CHAPTER FOUR:
Flying
IT was a warm, sultry evening, with hardly a breeze. The clouds above the cliff upon which we were walking were perhaps two hundred feet above us, glowering cloud masses which reminded me of Tibet as they towered into fantastic shapes as imaginary mountain ranges. Huang and I had had a hard day in the dissecting rooms. Hard, because the cadavers there had been kept a long time, and the smell from them was just terrible. The smell of the decaying bodies, the smell of the antiseptic, and the other odors had really exhausted us. I wondered why I had ever had to come away from Tibet where the air was pure, and where men's thoughts were pure, too. After a time we had had enough of the dissecting rooms and we had washed and gone out to this cliff top. It was good, we thought, to walk in the evening and look upon nature. We looked upon other things as well because, by peering over the edge of the cliff, we could see the busy traffic on the river beneath. We could see the coolies loading ship, eternally carrying their heavy bales with a long bamboo pole across their shoulders on each end of which would be loads of ninety pounds, heaped in panniers. The panniers weighed five pounds each, and so the coolie would be carrying not less than one hundred and ninety pounds all day long. Life for them was hard, they worked until they died, and they died at quite a young age, worn out, human draught horses, treated worse than the beasts in the fields. And when they were worn out and fell dead sometimes they ended up in our dissecting rooms to continue the work of good, and this time by providing material for embryo doctors and surgeons who would acquire skill with which to treat living bodies.
We turned away from the edge of the cliff and faced into the very slight breeze which carried the sweet scent of the trees and the flowers. There was a slight grove of trees almost ahead, and we altered our steps slightly in order to go to them. A few yards from the cliff we stopped, aware of some strange sense of impending calamity, some sense of unease and tension, something inexplicable. We looked at each other questioningly, unable to decide what it was. Huang said, dubiously. “That cannot be thunder.” ”Of course not,” I replied. “It is something very strange, something we know nothing about.” We stood uncertainly, head on one side, listening. We looked about us, looked at the ground, at the trees, and then we looked at the clouds. It was from there that the noise was coming, a steady “brum-brum-brum” getting louder and louder, harsher and harsher. As we gazed upwards we saw, through a hole in the cloud base, a dark winged shape flit across. It was gone into the opposite cloud almost before we were aware of its presence. “My!” I shouted. “One of the Gods of the Sky is come to take us off.” There was nothing we could do. We just stood wondering what would happen next. The noise was thunderous, a noise of a sort that neither of us had heard before. Then, as we watched, a huge shape appeared, flinging wisps of clouds from it as if impatient of even the slight restraint of the clouds. It flashed out of the sky, Skimmed straight over our heads, over the edge of the cliff with a sickening shriek, and with a buffet of tortured air. The noise ended and there was silence. We stood absolutely aghast, absolutely chilled, looking at each other. Then, upon a common impulse, we turned and ran toward the cliff edge to see what had happened to the thing from the sky, the thing which was so strange and so noisy. At the edge we flung ourselves prone and peered cautiously over at the sparkling river. There upon a sandy strip of ground was the strange, winged monster, now at rest. As we looked it coughed with a spurt of flame and a burst of black smoke. It made us jump and turn pale, but this was not the strangest thing. To our incredulous amazement and horror a piece opened in the side and two men got out. At that time I thought that was the most wonderful thing I had ever seen, but—we were wasting time up there. We sprang to our feet and raced for the path leading down. Down we sped through the street of steps, ignoring traffic, ignoring all courtesy, in our mad rush to get to the water's edge.
Down by the side of the river we could have stamped our feet with frustrated anger. There was not a boat to be had, not a boatman, no one. They had all flocked across the water to be where we wanted to be. But, yes! There was a boat behind a boulder. We turned towards it with the intention of launching it and going across, but as we reached it we saw an old, old man coming down a steep path carrying nets. “Hey, father,” Huang shouted, “take us across.” “Well,” the old man said, “I don’t want to go. What's it worth to you?” He tossed his nets in the boat and leaned against the side, old battered pipe in his mouth. He crossed his legs and looked as if he could have stayed there all night, just chatting. We were in a frenzy of impatience. “Come, on, old man, what's your charge?” The old man named a fantastic sum, a sum which would have bought his rotten old boat, we thought. But we were in a flurry of excitement, we would have given almost anything we had to get across to the other side. Huang bargained. I said, “Oh, don't let's waste time. Let's give him half what he asks.” The old man jumped at it. It was about ten times more than he had expected. He jumped at it, so we rushed for his boat. “Steady on, young gentlemen, steady on. You'll wreck my boat,” he said. “Oh, come on, grandpa,” said Huang, “hurry up. The day is getting old.” The old fellow leisurely got aboard, creaking with rheumatism, grunting. Slowly he picked up a pole, and poled us out into the stream. We were fidgeting, trying mentally to move the boat more rapidly, but nothing would hurry the old man. In the centre of the stream some eddy of current caught us and swung us around, then he got the boat on the right course again, and we went across to the far bank. To save time, as we were approaching, I counted out the money and pushed it at the old man. He was certainly quick to take it. Then, without waiting for the boat to touch, we jumped knee-deep in water and ran up the bank.
