Observations placeholder

With Mystics and Magicians in Tibet – Alexandra David-Neel

One evening Chogs Tsang unexpectedly called up one of his trapas.

"Saddle two horses, we are going," he ordered him.  The monk remonstrated with the  Lama,  saying that it was already late and that it would be better to  wait until the next morning.

"Do not answer back," said Chogs Tsang laconically.  "Let us go."

They start, ride in the night and arrive at some spot near a river. There they alight from their  horses and walk towards the river bank.  Though the sky is completely dark, a spot on the water is "lighted by sun rays," and in that illuminated place a corpse is floating up-stream, moving against the current. After a while it comes within reach of the two men.

"Take your knife, cut a piece of the flesh and eat it”  commands Chogs Tsang to his companion. And he adds: "I have a friend in India who sends me a meal every year at this date."

Then he himself begins to cut and to eat: The attendant is struck with terror, he endeavours to imitate his master but does not dare to put the morsel into his mouth and hides it in his ambag.  Both return to the monastery where they arrive at dawn.

The lama says to the monk: " I wished you to share the favour and the most excellent fruits of this mystic meal, but you are not worthy of it. That is why you have not dared to eat the piece which you have cut off and hidden under your dress."

Hearing these words the monk repents of his lack of courage and puts his hand into his ambag to take his share of the corpse, but the piece of flesh is no longer there.

This fantastic story accords with certain information given me with great reserve by some anchorites belonging to the Dzogschen sect.

There exist, so they said, certain human beings who have attained such a high degree of spiritual perfection, that the original material substance of their bodies has become transmuted into a more subtle one which possesses special qualities.

Few people can discern the change which has come over these exceptional men. A morsel of their transformed flesh, when eaten, will produce a special kind of ecstasy and bestow knowledge and supernormal powers upon the person partaking of it.

A hermit told me that when a naljorpa, through his clairvoyance, has discovered one of these wonderful beings, he sometimes begs from him the favour of being informed of his death in order that he may obtain a small portion, of his precious body.

Might fervent candidates for this gruesome communion not sometimes grow too impatient and refuse to wait for the natural death of the holy one? Might they not hurry it forward?

One of those who disclosed this secret rite to me almost seemed to confess, that the thing had happened.

However, he was careful to mention the attenuating circumstance that the victim consented to the sacrifice.