Lobsang Rampa was the pen name of Cyril Henry Hoskin (8 April 1910 – 25 January 1981), an author who wrote books with paranormal and occult themes.

The title of the book is derived from an operation, similar to trepanation, that Rampa claimed he had undergone, in which a small hole was drilled into his forehead to arouse the third eye and enhance powers of clairvoyance.

He also takes part in an initiation ceremony in which he learns that during its early history the Earth was struck by another planet, causing Tibet to become the mountain kingdom that it is today.

"[2] Explorer and Tibetologist Heinrich Harrer was unconvinced about the book's origins and hired a private detective from Liverpool named Clifford Burgess to investigate Rampa.

Lama Lobsang Rampa of Tibet, he determined after one month of inquiries, was none other than Cyril Henry Hoskin, a native of Plympton, Devonshire, the son of the village plumber and a high school dropout.

[5] An obituary of Fra Andrew Bertie, Grand Master of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, claims that he was involved in unmasking Lobsang Rampa as a West Country plumber.

[7] According to the account given in his third book, The Rampa Story, he had fallen out of a fir tree in his garden in Thames Ditton, Surrey, while attempting to photograph an owl.

When Rampa's original body became too worn out to continue (following the events of his second book Doctor From Lhasa where, as a doctor in charge, he was questioned and tortured to the brink of death by the Japanese after being seized in the advance following the capture of Nanning as part of the Battle of South Guangxi), he took over Hoskin's body in a process of transmigration of the soul.

To Donald S. Lopez, Jr., an American Tibetologist, the books of Lobsang Rampa are "the works of an unemployed surgical fitter, the son of a plumber, seeking to support himself as a ghostwriter.

He received a reply from the Dalai Lama's deputy secretary stating "I wish to inform you that we do not place credence in the books written by the so-called Dr. T. Lobsang Rampa.

He and his wife, San Ra'ab, became Canadian citizens in 1973, along with his companion and secretary Sheelagh Rouse ("Buttercup"), described by the writer Eric Newby, sent by Rampa's publisher Secker and Warburg to meet Rampa in Ireland, as "a fresh-faced, very English-looking girl who told me that she had left her husband (who was a member of Lloyd's) and her three children in order to live as a disciple in the Lama's house".