A tibet story

Ok, I have a biography of a missionary to Tibet named Victor Plymire. He was in Tibet up until the communists took over China. But the book opens with the account of a western skeptic who disguised himself to participate in a closed Tibetan ritual. This story was originally printed in the December 1937 Reader's Digest. It is an account of a real live man seeing some things that he never thought he would see. The book included it because "missionary tales are sometimes doubted." So this is not from a missionary. I hope you read through it. It is longer than a blog post usually is, but be patient, and realize the stories read quicker than theology does.

I SEE THE KING OF HELL
By Harrison Forman

When disguised as a Tibetan sorcerer, I walked into the sacred forest of Radka Gonpa with Old Sherap, he was plainly frightened. If I were unmasked, his brother sorcerers might slay us both.

"If there be trouble" I promised him, "I assure thee that I shall swear that I have never seen thee before."

The sun was setting as we came into the clearing where, in a circle sat a score of sorcerers, silent except for an occasional whisper. As unobtrusively as possible we took our places in the circle, exciting little more than a momentary glance from others. I could sense my old friend's sigh of relief. I studied the nearest sorcerer on my left. His face was ugly and dirty. His long snakelike coils of black hair looked as though they might be the nesting place for all manner of crawling things. His coal black eyes were intently fixed on nothingness as he sat in the clearing like one in a trance.

He and his fellows were followers of Bonism, a form of paganism which predates Buddhism in Tibet. The lamas of Buddhism intercede between the laymen and the benignant deities; the Nukhwas of Bonism propitiate the evil ones. It was the materializing of these evil spirits that I had come to see.

The rustling wind of dusk rustled through the trees as though announcing the dread arrivals which we were expecting, and which I the skeptic, was sure would not come.
Then through an opening in the trees a tall man of impressive mien entered the clearing and mounted a tall boulder. It was Drukh Shim the Grand Wizard. Squatting cross-legged on the top, he faced us in silence, his piercing eyes apparently missing nothing that came within their range. I noticed that a human thighbone rested on the rock at his right hand. The top of a human skull on his left. For minutes there was a deep silence as dark closed in. Then, as if at a given signal, though I saw none given, the sorcerers started to sway forward and backward, and in deep tone spoke one word three times, "Yamantaka Yamantaka Yamantaka."

So they called upon the King of Hell himself, to appear.

After the third repetition, the Grand Wizard lifted the thighbone to his lips. It was a horn and its low note rolled mournfully through the forest. Then he lifted the skull cup libatation bowl. Old Sherap had prepared me for this and I knew the meaning of this solemn drinking. In ancient times they had held human sacrifices - and what the Grand Wizard now drank was human blood.

The Grand Wizard replaced the cup, and the sorcerers resumed their chanting, "Yamantaka Yamantaka Yamantaka."

Heads were bowed. I bowed mine, but out of the corner of my eye I watched them, alert for trickery, wondering how it would begin. I did not believe in demons and devils, much less that they could be made visible to the eyes of men. It was my sincere intention to remain as much the scientific inquirer as possible through all of that ceremony.

Again the thighbone trumpet spoke, again Drukh Shim drank. Faster swayed the sorcerers. "Yamantaka Yamantaka Yamantaka."

Faster and faster I swayed and chanted with them. And something entered me - got into my blood. I do not know what that something was; but it was there. I began to be less the skeptic, more the Tibetan sorcerer I was pretending to be. I recognized this and began to rebel. I was not going to allow myself to be hypnotized into seeing something reason told me could not possibly be there.

I could be hypnotized, I knew that, and believed that hypnotism would prove to be the answer to whatever happened in the Sacred Forest. But what form of hypnotism? Mass hypnotism? Should we all see things created out of the mind of someone else? Or should we be subjected to autosuggestion, creating whatever we desired out of our own minds? Now there began a low, mumbling monotone, moaning voices pitched in the deepest of tones.
"How better could they begin," I asked myself, "if they wish to hypnotize someone else? How do I know that Old Sherap's reluctance was not a trick, that the sorcerers are not intent of hypnotizing me that I may take stories of their wonders to the world?"

The chanting monotone continued. Heads were still bowed. One could feel a drowsiness creeping over one's body. But I was not to be fooled. Hypnotism thus far. And rather simple too.

Then I realized that perhaps I was not playing the game fairly. How could I expect to find out anything about the weird ritual if I refused to see, hear, feel it? Demons, if there were demons, perhaps they could be called into being! Who was I to say that the Tibetans did not know what they were talking about?

I stirred, looked around me - puzzled. For something I'd never experienced before was beginning to fasten itself upon me like invisible hands, to possess me against my will. I tried to shrug the feeling away. And the scientific side of me looked about for some explanation, I looked at the chief Wizard, up there on the dais: a much feared and holy man. It stuck me that he was seeking to control me and all the others. I fought against him. I had a distinct sense of struggle, as though our spirits had moved from our bodies to the center of the clearing, to wrestle for the balance of power between us. I concentrated on driving back the will of the head one, I fought mightily but my thoughts kept fading strangely. The mumbling monotone of the Nukhwahs around us was mounting in a rumbling crescendo that crept into the blood, into the mind, into the very soul.

