To me it is strange beyond belief that western people can believe in television, and in space rockets that may circle the Moon and return and yet not credit Yetis or "Unknown Flying Objects," or, in fact, anything which they cannot hold in their hands and pull to pieces to see what makes it work.

I came of a very high-ranking family, one of the leading families in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet.  My parents had much to say in the control of the country, and because I was of high rank I was given severe training so that, it was considered, I should be fit to take my place.  Then, before I was seven years of age, in accordance with our established custom, the Astrologer Priests of Tibet were consulted to see what type of career would be open to me.

 For days before these preparations went forward, preparations for an immense party at which all the leading citizens, all the notabilities of Lhasa would come to hear my fate.  Eventually the Day of Prophecy arrived. Our estate was thronged with people.  The Astrologers came armed with their sheets of paper, with their charts, and with all the essentials of their profession. Then, at the appropriate time, when everyone had been built up to a high pitch of excitement, the Chief Astrologer pronounced his findings.

It was solemnly proclaimed that I should enter a lamasery at the age of seven, and be trained as a priest, and as a priest surgeon.  Many predictions were made about my life; in fact the whole of my life was outlined.  To my great sorrow everything they said has come true.  I say "sorrow" because most of it has been misfortune, and hardship, and suffering, and it does not make it any easier when one knows all that one is to suffer. 

 I entered the Chakpori lamasery when I was seven years of age, making my lonely way along the path.  At the entrance I was kept, and had to undergo an ordeal to see if I was hard enough, tough enough to undergo the training. This I passed, and then I was allowed to enter. I went through all the stages from an absolutely raw beginner, and in the end I became a lama, and an abbot.

Medicine and surgery were my particular strong points.  I studied these with avidity, and I was given every facility to study dead bodies.  It is a belief in the west that the lamas of Tibet never do anything to bodies if it means making an opening.  The belief is, apparently, that Tibetan medical science is rudimentary, because the medical lamas treat only the exterior and not the interior.  That is not correct. The ordinary lama, I agree, never opens a body, it is against his own form of belief.  But there was a special nucleus of lamas, of whom I was one, who were trained to do operations, and to do operations which were possibly even beyond the scope of western science.

My training was very intensive indeed, because I had to know not only my specialized subjects of medicine and surgery, but all the Scriptures as well because, as well as being a medical lama, I also had to pass as a religious one, as a fully trained priest.  So it was necessary to study for two branches at once, and that meant studying twice as hard as the average.  I did not look upon that with any great favour!

But it was not all hardship, of course.  I took many trips to the higher parts of Tibet-Lhasa is 12,000 feet above sea level-gathering herbs, because we based our medical training upon herbal treatment, and at Chakpori we always had at least 6,000 different types of herb in stock.  We Tibetans believe that we know more about herbal treatment than people in any other part of the world.  Now that I have been around the  world  several  times that belief  is strengthened.

The Dalai Lama, the thirteenth Dalai Lama, was my patron. He ordered that I should receive every possible assistance in training, and in experience. He directed that I should be taught everything that could be crammed into me, and as well as being taught by the ordinary oral system I was also instructed by hypnosis, and by various other forms which there is no need to mention here. 

The training was long and arduous. There were temple services to be attended throughout the night as well as throughout the day. Not for us the softness of beds. We rolled ourselves in our solitary blanket, and went to sleep on the floor. The teachers were strict indeed, and we had to study, and learn, and commit everything to memory. We did not keep notebooks, we committed everything to memory. I learned metaphysical subjects as well. I went deeply into it, clairvoyance, astral travelling, telepathy, I went through the whole lot.

In one of my stages of initiation I visited the secret caverns and tunnels beneath the Potala, caverns and tunnels of which the average man knows nothing. They are the relics of an age-old civilization which is almost beyond memory, beyond racial memory almost, and on the walls were the records, pictorial records of things that flow in the air, and things that went beneath the earth. In another stage on initiation I saw the carefully preserved bodies of giants, ten feet, and fifteen feet long.

I too, was sent to the other side of death, to know that there is no death, and when I returned I was a Recognized Incarnation, with a rank of an abbot. But I did not want to be an abbot, tied to a lamasery. I wanted to be a lama, free to move about, free to help others, as the Prediction said I would. So, I was confirmed in the rank of lama by the Dalai Lama himself, and by Him I was attached to the Potala in Lhasa.

Even then my training continued, I was taught various forms of western science, optics, and other allied subjects.

But, at last the time came when I was called once again to the Dalai Lama, and given instructions.
He told me that I had learned all that I could learn in Tibet, that the time had come for me to move on, to leave all that I loved, all that I cared for. He told me that special messengers had been sent out to Chungking to enrol me as a student of medicine and surgery in that Chinese city.

I was sick at heart when I left the presence of the Inmost one, and made my way to my Guide, the lama Mingyar Dondup, and told him what had been decided. Then I went to the home of my parents to tell them also what had happened, that I was to leave Lhasa. The days flew by, and the final day came when I left Chakpori, when for the last time I saw Mingyar Dondup in the flesh, and I made my way out of the city of Lhasa, the Holy City, on to the high mountain passes.

And as I looked back the last thing I saw was a symbol. For from the golden roofs of the Potala a solitary kite was flying.