The creation of thoughtforms and phantasms

However interested we may feel in the other strange accomplishments with which Tibetan adepts of the secret lore are credited, the creation of thought forms seems by far the most puzzling.

...

Phantoms, as Tibetans describe them, and those that I have myself seen do not resemble the apparitions which are said to occur during spiritualist seances.

As I have said, some apparitions are created on purpose either by a lengthy process resembling that described in the former chapter on the visualization of Ydam or, in the case of proficient adepts, instantaneously or almost instantaneously. In other cases, apparently the author of the phenomenon generates it unconsciously, and is not even in the least aware of the apparition being seen by others.

However, the practice is considered as fraught with danger for every one who has not reached a high mental and spiritual degree of enlightenment and is not fully aware of the nature of the psychic forces at work in the process.

Once the tulpa is endowed with enough vitality to be capable of playing the part of a real being, it tends to free itself from its maker's control. This, say Tibetan occultists, happens nearly mechanically, just as the child, when his body is completed and able to live apart, leaves its mother's womb. Sometimes the phantom becomes a rebellious son and one hears of uncanny struggles that have taken place between magicians and their creatures, the former being severely hurt or even killed by the latter.

Tibetan magicians also relate cases in which the tulpa is sent to fulfil a mission, but does not come back and pursues its peregrinations as a half-conscious, dangerously mischievous puppet. The same thing, it is said, may happen when the maker of the tulpa dies before having dissolved it. Yet as a rule the phantom either disappears suddenly at the death of the magician or gradually vanishes like a body that perishes for want of food. On the other hand, some tulpas are expressly intended to survive their creator and are specially formed for that purpose.

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Must we credit these strange accounts of rebellious "materializations", phantoms which have become real beings, or must we reject them all as mere fantastic tales and wild products of imagination? -

Perhaps the latter course is the wisest. I affirm nothing. I only relate what I have heard from people whom, in other circumstances, I had found trustworthy, but they may have deluded themselves in all sincerity.

Nevertheless, allowing for a great deal of exaggeration and sensational addition, I could hardly deny the possibility of visualizing and animating a tulpa. Besides having had few opportunities of seeing thought-forms, my habitual incredulity led me to make experiments for myself, and my efforts were attended with some success. In order to avoid being influenced by the forms of the lamaist deities, which I saw daily around me in paintings and images, I chose for my experiment a most insignificant character: a Monk, short and fat, of an innocent and jolly type.

I shut myself in tsams and proceeded to perform the prescribed concentration of thought and other rites. After a few months the phantom Monk was formed. His form grew gradually fixed and lifelike looking. He became a kind of guest, living in my apartment. I then broke my seclusion and started for a tour, with my servants and tents.

The Monk included himself in the party. Though I lived in the open, riding on horseback for miles each day, the illusion persisted. I saw the fat trapa, now and then it was not necessary for me to think of him to make him appear. The phantom performed various actions of the kind that are natural to travelers and that I had not commanded. For instance, he walked, stopped, looked around him. The illusion was mostly visual, but sometimes I felt as if a robe was lightly rubbing against me and once a hand seemed to touch my shoulder.

The features which I had imagined, when building my phantom, gradually underwent a change. The fat, chubby-cheeked fellow grew leaner, his face assumed a vaguely mocking, sly, malignant look. He became more troublesome and bold. In brief, he escaped my control. Once, a herdsman who brought me a present of butter saw the tulpa in my tent and took it for a living lama.

I ought to have let the phenomenon follow its course, but the presence of that unwanted companion began to prove trying to my nerves; it turned into a "day-nightmare". Moreover, I was beginning to plan my journey to Lhasa and needed a quiet brain devoid of other preoccupations, so I decided to dissolve the phantom. I succeeded, but only after six months of hard struggle. My mind-creature was tenacious of life.

There is nothing strange in the fact that I may have created my own hallucination. The interesting point is that in these cases of materialization, others see the thought-forms that have been created.

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In connection with these kinds of visualization or thought-form creation, I may relate a few phenomena which I have witnessed myself:

1.

A young Tibetan who was in my service went to see his family. I had granted him three weeks' leave, after which he was to purchase a food supply, engage porters to carry the loads across the hills, and come back with the caravan.

Most likely the fellow had a good time with his people. Two months elapsed and still he did not return. I thought he had definitely left me. Then I saw him one night in a dream. He arrived at my place clad in a somewhat unusual fashion, wearing a sun hat of foreign shape. He had never worn such a hat. The next morning, one of my servants came to me in haste. "Wangdu has come back" he told me. "I have just seen him down the hill".