Before us was that wonderful machine, that incredible machine, which had come from the sky, and which had brought men with it. We looked at it in awe, and were amazed at our own temerity in daring to approach like this. Other people were there, too, but they were staying a respectable distance away. We moved forward, we moved close to it, under it, feeling the rubber tires on the wheels, punching them. We moved to the stern and saw that here there was no wheel, but a bar of springy metal with a thing like a shoe at the end. “Ah,” I said, “that'll be a skid to slow it down as it lands. We had a thing like that on my kites.” Gingerly, half frightened, we fingered the side of the machine, we looked with incredulity as we found that it was a sort of fabric, painted in some way and stretched on a wooden frame. Now, this really was something! About half way between the wings and the tail we touched a panel, and we nearly fainted with shock as it opened, and a man dropped lightly to the ground. “Well,” he said, “you certainly seem to be very interested.” "We are indeed,” I replied. “I've flown a thing like this, a silent one in Tibet.” He looked at me and his eyes went wide. “Did you say in Tibet?” he asked. “I did,” I answered. Huang broke in, “My friend is a living Buddha, a lama, studying in Chungking. He used to fly in man-lifting kites,” he said. The man from the air machine looked interested. “That is fascinating,” he said. “Will you come inside where we can sit down and talk?” He turned and led the way in. Well, I thought, I have had many experiences. If this man can trust himself inside the thing—so can I. So I entered as well, with Huang following my example. I had seen a thing larger than this in the Highlands of Tibet, in which the Gods of the Sky had flown straight out of the world. But that had been different, not so frightening, because the machine that they had used had been silent, but this had roared and torn at the air, and shook.
Inside there were seats, quite comfortable seats, too. We sat down. That man, he kept asking me questions about Tibet, questions which I thought absolutely stupid. Tibet was so commonplace, so ordinary, and here he was, in the most marvelous machine that ever had been, talking of Tibet. Eventually, after much time and with a great amount of trouble, we got some information out of him instead. This was a machine that they called an aeroplane, a device which had engines to throw it through the sky. It was the engines which made the noise, he said. This particular one was made by the Americans and it had been bought by a Chinese firm in Shanghai who had been thinking of starting an airline from Shanghai to Chungking. The three men that we had seen were the pilot, a navigator, and engineer, on a trial flight. The pilot—the man to whom we were talking said, “We are to interest notabilities and to give them a chance of flying so that they may approve of our venture.” We nodded, thinking how marvelous it was, and how we wished that we were notabilities and would have a chance of flying. He went on, “You from Tibet, you are indeed a notability. Would you like to try this machine with us?” I said, “My goodness me, I would as quickly as you like!” He motioned to Huang, and asked him to step outside, saying that he couldn't go. “Oh no,” I said, “Oh, no. If one goes, the other goes.” So Huang was allowed to stay (he did not thank me later!). The two men who had got out before moved toward the plane and there were a lot of hand signals. They did something to the front, then there was a loud “bam” and they did something more. Suddenly there was a shocking noise, and terrible vibration. We clung on, thinking that there had been some accident, and we were being shaken to pieces. “Hang on,” said the man. We couldn't hang on more tightly, so it was quite superfluous of him. “We are going to take off,” he said. There was a simply appalling racket, jolts, bumps, and thuds, worse than the first time I went up in a man-lifting kite. This was far worse because in addition to the jolts, there was noise, abominable noise. There was a final thud, which nearly drove my head between my shoulders, and then a sensation as if someone were pressing me hard beneath and at the back. I managed to raise my head and look out of the window at the side. We were in the air, we were climbing. We saw the river lengthening into a silver thread, the two rivers joining together to make one. We saw the sampans and the junks as little toys like little chips of wood floating. Then we looked at Chungking, at the streets, at the steep streets up which we had toiled so laboriously. From this height they looked level, but over the side of the cliff the terraced fields still clung precariously at the appalling steep slope. We saw the peasants toiling away, oblivious to us. Suddenly there was a whiteness, complete and utter obscurity, even the engine noises seemed muffled. We were in the clouds. A few minutes with streamers of cloud rushing by the windows, and the light became stronger. We emerged into the pale blue of the sky, flooded with the golden sunlight. As we looked down it was like gazing down on a frozen sea of snow, scintillatingly white, dazzling, eye-hurting with the intensity of the glare. We climbed and climbed, and I became aware that the man in charge of the machine was talking to me. “This is higher than you have been before,” he said, “much higher than you have been before.” “Not at all,” I replied, “because when I started in a man-lifting kite I was already seventeen thousand feet high.” That surprised him. He turned to look out of the side window, the wing dipped, and we slid sideways in a screaming dive. Huang turned a pale green, a horrible colour, and unmentionable things happened to him. He lurched out of his seat, and lay face down on the bottom of the plane. He was not a pleasant sight, but nothing pleasant was happening to him. I—I was always immune to air-sickness, and I felt nothing at all except mild pleasure at the maneuvers. Not Huang, he was frightfully upset by it. By the time we landed he was just a quivering mass who occasionally emitted a painful groan. Huang was not a good airman! Before we landed the man shut off his engines and we drifted in the sky, gradually getting lower, and lower. There was only the “swish” of the wind past our wings, and only the drumming of the fabric at the sides of the plane to tell us that we were in a man-made machine. Suddenly, as we were getting quite near the ground, the man switched on his engines again and we were once more deafened by the ear-shattering roar of many hundreds of horse-power. A circle, and we came in to land. A violent bump, and a screech from the tail skid, and we clattered to a stop. Again the engines were switched off and the pilot and I rose to get out. Poor Huang, he was not ready to rise. We had to carry him out and lay him on the sand to recover.
