Lobsang T Rampa - Twilight.doc

                            CHAPTER ONE


    The old grey plane soared gently through the noonday
sky.  Years before she had been one of the Queens of
Travel bearing a famous marquee indeed, traversing the
air lanes of the whole world, covering the globe wherever

Man traveled, carrying the elite of commerce, the stars

of the theatre world and the films.  In those days it had

been a prestige symbol to fly in a plane such as this.  Now

she was old and worn, a relic from a bygone age, ousted

by screaming jets and the insane desire to “get there”

faster and faster for—why?  What DO people do with all

the time they “save”?

    The old twin-engines murmured softly, a pleasant

enough sound, like giant bees on a summer day.  Now the

old plane was on a placid routine flight from Vancouver

to Calgary.  Last week, perhaps, she may have been flying

in the Northern Territories where the temperature was

far, far below zero, and the blinding snow would make

anything but instrument flight impossible.  Next week,

maybe, she would take oil prospectors to some of the

remote oil sands in the search for more and more power

by a power-mad nation, for a power-mad world.  But now

the former Queen of the Air was a charter plane, a poor

old hack going anywhere at the whim of any customer

with a few dollars to spare.

    Soon the foothills of the Rockies came into view rising,

ever rising, until they soared into the highest peaks of

that immense range stretching across the world.  Now the

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air was becoming turbulent and the plane bounced and 

tossed amid the snow-clad ranges, for here was the re-

gion where the snow never left the highest mountain

peaks. 

    Miss Taddy Rampa uttered a yowl of outraged protest

and looked as though her last moment had come.  Miss

Cleo Rampa swallowed hard and put on her bravest I-

Can-Take-It look as she opened wide her big blue eyes as 

she stared hard at the rocky ground so far below. 

    But why the flight? Why yet another move?  It all

started a few months before in Vancouver—.
    June in Vancouver is usually such a pleasant month, a

month when Nature starts to come fully awake and the

weather is good, and when the sea has a smiling sparkle,

when people are busy with their boats.  Tourists start

coming, and it is usually a time when all the store-

keepers are sharpening up their wits hoping to match

those of the tourists.  But this June, this day in June, was

not so good after all.  You'll have had the same type of

day, one of those days when everything—but EVERY-            

THING—goes wrong.  Still, you are lucky, you know, you

have those days every so often, or, as the saying goes,

“Once in a blue moon.”  But supposing this type of day

lasted for weeks, for months, or even for years, supposing   

there were patterns?  Probably most people who are “in 

the public eye” get trouble with the moronic few who

seem to exist solely to cause trouble for others. 

    A bus driver friend of mine told me that he and his

fellows are always being persecuted by frigid old biddies

who think that they are the “Lords Anointed” and are

entitled to special consideration from bus drivers—they

think the buses are their own private chariots.  And when

a bus driver politely points out that the buses are for the

use of everyone the old biddy will rush off to complain

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and try to lose the bus driver his job.  Authors get people
like that to persecute them and to prevent them from

being complacent or self-satisfied.  I was going to tell you

all about a series of events which caused me to leave

British Columbia, but—conditions decreed otherwise—
    The old Author sat in his wheelchair and watched
complacently while a typescript was being bundled up.

Another book finished, the fifteenth this time, and the old

man, just out from the hospital, was smiling to himself

with satisfaction because this was a book which would

stir no controversy, this was a book which a publisher

could take without having any qualms, without having

any urgent stirrings in those lower regions and to which

publishers seem to be remarkably prone.

    The typescripts—for another country also was inter-

ested—were taken away to be mailed, and the old Author

went about the rather difficult task of everyday living in

the hope that soon he would be able to consider yet

another book as had been asked for by so many inter-

ested readers.

    Time went on, as it usually does, and eventually there

came a gloomy message from the Agent in England say-

ing that the typescript was not suitable for England.  It

seemed a fantastic state of affairs to the old Author be-

cause as was usually the case he had had the typescript

read by a panel of twelve people to make sure there was

nothing which could rule even the tenderest feathers,

and all twelve had insisted that this was perhaps the most

peaceful book and the “smoothest” book.  But the Great

God Publisher who sat upon the Golden Throne and

wielded a whip laden with old lead type did not like the

look.  Although the matter had already been dealt with

this time the edict came down from “the One Above” that

apparently there must be nothing about police, sex, pris-

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ons, abortions, religion—well, there mustn't be anything

about all the things I had written about.  So it caused

quite a problem. 

    At about that same moment there came a cable from

another publisher who was highly elated with the book. 

He was well satisfied, he cabled to say that he wanted to

sign the contract then and there.  And another publisher    

expressed his interest in the book without any alterations. 

