TEMPORAL AND SPIRITUAL JOURNEYING TO THE "ROOFTOP OF THE WORLD"
Adventure (see Fergusson 1911) and spirituality are integral parts of journeys into Tibet. Lhasa, "a centre where barbaric practices mingle with the most sublime and philosophic studies," attracted Western travelers for "nothing is too strange for anyone to expect in this hidden metropolis of nirvana" (unidentifiable newspaper article by Edward Arnold, in IOR: MSS EUR/F197/523 n.d.). Western travelogues highlight a sense of adventure, surprise, and an encounter with spirituality in travels into Tibet, particularly in journeys to Lhasa (see Hovell 1993). After examining the enchantment with Tibet in terms of its geographically and politically challenging location, I look at two works of travel writing and pick out elements of temporal and spiritual adventure (see Cocker 1992). Apart from stereotyping, the main representational strategies at work include gaze, naturalization, [40] spiritualization, self-affirmation, and self-criticism.
One factor that explains the magnetic power of Tibet is its extreme remoteness from the West, conjuring images of a land of cherished ideals or a wasteland. Tibet's geographical features constitute a uniquely "fantastic" landscape. "It has all the physical features of a true wonderland… No description can convey the least idea of the solemn majesty, the serene beauty, the awe- inspiring wild-ness, the entrancing charm of the finest Tibetan scenes" (David -Neel 1936, 262).
Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the fact that they were "closed" to Europeans added to the mystery of Lhasa and
Tibet. The epithets "the Forbidden City" and the "forbidden land" merely served to enhance the desire of individual Western travelers to defy the authorities. Wellby, who wanted to go to Tibet to find out "what mysteries lay beneath the word UNEXPLORED with which alone our latest maps were enlightened" (1898, 72; emphasis in original) finally gave up when he realized that the only way to succeed "would have been to shoot the most determined of our obstructionists… Even if supposing we had shot some of them, it would have been a very hazardous step to have risked a serious scrimmage almost on our very frontier" (72; emphasis added).
The desire to explore the unknown as the main reason to travel to Tibet is nicely expressed in Deasy:
I had long entertained the desire to travel in some unknown country, and in the spring of 1896, when circumstances were favourable, the wish was transformed into a settled purpose. The vast extent of the territory marked "unexplored" on the map of Tibet, then recently published, at once attracted me, and it was to this inhospitable and almost inaccessible land that I resolved to proceed. (1901, 2)
The opening of Tibet did not follow the British invasion: travel to Lhasa was severely restricted both by the Lhasa authority and the British Indian government. The "forbidden" character of Tibet was etched even deeper in Western imagination when China occupied Tibet and long periods of effective and coercive isolation began. Though Tibet has been opened to travelers in limited numbers since the 1980s, severe travel restrictions remain. Dodging Chinese authorities and encounters with "real" Tibetans (as opposed to "Sinicized" Tibetans) have become a staple of much contemporary travel writing (see, for example, Abbots 1997; Berkin 2000; Kewley 1990; McCue 1999; Morpurgo 1998; Patterson 1990; Scholberg 1995; Wilby 1988).
David-Neel's My Journey to Lhasa
Alexandra David-Neel was the first Western woman to be granted an audience with the Dalai Lama in Kalimpong. [41] She was the first to enter Lhasa when she went with a Sikkimese lama (Yongden) whom she adopted as her son and later brought to live in France. She set off in the winter of 1923 disguised as a Tibetan pilgrim, maps hidden in her boots, revolver in her peasant dress; she outwitted officials and bandits, enduring days without food and nights without shelter. Her account of her journey to Lhasa is replete with various themes common to Exotica Tibet. Though it is a travel account, it is also a journey into spiritual realms. As Hopkirk writes in the introduction to a later edition of her book, "her explorations were of the Tibetan mind rather than of the terrain" (David-Neel 1991, xv).
