by Karen Mutton

Like many writers of the 1950s, such as George Adamski and George Hunt Williamson, T. Lobsang Rampa described benevolent extraterrestrials that had come to warn humanity about the follies of nuclear power:

Flying saucers? Of course there are flying saucers! I have seen many, both in the sky and on the ground, and I have even been for a trip in one. Tibet is the most convenient country of all for flying saucers. It is remote from the bustle of the everyday world, and is peopled by those who place religion and scientific concepts before material gain. Throughout the centuries, the people of Tibet have known the truth about flying saucers, what they are, why they are, how they work, and the purpose behind it all. We know of the flying saucer people as the gods in the sky in their fiery chariots.

During the following decades, his discussions on extraterrestrials became more sophisticated and on the cutting edge of UFO research, particularly with The Hermit (1971), which introduced the ideas of human abduction and experimentation for genetic engineering purposes. Clearly, Rampa’s revelations of extraterrestrial genetic engineering pre-dated Zechariah Sitchin’s Earth Chronicles series, and yet his early influence in the “Ancient Aliens” genre remains largely unrecognized.

My Visit to Venus, an anthology of Rampa chapters that had been rejected from earlier books, was published in 1959 by Gray Barker, an American who ran Saucerian Press. Prior to Barker’s book, it had been published in various magazines such as Flying Saucer Review. Rampa did not really want it published, fearing it would be dismissed as science fiction.

The opening chapter, “Home of the Gods,” continues on from the description in Doctor From Lhasa of a visit to the Chang Tang Highlands, where the lamas discovered a huge, ancient city. Half frozen in a glacier, this city had once accommodated a race of giants. “Nearby in a spacious courtyard, there was an immense metal structure that reminded me of two of our temple dishes clamped together. It was clearly a vehicle of some sort.”

The monks cautiously approached the vehicle, which was about 50 to 60 feet (15.24 to 18.29 meters) across, and ascended a ladder leading inside. Once inside, Rampa’s guide touched something that caused the ship to hum and emit a bluish light. To their surprise, they were approached by large humans who communicated telepathically: “Be not afraid, for we were aware of your coming for the past hundred years. We made provisions so that those who were intrepid enough to enter this vessel should know the past.”

The humanoids showed them pictures from the past civilization: huge buildings that sat by the sea with disclike vehicles soaring above. They witnessed an enormous explosion that toppled buildings and caused a tsunami to rise above the ruins. The humanoids told them of a “White Brotherhood,” composed of incarnate and discarnate entities, which safeguarded all life.

The chapter continued with the seven lamas being taken up into space from where they could see Tibet. The vehicle left the atmosphere, with no increase in gravity or sensation of speed, and soared into space. The monks were taken on a tour of the spaceship. Its propulsion system utilized a form of magnetism that repelled the Earth’s magnetism. The repelling force could be adjusted to allow the vessel to hover, rise, or sink. The ship was also capable of collecting “space electricity” – a form of magnetic cosmic energy.

The Venusian hosts took the lamas in a strange vehicle to the Hall of Knowledge, where they observed the Earth’s creation along with the mighty civilizations of Lemuria, Atlantis, and Poseidonia. The Broad One warned: “We guard the earth, for, if man’s folly is allowed to go unchecked, terrible things will happen to the race of man. There are powers upon the earth that oppose all thoughts of our ships, who say there is nothing greater than the human upon Earth, so there cannot be ships from other worlds.”

Eventually, after many days, the Tibetans were returned to Earth, which “now seemed a tawdry place,” and “paled into significance against the glory of Venus.” The story ended with this: “Never again, I thought, shall I see such wonderful things. How mistaken I was, for that was but the first of many trips.”

During the 1960s, the subject of ufology became established, and Rampa, in his books Chapters of Life and Beyond the Tenth, expanded the theme of aliens as the guardians and indeed creators of the earth. He described UFOs as being of four distinct types:

1. Extraterrestrials: These “gardeners” of the earth, an extremely advanced race from another galaxy, colonized our planet billions of years ago. Every now and then, they come back to check on the progress of the human race.

2. Inner Earth inhabitants: In the Venus anthology, they are described as advanced humanoids who live in the earth’s interior and sometimes use their vehicles to explore the earth’s surface. This theme was later expanded in Twilight.