I am afraid that I was quite hard-hearted; Huang was lying face down in the yellow sand of the spit upon which we had landed in the middle of the mile-wide river. He was lying face down, making peculiar sounds and motions, and I was glad that he was not able to rise. Glad, because it gave me a good excuse to stop and talk with the man who had flown the machine. Talk we did. Unfortunately he wanted to talk about Tibet. What was the country like for flying? Could planes land there? Could an army land there dropped by parachute? Well, I hadn't the vaguest idea what parachutes were, but I said “No,” to be on the safe side! We came to an arrangement. I told him about Tibet and he told me about aircraft. Then he said “I would feel deeply honoured if you would meet some of my friends who also are interested in the Tibetan mysteries.” Well, what did I want to meet his friends for? I was just a student at the college, and I wanted to become a student of the air, and all this fellow was thinking of was the social side of things. In Tibet I had been one of the very few who had flown. I had flown high above the mountains in a man-lifting kite, but although the sensation had been wonderful, and the silence soothing, yet the kite had still been tethered to the earth. It could merely go up in the air, it could not fly over the land, wherever the pilot wanted to fly. It was tethered like the yak at pasture. I wanted to know more of this roaring machine that flew as I had dreamed of flying, that could fly anywhere, to any part of the world the pilot told me, and all he was bothering about was—talk about Tibet.
For a time it seemed to be a deadlock. We sat on the sand facing each other with poor Huang groaning away to the side, and not receiving any sympathy from us. Eventually we came to an arrangement. I agreed to meet his friends and tell them a few things about Tibet and about the mysteries of Tibet. I agreed to give a few lectures about it. He, in his turn, would take me in the aeroplane again and explain how the thing worked. We walked around the machine first, he pointed out various things. The fins, the rudder, the elevators—all sorts of things. Then we got in and sat down, side by side, right in the front. In front of each of us now there was a kind of stick with half a wheel attached to it. The wheel could be rotated, left or right, while the whole stick could be pulled back or pushed forward. He explained to me how the pulling back would make a plane rise, and pushing forward would make it sink, and turning would also turn the machine. He pointed out the various knobs and switches. Then the engines were started and behind glass dials I saw quivering pointers which altered their position as the rates of the engines varied. We spent a long time, he did his part well, he explained everything. Then, with the engines stopped, we got out and he took off inspection covers and pointed out various details. Carburetors, sparking plugs, and many other things.
That evening I met his friends as promised. They were, of course, Chinese. They were all connected with the army. One of them told me that he knew Chiang Kai-Shek well, and, he said, the Generalissimo was trying to raise the nucleus of a technical army. Trying to raise the general standard of the services in the Chinese army. He said that in a few days' time one or two planes, smaller planes, would arrive at Chungking. They were planes, he told me, which had been purchased from the Americans. After that I had little thought in my head beyond flying. How could I get to one of these craft? How could I make it go up in the air? How could I learn to fly?
Huang and I were leaving the hospital a few days later when out of the heavy clouds stretching above our heads darted two silver shapes, two single-seater fighter planes which had come from Shanghai as promised. They circled over Chungking, and circled again. Then, as if they had just spotted exactly where to land, they dived down in close formation. We wasted no time. We hurried down the street of steps, and made our way across to the sand. There were two Chinese pilots standing beside their machines, busily engaged in polishing off marks of their flight through dirty clouds. Huang and I approached them, and made our presence known to the leader of the two, a Captain Po Ku. Huang had made it very clear to me that nothing would induce him to go up into the air again. He had thought that he would die after his first—and last—flight.
Captain Po Ku said, “Ah, yes, I have heard about you. I was actually wondering how to get in touch with you.” And I was much flattered thereby. We talked for a time. He pointed out the differences between this machine and the passenger machine which we had seen before. This, as he pointed out, was a machine with a single seat, and one engine, but the other had been a three-engine type. We had little time to stay then, because we had to deal with our rounds, and it was with extreme reluctance that we left.
The next day we had half a day off and we made our way again, as early as possible, to the two planes. I asked the Captain when he was going to teach me to fly as promised. He said, “Oh, I could not possibly do that. I am just here by order of Chiang Kai-Shek. We are showing these planes.” I kept on at him for that day, and when I saw him the day after he said, “You can sit in the machine, if you like. You will find that quite satisfying. Sit in and try the controls. This is how they work, look.” And he stood on the wing root and pointed out the controls to me, showed me how they worked. They were much the same as those of the three-engine machine, but of course much simpler. That evening we took him and his companion—they left a guard of police on the machine—to the temple which was our home, and although I worked on them very hard I could not get any statement at all about when they were going to teach me to fly. He said, “Oh, you may have to wait a long time. It takes months of training. It's impossible to fly a thing straight off as you want to. You would have to go to ground school, you would have to fly in a dual-seat machine, and you would have to do many hours before you were allowed in a plane such as ours.”
