I heard he is living in Switzerland now.

Who is living in Switzerland Gondolf -- Hansard or Mohan? If the latter he has jumped bail. Wouldn't surprise me. If the former he's on the run. Wouldn't surprise me either.

I knew CH in New Zealand in 1982. At the time he was in legal and financial trouble. He had been running a mime school - the Auckland Mime Workshop - which had collapsed among massive hurt and anger from former colleagues and students. He was frequently ill, with a lot of physical pain and as Lorenzetti mentioned walked with a stick. He never mentioned Tibet, or Bon medicine although he expressed some non-specific knowledge of "healing." Common praise from him was that so-and-so was "a powerful healer." He claimed to be an initiate in the western esoteric tradition based on the Kabalah and Tarot. He said his grandfather had instructed him. The grandfather he represented as a kind of wild shaman-like figure, as he apparently later described "Urgyen." He claimed he had been taught mime by no less than Marcel Marceau's teacher Etienne Decroux although he also said, truthfully I believe, that he had never been out of NZ except for trips to Australia. Lorenzetti says he went to Selwyn College for a year. I believe that before this he attended Mt Albert Grammar School (Auckland) -rather than a Tibetan lamasery! His father was Peter Hansard, a former advertising executive, art-dealer and ornithological specialist. His mother Mary Hansard worked as a clerk for the NZ Housing Corporation, a government agency.

CH made many fantastic claims which revealed grandiloquence and snobbery to say the least. One was that Peter Hansard was "the real Earl of Lichfield" -the existing Earl being a pretender, presumably. He was a prolific writer of truly awful poetry and prose in a sort of free-wheeling quasi-Tantric manner and claimed that a collection of this work had been accepted for publication by Collins, which was suspicious to anyone with even a vague eye for literature. As well as the extravagant claims he also had the disquieting habit of lying about the most trivial, insignificant and easily verifiable things which is symptomatic of pathological liars. Despite seeing right through a lot of it and being suspicious of the rest I saw it as a reflection of some deep insecurity and fear. I felt he believed his own mythologies or was working hard to try and make himself believe. Was there perhaps some truth so awful that he had to fabricate his history? Anyway I felt oddly protective of him. He seemed very troubled.He oozed pathos while delivering his hyperbole of which he sometimes seemed uncertain.

At the risk of alienating some of the more sceptical users of this forum I have to say the first time I saw him was the only time in my life that I have ever seen an aura around a person. It was just for a moment and before we were introduced. It was black with flashes of crimson and the message to beware could not have been clearer. So I had huge intuitive reservations about him from the start. But he was so beautiful, flattering and charming that I chose to ignore them -and I had other reasons besides.

He was very intense and could be threatening. He would not tolerate any challenge or questioning. If you weren't with him you were against him. He was manipulative and insistent. He was consulting a spiritual adviser who used the pseudonym "MIss Ellen" (remember Dallas?) and appeared to live according to whatever she told him. He could be terribly hurtful while seeming unaware of it, or denying it, or not realising it, or not caring about it. He could be utterly ruthless and lacking in basic compassion.

And, of course, he was very intelligent, sometimes surprisingly funny and down to earth, and could be very kind, loving, generous and empathetic. If not, he would never have attracted so many people.

I heard nothing of him after 1984 when he left NZ so like others I was totally astonished to learn about his Tibetan medical practice in an article in the NZ Listener in 2002. At the time I thought, well, if there's any truth in this it explains a lot of things, although it raises a hell of a lot more questions too. I was a bit disturbed yet again by a couple of those trivial factual inaccuracies, hidden in plain sight: he was born in 1957 so could not have been four in 1959 and his parents were not English; his mother was not a doctor.

It appears that 25 years later nothing has changed. He used to say he had been "cursed" - most notably by the grandfather who supposedly gave him his esoteric instruction. Oddly enough this seems one of the most believable things in this whole bizarre and tragic story. He is a truly afflicted being, I think, and certainly can do massive harm.

Hi Elizabeth, many thanks for that revealing, authoritative, and thoughtful disclosure about the murky background of the Master of Dur-Con. What a 'pedigree' he has!

Certainly there are untruths about his parents. He told me they were simple uneducated people. But he did say he had a grandfather who was a diplomat and had a special Canadian passport but then the family moved to NZ.

Why does he bother lying? it's all so unnecessary. I hope anyone who still thinks this man is on the up and up will read all these lies and inconsistencies, and see a pathological liar. It was quite gratuitous to lie about his parents but the lying revealed a lot about his character. Throwing siddhis around may be impressive but the true mark of an honourable person is their behaviour when it seems no one is watching.

Great. I wonder how Peter Hansard would feel about being described as "simple and uneducated." He was quite a figure in the art/business world in NZ during the 70s and early 80s. Among other things he collaborated on film-scripts and books with such NZ luminaries as actor Ian Mune and painter Raymond Ching, and did a witty and sophisticated cartoon-strip for the NZ Listener. How insulting. Really, has CH been trying to convince people that until the timely intervention of Tibet they used to sit round on the family farm pushing peas up their noses?How stupid and unnecessary.

Would that be the same Peter Hansard that has credits for various New Zeland screenplays, Smash Palace for instance.

That's right.

Do you know when and where he died and whether he remained married. I heard he was a bit of a "lady's man."

Hello Gondolf, Please would you be kind enough to respond to my query re your previous post. Is Hansard now living in Switzerland? Or were you referring to Mohan? Many thanks and good wishes.