The book, originally published in 1927, starts with her rationale for taking the adventurous but dangerous trip. The British prohibited her from traveling in the Himalayan region, [42] which increased her determination. Once, when she was stopped from proceeding into Tibet,
I took an oath that in spite of all obstacles I would reach Lhasa and show what the will of a woman could achieve! But I did not think only of avenging my own defeats. I wanted the right to exhort others to pull down the antiquated barriers which surround, in the center of Asia… if "heaven is the Lord's," the earth is the inheritance of man, and… consequently any honest traveller has the right to walk as he chooses, all over the globe which is his. (xxv)
Her criticisms are also directed against the central Tibetan authority based in Lhasa. It was a period when Tibetans had been successful in pushing out the Chinese army and controlled large parts of the ethnically Tibetan area. According to her, the Tibetans lost much in parting with China, for their "sham independence profits only a clique of court officials" (256).
David-Neel's exoticization is more about the Tibetan landscape and less about the Tibetan people. While she finds most Tibetans very superstitious, she admires the physical landscape: "But is not everything a fairy tale in this extraordinary country, even to the name it gives itself, that of Khang Yul, 'the land of snows'?" (277). She derives spirituality not from Tibetan religion but from the geographical and natural landscape. After living the life of a Tibetan mystic, she felt that natural edifices like mountains and valleys conveyed a mysterious message: "What I heard was the thousand-year old echo of thoughts which are re-thought over and over again in the East, and which, nowadays, appear to have fixed their stronghold in the majestic heights of Thibet" (24). She considered the fantastic to be an everyday occurrence in Tibet. Mystics and mysticism are ever present in her pages. Speaking of the mystics' retreat in parts of Tibet, she writes, "This world of the Thibetan mystics is a mystery in the mystery of Thibet, a strange wonder in a wonderful country" (198).
David-Neel is conscious of her gender and the extra significance it has for her trip. When she finally succeeds in her goal, she writes, "All sights, all things which are Lhasa's own beauty and peculiarity, would have to be seen by the lone woman explorer who had had the nerve to come to them from afar, the first of her sex" (259). She concludes, "The first white woman had entered forbidden Lhasa and shown the way. May others follow and open with loving hearts the gates of the wonderland" (310).
Although David-Neel's journey into the wonderland of Tibet was a spiritual adventure, the dominant impression it conveys is that of a travel adventure. In contrast, accounts such as Peter Mattheissen's The Snow Leopard are primarily about spiritual journey. Physical adventure comes to symbolize a spiritual quest.
A SEARCH FOR THE SNOW LEOPARD
The Snow Leopard, first published in 1978, is about the search in the Himalayas for the elusive eponymous cat. It is also a celebrated account of the bond between human beings and nature. Written out of Peter Matthiessen's interest in Zen, The Snow Leopard (1995) recounts his trip to the remotest parts of Nepal with the naturalist George Schaller in search of the Himalayan blue sheep and the rarely seen snow leopard. Matthiessen confronts the beauty, mysteries, and often violent world of the Himalayas as well as his own equally strange and difficult feelings about life and death. Not surprisingly, the one book he carries with him is the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
The author exoticizes natives throughout the book. Praising Sherpas for their primitivism, he writes, "The generous and open outlook of the sherpas, a kind of merry defencelessness, is by no means common, even among sophisticated peoples; I have never encountered it before except among the Eskimos" (1995, 40). His companion calls Sherpas "childish people" (109). Matthiessen is ashamed of himself when he witnesses the "happy go lucky spirit," the "acceptance which is not fatalism but a deep trust in life" exhibited by Sherpa companions (149).
Unlike David-Neel, whose spec
ific goal was to reach Lhasa, Matthiessen has no aim. "I would like to reach the Crystal Monastery,
I would like to see a snow leopard, but if I do not, that is all right too" (93). When all he gets to see are the marks of the snow leopard, he writes, "I am disappointed, and also, I am not disappointed. That the snow leopard is, that it is here, that its frosty eyes watch us from the mountain-that is enough" (221). In response to a question- "Have you seen the snow leopard?"-he replies, "No! Isn't that wonderful?" (225). When asked why he took the journey, he replies: "I wished to penetrate the secrets of the mountains in search of something still unknown that, like the yeti, might well be missed for the very fact of searching" (121-22; emphasis added).
