Shambala etc.

[Glenn Scheper]

Shambala etc.
I think I am still reading Rinpungpa harvest...


PART ONE SHERPA CULTURAL ECOLOGY

The Sherpa conceptual map of Khumbu is far more complex than even the finest 
Western maps.

The mountain Khumbila, for example, is the main residence of the Khumbu Yul Lha, 
the great god of the region, and there are other peaks and places that are the 
homes of clan gods.

Often houses face in a similar direction, an orientation influenced not only by 
sunlight and slope but also by geomantic beliefs about
auspicious and inauspicious directions and the danger of having a house face 
places such as caves inhabited by demonesses.

Himalayan Subsistence Strategies

Barley is also the only Khumbu crop that is associated directly with divinity: 
there is a local god of barley whose seat is the beautiful barley-grain-shaped 
snow peak of Cho Polu that overlooks the barley fields of Dingboche. Buckwheat 
has no such religious associations but is instead
regarded as an inauspicious grain that can be used ritually only to hurl at 
ghosts in an effort to drive them off. Puffed buckwheat can also be used in a 
ceremony to appease feared spirits (saptok ) who dwell in boulders. Even white 
buckwheat is inauspicious, for the shape more than the color of the grain is the 
issue. Buckwheat grains have three sides, a number which is considered very 
unlucky by Khumbu Sherpas.[28]

There are three different shadow points. The first two mark the time for potato 
planting at the main village and the high-altitude settlements respectively, and 
the third, reached ten days after the second, indicates that it is time for 
buckwheat planting in Phurtse. Dingboche planting time is chosen by consulting 
the shadow of Ama Dablam as it falls on a small shrine near Orsho, between 
Dingboche and Pangboche. Once this event has occurred families choose a specific 
day to begin barley planting based on their personal horoscope.[72]

The ritual is taken very seriously. Some of the most sacred things enshrined in 
the village temples are taken out at this time and paraded. Care is taken to 
collect grain from each family of the community and to extend protection to 
each-farmers whose fields were inadvertently omitted from the blessed boundaries 
would be very angry indeed. The costs of an improperly performed ritual can be 
high, for it is believed they can directly endanger the crops of all villagers.

All weeding is completed by the Dumje festival, a seven-day celebration which 
culminates on the full-moon night of June-July. After this festival all further 
field work was once banned in all the Khumbu villages until harvest. The Dumje 
rites thus come at an important time in the agricultural cycle, the point where 
the crops and the well-being of the villages are thereafter entrusted to luck 
and the will of the gods. The protective rites of the festival are indeed the 
great religious event of the year in Khumbu. Dumje is the one festival 
considered by Khumbu Sherpas to be distinctly Sherpa and it is a powerful 
expression and reinforcement of village solidarity.[79] Its celebrations include 
a number of masked dance performances as well as daily communal feasts and 
nightly parties. But the heart of the festival is a set of exorcism rites that 
protect the village and its inhabitants from evil including, presumably, such 
calamities as crop failure.[80]

Houses are increasing in size as well. There is a saying now in Khumbu that 
whereas once, when a Sherpa became rich, he spent his money on religion (thus 
accruing merit for his rebirth), he now builds a new house.

Sacred trees and forests are an integral part of the landscape of Khumbu, an 
expression of the historical depth of Sherpa Buddhist faith.[17] Villages and 
fields are dotted with trees believed to be the homes of lu, spirits worshiped 
by particular families who pass down the caretaking of the tree, spirit, and 
shrine through generations. Temples are surrounded by sacred groves. Other 
forests, called lami nating (lama's forest) are set apart because certain lamas 
sanctified them as places where no tree must be cut and into which no cutting 
implement might be taken.

Sherpa sacred forests may have evolved from Sherpa and Tibetan beliefs about the 
spirits known as lu. Sherpas believe that several types of these half-human, 
half-serpent, female spirits live in Khumbu, inhabiting springs, boulders, 
trees, shrines, and houses.[18] The lu of springs control the flow of water and 
can, if offended, withhold it.[19] Boulders can be inhabited by a male saptok , 
similar to a lu. These beings have an evil reputation for causing harm to people 
who pass near them and are much feared by travelers caught between villages by 
nightfall. Most houses have a lu and a special shrine (lu khang or "lu's house") 
is built inside the home for it. These are usually small, stone shrines tucked 
in unfrequented corners of the house, usually in a lower-story corner. These lu 
can influence family health and luck for good or ill and hence must be very 
carefully respected and given regular offerings. Tree lu sometimes live in trees 
near springs and sometimes in the forests. It is said that these forest spirits 
sometimes follow people home and take up residence in trees near their house. Lu 
trees within villages are a distinctive phenomenon. These may be few or many and 
can be of any species. Each belongs to one of the families whose house is nearby 
and the women of that family have responsibility for carrying out rites at 
it.[20] Often a small shrine is built at the foot of the tree.