The next day at the end of the afternoon we went down again. Huang and I crossed the river and landed on the sand. The two men were quite alone with their machine. The two machines were many yards apart. Apparently there was something wrong with that of Po Ku's friend, because he had got the engine cowling off, and tools were all over the place. Po Ku himself had the engine of his machine turning over. He was adjusting it. He stopped it, made an adjustment, and started it again. It went “phut-phut-phut” and did not run at all evenly. He was oblivious to us, as he stood on the wing, and fiddled about with the engine. Then, as the motor purred evenly, smoothly, like a well-pleased cat, he straightened up, wiping his hands on a piece of oily waste. He looked happy. He was turning to speak to us when his companion called urgently to him from the other plane. Po Ku went to stop the motor but the other pilot waved his hands frantically, so he just dropped to the ground from the wing and hurried off.
I looked at Huang. I said, “Ah ha, he said I could sit in, did he not? Well, I will sit in.” “Lobsang,” said Huang, “You are not thinking of anything rash are you?” “Not at all,” I replied. “I could fly that thing, I know all about it.” “But, man,” said Huang, “you'll kill yourself.” “Rubbish!” I said. “Haven't I flown kites? Haven't I been up in the air, and been free from air-sickness?” Poor Huang looked a bit crestfallen at that because his own airmanship was not at all good.
I looked toward the other plane, but the two pilots were far too busy to bother with me. They were kneeling on the sand doing something to part of an engine, obviously they were quite engrossed. There was no one else about except Huang, so—I walked up to the plane. As I had seen the others do I kicked away the chocks in front of the wheels and hastily jumped in as the plane began to roll. The controls had been explained to me a few times and I knew which was the throttle, I knew what to do. I slammed it hard forward, hard against the stop, so hard that I nearly sprained my left wrist. The engine roared under full power as if it would tear itself free. Then we were off absolutely speeding down that strip of yellow sand. I saw a flash where water and sand met. For a moment I felt panic, then I remembered: pull back. I pulled back on the control column hard, the nose rose, the wheels just kissed the waves and made spray, we were up. It felt as if an immense, powerful hand was pressing beneath me, pushing me up. The engine roared and I thought, “Must not let it go too fast, must throttle it back or it will fall to pieces.” So I pulled the throttle control a quarter way back and the engine note became less. I looked over the side of the plane, and had quite a shock. A long way below were the white cliffs of Chungking. I was high, really high, so high that I could hardly pick out where I was. I was getting higher all the time. White cliffs, of Chungking? Where? Goodness! If I go any higher I shall fly out of the world, I thought. Just then there was a terrible shuddering and I felt as if I was falling to pieces. The control in my hand was wrenched from my grasp. I was flung against the side of the machine which tilted, and lurched violently, and went spinning down to earth. For a moment I knew utter fright. I said to myself “You've done it this time, Lobsang, my boy. You've been too clever for yourself. A few more seconds and they'll scrape you off the rock. Oh, why did I ever leave Tibet?” Then I reasoned out from what I had heard and from my kite flying experience. A spin; controls cannot operate, I must give full throttle to try and get some directional control. No sooner had I thought of it than I pushed the throttle right forward again, and the engine roared anew. Then I grabbed the wildly threshing control and braced myself against the back of the seat. With my hands and my knees I forced that control forward. The nose dropped startlingly, as if the bottom had fallen out of the world. I had no safety belt and if I had not been clinging on very tightly to the controls I would have been shot out. It felt as if there were ice in my veins, as if someone was pushing snow down my back. My knees became strangely weak, the engine roared, the whine getting higher and higher. I was bald, but I am sure that had I not been the hair would have stood absolutely on end in spite of the airstream. “Ouch, fast enough,” I said to myself, and gently, oh, so gently, in case it broke off, I eased back that control. Gradually, terrifying slowly, the nose came up, and up, but in my excitement I forgot to level off. Up went the nose until the strange feeling made me look down, or was it up? I found the whole earth was above my head! For a moment I was completely at a loss to know what had happened. Then the plane gave a lurch and turned over into a dive again, so that the earth, the hard world beneath, was directly in front of the propeller. I had turned a somersault. I had flown upside down, braced on hands and knees in the cockpit, hanging upside down with no safety belt, and definitely without much hope. I admit I was frightened but I thought, “Well, if I can stay on the back of a horse, I can stay in a machine.” So I let the nose drop some more and then gradually pulled back the stick. Again I felt as if a mighty hand was pushing me; this time, though, I pulled back the stick slowly, carefully, watching the ground all the time, and I was able to level off the plane in even flight. For a moment or two I just sat there, mopping the perspiration from my brow, thinking what a terrible affair it had been; first going straight down, then going straight up, then flying upside down, and now I did not know where I was.
