Tibet's "Phantom Body": A French Female Explorer Said She Created a Monk with Her Mind

Alexandra David-Néel was a French woman who, in the early twentieth century, entered Tibet alone. In 1924, she disguised herself as a beggar and sneaked into Lhasa, becoming one of the first Western women to enter that city. She stayed in Tibet for over a decade, studying under local lamas, and lived to be one hundred and one years old.

In the memoirs she later wrote, she recounted a very strange story.

Tibetan lamas told her that there is a practice called "phantom body," meaning to use concentrated thought to create a visible image. The practitioner must retreat into seclusion for long periods, staring every day at an image imagined in the mind, visualizing it bit by bit: the face, the clothes, the movements, the expressions. Eventually, the image would walk out of the brain and appear before the eyes.

She said she decided to try it. She chose an image: a short, fat monk with a round face, smiling, looking very kind. She went into seclusion for several months, thinking of him every day.

As a result, she succeeded. The monk really appeared, standing in her tent, sometimes following her as she walked, sometimes sitting to one side. She said that at first, he was very obedient, like a silent companion.

But gradually, things changed. The monk's appearance began to change; his face grew thin, became a bit crooked, his eyes took on something unpleasant, and his smile carried a hint of mockery. He no longer obeyed her commands; sometimes he appeared on his own even when she had not thought of him.

Once, a herdsman who came to deliver butter to her saw him and thought he was a real monk. After the herdsman left, the monk was still standing there.

She felt something was wrong and decided to dissolve him. But it was much harder than she had imagined. She went into seclusion again, concentrated her thoughts, and it took nearly six months to slowly, bit by bit, make the monk disappear.

In her memoirs, she said she did not think this was any ghost or spirit; it was something created by her own mind. She said the Tibetan lamas thought the same way: all of this was the work of the mind.

This incident has never been proven to this day. Researchers say it may have been a hallucination caused by her long-term solitude and seclusion, combined with fatigue and suggestion. She herself did not deny this possibility.

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