The Day the Lama Came to Tea
By JOHN IRWIN
MY first thought on reading The Third Eye was, 'Can this be true?'; my second, 'I hope it is.' Here was a tale of magic powers, born of strange experience; here was someone filled with a wisdom never known to Western man, and declining in the Orient. Before it was too late, I must meet this Lama, to ask him a thousand questions; to be shown a hundred wonders.
From my publishers, Seeker and Warburg, I learnt that he was a recluse who saw few, if any, people other than his own small circle, but that if I cared to send a letter it would be forwarded. I wrote, and waited. Some three weeks later I was awakened by the telephone ringing at seven O'clock in the morning. A female voice told me that Dr. Lobsang Rampa had received my letter, and the stars indicated that he should call to have tea with me at 3.7 p.m. on the following Wednes- day. This was exciting news. 'A Lama to tea?' my wife said. 'I wonder if Fortnums stock yak butter?' They don't.
At exactly 3.7 p.m. a taxi drew up; in it was a man over six feet high, bald and clean shaven, Wearing a saffron cloak and a blue skirt, under which were brown woollen socks and sandals on a pair of very big feet. He was as Western a man as I had ever seen, and we endured three hours of bewildering embarrassment. Saying, 'In my country it is the custom to bring a gift to a strange home,' he presented my wife with a small package wrapped in tissue paper. He told us that he had made the nine Chinese figures, carved in wood, in a tableau of a trial scene. It is by me as I write, inscribed 'To Mr. and Mrs. Irwin.' He told us he had carved it himself. That gave us something to talk about, while I recovered from the shock of knowing that this tall, pale, white man with a west-country accent was not a Lama. What was he? Impossible to say 'Come off it, Lobsang !'
Almost every sentence he spoke was prefaced by 'In my country:. He implied that he had to be very careful of seeing strangers because of some obscure Communist threat. He had stomach trouble, he said, as a result of his captivity during the war, and for tea he ate slice after slice of very thin brown bread and butter. He told us that all his fingers had been broken by the Japanese, and held out his large hands with unshaped knuckles. The naughty thought flashed through my mind, 'How did he carve those delicate figures with those hands?' He talked a lot about my aura, and described the colours which suggested tran- quillity to him, explaining the 'Line of Life' as a purple-coloured thread. He held his hands about six inches from my wife's and asked me if I could see the purple coloured threads passing between their finger tips. I couldn't.
We then talked about the sales of his book. He clearly set great store by the profits he hoped for from the American sales. I expected him to hint at some television publicity to help his sales, but he made no such suggestion. Why, then, had he come? He seemed a gentle person, and though completely lost in this fantastic role he was play- ing he was harmless and very lonely. Did he write the book or not? I could not ask him, but some evidence has come later that either he did or he had control of some other person who could write. He told me I had clairvoyant powers, which I should use with a crystal ball. He offered to instruct me in the technique, and, three days later, I received an article written in exactly the sati; easy-to-read style as The Third Eye, describing a method of crystal-gazing. He was a sad man and, while I am sure that he had no magic powers or strange knowledge, if he wrote this book he certainly has remarkable imagination. But I do not think that any reasonable person could meet him and not draw some of the conclusions now re- ported. Nobody, I feel, could believe that he was Tibetan, or Chinese. Nobody could believe that he is, or ever had been, a Lama. I could not even believe that he is, or ever had been, a surgeon. Is the man who came to tea a spoofer, on his own, or is he a pathetic puppet at the centre of an organ- ised deception? I do not know, but I am astonished that he should have got away with it.
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