Chapter 21 - Healing Powers

The healing power of saints is not only a Tibetan belief, but a general human experience. Christ, according to the testimony of the Evangelists, was first and foremost a healer (which is the exact equivalent of the German word 'Heiland', the most frequent epithet given to Christ), who convinced people not by arguments and sermons but mainly by the power of his saintly personality, which aroused such faith in those who came in contact with him, that they were healed even of long-standing and apparently incurable diseases.

The relationship of faith and healing power is reciprocal. Faith is the capacity to receive; the power of the spirit, the capacity to communicate, to pour out and give from the accumulated fruits of inner experience, that have matured in the stillness of a composed and devoted mind. Healing power and faith are like the positive and the negative pole of the same force, and where the former exists the latter will be aroused as a natural concomitant. But even the reverse is possible: faith may become a power in itself which, like a vacuum, draws all surrounding forces into itself, and thus endows the object or the person with which it is connected with the forces towards which it tends.

Religious leaders depend as much on the faith of their adherents as their adherents depend on the initial inspiration which they receive from their leaders. Once this mutual process has started, it grows like an avalanche. The combined forces of those whose faith is directed towards a religious leader or an incumbent of a high religious office (which normally is due to the outstanding qualities of the individual in question) make him a centre of forces which go far beyond those of his own person or separate individuality. It is for this reason that we should not expect religious leaders taken out of their surroundings and their spiritual and traditional background -- like many of the high Lamas who fled from Tibet and are compelled to live in completely uncongenial surroundings, in a kind of spiritual vacuum -- to display the same super-individual forces which centred upon them before they were deprived of their natural conditions of life and of the contact of those who had faith in them.

Unless we understand the mutual relationship between faith and spiritual forces, we shall regard the healing powers of a saint either as miraculous or as self-deception. But what we call miraculous is nothing but a short cut in the interaction of natural forces, i.e. a direct action from mind to mind, without the usual round-about way via the senses and material agents. Faith merely acts as a conductor which makes this short cut possible. Just as electricity which is potentially present everywhere becomes effective only in the presence of a conductor, so spiritual power becomes effective only in the presence of faith, be it faith in a divine power, or a human Guru, or faith in an ideal or in one's own inner reality.

As long as we are convinced that the mind is not merely a product of physical functions or chemical reactions, but the primary fact of life, the builder of the body and not its slave, so long it is only natural to ascribe health to a balanced, harmonious mind and to ascribe diseases to mental disorders or spiritual disharmony. Even the earliest Buddhist scriptures described the mind as the forerunner of all things (mane pubbaṇgamā dhammā), the conditio sine qua nom of all that exists.

Tibetans, therefore, rather than trying to cure physical symptoms, endeavour to go to the root of all disease by curing the mind. This can be done either by the direct influence of a saintly personality or through certain means which help the transference of power or a stimulation of faith through the medium of consecrated objects, symbols and rites, etc, all of which are intended to guide the mind in a certain direction.

Whether we believe in the psychometric properties of matter in general or the possibility of impressing it with certain qualities through conscious concentration, the fact is that there is a constant interaction between mind and matter, or even between different forms of material aggregation, which, after all, only represent more or less stabilised or 'bound' states of energy. The idea of transubstantiation, therefore, is not only the basis of the Christian Eucharist, but of all rites of consecration in which certain substances are exposed to the penetrating power of spiritual concentration, as produced in the course of certain magic rites or in the long years of silent meditation to which Gomchens are accustomed in Tibet.

Thus, Tomo Géshé rimpoche, when emerging from his twelve-year-long period of lonely meditation, had become a healer of such power that the ribus (pills) which he distributed freely to all those who came for his blessing were sought after all over Tibet and are nowadays more precious than pearls. When I received three of these ribus after my initiation Géshé Tubden Sherab, who had assisted me, begged me to share them with him, and related how in the case of a serious illness, when doctors had been unable to give him relief, he had been cured instantaneously by one of these ribus. Not realising at that time the deeper significance of the Guru's gift, thinking of it merely in terms of a medical remedy, of which I did not feel any great need at that time (besides having more faith in Western medicines), I gave away two of these precious ribus; and since it never came to my mind to replace them on later occasions, when I could have asked for them, only one has remained in my possession. It was only many years later that I realised their value.

The following episode may illustrate the importance attached to these ribus. When returning from Western Tibet in 1949 together with Li Gotami, we were surprised to find a small but well-equipped Tibetan temple containing a full set of the Sacred Scriptures (Kanjur and Tanjur) as well as an enormous prayer-wheel, in Rampur, the capital of Bashar State, which was ruled by a Hindu Maharaja. Since the population of Rampur was purely Hindu, we were wondering who could have built and endowed this sanctuary, until we were informed that it was the Maharaja himself who had done it, in the fulfilment of a vow.

This is the story we were told: The Maharaja had been childless for many years, and without an heir his dynasty would have come to an end. Though he had consulted many learned Brahmins and performed various religious rites to propitiate the gods, he had not been blessed with an heir. One day a well-known Lama and his retinue passed through Rampur on a pilgrimage to Mount Kailas, and since his fame had spread wide and far and thousands of people came to have his darshan, the Maharaja invited him to his palace and, telling him of his predicament, promised to build a temple for Buddhist pilgrims and to furnish it with a complete set of Tibetan Sacred Scriptures if through the Lamas blessings an heir would be born to the throne.

The Lama promised his help, but he made one condition, namely that the Maharaja would provide him with a place where he could retire for meditation, perform the necessary rites, and prepare the consecrated ribus for the Maharaja and his consort. The Maharaja, thereupon, had a special pavilion built in the palace grounds and gave strict orders that nobody should be allowed to approach the pavilion or to disturb the Lama during the performance of his religious rites.