I looked over the side, I peered at the ground, I turned round and round, and I hadn't got the vaguest idea where I was. I might have been in the Gobi Desert. At last, when I had just about given up hope, inspiration struck me—just about everything in the cockpit had as well!—the river, where was it? Obviously, I thought, if I can find the river then I either go left or right, eventually I will go somewhere. So I turned the plane in a gentle circle, peering into the distance. At last I saw a faint silver thread on the horizon. I turned the plane in that direction, and kept it there. I pushed forward the throttle to get there more quickly, and then I pulled the throttle back again in case something broke off with all the noise I was making. I wasn't feeling too happy at this time. I had found that I was doing everything in extremes. I had pushed forward the throttle, the nose would rise with alarming rapidity, or I would pull back the throttle and the nose would fall with even more alarming suddenness. So now I was trying everything gently; it was a new attitude which I had adopted for the occasion.
When I was right over it, I turned again, and flew along that river, seeking the cliffs of Chungking. It was most bewildering. I could not find the place. Then I decided to come lower. Lower I circled, and circled, peering over the side looking for those white cliffs with the gashes which were the steep steps, looking for the terraced fields. They were hard to find. At last it dawned upon me that all those little specks on the river were the ships about Chungking. A little paddle steamer, the sampans, and the junks. So I went lower still. Then I saw a mere sliver of sand. Down I went spiraling down like a hawk spiraling down in search of prey. The sandy spit became larger, and larger. Three men were looking up, petrified with horror, three men, Po Ku and his fellow pilot and Huang, feeling quite certain, as they later told me, that they had lost a plane. But now I was fairly confident, too confident. I had got up in the air, I had flown upside down, I had found Chungking. Now, I thought I am the world's best pilot. Just then I had an itch in my left leg where there was a bad scar from the time when I was burned in the lamasery. Unconsciously I suppose I twitched my leg; the plane rocked, a tornado of wind struck my left cheek, the nose went down as the wing tilted, and soon I was in a screaming sideslip. Once again I pushed forward the throttle and gingerly pulled back on the control column. The plane shuddered and the wings vibrated. I thought they were going to fall off! By a miracle they held. The plane bucked like an angry horse, and then slid into level flight. My heart was fairly pounding at the effort and with the fright. I flew again in a circle over the little patch of sand. “Well, now,” I thought to myself, “I've got to land the thing. How am I going to do that?” The river here was a mile wide. To me it looked as if it was inches and the little patch on which I had to land was diminutive. I circled wondering what to do. Then I remembered what they had told me, how they had explained flying. So I looked for some smoke to see which way the wind was blowing, because they had told me I had to land into wind. It was blowing up-river, I saw by a bonfire which had been lit on the bank of the river. I turned and flew up-stream, up many miles, and then I reversed my course, so that I was facing down-river and into wind. As I flew towards Chungking I gradually eased back the throttle so that I was going slower and slower, and so that the plane would sink and sink. Once I eased it back too much, and the machine stalled and rocked, and dropped like a stone, leaving my heart and stomach, or so it felt, hanging on a cloud. Very quickly indeed I pushed forward the throttle and pulled back the control column, but I had to turn round again and make my way up-river once more, and start all over again. I was getting tired of this flying business, and wishing that I had never started it at all. It was one thing, I thought, to get it up in the air, but a very different thing to get down—in one piece.
The roaring of the engine was becoming monotonous. I was thankful to see Chungking coming in sight again. I was low now, going slowly, just above the river, between huge rocks which often looked white, but now, through the oblique rays of the sun, looked a greenish black. As I approached the sandy spit in the middle of the too narrow river—I could have done with several miles of width!—I saw three figures hopping up and down with excitement. I was so interested watching them that I just forgot all about landing. By the time it had occurred to me that this was the place I had to alight, it had passed beneath my wheels, beneath the tail skid. So, with a sigh of weary resignation, I pushed that hated throttle forward to gain speed. I pulled back on the control to gain height, and went over in a sharp left swing. Now I was facing up-river again, sick of the scenery, sick of Chungking, sick of everything.
I turned once more down-river, and into wind. Across to the right I saw a beautiful sight. The sun was going down and it was red, red and huge. Going down. It reminded me that I had to go down too, and I thought I would go down and crash and die, and I felt to myself that I was not yet ready to join the Gods, there was so much to be done. This reminded me of the Prophecy and I knew that I had nothing more to worry about. The Prophecy! Of course I would land safely and all would be well.
