Dibyesh Anand - Geopolitical Exotica

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.

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 specific 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.

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.

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: