The Dalai Lama of Tibet: An Interview with author Laurie Conrad

Ithaca, New York

Q You also describe, in your new book "Realms of Light", how you first met the Dalai Lama in your dreams, before you even knew who he was. Later you met him in person. Tell us your impressions of him. Anecdotes ...

L Our Holiness, the Dalai Lama of Tibet. Well, he is an extraordinary person. I have seen him and met with him in a group setting many times. One of the first things that struck me is his incredible sense of humor - and his tremendous joy. The next thing that I noticed was his extraordinary earnestness and seriousness whenever he speaks about prayer. He and his monks are constantly praying for the world. He is a very humble and holy man. And I love that juxtaposition of those two attributes of his personality, the humor and the holiness. He is said to be the incarnation of Compassion, and everything that he says and does revolves around the higher Compassion.

When he speaks about the higher Compassion, it is always combined with Wisdom - the Higher Wisdom which roughly corresponds to the Wisdom of the Catholics and other religions: that we are not the body, that the material world is not Ultimate Reality. This higher Compassion is not the ordinary, sentimental emotion most people call compassion; Paul Brunton would call that emotion, or the sentimentality of empathy, the lower octave of true Compassion. The Dalai Lama would say that true Compassion also includes this higher Wisdom. By applying Wisdom, we would have Compassion for every sentient being, every being on earth - just because they are in the body, and therefore, suffer. That is the true Compassion. This Compassion would also include the view that you stop people if they are behaving badly, because in their bad behavior they are hurting themselves and others. So, in this definition of Compassion, Wisdom stands in the background in a loving, detached way. The Witness position, let's say, of Paul Brunton, when we are able to clearly see what is truly best for everyone in the situation. That is true Compassion.

On the whole, we humans come to the world mainly from our personal thoughts and lower emotions. The big Teachers, such as the Dalai Lama and the sages, the saints - they are all trying to get us to come from a higher position, the higher octave of all the personal emotions. Brunton speaks about this at length in his Notebooks, and the Dalai Lama also has written many volumes of books.

As for anecdotes, I wouldn't even know where to begin. Mainly I remember his laughter, his joy. Next the sacredness that he brings with him. The clarity of his mind. The first time I was in the same room with him, I clairaudiently heard a very low tone everywhere in the room, vibrating the entire room - perhaps it was the energy of his very being, or his mantra, his inner prayers. I had not heard that phenomenon before that day, nor since, not even while in his presence.

Q I remember a story you told about the Dalai Lama coming and clearing a space where he was going to speak, with a storm?

L Yes, that was in Boston, when he spoke at Harvard. A friend and I were staying at Mataji’s ashram for a few days. I believe Mataji took over for Ramakrishna. She had an ashram near Boston, and we had decided to stay there instead of at a hotel in Boston. We had come to hear the Dalai Lama when he spoke at Harvard.

I don't know what year this was, but it was many years ago. It was one of the Dalai Lama's first visits to this country. Mataji sent three of us ahead, to arrange a meeting between her and the Dalai Lama just before the lecture. She had never met him. So she sent us ahead to talk to his entourage, and arrange it. I always thought this unusual assignment was a ruse of some sort - Mataji was fully enlightened, she did not need to send three young human seekers to arrange this meeting with the Dalai Lama. She and the Dalai Lama were perfectly able to arrange it themselves, through non-verbal communication, mentally. As it turned out, the young woman driving us there had met Paul Brunton in dreams throughout her childhood - as I had visited with the Dalai Lama first in dreams as an adult. In those dreams, Brunton instructed her. She found out who he was years later, when she saw his photograph in a book. That was probably why Mataji sent us ahead together, so that my friend and I would meet this young woman and hear her story. Also that I would experience the storm, to one day tell the story in this interview. Mataji, like Paul Brunton, was perfectly able to see into the future.

In any case, the three of us all got into a little car, an old, very beaten down car that we hoped would get us there. And we did get there early enough to arrange a meeting between the extraordinary Mataji and the saintly Dalai Lama.

After we had finished speaking with his people, they readily agreed to the meeting, and we were very pleased and happy that our mission had been accomplished so easily. I decided to go outside by myself to wait for Mataji to arrive. It was a beautiful, calm, early fall day. The sun was shining and there I was, on the beautiful Harvard campus; I had never been there. Students were sitting under the trees studying, or strolling to or from their classes along the paths. I walked out of the lecture building door a little way and happily stood there, taking in the beauty of the scene. Suddenly, a huge storm came up; an intense and surprising, shocking wind. Students’ papers were flying everywhere, branches waving everywhere, the trees were almost bending. I tried to take shelter against a huge tree near the door, wind and leaves flying, students now scurrying along the paths, bent over against the storm, trying to retrieve their scattered papers. It was quite something. It felt like I had inadvertently stepped into a vacuum cleaner or a washing machine. It probably lasted for about two or three minutes. Then the storm stopped just as quickly as it had arisen. I said to myself: "Good Heavens, what was that?"

Then I laughed. I realized that it was probably the Dalai Lama purifying the grounds of Harvard before he arrived. And that's still my view. He's a very powerful being, the Dalai Lama. He has tremendous power. Yet, in terms of his teachings, probably his biggest message to the world is kindness, to be kind to others. And if you have followed the messages from Our Lady, the Madonna, to the world - She has been appearing in Medjugorje, Yugoslavia for almost twenty years to six visionaries - She also says to lead a kind, simple life. She says that we should try to pattern our lives after St. Therese of Lisieux. And St. Therese of Lisieux never even left her convent! She had the simplest of lives. She had, at most, a little table in her convent cell and a bed. Maybe a chair. At one point she had a vase in her room, but she thought she might be getting too attached to it, so she asked them to remove it. She basically did her daily work and chores at the convent and was kind to the other nuns. And yet she became one of the greatest Catholic saints. In Medjugorje, Our Lady said basically: pick your path and lead a kind, simple life.

The Dalai Lama is now a celebrity, he is a very famous man. He has written books and lectured in many countries. He is world known. And he is still one of the most humble and simple of men. They say that he has one pair of shoes and two sets of his maroon robes. He remains completely untouched and unspoiled by the world. He considers himself a monk, yet he is both the temporal and spiritual leader of his country. But he lives like a simple monk. So, in that sense alone, I think he is an incredible and saintly man, and a role model for humanity.

Our interview couldn’t be long enough to really discuss the Dalai Lama. When I first saw him in person, I inwardly told Our Lady that I felt as though I had met Her Son. I felt as though I had seen Christ on earth, that I had listened to Him speak.