The first-person narrator is a Tibetan physician with the psychic ability to read human auras-via a third eye sited vertically in his forehead. That's likely because he built his reputation under the persona of a Tibetan lama-physician purporting to be the author of a tome called The Third Eye. While he revelled in the attention he got from his books, he hated to be recognized in person. Lobsang Rampa (not his real name) was a refugee of the celebrity kind, on the run from news hounds.

He usually wrote in bed, closely monitored by his Siamese cats. It's possible he composed one or two books during his stay. The self-designated guru Lobsang Rampa stayed close to the top of the 35-storey building where he led a hermit-like existence, making occasional wheelchair forays to Denman Place Mall. The upper floors hosted residential suites with expansive views over English Bay. It is a little-known fact that sometime in the early 1970s, the self-designated guru Lobsang Rampa and his entourage lodged for about two years at the Denman Place Inn (as it was then known) in Vancouver's West End. News of Rampa's secretive Vancouver residence only came to light with the publication of his secretary Sheelagh Rouse's memoirs, Twenty-Five Years with T. Lobsang Rampa (not his real name) and his entourage took refuge atop the 35-storey Denman Inn at English Bay where he led a hermit-like existence, making occasional wheelchair forays to Denman Place Mall. He once wrote about his travels by flying saucer from Tibet to a paradise on Venus, but he never mentioned his two-year stay in Vancouver. Rather than present The Third Eye as fiction, Rampa stuck to his Tibetan lama identity and laughed all the way to the bank. The first-person narrator is a Tibetan physician with the psychic ability to read human auras via a third eye sited vertically in his forehead. Lobsang Rampa launched one of the greatest literary hoaxes of the 20th century with the publication of The Third Eye in 1956. LITERARY LOCATION: Denman Place Inn, corner of Denman & Comox, near English Bay, VancouverĪ charlatan who gained international success as the author of esoteric bafflegab, T.

The hermit lobsang rampa