"I believe the idea of Shambhala has not yet come to full flower, but that when it

does it will have enormous power to reshape civilisation. It is the sign of the future.
The search for a new unifying principle that our civilisation must now undertake
will, I am convinced, lead it to this source of higher energies, and Shambhala will
become the great icon of the new millennium." Victoria LePage, Shambhala

For thousands of years rumours and reports have circulated that somewhere beyond
Tibet, among the icy peaks and secluded valleys of Eurasia, there lies an inaccessible
paradise, a place of universal wisdom and ineffable peace called Shambhala although it
is also known by other names.

James Hilton wrote about it in the 1933 book Lost Horizon, Hollywood portrayed it in the
1960s film Shangri-la, and recent films such as Kundun, Little Buddha and Seven
Years in Tibet allude to the magical utopia.

Even author James Redfield, noted for his New Age best seller The Celestine Prophecy,
has written a book called The Secret of Shambhala: In Search of the Eleventh Insight.

Shambhala, which in Sanskrit means place of peace, of tranquility, is thought of in Tibet

as a community where perfect and semi-perfect beings live and are guiding the evolution
of humanity. Shambhala is considered to be the source of the Kalachakra, which is the
highest and most esoteric branch of Tibetan mysticism.

Legends say that only the pure of heart can live in Shambhala, enjoying perfect ease and
happiness and never knowing suffering, want or old age. Love and wisdom reign and
injustice is unknown.

The inhabitants are long-lived, wear beautiful and perfect bodies and possess supernatural
powers; their spiritual knowledge is deep, their technological level highly advanced, their
laws mild and their study of the arts and sciences covers the full spectrum of cultural
achievement, but on a far higher level than anything the outside world has attained.

By definition Shambhala is hidden. Of the numerous explorers and seekers of spiritual

wisdom who attempt to locate Shambhala, none can pinpoint its physical location on a
map, although all say it exists in the mountainous regions of Eurasia.

Many have also returned believing that Shambhala lies on the very edge of physical
reality, as a bridge connecting this world to one beyond it.

The Sanskrit and Tibetan Shambhala has also been identified by no less an authority than
Alexandra David-Neel, who spent years in Tibet, with Balkh in the far north of
Afghanistan the ancient settlement known as the mother of cities.

Present day folklore in Afghanistan asserts that after the Muslim conquest, Balkh was
known as the Elevated Candle (Sham-i-Bala), a Persianisation of the Sanskrit
Shambhala.

Tibetan lamas spend a great deal of their lives in spiritual development before attempting
the journey to Shambhala. Perhaps deliberately, the guidebooks to Shambhala describe
the route in terms so vague that only those already initiated into the teachings of the
Kalachakra can understand them.
As Edwin Bernbaum says in The Way to Shambhala:

"As the traveler draws near the kingdom, their directions become

increasingly mystical and difficult to correlate with the physical world. At

least one lama has written that the vagueness of these books is deliberate

and intended to keep Shambhala concealed from the barbarians who will

take over the world."1

The lamas reference to the barbarians who will take over the world is directly connected
to the prophecy of Shambhala. This prophecy tells of the gradual deterioration of mankind
as the ideology of materialism spreads over the earth.

When the barbarians who follow this ideology are united under an evil king and think
there is nothing left to conquer, the mists will lift to reveal the snowy mountains of
Shambhala.

The barbarians will attack Shambhala with a huge army equipped with terrible weapons.
Then the 32nd king of Shambhala, Rudra Cakrin, will lead a mighty host against the
invaders. In a last great battle, the evil king and his followers will be destroyed.

As the cultures of the East and West collide, the myth of Shambhala rises out of the mists
of time. We now have access to numerous Buddhist texts on the subject, along with
reports by Western explorers who set out on the arduous journey in search of Shambhala.
There is much we can learn for our own individual journey of spiritual understanding.

The Lost World of Agharta

The idea of a hidden world beneath the surface of the planet is a very ancient one indeed.
There are innumerable folk tales and oral traditions found throughout many countries
speaking of subterranean people who have created a kingdom of harmony, contentment
and spiritual power.

