My Life in Tibet

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A boy is born in a quiet country district in England. A revered Lama dies in eastern Tibet. What is the connection between these isolated events thousands of miles apart?

Somewhere in eastern Tibet, we never actually find out where, is an isolated monastery cloaked in immense mystery. Strange supernatural and metaphysical methods practiced here give rise to some human experiences that defy logic.

The author, Edwin John Dingle, travels across China from Shanghai where he has been a journalist for some years, to this hidden temple. Here he meets his Tibetan spiritual master. A sense of calling has driven him beyond human misery to reach this holy shrine of learning. Has knowledge of the inner workings of the hidden part of the human brain been lost to all but a few guardians left isolated here in Tibet?

Writing now some thirty years later, he vividly recalls happenings of an occult nature. How do masters of meditation walk on hot rods, sit in frozen caverns, their body heat melting snow? And yet stranger, how do they leave the living world and return from a state of apparent death? We delve into the deepest chasms of the meaning of life in this exceedingly unusual book.

Although we never really find out where the story takes place, we know it most probably has its location in Eastern Tibet. The author, Edwin John Dingle spent much of his working life in China and he converses with his mentor in the Chinese language. A boy in England and a great spiritual teacher in Tibet, what can be the link?

The story is an unusual one, with none of the usual sparkling descriptions of the country or his journey to this seat of learning isolated beyond the foothills of western Sichuan. Its focus is on the supernatural, the spiritual and the meditation that necessarily precedes any opening on to the plains of enlightenment. It is not an epic of adventure, but a strange, at times bizarre, mix of learning and study. Of devotion to a teacher, one whose powers to transcend the normal are more than apparently sincere.

Yet one cannot but help develop a feeling of mild scepticism; to do otherwise might be a failing in human reasoning. But here we are concerned with ideas and methods surrounding the supernatural, which might have been lost to all but a few chosen disciples of such powers. An open mind is sufficient to appreciate the possible and potential scope of these baffling happenings. Can man through levels of meditation above the normal sphere be capable of rising above pain, where the mind has power over the body?

We cannot easily dismiss the theme of the book as misplaced, for we are here verging on the edge of knowledge, which our naturally cynical minds could easily dismiss. Can a spiritual being reach such a high level of detached knowledge that he can leave this world and return at a time of his choosing in the future?

Is Edwin John Dingle a crank or an enlightener for those in the world who seek answers to the mysteries of life? One must read and think on these matters. For here in an isolated temple may be found the final secrets of life revealed by those of humble needs.