Who was Lobsang Rampa, really?

(Pic above: Lobsang Rampa together with one of his Siamese cats, a polished stone ball, and Tibetan prayer wheel)

Last week I received an email from a TV producer wanting to know if I’d be willing to share what I know about Lobsang Rampa. Ah, that name again! It’s curious how, more than forty years after he died, he is still remembered.

Those of us of a certain age – which includes many of you, dear readers! – may recall the excitement we felt reading our first paperback by T. Lobsang Rampa. I certainly do. I was about sixteen when I first encountered You Forever. The book did the rounds of a small group of us in Greendale, Salisbury, where I grew up, and where, spiritually speaking, mainstream Christianity was the only game in town.

I can still remember the thrill of coming across a completely different spiritual view. Friends with whom I’d cycle home from night-time school clubs, would gather under the gum trees, at the intersection where we’d need to go our separate ways, and talk for ages about whether we might be capable of astral travelling!

There was an exhilarating rebelliousness about reading Lobsang Rampa, who seemed to challenge all we’d been taught to believe. His talk of detecting people’s auras, opening one’s third eye, mind-reading cats, and constant spiritual advancement – no judgement or eternal damnation – was both electrifying and liberating. Could it possibly be true?

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Back in those days, as a teenager in the middle of Africa, it was hard to find out. Interest in Lobsang Rampa’s writing peaked in the 1960s. I encountered him in the 1970s, decades before it was possible to find out whatever you want in just a few keystrokes. I guess my interest in his books faded as I grew up and moved onto other intrigues.

I don’t know when I first found out that the British press had unmasked Lobsang Rampa as a Devonshire plumber by the name of Cyril Hoskin. Cyril’s account was that his body hosted the spirit of Tuesday Lobsang Rampa, the author of his books. By the time I gave the subject much thought, Tibetan lamas like Lama Yeshe, Chogyam Trungpa, Akon Rinpoche and of course, His Holiness the Dalai Lama were already becoming known in the West as authentic sources of Buddhist wisdom.

Then one meditation retreat I attended some years ago, Lobsang Rampa’s name came up in conversation. A group of us were sitting together at the end of a day’s meditation, and I was surprised by how many of our own most seasoned practitioners and meditators said that their first encounter with Tibetan Buddhism had been reading a Lobang Rampa book. There were chuckles as we recalled some of his more preposterous claims. But a great deal of fond memories, like mine, too.

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I decided to revisit his books for the first time, having spent some years learning the Dharma from real Tibetan Buddhists. While some of his writing about Tibet and Tibetan culture seemed to be authentic, it was instantly obvious that Tuesday Lobsang Rampa wasn’t actually a Tibetan lama. The subjects he focused on – astral travelling, auras and the like – are more New Age subjects, barely touched on in the Dharma. Meanwhile, the major subjects of our syllabus, particularly renunciation, bodhichitta and shunyata, were never mentioned. (See my recent post on the Path to Enlightenment).

I know that there are many who still regard him as an extraordinary spiritual being and teacher. Rampa-ism is definitely a thing. But it doesn’t have much to do with mainstream Tibetan Buddhism.

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Which brings us to the question of who was T. Lobsang Rampa, really? The answer is logically to be found in one of three possibilities.

Perhaps he was merely one in the millennia-old tradition of spiritual charlatans – people who exploit the gullibility of others for their own personal advantage. Tales of ‘walk-ins’ – spirits who permanently take over another person’s body - the use of crystal balls and other new age fandangos may have no place in the practices and wisdom of Tibetan Buddhists, but they make for great stories!

Maybe he suffered from psychosis, specifically various forms of delusion, and genuinely believed himself to be the product of a ‘walk-in,’ channelling ideas into his books that he somehow convinced himself – and those around him - were authentic.

A third possibility is that Lobsang Rampa really was the manifestation of an enlightened being whose purpose was to stimulate interest in the Dharma. By that yardstick he was highly successful – his purportedly autobiographical ‘The Third Eye’ sold over half a million copies in its first two years, a phenomenal success even by today’s standards.

