Sadly it's not only the likes of Christopher Hansard who misrepresent Tibet and its culture, the BBC is doing that very nicely.

Do visit: [gopetition.com]

A few weeks pass by and we still await firm news on legal actions against Christopher Hansard.

I met Christopher Hansard a couple of times. I found he had a strange brooding intensity. He seemed to me, very arrogant with a massive ego. I was quite shocked at how confrontational and rude he was. Then when he had established that I was not a threat to hs authority and knowledge, he switched and was completely charming!

I walked away not really knowing what to think. I cant comment about the various allegations in this thread. I just don't know. I did hear some disturbing rumours.

The internet is a wonderful thing in many ways, because we have the freedom to say exactly what we like. Unfortunately it also means people can hide behind a screen name, and are then free to say things that would normally be classed as defamation. I have seen some good people mercilessly slagged off in forums on a whole range of subjects.

On the other hand, when people are scared of repercussions and cannot speak out in their normal situation the anonymity is perhaps a good thing.

Let it be safe to say that if he has done the things some say, then Karma will catch him, in this life or the next. Abuse of spiritual power is a terrible thing and I believe within the Tibetan spiritual traditions there are some wrathful beings who might well call someone in for an "interview without coffee" if they are guilty of such abuses.

The martial arts connection:

I was interested to read Lorenzettis comments that he was claiming to train in Kung Fu when he was younger.

I dont know if the readers of this forum are knowledgeable about the martial arts. Martial arts can broadly be divided in to "internal" and "external" External arts train you in distance, timing, leverage, strength, stamina etc. Very much like western boxing. Internal arts train you to open the energy channels of the body and store and transmit large amounts of energy (Chi in Chinese arts, Ki in Japanese, Prana in Indian / Tibetan etc) an internal martial artist can discharge massive amounts of energy in to the body of their oponent causing massive physical and energetic damage if they so wish.

The three best known Chinese internal arts are Tai Chi Chuan, Ba Gua Chang and Hsing I Chuan.

I know that a very respected internal arts teacher (I will not mention his name as I am certain that he would not wish to be in any way associated with CH) went to train with CH in an esoteric Tibetan martial art he was calling "Lung Ta" (whether this actually exists or not I dont know) During his training he experienced incredable psychic "hits" to his system and had experiences of reality breaking down. From all accounts he was rather freaked out and thus stopped training with CH and went back to his previous system.

This is interesting as it might be relatively easy to pretend to have all sorts of psychic and healing abilities. Any new age fair will show you that! However it would be much more difficult to fool an already accomplished martial artist that you are yourself are a high end practitioner. The man defiantely has some sort of ability.

Maybe (and this is pure guess work) he found a Chinese internal arts teacher when young in NZ (More likely to find a Chinese person fleeing communist China I would have thought historically) and through Chi Kung type practices developed the powers he has demonstated.

An account of this martial arts angle can be found in:

"Esoteric Warriors" by Alex Kozma 1998 ISBN: 1 874250 95 2. Chapter 7.

It does not mention CH by name but refers to "the man who brought the art to Britain" It then relates the story of Urgyen Gnam Chak etc... (p88)

To quote from p 83.

"When I met my Tibetan style teacher in 1987 he told me to attack him, and as I did so I found myself becoming very emotional. I began crying. I didnt expect this at all because I was a trained fighter and very confident. He had the ability to work on a seemingly non physical level, to cut through my attack in a way that exposed my core feelings. His art was Lung Ta , and the tribe that was noted for this art in Tibet were famed for the emotional damage they would do to an opponent. What they would leave in the end was an emotionally wrecked person"

I would be interested to hear if anyone else has experience of this CH martial arts angle and in fact whether Lung Ta exists as a system or is something totally fabricated.

All the best

S

Are we to conclude, from the recent absence of contributions, that this thread is now closed?

Sparrow,
Just to clarify exactly what I wrote about Christopher's claims regarding being trained in Kung Fu, I will post it again.
I am doing this in response to your posting, which states:

Quote

I was interested to read Lorenzettis comments that he was claiming to train in Kung Fu when he was younger.
...This is interesting as it might be relatively easy to pretend to have all sorts of psychic and healing abilities. Any new age fair will show you that! However it would be much more difficult to fool an already accomplished martial artist that you are yourself are a high end practitioner. The man defiantely has some sort of ability.
Maybe (and this is pure guess work) he found a Chinese internal arts teacher when young in NZ (More likely to find a Chinese person fleeing communist China I would have thought historically) and through Chi Kung type practices developed the powers he has demonstated.

Quote


My postings:
01/31/2007.
... At the time Christopher was claiming to have trained in Kung Fu. He also claimed to me that he had been living in Tibet before attending Selwyn College.

01/31/2007.
vaidya wrote:

Quote

and sorry, just to understand, at age 19 CH had claimed to you to have been trained in kung fu and had been living in tibet? did he demonstrate any skills in this area? did you think it was just a lie or fantasy at the time or did you take him seriously?

Quote

In answer to your question: I thought that Christopher’s claims regarding living in Tibet and being trained in Kung Fu were fantasy. It was the mid 1970’s – the things he claimed about himself seemed to be loosely based on the role played by David Carradine in a popular television series. I am not an expert, but I do not feel he showed any proficiency in Kung Fu, except in mimicry.


