The Disappearing (and Reappearing) Tibetan

Few people have had quite as interesting a life as Alexandra David-Néel (1868 -- 1969), the French-born explorer. 

There are books about her, and many more books by her - and quite influential books they turned out to be.

In one of her works, With Mystics and Magicians in Tibet, she mentions, among many other interesting tidbits, the case of a young man who disappeared from view in circumstances that seem opposed to the laws of physics as we know them.

As you will see, this case differs, or so it seems, from any other mentioned so far in this blog. It could not be called a dimensional anomaly, properly speaking - certainly not in the same sense as the other cases described so far.
 

Still, after careful consideration we decided to include it here because there is simply much too much that we - we as a civilisation - do not know about our being on this Earth and about the modalities of its appearance, to omit it on the grounds of iffy categorisations.
 

The story appears within a very interesting lengthy passage on the formation of thought forms among Tibetan mystics and "magicians".
 

Here it goes, in A. D. N.'s own words.

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 Yidam 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. 

In connection with this kind of visualization or thought-form creation, I may relate a few phenomena which I have witnessed myself.

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 traveller.

The place where I stood dominated a valley. I distinctly saw Wangdu. 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 must 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, 279 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 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 hear 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.

The modality, the appearance of the young Tibetan's disappearance, if you'll forgive the hapless pun, is practically identical to some of the "vanishing" stories mentioned here - notably the disappearance of Benjamin Bathurst (which, however, seems to have been a particularly well executed abduction and/or murder) and the account about Paula Welden's vanishing (possibly also a murder), in 1950.

To refresh your memory: Bathurst famously "walked around the horses" into thin air - or so it was reported - while Paula Welden reportedly vanished when she walked around a rocky outcrop. She simply never reappeared.

But the similarity ends there. As you can see, A. D. N. interpreted this peculiar incident as having to do with the creation of thought forms.

Then again, there is a whole line of thought that claims that everything we see or do is a mental construction - a "thought form". The only difference would be that instead of doing it consciously and purposefully we do it mostly in a haphazard or at least consciously uncontrolled manner.

According to this line of thought - and many of the stories here seem to corroborate it - appearance is nothing: a flicker on a flimsy surface, a projection.

And yet, appearance is the very base of our daily reality, and the measuring stick by which we gauge the "reality" of reality. 

And this is what warrants the inclusion of this peculiar story here, whatever the origin of the phenomenon described.

IF YOU LIKED THIS, YOU MIGHT LIKE THIS:

The Scream (and within in it another story, Heard Accident Before it Happened) 
The Other One 
My Body, Myself?




If you want to report a perceived dimensional anomaly, please do, but read this first.

Whatever happened to the Roman soldiers of York?

Why haven't we posted a word about that famous story yet? a concerned reader asked.

You know, the one about the poor chap who went into a cellar to do some maintenance or repair work and must have drilled too far into the wall or something, because an entire company of Roman soldiers, not to mention the horse, came out of the wall - surely you've heard about it?

If you haven't, don't worry.

Either the Search function doesn't work properly, or the reader somehow missed the search results, but we certainly did write about it, albeit within a post discussing a different matter.

Here it is, complete with resurrected links. 

What is (Not) a Ghost?

 
P.S. If you're looking for ancient Romans in Great Britain, you might want to have a peep at these, too: The Last of the Romans.

N.B. Please, excuse the messy and generally deteriorated appearance of this blog.

Yesterday Blogger must have suffered some particularly ill effects of the full moon, because it almost ate our blog entirely. We have spent two days trying to undo the damage, but it appears to be a lobotomy.

High time for Google to renew its brain - or at least some of its local grey cells...

A Matter of Gravity

Here's a thought from a nice little compendium of "shocking" facts from the  recently published book, The Grand Design, by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow:

"No matter how thorough our observation of the present, the (unobserved) past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities."

Ah yes - observation. The physics equivalent of the Holy Grail... and just as elusive.

What is observation - this force that makes infinite potentialities and probabilities collapse into one observed "reality"?

It is an acknowledgement of sorts, yes - but does it have anything to do with consciousness, in the (admittedly limited) sense that we understand it? 

The father of the "many worlds theory", Hugh Everett, is said to have vehemently refused the idea.

Apparently, very many physicists still do.

But it should also be said that Everett's conception of consciousness itself was, inevitably, limited.

A friend of mine, also a physicist (the same one that shared a pizza and Australia's Next Top Model with me), recently said something that is now stuck in my mind like a silly tune, a jingle that won't go away:

OBSERVATION = GRAVITY

GRAVITY = OBSERVATION 

The problem is, gravity itself is much more of a mystery than apple-stricken Isaac Newton and his followers (especially his followers) would have us believe.

Yet this same force seems to be dictating Time - arranging timespace - itself.

Something to ponder about on this almost-spring Saturday, when so many people seem to be expecting so many terrible wonders from our dear puny little Moon.

 The Moon (who else?) from Georges Méliès' 1902 film, A Trip to the Moon.

IF YOU LIKED THIS, YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE: Is it the Faultlines' Fault?

(A) Dare

If you are feeling antsy and would like to actually experiment with timespace on your own, this may be your lucky day. Your journey starts here.

ESSENTIAL LUGGAGE (10 items):

1. unwavering belief that it is actually possible to manipulate your position in time/space beyond what seems possible or normal
 

2. a humble mind unencumbered by what it reads

("Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven"... Does this ring any bells?)

4. A well-developed body awareness and body memory
(more on this in some other post, perhaps, but it's exactly what it sounds like: how do you feel - in your body - the reality of any given moment, of whatever is happening... and how it is happening?)

5. fearlessness

6.-10: perseverance

OPTIONAL (but highly advisable);

- a joyful heart

- gratitude

Man can prove the existence of a dimensionally larger world simply by focusing his attention on an invisible state and imagin­ing that he sees and feels it.

If he remains concentrated in this state, his present environment will pass away, and he will awak­en in a dimensionally larger world where the object of his con­templation will be seen as a concrete objective reality.

Intuitively I feel that, were he to abstract his thoughts from this dimension­ally larger world and retreat still farther within his mind, he would again bring about an externalization of time.

He would discover that every time he retreats into his inner mind and brings about an externalization of time, space becomes dimen­sionally larger.

And he would, therefore, conclude that both time and space are serial, and that the drama of life is but the climb­ing of a multitudinous dimensional time block.

Thus spoke Neville Goddard, one of those rare people who dare go out of their - our - mind: out of the confines of the rational mind.

(The link above leads to a book from where the excerpt was taken.
You can find more links to books - free of charge - if you follow the link below. Or if you just Google them out.)

For a very good link on him, see The Answer (and related entries) in our associated blog.

DISCLAIMER

If anything - anything at all - goes awry, please do not blame us.

We don't think you would, but we have no control over who reads this blog, and how they choose to interpret it. We cannot be held responsible for other people's lives and decisions.

Post originally written on 23/02/10