept in architecture)

The slides were mostly of travels in the latter years of his life - Europe, South America, USA, Canada and even Australia.  I was disappointed to find that almost all were of landscapes, buildings, ships and aircraft - he clearly had an enthusiasm for mechanical innovation and technology.  I had hoped to discover that he had been photographed with other people known in the worlds of psychic studies, psychology or spirituality more broadly.

For a while the family and their cats lived in Habitat, a model community and housing complex which was built in Montreal, Quebec, for the World Fair held there in 1967.  The building was only two years old when they moved in, and probably appealed to the author's spirit of modernity.  The photograph below is one of the few with a person in it - his adopted daughter, Sheelah.

(His adopted daughter outside the apartment block - offering a sense of scale)

Overall, the materials were more striking for what they didn't contain as what they did.  There is nothing in any of them to suggest that, through all his extensive travels, Lobsang Rampa ever visited a Tibetan Buddhist centre, met practitioners from any lineage, let alone the more prominent Tibetan Buddhists who had begun to visit Western countries.  No passing references to interesting books he'd read or conversations he’d had with fellow authors or kindred spirits. These may have happened, but if you didn’t know the occupation of  person who'd sent the items in that old cardboard box, from the vast majority of them you would probably conclude that he was some kind of engineer.

There were a couple of photos of the author in the hospital-style bed in his apartment, in each case holding one of his Siamese cats.  One of these included a crystal ball and Tibetan prayer wheel, which I have featured at the top of the post, as I think it's the best photograph of all.

Another curiosity was a personal emblem/"coat of arms" drawn by or for the author, showing images of: Lhasa's Potala Palace, a Tibetan prayer wheel, a crystal ball, volumes of Western-style books and two cats holding a candle.   Encircled by a row of beads, they include the motto: "I lit a candle."

He did.  And for the time he was living in, perhaps that was enough.

(His personal emblem)

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The enduring fascination with Lobsang Rampa

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 30 MARCH 2018

Back in 2016 I wrote a blog about T. Lobsang Rampa, author of books like The Third Eye and You Forever, that were very popular in the 1960s and 70s.   The main point I tried to make in my blog (below) was that a surprising number of Western students aged 55 plus, attribute their initial interest in Tibetan Buddhism to books by Lobsang Rampa - even though many have come to disbelieve his claims to be a Tibetan lama.

When I published my blog, I had no idea how much interest it would create.  Since then, there has been a steady stream of visits to it every week.  And a large number of comments – ranging from those with whom my observation chimed, to a number of people who were irate about my scepticism.

I have received several, angry, multi-page rebuttals of my blog, demanding that I see the error of my ways and bow down at the enlightened feet of T. Lobsang Rampa - or Cyril Hoskin as he was also known.  Had I done the poor fellow an injustice?  Was my blog, based on a skim through one of his books, the result of a prejudicial reading?

In the interests of a fair hearing, I took out two of his better-known books from the local library – The Third Eye and You Forever.  Settling into my armchair one evening, I turned the pages …

The strongest, overall impression I had was that I was reading the work of someone who didn’t have much of an education, but did have a sense of humour and a love of cats, and who had somehow come to obtain a lot of information about the social and cultural aspects of life in pre 1959 Tibet.  The most likely explanation is that he came across a book about Tibet which he used as a source.  Perhaps he had also met someone who had once been there.

Into this information about day to day life in Tibet, which had a ring of authenticity, he had woven a narrative about “Buddhist” practices, which are extremely inauthentic.  In fact, they read like a homespun philosophy with few links to Buddhism at all - more like Christianity-Lite with a few shakes of New Age thrown in. Themes of key interest to Rampa were auras, astral traveling and hypnosis – subjects I have never heard a lama teach on, nor which are covered in any of core texts that I’m aware of.  Of course the Tibetan Buddhist view is that we are energetic beings as much as physical ones – but Tibetan Buddhists don’t wander around checking up on the colours of people’s auras.  As for astral travelling, only the most accomplished yogis may be capable of directing their consciousness when asleep.  It is definitely not a practice relevant or accessible to most people, or something you can pick up from a book.