The early European travelers to Tibet consistently told the same tale of a hidden spiritual
center of power. Adventurers recounted fantastic tales of a hidden kingdom near Tibet.

This special place is known by numerous local and regional names, which no doubt
caused much confusion among early travelers as to the kingdoms true identity. These
early travellers knew it as Agharta (sometimes spelt Agharti, Asgartha or Agarttha),
although it is now commonly known as Shambhala.
Taking the legend in its most basic form, Agharta is said to be a mysterious underground
kingdom situated somewhere beneath Asia and linked to the other continents of the world
by a gigantic network of tunnels.

These passageways, partly natural formations and partly the handiwork of the race which
created the subterranean nation, provide a means of communication between all points,
and have done so since time immemorial. According to the legend, vast lengths of the
tunnels still exist today; the rest have been destroyed by cataclysms.

The exact location of these passages, and the means of entry, are said to be known only
to certain high initiates, and the details are most carefully guarded because the kingdom
itself is a vast storehouse of secret knowledge.

Some claim that the stored knowledge is derived from the lost Atlantean civilisation and of
even earlier people who were the first intelligent beings to inhabit the earth.

The first Westerner to popularise the legend of Agharta was a gifted French writer
named Joseph-Alexandre Saint-Yves (1842-1910). Saint-Yves was a self-educated
occultist and political philosopher who promoted in his books the establishment of a form
of government called Synarchy.

He taught that the body politic should be treated like a living creature, with a ruling spiritual
and intellectual elite as its brain.

In his quest for universal understanding, he decided in 1885 to take lessons in Sanskrit,
the classical and philosophical language of India.

He learnt far more than he expected. Saint-Yvess tutor was a certain Haji Sharif, who was
believed to be an Afghan prince. Through this mysterious personage, Saint-Yves learnt a
good deal about Oriental traditions including Agharta.

The manuscripts of Saint-Yves Sanskrit lessons are preserved in the library of the
Sorbonne, written in exquisite script by Haji. According to Joscelyn Godwin, writing
in Arktos:

"Haji signed his name with a cryptic symbol and styled himself Guru Pandit

of the Great Agarthian School. Elsewhere he refers to the Holy Land of

Agarttha In due course he informed Saint-Yves that this school preserves

the original language of mankind and its 22-lettered alphabet: it is called

Vattan, or Vattanian."2
Saint-Yves soon discovered his training enabled him to receive telepathic messages from
the Dalai Lama in Tibet, as well as make astral journeys to Agharta.

The detailed reports of what he found there became the crowning volume of his series of
politico-hermetic Missions: Mission des Souverains, Mission des Ouvriers, Mission de
Juifs, and finally Mission de lInde (The Mission of India).

In The Mission of India we learn that Agharta is a hidden land somewhere in the East,
below the surface of the earth, where a population of millions is ruled by a Sovereign
Pontiff, who is assisted by two colleagues, the Mahatma and the Mahanga.

His realm, Saint-Yves explains, was transferred underground and concealed from the
surface-dwellers at the start of the Kali Yuga, which he dates around 3200 BCE.

According to Saint-Yves, the mages of Agarttha had to descend into the infernal regions
below them in order to work at bringing the earths chaos and negative energy to an end.

Each of these sages, Saint-Yves wrote, accomplishes his work in solitude,

far from any light, under the cities, under deserts, under plains or under

mountains.3

Now and then Agharta sends emissaries to the upper world, of which it has perfect
knowledge.

Agharta also enjoys the benefits of a technology advanced far beyond our own. Not only
the latest discoveries of modern man, but the whole wisdom of the ages is enshrined in its
libraries. Among its many secrets are those of the relationship of soul to body, and of the
means to keep departed souls in communication with incarnate ones.

