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After reporting all this to the king, the king sent the Chagzoe to Kalimpong in order to interview Dudjom Rinpoche. The Chagzoe told the high lama, who was Tulshuk Lingpa’s root guru, ‘I’ve’ just come from Tashiding where I interviewed Tulshuk Lingpa and he told me everything. Some say he’s not serious about actually going to Beyul but he brought his khandro, a sure indication that he has every intention of opening the gate. He told me everything but he wouldn't tell me when he would depart. He is your disciple so you must know when. So please tell me.’

Dudjom Rinpoche said, diplomatically but to the point, ‘Tulshuk Lingpa is a terton, and Beyul does exist. He is the right man to open Beyul. I have no idea about the timing. Only he can know this.’

— A Step Away from Paradise by Thomas K. Shor, Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo (Page 184)

‘And by the way,’ he said, ‘I’ve been to the beyul.’

You've been to Beyul Demoshong?’ I was incredulous.

‘So have you,’ he replied dryly, pausing for effect. ‘Beyul Demoshong is congruous with Sikkim, superimposed upon its physical geography. It exists in a kind of parallel dimension. Physically it is Sikkim but it has all these other qualities. Beyul is in the physical landscape of Sikkim. You can physically go there—we've both been to Tashiding, so we've both been to the centre of the Hidden Land. But we don’t know that we've been there because we don't have the right realization.’

— A Step Away from Paradise by Thomas K. Shor, Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo (Page 166)

Dharmapala and mahapala are the Sanskrit names for spirits that in Tibetan are known as the shipdak and sadag. The shipdak are the local mountain deities. They show the way. The sadag are the spirit owners or lords of the land. Sa means soil and dag means owner. There are different shipdak and sadag for each of the four gates to Beyul Demoshong. Unless you appease these spirits, the way will not open.

— A Step Away from Paradise by Thomas K. Shor, Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo (Page 159)

Beyul means Hidden Land. Both its existence and its opening are cloaked in mystery and are meant to be kept secret. Tulshuk Lingpa’s teachers, Chatral Rinpoche and Dudjom Rinpoche, warned him to keep quiet and take only a few disciples. They cautioned that Beyul could not be opened by brute force. Yet events seemed to take on a life of their own. Tulshuk Lingpa had taken centre stage at the central monastery in Sikkim and the numbers of his followers were growing daily, all of whom were intent on vanishing from this world and all its problems to enter a land that was known to exist on the slopes of Mount Kanchenjunga ever since people first started living in the land had become known as Sikkim.

— A Step Away from Paradise by Thomas K. Shor, Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo (Page 141)

Tulshuk Lingpa made it clear that only those with true and unflinching faith should even think of coming with him. Opening the way to a hidden land is a tremendous act—calling as it does upon tremendous physical, spiritual and imaginative powers. He knew that the fate of the entire enterprise would hinge upon the fate of each individual who came with him. One’s faith had to be total, and the test of this was given even before leaving. Only those who would gladly give up everything—every attachment to both people and material goods and even the notion of return—were fit for such a journey. If you wanted to plant your crops as an insurance policy against a failed attempt, if you wanted to only loan your house out and not sell it or give it away in order to have something to return to, your faith was thereby shown not to be great enough. Your lack of faith would present an obstacle sufficient to block everyone's way.

— A Step Away from Paradise by Thomas K. Shor, Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo (Page 129)

Tashiding Gompa is a collection of temple buildings behind which lies an area of stupas. There is a kora, a well-worn path circling the temple complex and stupas, by which the faithful circumambulate the holy site intoning mantras, cycling through the 108 beads of their rosary-like malas. Along the kira, towards the back behind the stupas, one finds the rock face by which the monastery actually derives its name. The full name of the monastery is Drakar Tashiding. Drakar means white rock. Tashiding means Auspicious Centre. So the name of the monastery translates to White Rock of the Auspicious Centre. The rock face does in fact have a light-coloured area roughly rectangular in shape and the size of a small door, and it is this section of the rock face that lends its name to the monastery. Since the most ancient times, there has been a belief prevalent in Sikkim that this white area of the rock is actually a door to Demoshong. There was even a small cavity in the rock inside of which was a loose stone. The opening of the cavity was such that although one could fit one’s hand into the cavity and move the stone you couldn't get the stone out, This was the ‘key’ to the door.