Further, in her post dated 11/20/2007, Elizabeth states that Christopher went to Mt Albert Grammar School (Auckland) before attending Selwyn College.

CH had considerable knowledge of martial arts which, however, he could easily have picked up in NZ. He did have a lot of extra-curricular education; it is just the sources of instruction which have been misrepresented.

I have already submitted a similar posting to this one which doesn't seem to have gone through. Hopefully only one of my messages will be posted on the forum.
Christopher may have developed knowledge of martial arts after leaving Selwyn, but he certainly didn't have much skill before that.
My point is that Christopher has made claims regarding his medical training and his background which are false. He has been exposed as a fraud, yet Sparrow is speculating about the possibility that Christopher may have "found a Chinese internal arts teacher when young in NZ".... "and through Chi Kung type practices developed the powers he has demonstrated". These "powers" included giving a "very respected internal arts teacher" "incredible psychic "hits" to his system and he had experiences of reality breaking down".
The bottom line is that Christopher has caused damage to many people, who believed his BS because of the mythology he built around himself. Sparrow's posting, albeit probably unintentionally, seems to be again reinforcing this mythology.

In response to Lorenzetti...I agree with you that CH cultivated a mythology around himself and exploited it to the max. I have, however, heard from several sources that he acquired psychic ability (known as *siddhi*) and that he uses it to impress susceptible individuals. I think it very likely that the apprentices who regarded him as a guru were deceived by this phenomenon. There are anecdotes galore about unscrupulous yogis who lined their pockets in the 1960s and 70s by blowing naive western minds with siddhi. Authentic spiritual teachers warn against this very strongly. They do not deny the existence of psychic powers, but they are emphatic that they are *phenomena along the path* and not an end in themselves. And they do not deploy them in a manipulative manner or to gain status.

Can we please not invest Christopher Hansard with any advanced/supernatural powers or abilities. It may be he was possessed of a common capacity to intimidate, manipulate, and coerce, but this effort to portray the 'Master of Dur-Con' as some cosmic mega-being, capable of exerting a mesmeric hold over his associates, is insulting to anyone equipped with normal intelligence and reason.

Moreover this suggestion seeks, rather unethically, to absolve any responsibility of Hansard's associates and colleagues, some of whom we must remember, stated on this forum that they were very aware of his odious activities.

Despite that awareness Hansard allegedly managed to abuse clients for years, without challenge, objection or opposition from his apprentices and associates. Such troubling inaction, while in possession of experience and knowledge of apparent abuse by Hansard, makes such individuals complicit.

No excuse, including the exotic psychic bunkum of Hansard's 'influence', can alter that very troubling fact, they had a professional, personal and ethical responsbility to take action, they never did!

Meanwhile, Hansard remains at large, no doubt comforted by the singular absence of any legal challenge by those who knew but maintain to this day an objectionable silence.

PS: Dear Sparrow, As Hansard is neither fluent in written or spoken Tibetan I would not place too much credence in his understanding or employment of Tibetan terms such as 'Lung-ta'.

Hi, Thanks to Elizabeth and Lorenzetti for your comments.

What I am interested in, more specifically is if he trained in internal martial arts in NZ. Who specifically did he train with? Whether Chinese, Tibetan or anything else. If its not known thats fine. I am just curious.

Also if anyone has genuinely trained in any Tibetan martial art and has genuine professional knowledge of this area I would be interested in hearing their view.

I am not attempting to add to the mythology of CH. I am however making the serious point that in the spiritual/healing/new age/occult world there are sadly some very easily influenced / manipulated, vulnerable people.

This is often because people in this walk of life are often scared, damaged, ill or seriously socially disfunctional. Probably more so than in many other walks of life. The deep need to search for "something" to sort themselves out (physically or mentally) combined with a massive oversensitivity and a certain degree of social incongruence makes people like this very vulnerable to manipulation from somebody more knowledgeable, charismatic or dominant. This is why so many "spiritual" people get involved with cults or cult like activities.

A key point is that in order to help and heal people you need to know what was done to them physically, mentally, psychically, emotionally or energetically. A number of people have commented that CH has "siddhis" or is a great "energy manipulator" thats great..... but by understanding his training and what techniques he used could well be key to help the people that have been effected by him.

A second point is that while people in the previous category might easily fall for some trickery such as "cold reading" for example it is unlikely that a very experienced internal martial artist will. This is because it is normal in the martial arts world to try and "big yourself up" to psych out you opponent. However if you actually try and walk your talk (and that talks not genuine) you very quickly get your head kicked in!

I am merely commenting that if he did manage to impress a high level internal arts teacher then he might (and I say might) have genuine ability.

I think theres another point worth mentioning. Firstly if he has done something wrong, a court of law would want to know. To whom. What happened. When. Are there any witnesses. Is there any other evidence?

I am not defending the guy but you are talking about destroying somebodies repuatation, career and possibly freedom if the law gets involved. As Jeff has pointed out the thread went very quiet for a while and I am thinking that if people have gone to the police then usually if there is any evidence then they tend to move quite quickly where sexual offences are involved......... I am still waiting to hear.

If its a civil action then that could well take a couple of years.

The fact that he may have used energetic or psychic ability to commit wrondoings in no way absolves anyone else of being complicit. Essentially there is no real difference to using a physical technique. The others present would almost certainly have known this given the setup at Eden.


S