Ever wondered what it’s like to have your third eye opened surgically? In his bestselling 1956 book The Third Eye, Tuesday Lobsang Rampa describes the procedure that he underwent on his ninth birthday in a Tibetan monastery.
One lama held young Rampa’s head between his knees to keep him still. Another lama applied a herbal compress to the boy’s head and then took out a scary looking tool with a U-shaped blade covered in tiny teeth.
The lama said it would hurt. In Rampa’s own words:
He pressed the instrument to the centre of my forehead and rotated the handle. For a moment there was a sensation as if someone was pricking me with thorns. To me it seemed that time stood still. There was no particular pain as it penetrated the skin and flesh, but there was a little jolt as the end hit the bone. He applied more pressure, rocking the instrument slightly so that the little teeth would fret through the frontal bone… Suddenly there was a little ”scrunch” and the instrument penetrated the bone… For a moment the pain was intense, like a searing white flame. It diminished, died and was replace [sic] by spirals of colour, and globules of incandescent smoke…[i]
The operation, Rampa claimed, gave him special powers like the ability to see auras, leave his body, levitate and read minds…
Later in this and subsequent books, Rampa tells how the monks of Tibet had created amazing giant kites and how lamas would go flying through the air in them. He also encountered a yeti, was tortured by the Japanese and travelled to Venus in a spacecraft…[ii]
As a young teen, I devoured the works of Tuesday Lobsang Rampa. They had everything: astral projection, auras, Atlantis, yetis, hollow earth, telepathy, levitation, prophecy, mysticism and flying saucers all seasoned with a superficial knowledge of Buddhism and the Theosophical tradition. Rampa wrote of the Akashic record, an infinite library of books containing everything that ever happened or would ever happen. The Akashic record is an idea Rampa borrowed from Theosophy, but as a bookish youth this endless library of wisdom was my idea of heaven. It sounds quaint now. The Akashic Record would probably all fit on your phone.
But who was the eccentrically monikered Tuesday Lobsang Rampa, this mysterious lama from Tibet?
As the lama says, ‘The more you know, the more you have to learn…’
Lama Chameleon
As soon as Rampa’s book The Third Eye was published, experts on Tibet and Buddhism decried it as a hoax. Some scholars went so far as to hire a private detective to investigate this mysterious man from the east.
It turned out that the supposed Tibetan lama Tuesday Lobsang Rampa was born as Cyril Hoskin to a Devonshire plumber. He was not Tibetan nor a lama and had never been anywhere near Tibet yet alone Venus. He had, though, shaved his head and changed his name to Dr Kuan-So. Still, his accent was less eastern than west country.
At the time of his expose, Rampa aka Dr Kuan-So aka Cyril Hoskin was living in Howth near Dublin with his wife and a young woman called Sheelagh Rouse, a society hostess who had left her husband and children to become Rampa’s disciple.[iii]
It seems Rampa had also been attempting to photograph the human aura. This activity required a succession of young female models (their auras are brightest, apparently) to pose naked (the clothing interferes with the aura, apparently).
In any case, it seemed the game was up for the bogus lama, as the press were now calling him.
But Cyril Hoskin had plenty more up the sleeve of his saffron robe…
And he could explain everything…
How Cyril Henry Hoskin became Tuesday Lobsang Rampa
Rampa explained that Cyril Hoskin had been attempting to take a photo of an owl when he fell out of a tree. When he got to his feet, he was surprised to see that his body was lying in a crumpled heap where he had fallen. Just then, a saffron-robed Tibetan lama floated across the lawn and told him telepathically that he wanted Cyril’s physical body for the good of humanity. Cyril wasn’t thrilled with this prospect, but the lama told him he would be back in a month for his answer, but in the meantime he was to grow a beard and think it over.
A month later, the lama returned with two companions and met Cyril in his garden. He decided to go though with the exchange of souls. In order for the ‘transmigration’ of souls to occur, the lama told Cyril to climb the tree again and throw himself out of it once more which he did. Cyril Hoskin went straight to paradise allowing Tuesday Lobsang Rampa to take over his physical body.[iv]
Mrs Hoskin didn’t seem to mind that her husband was now a Tibetan lama, and the best-selling books continued: The Doctor from Lhasa, the Rampa Story, Cave of the Ancients, Wisdom of the Ancients, the Hermit, Tibetan Sage, I Believe, You Forever, the Saffron Robe, Feeding the Flame, As it Was… and several others. One book, Living with the Lama, was even dictated by his cat, Mrs Fifi Grey-whiskers!
I was overjoyed when I got my hands on his 1965 book You Forever. This was the one that told you how to do everything. How to see auras. How to develop psychic powers like clairvoyance, psychometry and telepathy. And best of all, how to leave your body and go travelling on the astral plane to visit the Akashic Record. I followed his instructions meticulously night after night, but my psychic powers remained undeveloped, and my astral body stubbornly refused to budge.
Not knowing of his newspaper exposes in the 1950s, it only when I read of his journey to Venus that even my teenage credulity was stretched to its limits…
The Lama Goes to Venus
In articles for the Flying Saucer Review magazine, Rampa told how he became one of a group of seven telepathic lamas who discovered an ancient alien spaceship high in the Tibetan highlands. Venturing inside the craft, they met telepathic alien giants who took them for a ride in their flying saucer.
The magnificent seven telepathic lamas were taken on a tour of the alien giants’ base on the dark side of the Moon before being flown at the speed of light to Venus. There they found the planet to be full of fairy cities, with towers, domes and spires all glittering with beautiful colours…
Rampa and the other lamas were taken in a flying Venusian car to the Hall of Knowledge, where the Lords of Venus projected for them the entire history of the planet earth from the eons before Atlantis to the year 3000…
And then they were taken home again…
As the lama himself says, ‘If people don’t wish to believe, it doesn’t matter how much proof is offered…’
Epilogue
Tuesday Lobsang Rampa died in 1981 aged 70. An excellent recent biography of the man by R.B. Russell sums up his ubiquitous books:
…a unique mix of derring-do, hardship, pseudo-orientalism and various New Age beliefs, although there was also a great deal of home-spun philosophy with additional reactionary grumbling.[v]
Yes, he was a New Age charlatan who made a living from writing specious books about his imagined experiences in a Tibet he had never even visited. But his books also fired the imaginations of many around the world looking for exotic excitement and occult adventure. He still has his devotees today and his website contains online versions of all nineteen of his books, including the one written by Mrs Fifi Grey-whiskers his Siamese cat.[vi]
As the lama once said, ‘Humans upon earth are an irrational figure given to believing that which is not so, in preference to that which is…’
[i] Tuesday Lobsang Rampa (1956) The Third Eye, Corgi, pp.75-78
[ii] Rampa’s adventures on Venus were published in Flying Saucer Review and are available here: https://educate-yourself.org/cn/My-Visti-to-Venus-1957-Dr-T-Lobsang-Rampa.pdf
[iii] R.B. Russell (2025) T. Lobsang Rampa and Other Characters of Questionable Faith (Tartarus Press)
[iv] See the excellent R.B. Russell (2025) T. Lobsang Rampa and Other Characters of Questionable Faith (Tartarus Press) for the different versions of Rampa’s transmigration story in his various books
[v] Russell (2025) p.100
[vi] This website run by Rampa’s devotees including his live in disciple Sheelagh Rouse and contains all his books in various digital formats: https://www.lobsangrampa.org/research-material.html The snippets of Rampa wisdom (the lama says etc …) are taken from the above website
Paul Weatherhead 