Background
Dr. Tuesday Lobsang Rampa was born in Tibet in the early XX century. Dr. Lobsang Rampa was educated at the medical school of spiritual Sakpori in Lhasa in Tibet. In 1923, Lobsang Rampa went to Tibet to study medicine at the University of Chongqing in China. Lobsang Rampa was a prisoner during World War II.
Books written by Lobsang Rampa, written in the genre of New Age, contain biographical information in addition to the arguments about metaphysics and the occult. In the early books can be found on ethnographic observation Tibetans, the real ethnographic data, and quite superficial stories about Buddhism, combined with fantastic stories. The books also explains astral travel, observation and reading auras, telepathy, clairvoyance, etc.
The Third Eye
In November 1956 a book called The Third Eye was published in the United Kingdom. It was written by a man named Tuesday Lobsang Rampa and purported to relate his experiences while growing up in a monastery in Tibet after being sent there at the age of seven. The title of the book is derived from an operation, similar to trepanation, that Rampa claimed he had, in which a small hole was drilled into his forehead to arouse the third eye and allow stronger powers of clairvoyance. The book describes the operation as follows:
The instrument penetrated the bone. A very hard, clean sliver of wood had been treated by fire and herbs and was slid down so that it just entered the hole in my head. I felt a stinging, tickling sensation apparently in the bridge of my nose. It subsided and I became aware of subtle scents which I could not identify. Suddenly there was a blinding flash. For a moment the pain was intense. It diminished, died and was replaced by spirals of colour. As the projecting sliver was being bound into place so that it could not move, 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."
During the story, Rampa meets yetis and, at the end of the book, he encounters a mummified body that was him in an earlier incarnation. He also takes part in an initiation ceremony in which he learns that during its early history the Earth was struck by another planet, causing Tibet to become the mountain kingdom that it is today.
Original 1950s cover of The Third Eye
The manuscript of The Third Eye had been turned down by several leading British publishers before being accepted by Secker and Warburg for an advance of £800. Prior to the book's publication Fredric Warburg met "Doctor Carl Kuon Suo" - before he changed his name to Dr Tuesday Lobsang Rampa - and was intrigued by his personality. Warburg sent the manuscript of the unpublished book to a number of scholars, several of whom expressed doubts about its authenticity. Nevertheless, the book was published in November 1956 and soon became a global bestseller. The Times Literary Supplement said of the book: "It comes near to being a work of art."