Thursday, May 20, 2004

The Third Eye



The third eye is the energy gate between your eyes. It is also the title of a book by Tuesday Lobsang Rampa, a Tibetan priest. In the book Rampa tells us how his third eye was opened: by drilling through the skull and by wedging it open for two weeks with a piece of wood! Do not try this at home. It's not necessary, anyway. There are much gentler methods for those who want to pursue such esoteric hobbies.

Here's what Rampa says about his first experience of wearing a Western suit:

Oh that suit! Tight tubes of cloth that gripped my legs, so tight that I was afraid to bend. Now I knew why the Westerners could not sit in the Lotus attitude: their clothes were too tight. Certainly I thought that I was "ruined for life" by these tight tubes. They put a white shroud on me, and around my neck they tied a thick ribbon and pulled it tight as if they were going to strangle me. Over that they fitted a short piece of cloth with patches and holes behind, in which, they said, the Westerners kept things - instead of in a robe as we did. But the worst was yet to come. They put thick and heavy "gloves" on my feet and pulled them tight with black strings with metal ends....A black inverted bowl with an edge around it was put on my head, and I was told that I was dressed as a "Western gentleman of leisure". It seemed to me that they would have to have leisure as surely they could not be expected to do any work dressed up like this!


This is why I love books: unexpected treasures in the most unlikely places!


And THIS is why I really love books: It turns out that the whole book is a hoax, written by one Cyril Henry Hoskins... Thanks for the anonymous in the comments-section. Though it was clear from the drilling-through-the-skull stuff to me that the story wasn't intended to be a real one, I thought that it was a Tibetan hoax, not a Devon one.