The Snow Leopard in its spiritual quest also becomes a means through which the Western Self is critiqued. The author writes, "My head has cleared in these weeks free of intrusions-mail, telephones, people and their needs-and I respond to things spontaneously, without defensive or self-conscious screens" (112). The account ends with despair as "I am still beset with the same old lusts and ego and emotions… I look forward to nothing" (272). The elusive snow leopard stands here for the mystical elusiveness of Tibetan culture, for the impossibility of renouncing Western desires.
TIBET: A MYSTICAL AND FANTASY LAND
An integral theme of Exotica Tibet has been the imagination of Tibet as a land of mysticism and fantasy where most events are romantic, extraordinary, and absolutely different from anything in the West. Contrasting this image with the West's self-portrait, Norbu writes, "The West, whatever its failings, is real; Tibet, however wonderful, is a dream; whether of a long-lost golden age or millenarian fantasy, it is still merely a dream" (2001, 375).
In her account of life in the border region of Tibet in With Mystics and Magicians in Tibet, David-Neel (1936) mentions having met three lung-gom-pas runners-those who take extraordinarily long tramps with amazing rapidity by combining mental concentration with breathing gymnastics. She also refers to her own ability to practice the art of warming oneself without fire in the snows and the capacity to send messages "on the wind" (telepathy) that was a privilege of a small minority of adepts (1936, 210-20).
A prominent mixture of fantasy and mysticism is found in fictional/fantasy literature. The most (in)famous example is the trilogy written by Lobsang Rampa (1956, 1959, i960), who, although an ordinary Englishman, claimed the trilogy to be the autobiography of a Tibetan lama. His works reflect the centrality of stereotyping, es-sentialism, idealization, affirmation, gerontification, and self-criticism as some of the dominant tropes in Exotica Tibet.
The Third Eye of Rampa the Mystifier
Tuesday Lobsang Rampa (alias Cyril Hoskin) was a mystifier, in two senses of the term. First, he mystified Tibet, embellishing its various realities with his own fancies, and second, he mystified his readers, playing on the credulity of the reading public (Lopez 1998, 86). Initially he did not disclose his identity; later, when detective investigation revealed that he was an English plumber who had never been to Tibet, he claimed to have been possessed by a Tibetan lama and over the course of seven years to have become a Tibetan not just in his dress but in his molecules. His trilogy consists of The Third Eye: The Autobiography of a Tibetan Lama (1956), Doctor from Lhasa (1959), and The Rampa Story (1960). The most prominent of these is The Third Eye, published in 1956 by Secker and Warburg despite opposition from experts on Tibet. The publishers defend their decision by asserting in the preface that it is "in its essence an authentic account of the upbringing and training of a Tibetan boy in his family and in a lamasery. Anyone who differs from us will, we believe, at least agree that the author is endowed to an exceptional degree with narrative skills and the power to evoke scenes and characters of absorbing and unique interest" (in Rampa 1956, 6). It became an immediate best seller. Though the community of European experts on Tibet was outraged, most reviews were positive, [43] and despite the disclosure of Rampa's identity in 1958, the book continued to sell.
Rampa opens The Third Eye with statements that are unlikely to have come from a Tibetan: "I am a Tibetan. One of the few who have reached this strange Western world" (9). This supposed autobiography of a young Tibetan lama, his life in Tibet, his training as priest-surgeon, his spiritual and fantastic adventures, and finally his departure from Tibet, is replete with stereotypes and cliches about Tibet that were prevalent in the mid-twentieth century.
Rampa defends Tibetan society's exclusiveness and resistance to progress. He writes, "Tibet was a theocratic country. We had no desire for the 'progress' of the outside world. We only wanted to be able to meditate and to overcome the limitations of the flesh" (14). Tibet is not only gilded with mysticism but also rich in material wealth. Rampa invokes the gold that was a crucial part of the imagination of Tibet in the early twentieth century. [44] "There are hundreds of tons of gold in Tibet, we regard it as sacred metal… Tibet could be one of the greatest storehouses of the world if mankind would work together in peace instead of so much useless striving for power" (206).