Rampa gets a number of essential concepts completely, you might say, hilariously wrong.  Here he is on inner development: ‘According to Buddhist belief, all animals, all creatures in fact, have souls, and are reborn to earth in successively higher stages.” (The Third Eye, Chapter One).  There is no concept of a “soul” in Buddhism – but we’ll let that slide as a translation issue.  The idea of successively higher stages, however, is just not Buddhist.  It would suggest that, irrespective of your behaviour in this lifetime, things for you in the future are going to get better and better.  What happened to cause and effect?

For karma you’ll have to turn to Lesson Twenty-Four in You Forever which he begins: ‘People may have heard of the Law of Karma.  Unfortunately so many of these metaphysical matters have been given Sanskrit or Brahmin names.’  Huh?  Isn’t that exactly what you’d expect given that these concepts originated in India.  And as a highly educated Tibetan monk – he told us this earlier – whether these terms are in Sanskrit or Tibetan is of no consequence. 

Let’s press ahead with karma: ‘Karma is a matter which few of us can escape. We make a debt, we have to pay it, we do good to others, they must pay us back and do good to us.  It is much better for us to receive good, so let us show good, compassion and kindness to all creatures … It is not for us to question the ways of God.’

God?!  Let’s not drag Him into this!  He is another concept you don’t find in Buddhism.  As for the ‘tit for tat’ account of karma, this doesn’t sound anything like the usual presentation we read in texts. 

But perhaps none of that matters, because when you turn to Lesson Twenty Five, apparently this is what happens after you die: ‘After having seen yourself in the Hall of Memories, then you go on to that portion of the “Other World” which you think is most suitable for you.  You do not go to Hell, believe us when we say that Hell is upon Earth – our training school!’

Contrary to what Lobsang says, the traditional Buddhist teaching is that our mind may have to endure any number of awful or wonderful experiences, depending on what arises within it.  More importantly, this process is driven by our karmic propensities, not by a calm decision to pick our next Other Worldly experience.

As for earth being hellish, it may be for many beings.  But Buddha described a precious human birth, of the kind most of us have, as being of the most incredible rarity, something to be greatly treasured.  Not a sentiment that comes across in Lobsang Rampa’s books.

I could go on, but I won’t.  I don’t know where Lobsang got his ideas from, but not from Tibetan Buddhism.  I suspect the only reason he got away with it was because, back in the 1960s and even 70s, there weren’t too many real lamas around to contradict him.  He certainly wouldn’t get away with it now.

As much as all the things he got wrong, it’s the glaring omissions which are also striking.  The lineage to which we belong is one of the most treasured elements of our practice, and establishing the veracity of the teachings one has received is the traditional preamble to any teachings by a lama.  Rampa not only makes no reference to his lineage, nor does he mention any of the great names in the Tibetan Buddhist pantheon – names like Padmasambhava, Milarepa, Tsong Khapa, Shantideva, to name just a few.

Bodhichitta, the heart of Tibetan Buddhist practice, doesn’t get a single mention, nor does sunyata wisdom or “suchness” – arguably, the concept that most strongly distinguishes Buddhism from other traditions. There is no reference to sutra or tantra teachings, or meaningful accounts of any meditation practices.

Again, I could go on, but I won’t.  It really is very clear that, whatever else he was, T. Lobsang Rampa was no Tibetan Buddhist, much less a rigorously-trained lama. 

That said, it’s easy to see the appeal of his ideas.  And one thing he did get right is that Buddhists perceive all creatures as being “sem chens” or “mind havers, possessing the same ultimate capacity for enlightenment as humans.

I know this blog will probably prompt more angry emails.  But I’d like to be clear that whatever Cyril Hoskin’s motives, both I, and many others, owe him a debt of gratitude for being among the first to stimulate an interest in Tibetan Buddhism decades ago.  His explanation of surgically opening the third eye may be complete nonsense. His instructions about auras and hypnosis derived from places other than a Tibetan monastery. It was enough that he planted the seed of an idea that this was a tradition worth exploring further.  As one reader of my blog observed: “Made up, fantasy, rubbish?  Does it matter?  It helped us get to where we are.”  As T. Lobsang Rampa may have said, “Amen to that!”

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