— A Step Away from Paradise by Thomas K. Shor, Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo (Page 124)

‘Look,’ he said, ‘a perfect signal!’ It was true. He quickly called Delhi. When he got his girlfriend on the other end, he stepped out of the door of Géshipa’s room on to the old wooden staircase for some privacy but the signal faded the moment he crossed the threshold of Géshipa’s room. The only place during that entire trip where his mobile phone worked was inside the room of that wizard.

— A Step Away from Paradise by Thomas K. Shor, Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo (Page 114)

I had all round a feeling of total peace and happiness. This sense of utter happiness transformed itself into great compassion and the spontaneous manifestation of happiness. Towards the beings of the six realms and those of the present time, I developed an irresistible feeling of compassion. In such a mood—through my deep contemplation—whatever sights and sounds I experienced were turned into the body, speech and mind of Chenresig, the Buddha of Compassion. After getting up from this meditation, I offered prayers and benedictions in order to expand and maintain the clear light of sleep.

— A Step Away from Paradise by Thomas K. Shor, Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo (Page 101)

Increasingly, people flocked to Tulshuk Lingpa to hear him speak of Beyul. Kunsang remembers his father saying, ‘One day I must go to Shangri La. Whoever wants to come with me, come but only if you have no doubts, If you have doubts, please don’t go. Stay here!’ Kunsang remembers him saying this especially when jinda provided him with a big bottle of nice to drink.

— A Step Away from Paradise by Thomas K. Shor, Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo (Page 92)

To a yogi and mystic such as Tulshuk Lingpa, the most important thing is having the time and space to do spiritual practice. Tibet, with its vast isolation and empty spaces, had been a natural place of spiritual attainment; it had produced many of the world’s most highly developed mystics who had handed down and preserved an ancient tradition of attaining spiritual understanding and bodhichitta, loving kindness. In the isolation of the cliff face in Pangao and in the monastery in Simoling, Tulshuk Lingpa found that even surrounded by family he could continue to develop his practice. Yet he saw that for so many others death and cataclysm was their lot, and increasingly they had nowhere to go.

— A Step Away from Paradise by Thomas K. Shor, Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo (Page 73)

In much the same vein, Tulshuk Lingpa introduced a new ritual to the village, which transformed the age-old practice of blood sacrifice into one that offered vegetable sacrifices, flowers and water. This ritual is performed in Simoling to this day, and as one lama from the monastery told me, ‘We used to sacrifice four goats a year. That was over forty-five years ago. So we've saved over 180 goats.’

— A Step Away from Paradise by Thomas K. Shor, Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo (Page 62)

There is no external mark of a truly spiritual person. You'll recognize it not by whether he or she wears a robe or a business suit, a turban or a baseball cap. How versed he is in the scriptures or whether he knows the rituals has nothing to do with it. It doesn’t matter whether he eats meat or not, takes his rest on Saturday or Sunday or whether he spends his days in devotion or in the office. The mark of a person who is spiritually advanced is that he or she has natural and spontaneous compassion.

— A Step Away from Paradise by Thomas K. Shor, Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo (Page 51 - 52)

Each time I arrived at Kunsang’s with my tape recorder and paper he would get an impish smile, burst out laughing aad say, ‘And then what happened?’ But his question was clearly rhetorical. It was obvious he had been thinking of what story to tell me next. His stories weren't often linear but there was an internal, often logic-defying thread that strung the incidents of any given story together and wove the stories themselves together into a coherent whole. Since the stories of Tulshuk Lingpa’s life all culminated in his setting forth for the Land of Immortality, every incident seemed designed to loosen the rational mind from its moorings.

— A Step Away from Paradise by Thomas K. Shor, Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo (Page 41)

Tulshuk means crazy—but it also means fickle, mutable or changeable. So a man with a tulshuk nature would always be changing his mind—saying one thing in the morning, something else in the afternoon and contradicting both by evening. Though sober, he would get drunk, and when drunk he would act as if sober. Though a lama, he would have lovers, and when with them would still act as a lama. Though holy, he would be irreverent but while irreverent he would still retain his holiness.

— A Step Away from Paradise by Thomas K. Shor, Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo (Page 33 - 34)

Concepts about these hidden valleys vary, even among learned lamas. Some say that a person who is not spiritually advanced—someone without the karma to find or enter one—could climb into the high mountains, stumble upon one of these valleys and not even realize it. One could walk through a landscape that would be transformed into a place of miracle and wonder by a person of spiritual understanding, and notice nothing. William Blake once said, ‘If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.

— A Step Away from Paradise by Thomas K. Shor, Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo (Page 24)