Private v. Third Eye

"He pressed the instrument to the center of my forehead and rotated the handle . . . There was no particular pain as it penetrated the skin and flesh, but there was a little jolt as the end hit the bone . . . Suddenly there was a little 'scrunch' and the instrument penetrated the bone . . . there was a blinding flash . . . 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.' It was a very strange experience . . ."

Thus a mysterious Tibetan calling himself T. (for Tuesday) Lobsang Rampa described the operation that at the age of eight opened his "third eye," giving him, in addition to clairvoyant and telepathic powers, the ability to diagnose a person's state of health and humor from his "aura" (a cleaning man in a temper looked like "a figure smothered in blue smoke, shot through with flecks of angry red"). This was a mere overture to a long vaudeville show of astonishment presented in Rampa's account of his Tibetan life, The Third Eye (Doubleday; $3.50). Other attractions included levitation, riding in kites ("horrible swayings and bobbings did unpleasant things to my stomach"), man-mauling Siamese cats, Abominable Snowmen, and a visit to the mummified remains of one of his own previous incarnations.

Rampa claimed to have been a confidant and adviser to the Dalai Lama, to have served as a medical officer in the Chinese army during World War II, to have done time in Japanese and Russian concentration camps and to have visited the U.S. "We Tibetans," wrote Rampa, "believe that everyone before the Fall of Man had the ability to travel in the astral, see by clairvoyance, telepathize and levitate." Levitation "takes much practice," but astral traveling "can be accomplished by almost anyone."

Who's Suo. Since first publication in England 18 months ago, The Third Eye has sold close to 300,000 copies, 12,000 of them in the U.S. From all over the world fan mail poured in to Tuesday Lobsang Rampa. Fans wanted to come in person, but the mysterious Tibetan might have been in a state of permanent astral projection for all they could find of him. Only a few insiders knew--or thought they knew--that Rampa was really Dr. Kuan Suo, an egg-bald, bearded sage living quietly with his English wife outside Dublin. One of these insiders, pretty Mrs. John Rouse, wife of a London businessman, lives with the Kuans, serves as Dr. Kuan's secretary.

Not all Third Eye readers were fans. Among the dissidents were British Author Marco Pallis, whose Peaks and Lamas was a bestselling account of his Tibetan mountain climbing in the 1930s, and Diplomat Hugh Richardson, who had served as chief of the British mission in Lhasa for eight years before and after World War II. They compiled lists of Rampa inaccuracies, e.g., mention of gold candlesticks, unknown in Tibet; description of Rampa's mother wearing a single earring, a privilege restricted to male officials of a certain rank. Joining forces with Austrian Author Heinrich Harrer (Seven Years in Tibet), Pallis and Richardson decided to go to work on three-eyed Rampa with a private eye of their own.

In four weeks and 3,000 miles of traveling, Detective Clifford Burgess and his pretty girl assistant turned up enough to make Tuesday Lobsang long for a lamasery. For, announced Burgess, his name is neither Rampa nor Kuan Suo but plain Cyril Henry Hoskin, and he is the son of a Devon plumber.

Ghost's Ghost. Hoskin had "gone Eastern" while working for a career-counseling firm in London. He shaved his head, grew a beard, changed his name and wrote a rhyme to his managing director: "You may wonder why I go on so But will you please remember I am Kuan Suo." When he was sacked some time later, he took to "spivving it" and writing occasional magazine articles. To Literary Agent Cyrus Brooks he brought a manuscript on corsets and such a high, wide and fancy load of Himalayan snow that

Brooks suggested he forget corsets and set to work on The Third Eye instead.

As a result, Hoskin, 47, was nearly $50,000 richer last week as he lay ill in his Irish cottage. Outside, flocks of tourists, alerted by front-page treatment of the expose in the British press, trampled the lawn. The embarrassed publishing firm of Seeker & Warburg suspended plans for publication of Hoskin's next book, Medical Lama. Said a U.S. spokesman for Doubleday: "We expected that people would think it was good reading, but not necessarily true." "I am surprised," said Agent Brooks. "He possesses extraordinary powers of telepathy." Ailing Hoaxer Hoskin (he says he has both heart disease and cancer) insisted, in a tape recording made for a British commercial TV program, that his book was all true--he had merely ghosted it for a ghost.

"Some time ago," he said, "I had the strangest premonition, the strangest urges, and even against my will I was compelled to change my name ... I had a slight accident. I had concussion. And my body was actually taken over by the spirit of an Easterner."

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