3. Antimatter vehicles: These explode when they come into contact with the earth’s atmosphere.

4. Interdimensional vehicles containing aliens from other realms: Usually we are unable to perceive these aliens, as they vibrate at a different frequency from human beings. We can only perceive their vehicles as gyrating lights in the sky, a third-dimensional shadow of fourth-dimensional vehicles.

Beyond the Tenth was published in 1969, the same year that Erich von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods was published in English. While the Swiss author built his case upon incongruous ancient anomalies, Rampa stated unequivocally that “Earth is like a colony; Earth is a testing ground, a seeding place where different types are put together so that the gardeners of space can see how they get on together.”

He claimed that even though the gardeners were friendly and concerned with our welfare, they sometimes abducted and experimented upon humans in an effort to improve our species.

Rampa was also aware of censorship surrounding the reporting of UFOs: “Pilots who fly in a commercial capacity, or in connection with the armed forces, have seen, and will continue to see, UFOs. But until the moronic governments of the world change their attitudes, not much will be heard of those sightings. The Argentinean government is surely one of the most enlightened in that they officially recognize the existence of UFOs.”

The military clique cannot acknowledge UFOs, because it would compromise security and reveal their vulnerability. He noted that references astronauts make to UFOs while in space are deleted, and their photos destroyed. While this may have sounded like unfounded paranoia in the 1960s, many people today believe there has been a monstrous government conspiracy of silence lasting over 50 years – a belief fueled by such TV shows as The X-Files, Dark Skies, The Smoking Gun, and Roswell.

Rampa also claimed that religious leaders would not acknowledge UFOs, because if an advanced alien appeared to be nonhuman, it would shake their paradigm that man is made in the image of God.

Further, he noted: “If the UFO people wanted to take over the earth, they could have done it centuries ago. The point is, they are afraid that they will have to take over the earth (and they do not want to) if we go on releasing too much atomic radiation. These spacemen are the gardeners of Earth. They are trying to save Earth from the earth people – and what a time they are having!”

Five years before Sitchin wrote his cult classic, The Twelfth Planet, expounding the belief that extraterrestrials had seeded and genetically engineered the human race, Rampa explained the whole process in The Hermit. The story began with a blind old Tibetan hermit imparting his knowledge to “the chosen one.”

In his youth, he had been abducted by an advanced race that revealed themselves as “the Gardeners of the earth.” They took him to another galaxy and performed medical experiments upon his unwilling body, including brain surgery to increase his intelligence. Bluntly, they informed him that Earthlings were a very evil race who threatened to destroy not only themselves, but also other intelligent life on nearby worlds.

The Gardeners informed him: “We travel in universes putting people and animals on many different worlds. You Earthlings have your legends about us; you refer to us as gods of the sky. Now we are to give you information as to the origin of life on earth, for it is time that people knew the truth of their gods before we initiate the second phase.”

They transported the blind monk to another galaxy and implanted in him artificial sight, so that he could witness the wonders of their civilization. He was taken to the center of the empire, where “the colors were all wrong. The grass was red, and the rocks were yellow. The sky was of a greenish cast, and there were two suns.”

The empire was vast and incorporated many different planets and star systems, which co-existed in harmony. The inhabitants were humanoids with varied characteristics and features. There were vast cities of towering spires traversed by flying vehicles of all descriptions. This world was the headquarters of the vast empire, where every planet was self-governing, but owed allegiance to the “Master of the World.”

The Gardeners took the monk to an orbiting observatory, where nine wise men were in charge of observing the Akashic records of Earth and other worlds. They showed him the history of the world, beginning with a huge comet colliding with a dead world at the centre of the galaxy, sending out gobbets of incandescent gas that eventually became the planets.

Two expeditions explored the new worlds, while a third dropped biological specimens onto the land and into the seas. Millennia later, a fourth expedition delivered huge dinosaurs to planet Earth. However, after many years, the Earth was wobbling on its axis, so a vessel was dispatched to break up the large supercontinent with a laser beam.

Another expedition brought purple humanoids to the Earth, who had eight breasts and long, apelike arms. They lived in caves and could not use fire, so the Gardeners were forced to exterminate them to make room for more advanced humans.

After thousands of years and climate change, these humans developed a mighty civilization. But the Gardeners fraternized too freely with the Earthlings, especially the women. A group stole their technology, attacked them and let off a nuclear device that wreaked havoc upon the Earth, sinking whole cities and continents beneath the oceans.