So it seems that in this year and age the English people

appear to have rather tender susceptibilities.  But we

mustn't go on about this.  I am told the publisher wants

questions answered, so let's get on with some of those,

shall we?

    Hey, that's a nice little question, a sensible one, too;

“Why do people sleepwalk?”

    Well, just about everyone does astral travel when they

go to sleep.  The astral body goes off, and the physical

body is meant to remain more or less passive, twisting

and turning a bit, of course, in order that muscles may

not be strained by being contracted for too long in one

position.  But sometimes a person who is in the astral will

be so engrossed in his or her activities in that astral stage

that he or she will unconsciously relinquish part of the

control suppressing the activities of the physical back on

Earth.  And so the physical tends by “sympathetic reac-

tion” to follow the astral body, and so we get a case of

somnambulism, or sleep walking.  The person gets out of

bed and just ambles about, and it is better not to awaken

such a person because if he is awakened then the sudden

shock can bring back the astral body with yet another

shock which makes the combination of astral and physi-

cal quite bilious.  Sleep walkers who have suddenly been        

awakened will certainly agree with me on that point. 

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    Another question is, “Is the Land of the Golden Light a

fourth dimensional world?”

    Well, yes it is a fourth dimensional world while we are

in this third dimensional world.  But when we are in the

fourth dimensional world the Land of the Golden Light

will be in the fifth dimensional world, and so on.  You see,

when you move upwards the stage above you is always

more golden, that is, it has a more tenuous atmosphere

and a higher frequency of oscillation (why don't I just

call it “vibration”?)
    Somebody is quite interested in this fourth dimensional

world because he says, “When you die to the fourth di-

mensional world where does your astral body go?”

    You always have to have a body, after all, think how

stupid you would be if you were trying to get about and

you hadn't got a body of any land, if you were just pure

thought.  It wouldn't be much good to you, would it?  So

down here on Earth we have a physical body.  Now if you

can imagine what we were like on the second dimension,

then what is now our physical body would then have

approximated to the astral body.  So we moved from the

second dimension into the third, which is on this Earth,

and then we occupied more solidly the Earth body which

was in effect the astral body of the second dimension.  So

when we leave this Earth we shall vacate our Earth body

and then we shall go to the astral world and live in the

astral body which is then our physical body.  Do you

follow that?  Wherever we are at that moment we have a

physical body, and, of course, on each stage our body

will be absolutely as solid as all those other bodies which

are around us.  We build up energy for a new astral body

from what we are doing on what is at that moment our

“Earth”, or the world of our physical existence, so that

eventually when you get to the—oh, what shall I say?—

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eighth dimension, you will have to live in the eighth

dimensional physical body while your actions and your

life force will generate the ninth physical body which 

then, of course, will be your astral.  And that astral body

will be in close touch with your Overself which is much,

much, much higher. 

    Here's another question about astral travelling.  It is,

“When you are astral travelling how do you go about

finding the zones in which astral cats, dogs, horses, etc.,

live?”

    Well, you don't have to go about finding it.  If you are a

lover of some particular animal that animal will come to

your own “zone” and will actually invite you to come and

visit him or her in his or her own district or hometown. 

Remember that when you get beyond this Earth things

are very very different.  Animals are not just stupid crea-

tures who can't talk and can't do anything.  Actually,

humans are the dumb clucks because animals can and do       

talk by telepathy.  Humans for the most part have to

make uncouth  sounds which they term a language,

whereas any animal can do telepathy in any language.

To make it clearer I will say that if you want to go to a

particular zone and you have a right, or a reason, to be in

that particular zone, you can get there merely by think-    

ing about it.  It's as simple as that. 

    Well, I thought, as I said before, that we would move

from British Columbia.  We had had a lot of difficulty in

that Province and so it is always good to go to new

places, and that is what we decided to do. 

    The Government of British Columbia didn't help

either.  The Income Tax people were persecuting me

wanting to know why I claimed an allowance on a            

wheelchair; does a person sit in a wheelchair all day for    

the pleasure of it?  And wheelchairs wear out.  So the

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stupid asses of the Income Tax people got an “earful”

from me, and I had to get three Medical Certificates, two

from Montreal and one from Vancouver, to say that I

had been using a wheelchair for years and was not using

one for pleasure.  So, all things considered, we came to

the definite conclusion that the sooner we got out of Van-

couver the better for our health and our peace of mind.

We thought and thought, and looked at maps, and then

for some quite unknown reason we settled on Alberta.

From the data we were able to get we found that

Edmonton was too cold and too windy and too insular.

Lethbridge, nearer the American border, was too much

of a farming community where the word “insular” prob-

ably would not even be known.  So we settled on Calgary.

