The Third Eye; by Lobsang Rampa.

Even after so many years after reading it, a little over three decades, a few details remain etched in memory from this book.

The little boy who grew up to be the Lama that wrote this story of his life and times and experiences and all he saw, liked to play within the remote plains of Tibet - and what could he have played with, it was not only not a rich place (still very poor, Tibetans, and since occupation the light of free smile is gone too) in terms of money, it is also the large expanse that is often named roof of the world for good reason. It is at a great height, the highest in the world. very remote from most other human settlements since it is very large too, and devoid of most greenery of nature.

Little grows there, and so the games and play that is available to most little children in rural India for example - playing in trees, swinging, and games devised around ability to climb up a root of the Banyan tree (the roots off a grown up tree come down from branches to root themselves and spring up new trees around, so that often there is a mile around a tree and its descendent trees around it, all thriving and growing more around in turn) - a variation on the old chasing game.

But little grows in Tibet, no trees certainly, and to devise play for little children would take some ingenuity - which fortunately all children do have until their culture deprives them by filling their space with toys and limiting their imagination.

This little boy - the picture is as vivid as if I saw it - liked to walk on stilts and so once while he did that crossing a river, a grown up man looked at the little boy walking and decided the river had to be very shallow and so walked in - and fell in way over his expectation, to his surprise, and got angry.

He was destined for a life as a Lama and so joined the lamasery quite early as they do, and grew up with the other Lamas to for his family for rest of his life, to guide and care and console him those early days when he missed his earthly family. There was education too, which involved more than learning from texts and other normally understood parts of learning. There was meditation and opening of the inner parts, and therein comes the title.

In India the third eye is very well known and understood but it is something of an inner vision, developed or opened with yogic discipline. I had never heard of a physical operation performed to open the third eye, and this is described on the book.

Subsequently he saw people's auras and was educated by his teachers in deciphering them. He could see that the Indian mission to Tibet was trustworthy but the Chinese could not be trusted, and more.

The book is much more than all this that I remember after well over three decades after reading it.