Evening star., 1937-11-30
FIRST WH|TELAMA
BACK FROM TIBET
Young Arizona Lawyer Tells
of Mastering Mysteries
of Priests.
By IRA WOLFERT.

NEW YORK, Nov. 80 (NANA).--
Among the passengers arriving on the
Queen Mary today was young Tucson
(Ariz) lawyer named Theos Bernard
who went to Tibet to collect material
for doctoral thesis and created a
sensation among the British popula-
ton of India when he emerged as the
hrst white man ever to become Lama
or Tibetan priest.
As lama he was enabled to pene-
trate the sacred mysteries of this re-
mote and largely unknown country,
which IS the last theocracy, or to-
tally church-ruled nation, on earth.
He has brought back with him, in ad-
dition to 10000 photographs and many
valuable manuscripts, a knowledge
OF the so-called tantric principles by
means of which Buddhist monks and
hermits perform feats which are gen.
orally regarded as incredible in the
Western World.
Can Stop Breathing.
He says that he has learned to stop
breathing for an indefinite length of
time, go without sleep, slow his heart
beat and halt the flow Of blood from
severed vein by sheer power of the
Will. He is preparing to submit his
accomplishments to scientific expert
ments by his wife. DR.. Viola Bernard
OF the Jersey City Medical Center. who
interested in psychiatry.
Ihe Arizona lawyer to whom these
extraordinary experiences befell is %
years old and has been a member of
the bar for six years, during four of
which he practiced. He is a tall. trim.
pmk-cheeked young man with wavy
brown hair and blue eyes and an af-
table smile. He became interested in
buddhism, he says, because he was
restless ':about what the world and
lie and everything was all about,
Wnat 1t meant and so forth. I knew
couldn't find out if I remained a law
yer in Tucson"
He was graduate of the Univer-
slty OF Arizona In 1885 he came here
10 Columbia University and continued
his studies in Buddhism, getting a
masters degree in philosophy with a
thesls called IAN introduction to
tantrlc principles" For his doctorate
ne decided to pursue his study of
tantric principles. Many Western
witnesses of the phenomena of-tant-
rlsm, he said, have reported back
Wnat they saw, but none has actually
mastered the principles and performed
the Phenomena himself I thought it
would be a genuine contribution to
our world and to our science if some
one did,
Goes to India.
with his young and pretty wife. he
went first to India, the original home
ol tantrlsm. But there" he said,
the old boys are dying out and the
YOUNG ones are interested only in the
western world. Even the manuscrints
nave suffered. No one has taken the
uounle to guard them from the cli-
mate and much of the material has
been ruined. Tibet is the only land
I" Whlch tantrism still f1ourishes.
MY vile returned home to continue
win her medicine and I went on to
hallmpong, a town just across the
border from Tibet. There I made the
scouaintance of as many Tibetan
Lamas as I could. They came across
continually to visit and trade 7
studied their dialects and their man.
herisms 1 found out that while
some British scholars know even more
about Buddhism than the Lamas thev
We're never accepted and allowed to
snare the lives of the Lamas because
they refused to abndon their manner
tsns.
L decided to fnesse may way in
learned all the little habits of the
iioeten Buddhists-to gesture with
tne palm upward, to cup my hands
before my chest as a kind of verbal
punctuation, to stand listening with