Rampa Lobsang - Three Lives, ZNAM I WIEM, SZTUKA WOJENNA, Księgozbiór Wielkiej Pradżni
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FOREWORD
This book is NOT presented to you as fiction for a very
special reason; it is NOT fiction!
Of course, we can readily agree that some of the words
in the book about life on this world are ‘artistic license’, but
accept my statement that EVERYTHING about the life on
‘The Other Side’ is definitely true.
Some people are born with great musical talent; some
people are born with great artistic talent, they can paint and
captivate the world. Other people may be highly gifted
through their own hard work and assiduous devotion to
study.
I have little in the material side of this world—no car; no
television, no this and no that—and for twenty-four hours
a day I am confined to bed because, for one thing, I am
paraplegic—no use in the legs. This has given me great
opportunity for increasing talents or abilities which were
granted to me at birth.
I can do everything I write about in any of my books—
except walk! I have the ability to do astral travel and
because of my studies and, I suppose, because of a peculiar
quirk in my make-up, I am able to astral travel to other
planes of existence.
The characters in this book are people who have lived and
died on this world, and because of special provisions I
have been able to follow their ‘Flights into the Unknown’.
Everything in this book about the After Life is utterly
true, therefore I will not label the book as fiction.
Lobsang Rampa
CHAPTER ONE
‘Who is that old geezer?’
Leonides Manuel Molygruber slowly straightened up and
looked at the questioner. ‘Eh?’ he said.
‘I asked you, who is that old geezer?’
Molygruber looked down the road to where an electric-
ally propelled wheelchair was just going into a building. ‘Oh
him!’ said Molygruber expertly expectorating upon the shoe
of a passing man. ‘He's a guy that lives around here, writes
books or something, does a lot of stuff about ghosts and
funny things, and then he does a lot of writing about people
being alive when they're dead.’ He snorted with superior
knowledge and said, ‘That's all rot you know, not a bit of
sense in that rubbish. When you're dead you're dead, that's
what I always say. You get them there priests come along
and they say you've got to do a prayer or two and then
perhaps if you say the right words you'll be saved and you'll
go to Heaven, and if you don't you'll go to Hell. Then you
get the Salvation Army come along, they make a hell of a
racket of a Friday night, and then fellows the likes of me
have got to come along with our little barrows and sweep
up after them. They're there yelling and banging their
tambourines or whatever you call the things, shoving them
under the noses of passers-by, screeching out they want
money for the work of God.’ He looked about him and blew
his nose on the sidewalk. Then he turned to his questioner
again and said, ‘God? He never done nothing for me—
never—I got my own bit of the sidewalk here which I've got
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to keep clean, I brushes and I brushes and I brushes, and
then I takes two boards and I picks up the stuff and I puts
it in me barrow, and every so often we get a car come
along—we call 'em cars but they're really trucks, you know
—and they comes and they takes me barrow and they upends
it with all the stuff inside and all the stuff is taken away and
I've got to start all over again. It's a never ending job, day
after day, no stopping. You never know what Council man
is coming by in his big flash Cadillac and if we ain't bent
over our brooms all the time, well, I guess they go along to
somebody in the Council and that somebody makes a
racket with my Boss, and my Boss comes down and makes
a racket on me. He tells me never mind if I don't do any
work, the tax payer will never know, but make a show of
working, you get your back down to it.’
Molygruber looked about him a bit more and gave a
tentative push at his broom, then he wiped his nose with a
horrid sound on his right sleeve and said, ‘You're asking the
time, mister, if anybody says what are you saying to that
there cleaner, but what I'm saying is this; no God ever came
down here and done me brushing for me, me wot's having
my back breaking with bending over all the day long and
pushing all the dirt that people drops around. You'd never
believe what I get down in my patch, pantyhose and other
things wot goes in pantyhoses—everything—you'd never
believe what I finds on these street corners. But, as I was
saying, no God ever came down here and pushed my brushes
for me, never picked up any of the dirt on the roads for me.
It's all me poor honest self wot can't get a better job that's
got to do it.’
The man making the enquiry looked sideways at Moly-
gruber and said, ‘Bit of a pessimist, aren't you? Bet you're
an atheist!’
‘Atheist?’ said Molygruber. ‘No, I'm no atheist, me
mother was Spanish, me father was Russian, and I was born
in Toronto. I dunno what that makes me but I still ain't no
atheist, don't know where the place is anyhow.’
The questioner laughed and said, ‘An atheist is a man
who doesn't believe in a religion, doesn't believe in anything
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except the present. He's here now, and he dies, and he's
gone—where? No one knows but the atheist believes that
when he dies his body is just like the garbage you pick up
there. That's an atheist!’
Molygruber chuckled and replied, ‘That's 'im! That's me!
I got a new thing wot I am now, I'm an atheist and when
the guys wot works with me asks me what I am I can always
tell 'em, no, I'm no Russian, I'm no Spaniard, I'm an
Atheist. And then they'll go away chuckling, they'll think
old Molygruber got a bit of wit left in him after all.’
The questioner moved on. What's the point of wasting
time talking to an old creep like this, he thought. Strange
how all these street cleaners—street orderlies they call them-
selves now—are so ignorant, and yet they really are a fount
of knowledge about people who live in the district.
He stopped suddenly and struck himself on the forehead
with his open hand. ‘Fool that I am!’ he said, ‘I was trying
to find out about that fellow.’ So he turned and went back
to where old Molygruber was still standing in contempla-
tion, apparently trying to emulate the statue of Venus except
that he hadn't the right form, the right sex, or the right
implements. A broom wasn't a very good thing to pose with,
after all. The questioner went up to him and said, ‘Say, you
work round here, you know about people who live around
here, how about this?’ He showed him a five dollar bill, ‘I
want to know about the fellow in the wheelchair,’ he said.
Molygruber's hand shot out and grabbed the five dollar
bill and snatched it from the questioner's hand almost
before he knew it was gone. ‘Know about that old fellow’
asked Molygruber. ‘Why sure I know about him. He lives
down there somewhere, he goes in that alleyway and then
he goes down and then he turns right, that's where he lives,
been living there about two years now. Don't see him about
much. He's got an illness to his terminals or something, but
they say he ain't going to live much longer. He writes books,
he's called Rampa, and the things he writes about, they're
just plain ridiculous life after death. He's no atheist. But
they do say a lot of people reads his stuff, you can see a
whole display of his books in that store down there, they
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