For centuries, the Gardeners stayed away from the irradiated planet, but eventually returned with more human and animal specimens, distributing them on different continents. Mankind eventually evolved and built towns and cities, while the supervising Gardeners were worshipped as gods by the earth inhabitants.

From another galaxy, a warlike race with horny growths on their forehead attacked the empire and laid waste to our solar system. Cataclysmic battles took place in the heavens; atmospheres were blasted away and worlds destroyed. A planet, dislodged from its orbit, struck the earth, causing a catastrophic loss of life. Only a few humans and animals, aided by the Gardeners, were conveyed to safety in a great ark.

On the earth, a great ice age developed. The Gardeners now decided to live apart from humans and dwell on mountains. Some inexperienced Gardeners, the “gods of Olympus,” engaged in licentious behavior and were transferred to other worlds. So the Gardeners then decided to communicate only through suitably chosen natives such as Moses, Buddha, and Jesus, who were instructed to institute new religions. But always the priests perverted the true teachings for their own power and gain.

The hermit was returned to a comfortable cave in Tibet, where he was told a “chosen one” would come many years later to hear his wisdom. The Gardeners decided that even though the auras of the human race were faulty, mankind would be given another chance. However, if humans did not heed such warnings and stop polluting their planet with radioactivity, the Gardeners would be forced to intervene at any time in the future.

In Tibetan Sage, Rampa provided more information about these Gardeners, although he repeated many themes from earlier books. With his guide, he visited an artificial cave that “used to be the headquarters of a special race that knew space travel.” This cave was part of a network created millions of years ago when Tibet was a low-lying land. It contained a space vehicle “about four or five men tall, and looked something like two dishes, one on top of the other.”

The similarity of this description with the one given in “Home of the Gods” in My Visit to Venus is obvious. These extraterrestrials had the technology to melt solid rock and heal traumatic wounds with a special bath. They were able to suspend life so that people could exist for millions of years “receiving adequate nourishment to keep the body functioning on a minute scale.” These suspended bodies were kept alive in tubs, in order to provide bodies for aliens to transmigrate into at a future date.

The Lama Mingyar Dondup could read their inscriptions, and learned that the suspended aliens were actually evil Gardeners who had raped human women and performed genetic experiments. They were a renegade faction who had waged many wars against the other Gardeners – wars that Rampa observed on one of their devices containing the Akashic records. (This is the fourth time Rampa claimed to have viewed the Akashic records; he had described them in the Venusian ship, the “Cave of the Ancients,” and the orbiting observatory.) As Rampa and his Guide departed from the caves, the whole complex was destroyed by booby traps.

Even if Rampa’s stories are dismissed as science fiction, there is merit in some of his original themes. His warnings from the extraterrestrials to stop our nuclear folly were not original, as other contactees in the 1950s had said the same. Venusians were very popular with contactees in the 1950s, before space probes revealed Venus to be an inhospitable planet.

Frank Stranges said he had been in contact with Val Thor, and George Adamski claimed to have flown to Venus with friendly aliens years before Rampa’s jaunt to our closest neighbor. Nor was Rampa the first to speak of levitators and telepathic communication with aliens, as George Van Tassel and George King had made earlier claims. Furthermore, in 1953, in Flying Saucers Have Landed, Desmond Leslie first popularized the notion that the ancient Indian scriptures contained many references to the vehicles of the extraterrestrial gods.

However, some of Rampa’s ideas were original and may have influenced later writers. His descriptions of Earth from space and warp travel with antimagnetic propulsion were quite novel for the pre-space-flight era. In The Hermit, he described alien abduction, experimentation, and genetic engineering at least a decade before Whitley Strieber wrote his influential Communion.

Recently, the idea that extraterrestrials were responsible for the evolution of humans and other animals has been incorporated into a new theory called “interventionism” by Lloyd Pye, which challenges Darwinism and creationism. Zechariah Sitchin, one of the proponents of this theory, claimed that the Mesopotamian gods, the Anunnaki, were extraterrestrials from the 12th planet, Nibiru, who genetically engineered the terrestrial hominids to produce a new species, Homo sapiens, about 200,000 years ago.

Sitchin’s influence in alternative history is undeniable, as terms like “Anunnaki” and “Nibiru” have passed into the New Age lexicon. However, Lobsang Rampa, whose book The Hermit tells us who the aliens are, where they are from, and why they are visiting and abducting humans, is still virtually unknown.

Printed with the permission of New Saucerian Press