Thinking of that almost made me forget Chungking. Here, it was nearly beneath the left wing. I gently eased on the rudder-bar to make sure that the sandy spit of yellow sand was dead in front of the engine. I slowed down more, and more. The plane gradually sank. I pulled back the throttle so that I was about ten feet above the water as the engine note died. To be sure that there was no fire if I crashed I switched off the engine. Then, very, very gently, I pushed forward the control column to lose more height. Straight in front of the engine I saw sand and water as if I was aiming directly at it. So gently I pulled back the control column. There was a tug, and a jar, then a bounce. Once again a scraping noise, a tug, and a jar, and then a rumbling creak as if everything was falling to pieces. I was on the ground. The plane had just about landed itself. For a moment I sat quite still, hardly believing that it was all over, that the noise of the engine was not really there, but that it was just imagination in my ears. Then I looked around. Po Ku and his companion and Huang came racing up, red in the face with the effort, breathless. They skidded to a stop just beneath me. Po Ku looked at me, looked at the plane, looked at me again. Then he went really pale-faced with shock and utter relief. He was so relieved that he was quite unable to be angry. After a long, long interval Po Ku said, “That settles it. You will have to join the Force or I shall get into very serious trouble.” “All right,” I said, “suits me fine. There's nothing in this flying business. But I would like to learn the approved method!” Po Ku turned red in the face again, and then laughed. “You’re a born pilot, Lobsang Rampa,” he said. “You'll get your chance to learn to fly.” So that was the first step toward leaving Chungking. As a surgeon and as a pilot my services would be of use elsewhere.
Later in the day, when we were talking over the whole matter, I asked Po Ku why, if he had been so worried, he did not come up in the other plane to show me the way back. He said, “I wanted to, but you had flown off with the starter and all, so I could not.”
Huang, of course, spread the story, as did Po Ku and his companion, and for several days I was the talk of the college and of the hospital, much to my disgust. Dr. Lee sent for me officially to administer a severe reprimand, but officially to congratulate me. He said that he would have liked to have done a thing like that himself in his younger years, but “There were no aircraft in my young days, Rampa. We had to go by horse or by foot.” He said that now it fell to the lot of a wild Tibetan to give him the best thrill that he had had for years. He added, “Rampa, what did their auras look like as you flew over them and they thought that you were going to crash on them?” He had to laugh as I said that they looked completely terrified and their auras had contracted to a pale blue blot, shot through with maroon red streaks. I said, “I am glad there was no one there to see what my aura was like. It must have been terrible. Certainly it felt so.”
Not so long after this I was approached by a representative of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek and offered the opportunity to learn to fly properly and be commissioned in the Chinese Forces. The officer who came to me said, “If we have time before the Japanese invade seriously, we would like to establish a special corps so that those people who are injured and cannot be moved can receive help from men of the air who are also surgeons.” So it came about that I had other things to study beside human bodies. I had to study oil circulation as well as the circulation of the blood. I had to study the framework of aircraft as well as the skeletons of humans. They were of equal interest and they had many points in common.
So the years went on, and I became a qualified doctor and a qualified pilot, trained in both, working in a hospital and flying in my spare time. Huang dropped out of it. He was not interested in flying and the mere thought of a plane made him turn pale. Po Ku, instead, stayed with me because it had been seen how well we got on together and we made indeed a satisfactory team.
Flying was a wonderful sensation. It was glorious to be high up in an aeroplane, and to switch off the engine an to glide and to soar in the way that the birds did. It was so much like astral travelling which I do and which anyone else can do provided their heart is reasonably healthy an they will have the patience to persevere.
Do YOU know what astral travelling is? Can YOU recall the pleasures of soaring, of drifting over the house top going across the oceans, perhaps, to some far distant land? We can all do it. It is merely when the more spiritual part of the body casts aside its physical covering, and world at the end of its “silver cord.” There is nothing magical about it, nothing wrong. It is natural and wholesome, and in days gone by all men could travel astrally without let or hindrance. The Adepts of Tibet and many of India travel in their astral from place to place, and there is nothing strange in it. In religious books the world over, the Bibles of all religions, there is mention of such things as "the silver cord" and the “golden bowl.” This so-called silver cord is merely a shaft of energy, radiant energy, which is capable of infinite extension. It is not a material cord like a muscle, or artery, or piece of string, but it is life itself, is the energy which connects the physical body and the astral body.
Man has many bodies. For the moment we are interested only in the physical and in the next stage, the astral. We may think that when we are in a different state we can walk through walls, or fall through floors. We can, but we can only walk or fall through floors of a different density. In the astral stage things of this everyday world are no barrier to our passage. Doors of a house would not keep one in or keep one out. But in the astral world there are also doors and walls which to us in the astral are as solid, as containing, as the doors and walls of this earth are to the physical body.
Have YOU seen a ghost? If so it was probably an astral entity, perhaps an astral projection of someone you know, or someone visiting you from another part of the world. You may, at some time, have had a particularly vivid dream. You may have dreamed that you were floating like a balloon, up into the sky, held by a string, a cord. You may have been able to look down from the sky, from the other end of this cord, and have found that your body was rigid, pallid, immovable. If you kept at that disconcerting sight you may have found yourself floating, floating off, drifting like a piece of thistledown on a breeze. A little later you may have found yourself in some distant land, or some remote district known to you. If you thought anything about it in the morning you would probably put it down as a dream. It was astral travelling.
Try this: when you go to sleep at night think vividly that you are going to visit someone you know well. Think of how you are going to visit that person. It may be someone in the same town. Well, as you are lying down keep quite still, relaxed, at ease. Shut your eyes and imagine yourself floating off the bed, out through the window, and floating over the street—knowing that nothing can hurt you—knowing that you cannot fall. In your imagination follow the exact line that you will take, street by street, until you get to the house that you want. Then imagine how you are going to enter the house. Doors do not bother you now, remember, nor do you have to knock. You will be able to see your friend, the person whom you have come to visit. That is, you will be able to if your motives are pure. There is no difficulty at all, nothing dangerous, nothing harmful. There is only one law: your motives must be pure.