To Saint-Yves, these superior beings were the true authors of Synarchy, and for thousands
of years Agharta had radiated Synarchy to the rest of the world, which in modern times
has chosen foolishly to ignore it. When the world adopts Synarchical government the time
will be ripe for Agharta to reveal itself.

Much of what Saint-Yves reveals in his books about Agharta, to the modern reader,
appears of a bizarre nature. His writings are in a similar vein to the reports of strange
worlds visited by numerous out-of-body explorers over the ages. After his own
investigation of Saint-Yves, the respected historian of esotericism Joscelyn Godwin wrote:
 "I believe Saint-Yves did see what he described, and that he did not

consider himself, to the slightest degree, to be writing fiction or deriving

anything from anyone else. The proof is in his utter seriousness of character,

and in the publications and correspondence of the rest of his life, which

take Agartha for unquestionable realities. But it is quite another matter to

accept his Agartha in all the actuality and physicality that he attributed to

it."4

Until the start of the twentieth century, the legend of Agharta remained very much a
legend. Stories of Agharta had widely spread in Europe since the publication of Saint-
Yvess books, but evidence to support the claims remained as elusive as ever.

Indeed, it might well have been expected that in the rational and materialistic new century,
such stories would finally be confined to the realms of fantasy: a colourful tradition to be
ranked alongside other ancient mysteries such as the lost continents of Atlantis and Mu.

But such a supposition did not allow for the remarkable discoveries of two intrepid
explorers who in the 1920s went into the vastness of Asia and there unearthed evidence
about Agharta which far exceeded that of any previous reports. Their accounts, indeed,
became the cornerstone of our present knowledge of the secret kingdom.

Strangely, neither man knew each other, yet both were of Russian extraction. One made
his discoveries about Agharta while fleeing for his life from the Bolsheviks in Russia; the
other came shortly after from self-imposed exile in America, seeking to penetrate the
mysteries of Tibet. Their names were Ferdinand Ossendowski and Nicholas Roerich.

The King of the World

Writing in the early part of last century, Russian traveller Ferdinand Ossendowski said he
noticed there were times in his Mongolian travels when men and beasts paused, silent and
immobile, as though listening.

The herds of horses, the sheep and cattle, stood fixed to attention or crouched close to the
ground. The birds did not fly, and marmots did not run and the dogs did not bark.

Earth and sky ceased breathing. The wind did not blow and the sun did not

move. All living beings in fear were involuntarily thrown into prayer and
 waiting for their fate.5

Thus it has always been, explained an old Mongol shepherd and hunter,

whenever the King of the World in his subterranean palace prays and

searches out the destiny of all peoples on the earth.6

For in Agharta, he said, live the invisible rulers of all pious people, the King of the World or
Brahatma, who can speak with God as I speak with you, and his two assistants: Mahatma,
knowing the purposes of future events, and Mahinga, ruling the causes of those events.
He knows all the forces of the world and reads all the souls of mankind and the great book
of their destiny.7

Ferdinand Ossendowski (1876-1945), a polish scientist who spent most of his life in
Russia, was as intrigued with legends and with the occult as he was with politics.

As he fled through Mysterious Mongolia the Land of Demons, he paused frequently to

speak with Buddhist monks and lamas about the traditions associated with lakes, caves
and monasteries. There was one story he said he encountered everywhere in Eurasia: he
called it the Kingdom of Agharti, regarding it as nothing less than the mystery of
mysteries.8

Ossendowskis knowledge of the hidden kingdom came about after he fell into the
company of a remarkable fellow Russian speaker, a priest named Tushegoun Lama, who
had also fled the Russian Revolution, and could claim personal friendship with the Dalai
Lama, then the supreme ruler of Tibet.

It was from Tushegoun Lama that Ossendowski heard the first hints about Agharta and be
inspired to investigate the stories and ultimately produce the first detailed modern report
on the subterranean kingdom. He called this report, Beasts, Men and Gods (1922), and it
is now a rare and much sought-after book.

During their journeying, Tushegoun Lama told Ossendowski of the miraculous powers of
the Tibetan monks, and the Dalai Lama in particular powers, he said, that foreigners
could scarcely begin to appreciate.