The fantastic never leaves the description. After Rampa spends some time in the medical-school-cum monastery, his "third eye" is opened through surgery, allowing him to ascertain people's health and moods from their emanation (101-2). He is also given a crystal used as an instrument to penetrate the subconscious. Later, Rampa sees records of "the Chariots of the Gods" (UFOs?) and argues that some lamas had established telepathic communication with these "aliens" (140). He mentions that levitation is possible but astral traveling is easier and surer. He describes his trip to a secret volcanic territory in the north with tropical vegetation where he sees a few yetis and offers:
I am prepared, when the Communists are chased out of Tibet, to accompany an expedition of sceptics and show them the yetis in the Highlands. They can use oxygen and bearers, I will use my old monk's robe. Cameras will prove the truth. We had no photographic equipment in Tibet in those days. (220; emphasis in original)
Nor is the audience (the West) ever absent from the narrative. The "autobiography" indulges in the representational strategy of (self-)criticism when Tibet is compared favorably to the West. The Dalai Lama warns Rampa that, while one could discuss the "Greater Realities" in Tibet and China, in the West one had to be extra careful because Westerners "worship commerce and gold"-"they ask for 'proof' while uncaring that their negative attitude of suspicion kills any chance of their obtaining that proof" (112).
Yeti, time travel, hypnotism, telepathy, levitation, astral travel, clairvoyance, invisibility-Tibet is a land of possibilities! It combines mysticism and fantasy, being both a lost horizon and a future utopia.
THE WEST'S PLAYGROUND
Exotica Tibet is a product of the Western imagination. It therefore comes as no surprise to see Tibet operating as a physical and imaginative playground for Westerners and their desires. Representational strategies of self-affirmation and self-criticism are as integral to the Western imagination of Tibet today as they were in the past. Tibet is seen as offering essential spiritual services to humanity. Tibet provides a set for the "drama of white people" (Norbu 1998, 20). The role of Tibet as a colorful [45] and transformative backdrop can be explored in Seven Years in Tibet-both the book and the Hollywood movie.
Seven Years in Tibet
Seven Years in Tibet (1956) is an account of the Austrian Heinrich Harrer's time in Tibet. With the outbreak of the Second World War, the British in India interned Harrer. After some unsuccessful attempts, he escaped in 1944 and, along with Peter Aufschnaiter, crossed the Himalayas into Tibet. After dodging officials, they managed to reach Lhasa in early 1946. Instead of being turned back, they were accepted by the authorities in Lhasa. Harrer's account of his stay in Tibet covers a crucial time in Tibetan history, its last years as an independent state. He also became an official paid by the Tibetans and tutored the young Dalai Lama before he was forced to leave Lhasa in 1951 when the Chinese took control.
It is interesting to note that Harrer and his companion set out for
Lhasa just after the war was over. So it was not the escape from the British but the "lure of the Forbidden City" that encouraged them (86-87). In the tradition of previous travelers to Lhasa, Harrer describes his first sight of the golden roofs of Potala: "This moment compensated us for much. We felt inclined to go down on our knees like the pilgrims and touch the ground with our forehead" (113).
Though the representational strategies of idealization and self-criticism are dominant, Harrer's attitude is full of ambiguity. He writes of his infuriation with the "fatalistic resignation" (145) with which Tibetans lent themselves to backbreaking toil (they did not use the wheel) and is scathing about the Tibetan government's attitude toward modern medicine, hygiene, and sanitation. He writes disparagingly of the prevalence of venereal disease and homosexuality (186). Yet he "did not miss the appliances of Western civilization. Europe with its life of turmoil seemed far away" (156). While pondering whether progress in the form of a motor road to India would be good, he thinks, "One should not force a people to introduce inventions which are far ahead of their stage of evolution… Tibetan culture and way of life more than compensates for the advantages of modern techniques" (185; emphasis added). The admirable aspects of Tibetan culture, for Harrer, include the "perfect courtesy of the people" and "cultivated and elegant" upper-class women. In his more recent Return to Tibet (1985), Harrer provides an even more nostalgic account of Tibet as a surrogate society: "Would it not be marvellous if our young people could also possess their land of mystery and magic, their Shangri-La, a goal they would exert their best efforts to attend?" (173). He affirms that this Shangri-la for him was Tibet.
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