T. Lobsang Rampa and the Third Eye – a Zoom talk with Ray Russell

T. Lobsang Rampa, the Third Eye, & Other Characters of Questionable Faith

T. Lobsang Rampa’s 1956 ‘autobiography’ The Third Eye was an international best-seller, the first of eighteen books that would result in sales of millions during the author’s lifetime. With his training as a medical lama in Tibet, Rampa appeared to be in a unique position to share all the secrets of Tibetan Buddhism, and his revelations made him influential in the twentieth-century New Age Movement.

However, just two years after the publication of The Third Eye, it was discovered that Rampa was not a high-born Tibetan lama after all, but Cyril Henry Hoskin, the son of a plumber from Plympton in Devon. This revelation caused the world’s press (including Time magazine in the US and Der Stern in Germany) to descend upon him. This might have daunted other writers, but after only a few false starts, Rampa explained, yes, his body had once belonged to Cyril Hoskin, but that he, Lobsang Rampa, had transmigrated into it, along with all his marvellous knowledge.

Apart from shaking their heads at some of the more unlikely and outrageous revelations in The Third Eye, anyone who knew anything about either Tibet or Buddhism will have spotted the many factual errors in Rampa’s debut book. But there have always been those who want to believe a guru, even when their claims are provably untrue. Rampa realised that despite the damning evidence against him, he had somehow retained an uncritical readership, and over three decades he published book after book promoting such un-Tibetan and un-Buddhist concepts as the human aura, astral travel, astrology, telepathy with cats, UFOs and much more that formed a part of New Age thought at the time. Additionally, he made predictions about the near future which patently never came true. He retained followers then, and he has followers today.

Your speaker for this event will be the author and publisher Ray Russell. In this talk he will touch upon his research into T. Lobsang Rampa, which has resulted in T. Lobsang Rampa & Other Characters of Questionable Faith (2025), the first full-length biography of Rampa. Ray co-runs the award-winning Tartarus Press with his partner, Rosalie Parker. As an author he has had six volumes of non-fiction published including a biography of Robert Aickman, as well as four collections of short stories, three novellas and four novels.

Your curator and host is the writer Edward Parnell, author of Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country (2019). Ghostland, a work of narrative non-fiction, is a moving exploration of what has haunted our writers and artists – as well as the author’s own haunted past; it was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley 2020 prize, an award given to a literary autobiography of excellence. Edward’s first novel The Listeners (2014), won the Rethink New Novels Prize. His latest book is Eerie East Anglia (2024), part of the British Library’s Tales of the Weird series. For further info see: https://edwardparnell.com

Don’t worry if you can’t make the live event on the night – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day.