Then, he went on:

But there also exists a still more powerful and more holy man The King of

the World in Agharti.9

At that point, according to Ossendowskis account, the Lama did not wait around to answer
questions, but rode off on his horse. The poor Russian was left standing in the settling dust
with a series of whirling questions rushing through his head. He had to wait several
months before he began to get any answers to these questions.

Later, another Tibetan called Prince Chultun Beyli told Ossendowski that sixty thousand
years ago a holy man had led a tribe of his followers deep into the earth.

They settled there, beneath Central Asia, and through the use of the holy mans incredible
wisdom and power, and the labours of his people, Agharta became a paradise. Its
population now numbered in the millions, and all were happy and prosperous.

The Prince also added the following details:

"The kingdom is called Agharti. It extends throughout all the subterranean

passages of the whole world. These subterranean peoples and spaces are

governed by rulers owing allegiance to the King of the World You know

that in the two greatest oceans of the east and the west there were formerly

two continents. They disappeared under the water but their people went into

the subterranean kingdom. In underground caves there exists a peculiar light

which affords growth to the grains and vegetables and long life without

disease to the people."10

Ossendowski, understandably, found much that was puzzling as well as confusing in these
accounts. Nonetheless he was convinced that he had come across something more than
just a legend or even an example of hypnosis or mass vision but more likely a powerful
force of some kind, evidently capable of influencing the course of life on planet earth.

Interestingly, Ossendowski reports that the enormous powers the people of Agharta were
believed to control could be used to destroy whole areas of the planet, but equally could
be harnessed as the means of propulsion of the most amazing vehicles of transport.

It has been suggested that this could be a prediction of nuclear energy and flying saucers!
(Beasts, Men and Gods was, of course, published in 1922, long before such topics were
even being discussed).

Ossendowski closes off his book with the prophecy of the King of the World (see A
Prophecy From the Inner Earth!, page 33), in which it is stated materialism will devastate
the earth, terrible battles will engulf the nations of the world, and at the climax of the
bloodshed in 2029, the people of Agharta will rise out of their cavern world.

Must-read related:
1.Hollow Earth: Agartha - Complete Accounts
2.Nazi Maps and Documents to Agartha Confirm the Hollow Earth Accounts
3.Hollow Earth: the Forbidden Land of Agartha and the Thule Secret Society
4.The Black Sun and the Vril Society

Emissary of Shambhala

It would be easy to dismiss Agharta/Shambhala as pure fantasy, were it not for a very
credible explorer who searched for, found and returned to tell us something about his
experiences.

Nicholas Roerich (1874-1947), a Russian born artist, poet, writer, mystic and distinguished
member of the Theosophical Society, led an expedition across the Gobi Desert to the Altai
mountain range from 1923 to 1928, a journey which covered 15,500 miles across thirty-
five of the worlds highest mountain passes.

As Victoria LePage puts it in her book Shambhala:

"Roerich was a man of unimpeachable credentials: a famous collaborator in

Stravinskys Rite of Spring, a colleague of the impresario Diaghilev and a

highly talented and respected member of the League of Nations."11

He was also influential in the Franklin Delano Roosevelt United States administration, and
was the pivotal force behind placing the Great Seal of the United States on the dollar bill.

Nicholas Roerich was first exposed to Buddhism and heard of Shambhala in St.
Petersburg, Russia during his involvement with the construction of the Buddhist temple
under the guidance of Lama Agvan Dordgiev.12

One of the reasons for Roerichs expedition may have been to return a stone said to be
part of a much larger meteorite possessing occult properties called the Chintamani Stone,
alleged to have come from a solar system in the constellation of Orion.

The stone, says LePage, was capable of giving telepathic inner guidance and effecting a
transformation of consciousness to those in contact with it.13

According to Lamaist legend, a fragment of this Chintamani Stone is sent forth to help
establish spiritual missions vital to humanity, and is returned, when missions are
completed, to its rightful home in the Kings Tower in the centre of Shambhala.14

Such a stone was said to be in the possession of the failed League of Nations, its return
being entrusted to Roerich. Though it is not known whether he was able to return the
fragment or not, his expedition helped those who believed that Shambhala was more than
a myth.