"Yamantaka Yamantaka Yamantaka”

The circle of conjurers began to sway softly from side to side. The chanting continued to swell. And I began to think of all that Old Sherap had told me of what I must see there, Yama, King of Hell and his satellite demons and devils. I watched the spot where the demons were supposed to appear, trying to see something where reason told me there was nothing.

I do not know what my camera would have seen. I only know what I thought I saw. Yama, King of Hell, was appearing little by little! He did not come in through the trees. He was not a Tibetan masquerading. One moment he was not there and the space empty. Then he began to grow before my very eyes.

All of the circle of sorcerers saw it at the same time. Wilder and wilder became their chanting. It was not like a dream. Beyond the Grand Wizard, all around us, I could see the poplars and the pines. I saw the sorcerers - noted their faces deliberately. I made special note of Old Sherap beside me, with his 12 feet of hair coiled like a black snake atop his head. But Yama was coming at our call. As fervently as any other Nukwah, I was intoning in the deepest voice I could manage, "Yamantaka."

It was the glaring bulging eyes I saw first. At the height of an average man from the ground they stared at us, filled with malevolence. To right and left of the eyes were strange mists, which shifted and began to take form until, like some evil flower bursting suddenly into bloom, they became all the thirty-four arms of Yama with thirty-four hands grasping some implement of destruction.

The main head grew into being about the eyes. Then appeared other heads, until there were nine all shrouded in transparent bluish flames, which danced and flickered about unceasingly. Then the shoulders, over which hung a garland of human skulls, which rattled horribly at the least movement.

I shivered. I glanced away. When I looked back I expected that Yama would no longer be there. But he was, staring at me with his bulging eyes, His lips were now visible, and they were huge and libidinous – and the teeth like the fangs of no animal on earth.
But Yama was only the beginning. After him, the hardest to evoke, the lesser devils came willingly enough. I recognized the demon of lust, whom Old Sherap had called Nguh Nukh – a writhing demon whose twistings were the twistings of lusting men and women in fleshly travail. He danced before us, and love became something obscene, lascivious, horrible. The demon of hunger was next, his ribs showing through his skin. The demon of anger followed, shapeless, with a face all twisted with passion, and a body like the snake-like pile of hair on the head of some Nukwa, writhing, out of control. Other devils and demons appeared and then, as though it were a grand finale of the ceremony, Yama himself began his dance macabre, the most horrible of all, its very movement mocking the miseries of mankind with the clanking of his necklaces of skulls. I could smell the odor of death.

What now if these sorcerers could not control the demons they had brought forth? The mere thought of it caused cold perspiration to bathe me from head to foot – for Yama and his minions had become as real to me as my own self. I knew that if he escaped, all the country would be doomed.

Suddenly I could feel the same tension among my brother sorcerers. The demons were attempting to escape their invisible bonds, and the Nukhwas were uniting their wills against them. Though I told myself that this was some trick of mass- or self-hypnosis, I found myself applying my will adding it to the others, to beat back the surge of those devils. I strained against them. I almost put out my hands to push them back, until I realized that my hands would be as nothing to Yama and his satellites.

Whatever I had pretended before, I was now a Nukhwa among Nukhwas, fighting demons. Would we win? It seemed ages before the answer came. When it did I had a fierce surge of exultation.

Yama began to fade. It was an age before he vanished entirely. Nguh Nukh went, and the demons of hunger and anger, and reluctantly all the other devils, until we were just the score of sorcerers facing Drukh Shim there of his boulder. And I felt that had there been one less, Yama would have prevailed against us.

I did not look at the others. I was shivering. I sat there numb with what I had seen, until the last sorcerer had gone into the Sacred Forest, each alone as he had come, into the gathering darkness. Only Old Sherap remained.

“And what now dost thou believe?” he asked in a strange voice.

“My friend,” I said, “I do not know. I think I saw Yama and his devils. Just now I am sure I saw them, and they were as you had described them to me. What I shall believe tomorrow, I have not the slightest idea…”

To this day the spectral things I saw in the Sacred Forest, the things I do not believe in – but saw at least with the eyes that were mine while the swaying mob held me – abide with me constantly. There was something in that twilight in the high Tibetan forest which I could not and cannot even now explain.

This is a dark place. Although I never saw any demons like Mr. Forman did, I could feel evil in different places that I went to when I was in Tibet. I have spoken to a Bon monk (Bon is the religion discussed in the above passage.) Bonism is not very present anymore, but it still exists in Tibet. However, Tibetan Buddhism is not so very different. Yama still holds the wheel life in Tibetan Buddhism. This place is not practicing a peaceful meditative religion like many in America would have you believe. It is simply not the case. It is evil. Anyways, I hope you guys enjoyed reading that account.