The coincidence was strange. I went out of my room to look at the traveler. The place where I stood dominated a valley. I distinctly saw Wang-du. He was dressed exactly as I had seen him in my dream. He was alone and walking slowly up the path that wound up the hill slope. I remarked that he had no luggage with him and the servant who was next me answered: "Wangdu has walked ahead, the load-carriers bust be following."

We both continued to observe the man. He reached a small chörten, walked behind it and did not reappear. The base of this chörten was a cube built in stone, less than three feet high, and from its needle-shaped top to the ground, the small monument was no more than seven feet high. There was no cavity in it. Moreover, the chörten was completely isolated: there were neither houses, nor trees, nor undulations, nor anything that could provide a hiding in the vicinity.

My servant and I believed that Wangdu was resting for a while under the shade of the chörten. But as the time went by without his reappearing, I inspected the ground round the monument with my field glasses, but discovered nobody. Very much puzzled I sent two of my servants to search for the boy. I followed their movements with the glasses but no trace was to be found of Wangdu nor of anybody else.

That same day a little before dusk the young man appeared in the valley with his caravan. He wore the very same dress and the foreign sun hat which I had seen in my dream, and in the morning vision. Without giving him or the load-carriers time to speak with my servants and bear about the phenomenon, I immediately questioned them. From their answers I learned that all of them had spent the previous night in a place too far distant from my dwelling for anyone to reach the latter in the morning. It was also clearly stated that Wangdu had continually walked with the party.

During the following weeks I was able to verify the accuracy of the men's declarations by inquiring about the time of the caravan's departure, at the few last stages where the porters were changed. It was proved that they had all spoken the truth and had left the last stage together with Wangdu, as they said.

2.

A Tibetan painter, a fervent worshipper of the wrathful deities, who took a peculiar delight in drawing their terrible forms, came one afternoon to pay me a visit. I noticed behind him the somewhat nebulous shape of one of the fantastic beings which often appeared in his paintings.

I made a startled gesture and the astonished artist took a few steps towards me, asking what was the matter. I noticed that the phantom did not follow him, and quickly thrusting my visitor aside, I walked to the apparition with one arm stretched in front of me. My hand reached the foggy form. I felt as if touching a soft object whose substance gave way under the slight push, and the vision vanished.

The painter confessed in answer to my questions that he had been performing a dubthab rite during the last few weeks, calling on the deity whose form I had dimly perceived, and that very day he bad worked the whole morning on a painting of the same deity.

In fact, the Tibetan's thoughts were entirely concentrated on the deity whose help he wished to secure for a rather mischievous undertaking. He himself had not seen the phantom.

In these two cases, the Phenomenon was produced without the conscious co-operation of its author. Or, as a mystic lama remarked, Wangdu and the painter could hardly be termed the authors of the phenomena. They were but one cause - maybe the principal one - amongst the various causes which had brought them about.

3.

The third strange occurrence I have to relate belongs to the category of phenomena which are voluntarily produced. The fact that the apparition appeared in the likeness of the lama who caused it, must not lead us to think that he projected a subtle double of himself. This is not the opinion of advanced adepts in Tibetan secret lore.

According to them such phantoms are tulpas, magic formations generated by a powerful concentration of thoughts. As it has been repeatedly stated in the preceding chapters, any forms may be visualized through that process.

At that time I was camping near Punag ritöd in Kham. One afternoon, I was with my cook in a hut which we used as a kitchen. The boy asked me for some provisions. I answered, 'Come with me to my tent, you can take what you need out of the boxes.'

We walked out and when nearing my tent, we both saw the hermit lama seated on a folding chair next my camp table. This did not surprise us because the lama often came to talk with me. The cook only said 'Rimpoche is there, I must go and make tea for him at once, I will take the provisions later on.'

I replied: 'All right. Make tea and bring it to us.'

The man turned back and I continued to walk straight toward the lama, looking at him all the time while he remained seated motionless. When I was only a few steps from the tent, a flimsy veil of mist seemed to open before it, like a curtain that is slowly pulled aside. And suddenly I did not see the lama any more. He had vanished.

A little later, the cook came, bringing tea. He was surprised to see me alone. As I did not like to frighten him I said: 'Rimpoche only wanted to give me a message. He had no time to stay to tea.' I related the vision to the lama, but he only laughed at me without answering my questions. Yet, upon another occasion he repeated the phenomenon. He utterly disappeared as I was speaking with him in the middle of a wide bare track of land, without tent or houses or any kind of shelter in the vicinity.

I would like to thank Paul M., who sent me the original English text.
 

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