Roerich believed in the transcendental unity of religions in the notion that one day the
Buddhist, the Muslim, and the Christian would realise their separate dogmas were husks
obscuring the kernel of truth within.

All his works embraced the belief that all faiths awaited a new age in which this chaff of
dogma would be stripped away, humanity would toss aside its discords, and all would
come together in a paradise of universal brotherhood. His symbol for the coming paradise
was Shambhala.

Roerich kept a diary during the trip (published as Altai-Himalaya: A Travel Diary)15 and,
while in Mongolia, noted that, belief in the imminence of the era of Shambhala was very
strong.

In his book, Heart of Asia, Roerich describes both his scientific observations and his
personal spiritual quest.

Although he was ready to listen to tales of underground cities as part of the adventure, his
main interest centred on the spiritual dynamics of Shambhala and its importance as a
symbol of the coming age of peace and enlightenment. This blending of the scientific and
the spiritual is also present in the hundreds of paintings Roerich made throughout the
expedition.

His eye captured the shapes and colours of the mountains, monasteries,

rock carvings, stupas, cities and peoples of Asia, writes Jaqueline Decter

inNicholas Roerich. His soul understood their spirit; and his brush forged a

synthesis of beauty.

Throughout his life, Roerich strove to link all scientific and creative disciplines to advance
true culture and international peace, citing the power of art and beauty to accomplish such
a feat.

The Roerich Peace Pact, which obligated nations to respect museums, cathedrals,
universities and libraries as they did hospitals, was established in 1935 and became part
of the United Nations organisational charter. The connection between Shambhala and the
Peace Pact is clearly evident in the following speech given at the Third International
Roerich Peace Banner Convention in 1933:

The East has said that when the Banner of Shambhala would encircle the world, verily the
New Dawn would follow. Borrowing this Legend of Asia, let us determine that the Banner
of Peace shall encircle the world, carrying its word of Light, and presaging a New Morning
of human brotherhood.16

Today, notes LePage, every major Russian city has a Roerich organisation

that expresses his ideas for a new type of enlightened civilisation based on

the utopian principles of Shambhala.17

The Sign of Shambhala

Shambhala itself is the Holy Place, where the earthly world links with the

highest states of consciousness. In the East they know that there exists two

Shambhalas an earthly and an invisible one. Nicholas Roerich, The Heart

of Asia

Nicholas Roerich and party set out in 1924 to explore India, Mongolia and Tibet. Like
Ossendowski before him, Roerich soon encountered stories about a secret underground
kingdom. He jotted down his thoughts on this hidden kingdom and these notes were later
published in a remarkable record of the expedition entitled Altai-Himalaya: A Travel
Diary.18

In the summer of 1926, Roerich reported a strange event in his travel diary. He was
encamped with his son, Dr. George Roerich, and a retinue of Mongolian guides in the
Sharagol valley near the Humboldt mountain chain between Mongolia and Tibet. At the
time of the event in question, Roerich had returned from a trip to Altai and built a stupa, a
stately white structure, dedicated to Shambhala.

In August the shrine was consecrated in a solemn ceremony by a number of notable lamas
invited to the site for the purpose, and after the event, writes Roerich, the Buriat guides
forecast something auspicious impending. A day or two later, a large black bird was
observed flying over the party.

Beyond it, moving high in the cloudless sky, a huge, golden, spheroid body, whirling and
shining brilliantly in the sun, was suddenly espied. Through three pairs of binoculars the
travellers saw it fly rapidly from the north, from the direction of Altai, then veer sharply and
vanish towards the southwest, behind the Humboldt mountains.

