Case file No. 12 · Secrets and hoaxes
Lobsang Rampa and “The Third Eye”
The claim
T. Lobsang Rampa, the author of The Third Eye, was a Tibetan lama who underwent a mystical operation, and later claimed contact with beings from space.
Hoax
A hoax. The author was an Englishman, not a Tibetan.
In 1958 a private detective identified the author as Cyril Henry Hoskin, born in England. Hoskin did not deny that he was the author. He said that the spirit of a Tibetan lama had taken over his body.
Short answer
The Third Eye (1956) was a bestselling memoir that claimed to tell the story of a Tibetan lama, with a mystical operation to open his third eye [1]. In 1958 a private detective hired by the Tibetologist Heinrich Harrer traced the author to Cyril Henry Hoskin, born in England in 1910, a surgical fitter and the son of a plumber, with no connection to Tibet [2]. Hoskin did not deny writing the books. He said that the spirit of a Tibetan lama, Lobsang Rampa, had taken over his body after a fall from a tree [5]. Tibetan officials and scholars called the books fiction [4]. A booklet published under his name in 1966 describes a trip to Venus [3].
What supporters can show
Hoskin said a lama took over his body
- Source
- After being identified, Hoskin did not deny that he was born Cyril Hoskin. He said that, after a fall from a tree, the spirit of a Tibetan lama had taken over his body [5].
- Shows
- That Hoskin told this story.
- Does not show
- That it happened. There is no independent evidence of a spirit possession, and the claim came after the discovery that he was not Tibetan [2].
A booklet under his name describes a trip to Venus
- Source
- My Visit to Venus (1966) was compiled by others from his earlier magazine articles, and he said he had not authorised it [3].
- Shows
- That such claims appeared under his name.
- Does not show
- That they are real. Accounts of a visit to Venus do not match what space probes later measured.
Claims that supporters often repeat and that we looked for but could not confirm in a reliable source.
- Hidden Tibetan knowledge. The books describe Tibetan practices. Tibetan officials and scholars said they were fiction, and we found no support for them in Tibetan sources.
- Astral travel experiences. Descriptions of leaving the body and seeing distant places. We found no verified case.
What science found
The author was an Englishman
In 1958 a private detective, Clifford Burgess, hired by the Tibetologist Heinrich Harrer, found that the author was Cyril Henry Hoskin, born in 1910 in Plympton, England, a surgical fitter and the son of a plumber, who had never been to Tibet [2].
Tibetans and scholars rejected the books
A 1972 letter from the Dalai Lama's administration said that the Tibetan side did not believe the books, which it described as imaginative fiction. The scholar Agehananda Bharati criticised them in 1974 [4]. Donald Lopez's history of the Western image of Tibet treats the Rampa affair as a notable fraud [2].
He did not deny authorship
Hoskin did not deny that he had written the books. He changed his story to say that a lama's spirit had entered his body. That is a claim for which no independent evidence exists [5][2].
The space claims conflict with measurement
Accounts of a visit to Venus do not match what space probes later measured. The planet has a surface temperature of about 460 °C and a very dense atmosphere, so no visitor could walk on it.
What is still open
The case itself is not open. A fair question for historians is why the book found such a large audience, and what it tells us about how Tibet was imagined in the West [2].
If this happens to you
When you read a memoir that claims special knowledge, look for independent evidence of the author's identity and background. Publishers and critics often can check.
Sources
- Rampa, T. L. (1956). The Third Eye. Secker & Warburg.
- Lopez, D. S. (1998). Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West. University of Chicago Press.
- Rampa, T. L. (1966). My Visit to Venus. Saucerian Books. (Compiled by Gray Barker from earlier articles; not authorised by the author.)
- Bharati, A. (1974). Fictitious Tibet: The origin and persistence of Rampaism. Tibetan Review.
- Rampa, T. L. (1960). The Rampa Story. Souvenir Press.
Change log
15 November 2026: First publication. Verdict: Hoax.