The local airlines were not at all helpful.  They were

not interested in taking a disabled person in a wheelchair

and two Siamese cats.  So we went into the matter very

thoroughly, we worked out costs of fares, we wondered

whether we should get an ambulance to drive us from

Vancouver to Calgary, and eventually with the help of a

friend we managed to get in touch with a very good Air

Charter firm.  We were able to settle for a quite reason-

able sum for the trip which compared very favorably

indeed with what it would have cost by ambulance by

road.

     The Great Day came and at last our lease was termi-
nated.  I trundled aboard a thing known as a Handi-Bus, a
thing which has a ramp up which a wheelchair is pushed
into a sort of empty truck or bus, and there the wheel-

chair is strapped very securely to the floor, the ramp is

folded up outside the back, and friends or relatives of the

victim get into a taxi and then the cavalcade moves off.

We  went through  Vancouver to Vancouver Airport.

There we met the first obstacle.

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    It had been arranged that a forklift should be available

to lift me complete with electrically-powered wheelchair

into the big old plane.  Well, the forklift wasn't there, at

that part of the Airport they didn't have one!  I sat there

in the back of the Handi-Bus, and eventually I got fed up

with the whole idea so while people were milling around        

discussing what they should do, how to get me and the

wheelchair in the plane, I moved forward in the chair to

the foot of the ladder leading up into the body of the

plane.  There I managed to pull myself into the plane by

the power of my arms alone.  My legs are nothing to boast

about, but with my arms I could still toss a heavy man    

over my shoulders—it would probably give me a heart

attack it would be worth it!

    So I got myself into that old plane, and with crutches

managed to move to a seat along one side.  Then a load of

men lifted the wheelchair into place, and the others

of the little party got in, together with the luggage.  The

plane roared and roared, and eventually we got clearance

from the Airport and rushed down the runway and leapt

into the air.  And some of these old planes do indeed leap

into the air. 

    We took a climbing turn over the harbor and then

made a 300 degree turn toward the Rockies. 

    The mountains were beautiful.  Cleo was fascinated in

looking about her.  Taddy was continually distressed at

the thought that if there were any more bumps she might

lose her lunch, always Taddy's first thought.  And it is not

so easy for an aging Girl Cat to find her “air-going legs”

when the plane is bouncing and jouncing all over the

sky. 

    The time dragged slowly by, it always seems such a

waste sitting in a plane doing nothing except look out,

and all the time beneath us there were the cruel jagged        

                                              14
rocks with their high points enrobed in snow, and lower
down their flanks the vivid blue of deep, deep water.

Occasionally there was a sight of a small farming com-

munity served by a minute airstrip, or the sight of float

planes taking off from those mountain lakes where no

airship could be managed.

    The light came on and the sign lit up, “Fasten seat

belts-no smoking.”  Well, no smoking didn't apply to us,

but we fastened our seat belts and grabbed hold of the

cats who, for safety, we now put in baskets.

    The plane slanted down, passed through a layer of

cloud, and then we emerged over the foothills on the

other side of the Rockies.  Below us was the Foothills

Hospital which a year later I was to enter as a patient. To

the left of us was the big University of Calgary.  The

plane swooped on getting lower and lower.  We looked

with interest at the city which was going to be our new

home; we saw the Calgary Tower, we saw the sky-

scrapers of downtown, and we saw the twisting river, or

perhaps it should be rivers—the Bow and the Elbow—as

they threaded a labyrinthine way through the city, down

from the mountains and on toward Lethbridge, rivers so

silted up that they were not able to be used by pleasure

boats because of the eddies, because of the sandbanks—

and because the Police didn't want the rivers to be used!

    Below us the Airport loomed.  The pilot nodded his

head in satisfaction and the plane tilted even more

steeply.  There came the juddering rumble as the wheels

met the runway and speeded up.  Soon the tail dropped

and we trundled along gently into the area of the charter

company.

    Here conditions were different.  Everything was ready.

As soon as the plane came to a stop in front of the offices

an elderly gentleman drove a forklift truck to the side of

                                              15

the old plane and the pilot and co-pilot grabbed me and

my wheelchair quite tightly as though they feared that I

might escape or fall out or something.  But I am used to

wheelchair managing, and I soon drove out through the

door of the plane and straight on to the forklift platform,

but even here I was secured; the pilot and the co-pilot

held on to me and held on to the sides of the forklift

while gently we were lowered to the ground. 

    The question of payment.  Ah!  We always have to pay

for our jaunts, do we not?  And so it was that first we paid

for our trip and then another Handi-Bus backed to a stop

in front of me.  The ramp was lowered with a fearsome

rattle, and I drove my wheelchair up into the body.  And

then the rains came down!  It rained harder at that mo-

ment and for the rest of that day than it has rained at any...