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In the past, I would have felt more inclined to make a definitive call about which of those three possibilities seems the most likely. But as my inner journey has unfolded, I feel the need to make judgements less and less.

Does it really matter who and what Lobsang Rampa really was? How relevant is my opinion and does it change anything? It matters to be clear about what constitutes authentic Dharma. But for the rest, the more I know about the nature of reality, the more I know that I don’t know.

Tibetan Buddhism cautions us against taking at face value or being too judgemental in particular about lamas and teachers. In one of his Jataka tales, stories the historical Buddha told about his previous lives, he recounts living in the Himalayas as a celestial being called Canda-Kinnara (I love the name!) He and his equally celestial wife fell for false rumours about their teacher’s immorality and went on to disown him. As a result, they were reborn as humans, and experienced immense suffering, including poverty and hardship. Eventually recovering their way through humility and repentance, the story is a classic morality tale against making judgements about people when you don’t know the full story. Better, by far, to reserve judgement and say nothing.

Reserving judgement when we’re sceptical goes broader than only our teachers. Many of us, and I include my judgemental self here, are very much happier when we let go a little, don’t feel obliged to take sides or offer unnecessary opinions, and recall the one thing we know to be true which is that the way anything seems to us is as much about our mind’s projection as it is about anything external.

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So, who was Lobsang Rampa, really? Perhaps a better question is, ‘Who was Lobsang Rampa to me?’ Like many thousands – tens of thousands? – of others he was the source of unprecedented excitement about a spiritual tradition which had for a long time been inaccessible to the world because of the Himalayas. A tradition which, I now sense, I was probably connected to in lives before this one, given that there was absolutely nothing in my background or childhood to predispose me to it. Lobsang Rampa was the precursor to the real deal.

Getting that email from the TV producer last week had me looking back to the blogs I’d written about Lobsang Rampa. To my surprise, I discovered that they were among the visited I had written. There were three of them, posted well before I moved my newsletter to Substack. Given that many of you are new subscribers and may not have seen them, for the sake of convenience, I have gathered them together in one place which you can click through to below.  

My hope is that this post, and the associated link below, may bring back some happy memories for you about those innocent 1970s, the thrilling possibilities we first sense when we come to the Dharma, and the mysterious Lobsang Rampa and his Siamese cats!

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The Dalai Lama’s Cat & The Claw of Attraction - Update

I have a tender throat right now, dear readers, having spent most of the week recording The Claw of Attraction for my wonderful audio publishers Bolinda. They tell me that the audio book will be published on 1st Feb 2024.

Below: in the recording booth at Soundbyte studios here in Perth, Australia, with the ever-patient Lachy at the controls.

The Claw of Attraction - Australia Kindle edition. I am sorry to report that Amazon still hasn’t fixed this problem and continue to sell Awaken the Kitten Within under The Claw of Attraction cover. Hay House Australia, the Australian publishers, are following up. I will let you know when this is resolved. In the meantime, I recommend that Australian readers buy the book in paperback from their local bookstore.

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Our sponsorship of nuns at Dongyu Gyatsal Ling Nunnery

It is our collective privilege to be sponsoring nuns at Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo’s DGL nunnery near Dharamshala. As you may recall, one of the factors that makes karma especially powerful is the the object, and the closer the object is to a state of enlightenment, the more powerful our action. Nuns studying ther Dharma are therefore extraordinarily powerful karmic ‘objects’ - how fortunate we are to have this chance to support them.

I thought you’d like a glimpse of the lives you support:

At DGL Nunnery, the nuns are part of a revival of femal practitioners performing Cham or Tibertan Buddhist Ritual Dance, performed annually at Lhabab Duchen - an auspicious festival.

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About half the money you help me raise through your subscription goes to the following four charities. Feel free to click on the underlined links to read more about them:

Wild is Life - home to endangered wildlife and the Zimbabwe Elephant Nursery; Twala Trust Animal Sanctuary - supporting indigenous animals as well as pets in extremely disadvantaged communities; Dongyu Gyatsal Ling Nunnery - supporting Buddhist nuns from the Himalaya regions; Gaden Relief - supporting Buddhist communities in Mongolia, Tibet, Nepal and India.

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