Rab Wilkie's memory about the origin of the TEB's name.

On April 7th, 2015 Rab Wilkie, a practicing astrologer for over 35 years and an anthropologist for about 20 years involved by chance with the beginning of the Third Ear Band, posted these very interesting lines about the origins of the TEB's name at the old page  http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2010/07/origins-and-meanings-of-third-ear-band.html

"The naming of the band was very much the result of a group-think, everyone contributing an associated thought or three, and in the end Carolyn's seal of approval probably decided it, but my recollection is of my own strong advocacy for "Third Ear", and actually first suggesting it as an option. I suspect that I'd recently read "The Third Ear" by Lobsang Rampa and tied it in, mystically, with hearing divine sounds. Later that year (1967) I helped Steve Pank edit "Albion" and wrote the article about Tibetan monks, which appears with the TEB ad". 

Little changing the sense of Carolyn's memory about it, Rab actually alludes to that very famous (a Sixties real cult book!) Lobsang Rampa's "The Third Eye", about the nature of a third mystical eye in the human mind. The complete original version of this book, first published in England in 1956, is available for free download at http://www.lobsangrampa.org/data/en/The-Third-Eye.pdf

"Published in 1956, T. Lobsang Rampa's book The Third Eye created a huge sensation", writes Dan Anon at "Tibeto-logic" Web site. "And for obvious reasons. I believe

that still today it is the all-time bestselling book about Tibet in any language. In chapter seven of the book, the young Tibetan acolyte (who would only in later Rampa books take over the body of the Englishman Cyril Hoskins), in the presence of his teacher, has a hole drilled into his forehead, through the skin, flesh and skull.

"A splinter of wood is placed there and left for some time before being removed. TLR's teacher Mingyar Dondup (which must be, in real Tibetan spelling Mi-'gyur-don-grub, a person who seems 

otherwise unknown in the annals of Tibetan history) often told him that, “with the Third Eye open, I should be able to see people as they were.” In practice, as one may read in chapter fourteen, what having an open Third Eye meant for Lobsang Rampa was to be able to read the thoughts of other people more or less directly, but also to see their true feelings and intentions (and illnesses) by viewing the colors of their astral bodies. The Third Eye has a function which might at first seem to correspond to the 'intuitional' function of Plato’s

third eye, but in fact it is entirely oriented toward the realm of human action. It has no transcending function, no ability to intuit higher transworldly metaphysical truths of any kind".

They can be clear the possible connections with the Third Ear Band's idea of a third ear able to get the inner dimension of a person...

About the controversial figure of Lobsang Rampa, you can read something at the Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Lobsang_Rampa

An official Web site of him also exists at
http://www.lobsangrampa.net/ 

Soon some memories by Rab about the meeting with Glen, Carolyn and Steve Pank in London in 1967...

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