Here it is again, repetition if you like, but it is much better to approach it from one or two view-points so that you can see how utterly simple this is. As you lie upon your bed, alone with no one to disturb you, with your bedroom door locked so that no one can come in, keep calm. Imagine that you are gently disengaging from your body. There is no harm, nothing can hurt you. Imagine that you hear various little creaks and that there are numerous jolts, small jolts, as your spiritual force leaves the physical and solidifies above.
Imagine that you are forming a body the exact counterpart of your physical body, and that it is floating above the physical, weightlessly. You will experience a slight swaying, a minute rise and fall. There is nothing to be afraid of, there is nothing to worry about. This is natural, harmless. As you keep calm you will find that gradually your now-freed spirit will drift until you float a few feet off. Then you can look down at yourself, at your physical body. You will see that your physical and your astral bodies are connected by a shining silver cord, a bluish silver cord, which pulsates with life, with the thoughts that go from physical to astral, and from astral to physical. Nothing can hurt you so long as your thoughts are pure.
Nearly everyone has had an experience of astral travelling. Cast your mind back and think if you can remember this: have you ever been asleep and had the impression that you were swaying, falling, falling, and then you awoke with a jolt just before you crashed into the ground? That was astral travelling done the wrong way, the unpleasant way. There is no need for you to suffer that inconvenience or unpleasantness. It was caused by the difference in vibration between the physical and the astral bodies. It may have been that when you were floating down to enter the physical body after making a journey, some noise, some draught, or some interruption, caused a slight discrepancy in position and the astral body came down to the physical body not exactly in the right position, so there was a jolt, a jar. You can liken it to stepping off a moving bus. The bus, which is, let us say, the astral body, is doing ten miles an hour. The ground, which we will call the physical body, does not move. In the short space between leaving the bus platform and hitting the ground you have to slow down or experience a jerk. So, if you have had this falling sensation, then you have had astral travelling even if you did not know it, because the jerk of coming back to what one would call a “bad landing” would erase the memory of what you did, of what you saw. In any event, without training you could have been asleep when you were astral travelling. So you would have merely thought that you had dreamed. “I dreamed last night that I visited such-and-such a place, and saw so-and-so.” How many times have you said that? All a dream! But was it? With a little practice you can do astral travelling when you are fully awake and you can retain the memory of what you saw, and what you did. The big disadvantage of course with astral travelling is just this: when you travel in the astral you can take nothing with you, nor can you take anything back, so it is a waste of time to think that you will go somewhere by astral travelling, because you cannot even take money, not even a handkerchief, but only your spirit.
People with bad hearts should not practice astral travelling. For them it could be dangerous. But there is no danger whatever for those with sound hearts, because so long as our motives are pure, so long as you do not contemplate evil or gain over another, no harm whatever can happen.
Do you want to travel astrally? This is the easiest way to set about it. First of all remember this: it is the first law of psychology, and it stipulates that in any battle between the will and the imagination, the imagination always wins. So always imagine that you can do a thing, and if you imagine it strongly enough you can do it. You can do anything. Here is an example to make it clear.
Anything that you really imagine you can do, that you can do, no matter how difficult or impossible it is to the onlooker. Anything which your imagination tells you is impossible, then, to you it is impossible no matter how much your will tries to force you on. Think of it in this way; there are two houses thirty-five feet high, and ten feet apart. A plank is stretched between them at roof level. The plank is, perhaps, two feet wide. If you want to walk across that plank your imagination would cause you to picture all the hazards, the wind causing you to sway, or perhaps something in the wood causing you to stumble. You might, your imagination says, become giddy, but no matter the cause, your imagination tells you that the journey would be impossible for you, you would fall and be killed. Well, no matter how hard you try, if you once imagine that you cannot do it, then do it you cannot, and that simple little walk across the plank would be an impossible journey for you. No amount of will power at all would enable you to cross safely. Yet, if that plank was on the ground you could walk its length without the slightest hesitation. Which wins in a case like this? Will power? Or imagination? Again, if you imagine that you can walk the plank between the two houses, then you can do it easily, it does not matter at all if the wind is blowing or even if the plank shakes, so long as you imagine that you can cross safely. People walk tight ropes, perhaps they even cross on a cycle, but no will power would make them do it. It is just imagination.
It is an unfortunate thing that we have to call this “imagination,” because, particularly in the west, that indicates something fanciful, something unbelievable, and yet imagination is the strongest force on earth. Imagination can make a person think he is in love, and love thus becomes the second strongest force. We should call it controlled imagination. Whatever we call it we must always remember: in any battle between the will and the imagination, the imagination ALWAYS WINS. In the east we do not bother about will power, because will power is a snare, a trap, which chains men to earth. We rely on controlled imagination, and we get results.