However, one of the servants could not master his curiosity, and in the darkness of night he crept to the door of the pavilion in order to peep through the keyhole and to find out what the Lama was doing there all by himself. Apparently he had heard of the wonder working ribus and wanted to explore the secrets of their composition, as it was said that they contained many precious substances, obtained from supernatural sources. But when he managed to peep inside the pavilion he beheld the Lama, surrounded by a host of super-human beings, celestial as well as demonical, so that he fainted with fright. People found him the next morning at the foot of the steps leading to the entrance of the pavilion. When he came to himself, he was raving as if in a fever and died within a few hours. After this, nobody dared to approach the pavilion, and for many days and nights the Lama was absorbed in his devotions. Only the sounds of bell and ḍamaru and of the Lama's sonorous incantations were heard from time to time.

On the appointed day the Lama emerged from the pavilion, gave his blessings and the consecrated ribus to the Maharaja and his consort and before the year was out an heir was born to them. In gratitude to the saintly Lama, the Maharaja fulfilled his vow and built the promised temple. He sent a special delegation to Tibet to have the Sacred Scriptures printed and to fetch the necessary altar-vessels and whatever else was necessary for the completion of the temple and the performance of religious services.

After having paid a visit to the temple, we were inspecting the beautiful Tibetan pavilion in the palace grounds, in which the Lama had lived during his retreat. We asked the caretaker, who showed us around, whether he remembered the name of the Lama. His answer was: Tomo Géshé Rimpoché

All along the road from Tibet we heard miraculous stories about the pilgrimage of Tomo Géshé Rimpoché, who had given new faith and hope to thousands of people, and who had healed the sick and encouraged the downtrodden. In the village of Poo, on the Tibetan frontier, a dying girl was brought to him on a stretcher. She had been ill for a long time and her condition was such that her people were afraid to carry her, lest she might die on the way. However, the villagers had such faith in the powers of Tomo Géshé that they persuaded the girls parents to take the risk. When they arrived with the stretcher at the Lamas place almost the whole village was assembled there.

Under their very eyes, at the command of Tomo Géshé, the girl opened her eyes, got up from the stretcher, and after having received the blessings of the Lama, she walked out of the house as if she had never been ill. The girl was still alive during our stay at Poo, and numerous eye-witnesses vouchsafed for the truth of this event. We had no reason to doubt these reports -- even if Tomo Geshe had not been our own Guru -- because there was hardly a place through which he had passed during that memorable pilgrimage where people did not speak about him with veneration and glowing eyes -- though many long years had passed since then -- and the Guru himself had given up his body in the meantime.

Though popular imagination may have woven a veil of legends over many of the actual events, the fact of his healing powers and the tremendous impact of his personality upon the people stood out clearly and unmistakably from all the stories that came to our ears. Even during his lifetime he had become a legend, but to all those who had come into actual contact with him it became clear that there is more truth in the legends growing around a saint's life than our critical intellect may suspect, and that even in our times saints are walking the face of the earth, just as in the day of Buddha Śākyamuni or Christ, Mohammed or St. Francis of Assisi.

The example of Tomo Géshé Rimpoché shows convincingly that even those who go through the most severe practices of yoga training, living in complete solitude for years on end do not thereby lose their inner bonds with their fellow-beings, nor their functions and usefulness in human society. Indeed, they played a far greater role and had a deeper influence on the spiritual life of Tibet than those who were exclusively engaged in verbal teaching or literary work-in Tibet the function of a religious teacher is not so much the proclamation of a doctrine or the elucidation of the commonly accepted teachings of traditional Buddhism but the demonstration that the highest religious aims can be realised and that the ways towards their attainment are practicable. Even a silent hermit may act like a beacon of spiritual light in the darkness of ignorance and illusion. The very fact of his existence, the very fact that he can exist in the light of his own inner realisation, is sufficient to give courage and confidence to others.

Solitary confinement is regarded as the greatest punishment for the average individual. The untrained mind breaks down under the weight of prolonged confinement in solitude. Those who emerge unscathed from such an ordeal prove that they possess an unusual reserve of strength. Such strength, however, is not a matter of physical or mental robustness, but of a spiritual self-sufficiency that presupposes an unusually rich and active mind and a discipline that can only be acquired through a long and careful training.

Tibetans, therefore, are right when they show greater trust and respect to those who have proved their moral and spiritual strength in a solitary life of meditation and religious practice than to those who are merely good speakers or clever intellects. Only a man who knows how to unlock the treasures of the inner world can dare to renounce the outer one. To do this he must have the key that unlocks these treasures, and this key consists in the practice of his Sādhanā, in which he has been trained under the guidance of his Guru.

Through the Guru's mantra he remains in touch with him and with the hierarchy of his spiritual predecessors; through his Sādhanā he enters into contact with the inner world. And slowly, bit by bit, this inner world unfolds itself, takes on greater and greater reality, and finally surrounds him like a celestial Maṇḍala, in whose centre he experiences a bliss that surpasses all the pleasures of the world which he left outside his cubicle or his cave.

There is no time for him to be idle. His days are filled -- not in passive waiting for death or for visions to come -- but in the creation, consolidation, and re-integration of a new world, built from the universal and ever-present form-elements of a deeper and vaster reality. In the process of this creative activity the adept frees himself from the last traces of attachment or clinging to any particular form or 'Gestalt', because the whole orchestra of creative possibilities is at his disposal, and as little as a great conductor will cling to any phase of his creations -- because he is their master and can produce them whenever he will -- so the adept will know himself as the sovereign creator of ail forms and at the same time the silent centre of the universe.