One of the lamas told Roerich that what he had seen was the sign of Shambhala,
signifying that his mission had been blessed by the Great Ones of Altai, the lords of
Shambhala. They had also been witness to a classic UFO, twenty years before the
official beginning of the phenomenon with Kenneth Arnolds sighting in 1947.

Roerichs account of such a sighting aroused great interest in Europe and, corroborated as
it was by George Roerich, brought to the West the first concrete evidence that there might
be something present in Eurasia that defied understanding. Victoria LePage describes its
significance as such:

"In its vivid color and factuality, its bizarre but unarguable reference to an

unknown golden aircraft that behaved as no ordinary airplane could, the

Roerich story could rightly be called the first reliable intimation that the

kingdom of Chang Shambhala was perhaps knowable as more than an

intellectual curiosity, a popular Asian fable and from about 1927 onward

the world centre in the northern mountains exerted on Western occult circles

the fascination of an idea whose time has come."19

Which brings us to the very nature of reality. Paranormal experiences, including UFO
sightings, are always indicative of an altered state of consciousness that allows the
witness to see other realities. Often the experience is similar to a lucid dream, where
ordinary space-time physics no longer applies.

The Eastern mystical view of the world can be quite different from the Western scientific
view of it. It maybe that the guidebooks to Shambhala are describing a landscape
transformed by the visions of a yogi taking the journey there: Where we would see a
mountaintop gleaming with snow, he would see a golden temple with a shining god. In that
case, we might be able to travel the same path, but with a different view of reality.

To travel to Shambhala, as Nicholas Roerich journeyed, is to undertake at one and the

same time an inner mystical journey and an outer physical one through desolate and
mountainous territory to a cosmic powerhouse.

An old Tibetan story tells of a young man who set off on the quest for Shambhala. After
crossing many mountains, he came to the cave of an old hermit, who asked him:
 Where are you going across these wastes of snow?

To find Shambhala, the youth replied.

Ah, well then, you need not travel far, the hermit said. The kingdom of

Shambhala is in your own heart.20

By Jason Jeffrey, New Dawn Magazine

Footnotes:
1. Edwin Bernbaum, The Way to Shambhala: A Search for the Mythical Kingdom
Beyond the Himalayas, 2001, p.25.
2. Joscelyn Godwin, Arktos: The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism and Nazi Survival,
1993, p.83.
3. Subterranean Worlds: 100,000 Years of Dragons, Dwarfs, the Dead, Lost Races &
UFOs from Inside the Earth, Walter Kafton-Minkel, 1989, p.188.
4. Joscelyn Godwin, Arktos: The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism and Nazi Survival,
1993, p.85.
5. Ferdinand Ossendowski, Beast, Men and Gods, 1922, p.300.
6. Ibid, p.300.
7. Ibid, p.303.
8. Ibid, p.300.
9. Ibid, p.118.
10. Alec Maclellan, The Lost World of Agharti: The Mystery of Vril Power, 1982, p. 66.
11. Victoria LePage, Shambhala: The Fascinating Truth Behind the Myth of Shangri-
la, 1996, p.11.
12. See New Dawn No. 68, p. 85.
13. Victoria LePage, Shambhala: The Fascinating Truth Behind the Myth of Shangri-
la, 1996, p.10.
14. Andrew Tomas, Shambhala: Oasis of Light, 1976, p.32.
15. Nicholas Roerich, Altai-Himalaya: A Travel Diary (1929); Other books by
Roerich: The Heart of Asia (1930); Shambhala (1930)
16. Speech by Francis Grant in The Roerich Pact and Banner of Peace, 1947
17. Victoria LePage, Shambhala: The Fascinating Truth Behind the Myth of Shangri-
la, 1996, p.12.
18. Nicholas Roerich, Altai-Himalaya: A Travel Diary (1929).
19. Victoria LePage, Shambhala: The Fascinating Truth Behind the Myth of Shangri-
la, 1996, p.12.
20. As quoted in Edwin Bernbaum, The Way to Shambhala; Jacques Bacot, Introduction
a lhistoire du Tibet, 1962, p.92N.
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