If you have to go to the dentist for an extraction, you imagine the horrors that await you there, the absolute agony, you imagine every step of the extraction. Perhaps the insertion of the needle, and the jerking as the anaesthetic is pumped in, and then the probing about of the dentist. You imagine yourself fainting, or screaming, or bleeding to death, or something. All nonsense, of course, but very, very real to you, and when you get into the chair you suffer a lot of pain which is quite unnecessary. This is an example of imagination wrongly used. That is not controlled imagination, it is imagination run wild, and no one should permit that.
Women will have been told shocking tales about the pains, the dangers, of having children. At the time of the birth the mother-to-be, thinking of all these pains to come, tenses herself, makes herself rigid, so that she gets a twinge of pain. That convinces her that what she imagined is perfectly true, that having a baby is a very painful affair, so she tenses some more, and gets another pain, and in the end she has a perfectly horrible time. Not so in the east. People imagine that having a baby is easy, and painless, and so it is. Women in the east have their babies, and perhaps go on with their housework a few hours after, because they know how to control imagination.
You have heard of “brain-washing” as practiced by the Japanese, and by the Russians? That is a process of preying upon one's imagination, and of causing one to imagine things which the captor wants one to imagine. This is the captor's method of controlling the prisoner’s imagination, so that the prisoner will admit anything at all even if such admission costs the prisoner's life. Controlled imagination avoids all this because the victim who is being brainwashed, or even tortured, can imagine something else, and then the ordeal is perhaps not so great, certainly the victim does not succumb to it.
Do you know the process of feeling a pain? Let us stick a pin into a finger. Well, we put the point of the pin against the flesh, and we wait with acute apprehension the moment when the point of the pin will penetrate the skin and a spurt of blood will follow. We concentrate all our energies on examining the spot. If we had a pain in our foot we would forget all about it in the process of sticking a pin in a finger. We concentrate the whole of our imagination upon that finger, upon the point of that pin. We imagine the pain it will cause to the exclusion of all else. Not so the Easterner who has been trained. He does not dwell upon the finger or the perforation to follow, he dissipates his imagination—controlled imagination—all over the body, so that the pain which is actually caused to the finger is spread out over the whole of the body and so in such a small thing as a pinprick it is not felt at all. That is controlled imagination. I have seen people with a bayonet stuck in them. They have not fainted, or screamed, because they knew the bayonet thrust was coming, and they imagined something else—controlled imagination again—and the pain was spread throughout the whole body area, instead of being localized, so the victim was able to survive the pain of the bayonet thrust.
Hypnotism is another good example of imagination. In this the person who is being hypnotized surrenders his imagination to the person who is hypnotizing. The person being hypnotized imagines that he is succumbing to the influence of the other. He imagines that he is becoming drowsy, that he is falling under the influence of the hypnotist. So, if the hypnotist is sufficiently persuasive, and convinces the imagination of the patient, the patient succumbs, and becomes pliable to the commands of the hypnotist, and that is all there is to it. In the same way, if a person goes in for auto-hypnosis, he merely imagines that he is falling under the influence of—HIMSELF! And so he does become controlled by his Greater Self. This imagination, of course, is the basis of faith cures; people build up, and build up, and imagine that if they visit such-and-such a place, or are treated by such-and-such a person, they will get cured on the instant. Their imagination, in such a case, really does issue commands to the body, and so a cure is effected, and that cure is permanent so long as the imagination retains command, so long as no doubt of the imagination creeps in.
Just one more homely little example, because this matter of controlled imagination is the most important thing that you can ever understand. Controlled imagination can mean difference between success and failure, health and illness. But here it is; have you ever been riding a cycle on an absolutely straight, open road, and then ahead of you seen a big stone, perhaps a few feet from your front wheel? You might have thought, “Oh, I can't avoid that!” And sure enough you could not. Your front wheel would wobble, and no matter how you tried you would quite definitely run into that stone just like a piece of iron being drawn to a magnet. No amount of will power at all would enable you to avoid that stone. Yet if you imagined that you could avoid it, then avoid it you would. No amount of will power enables you to avoid that stone. Remember that most important rule, because it can mean all the difference in the world to you. If you go on willing yourself to do a thing when the imagination opposes it, you will cause a nervous breakdown. That actually is the cause of many of these mental illnesses. Present-day conditions are quite difficult, and a person tries to subdue his imagination (instead of controlling it) by the exercise of will power. There is an inner conflict, inside the mind, and eventually a nervous breakdown occurs. The person can become neurotic, or even insane. The mental homes are absolutely filled with patients who have willed themselves to do a thing when their imagination thought otherwise. And yet, it is a very simple matter indeed to control the imagination, and to make it work for one. It is imagination—controlled imagination—which enables a man to climb a high mountain, or to fly a very fast plane and break a record, and do any of those feats which we read about. Controlled imagination. The person imagines that he can do this, or can do that, and so he can. He has the imagination telling him that he can, and he has the will “willing” him to do it. That means complete success. So, if you want to make your path an easy one and your life pleasant in the same way as the Easterner does, forget about will power, it is just a snare, and a delusion. Remember only controlled imagination. What you imagine, that you can do. Imagination, faith, are they not one?
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