...more...
  -- http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft8b69p1t6&doc.view=content&chunk.id=d0e288&toc.depth=1&anchor.id=0&brand=eschol
  Claiming the High Ground "d0e288"


In India Siva was the creator and shaper of the world. He dwelt in the remotest 
heights of the Himalayas enwrapped in purple-and-gold clouds and seated on a bed 
of snow-white glittering diamonds. It was from mountain tops that Buddha and 
Christ ascended into heaven; from them Moses received the tables of the law and 
saw the promised land; and in the heights of the Caucasus Prometheus was 
chained. Almost every one of the older countries had its sacred mountains, from 
which the gods came and went -Lofen in China, Fujiyama in Japan, Samanala in 
Ceylon, Ararat in Armenia, Lebanon in Palestine. In Greece each separate 
mountain seemed to have its presiding deity. Pan was in every mountain grove; 
Apollo and the Muses held revelry on the top of Parnassus; while Zeus and his 
following heard the hymns and prayers of the faithful from the heights of 
Olympus.
  -- http://memory.loc.gov/gc/amrvg/vg04/vg04.sgm
  The mountain; renewed studies in impressions and appearances, by John C. Van Dyke...:a machine-readable transcription.


Probably the most outstanding of these examples in Western culture is Jesus 
purported fasting alone in the "wilderness" (Gospel of St. Matthew, King James 
Bible p. 5). Mohammed, Moses, Buddha, Black Elk and countless other shamans and 
figures from various religions, cultures and philosophical doctrines have 
intentionally sought wilderness experiences. "For the shaman, as for the Tibetan 
anchorite and most seers and visionaries," writes Joan Halifax "nature's 
wilderness is the locus for the elicitation of the individual's inner 
wilderness, the great plain of the spirit"
  -- http://c-zone.net/taylors/
  Scott Taylor's Research in Ecopsychology


        Pix...

Guide To Locales Connected with the Life of Zanabazar
http://www.zanabazar.mn/zanabazar.html


See Zanabazar’s Art Works in Ulaan Baatar’s Choijin Lama Museum
http://www.zanabazar.mn/Art-Choijin/Art-Choijin.html


[Zanabazar]
He also wrote a volume of commentary on the Kalachakra Tantra, which according 
to tradition had been taught by Buddha to Suchandra, the first king of the 
legendary realm Shambhala. He also translated from Sanskrit a guidebook to the 
kingdom of Shambhala entitled Kalapar Jugpa (“The Entrance to Kalapa”, Kalapa 
being the capital of Shambhala) This translation was later used as the basis of 
the most famous guidebook to Shambhala, Description of the Way to Shambhala, 
written by the Third Panchen Lama Palden Yeshe in 1775. Also, in his 
Autobiography, the first volume of his collected works, he relates that while in 
a dream state a small white boy led him to Shambhala. Alone among the many 
sojourners who claim to have visited this storied kingdom, either in their 
physical bodies, in dreams, or in meditative states,

In addition to the shen-teng teachings, the Jonangpa had an special interest in 
the Kalachakra, the doctrine which supposedly first flourished in Shambhala.

Reportedly this monastery was modeled on the traditional layout of the kingdom 
of Shambhala as shown on Shambhala thangkas.

The Songino Mountains were once thought to be the abode of powerful shamans and 
their attendant spirits. One famous shaman who lived on Songino Mountain was 
known as the Dark Old Man. According to legend he was also buried here, and he, 
or perhaps more properly his spirit, was later incorporated into the Buddhist 
pantheon.

Now Tooril would be almost totally forgotten had not the peripatetic Venetian 
traveler Marco Polo in his book Description of the World identified him as 
Prestor John, that legendary figure who many Europeans at the time believed 
ruled a vast kingdom of Christians somewhere in the East and was prepared to 
come to the aid of the Crusaders by attacking the forces of Islam from the rear.

Yet looking back east I could clearly see that the point surmounted by the tors 
was at the very least a hundred feet higher. I have never been able to confirm 
this, but I have often wondered whether the topographers, not wishing to profane 
the true summit of the Bogd Khan Uul massif, purposely designated a lower point 
as Tsetsee Gun Uul.

Originally Garuda was a entity from the Hindu pantheon, half man and half 
vulture, which feasted on snakes, the archetypical chthonic creatures. Tibetan 
Buddhist later fastened on this image because of its similarity with the 
mythical Himalayan bird known as the khyung which was associated with the air, 
or the heavens above.

The top the ridge, the traditional viewing point for the lake, looked just a few 
hundred feet higher, and a stone staircase had even been built part of the way 
up. A trail led to the rest of the way the top of the ridge at 17,399 feet. In 
the distance, about two or three miles away (it was very hard to estimate 
distances in the pellucid air at this height) was the lake, much smaller than I 
had expected. Two fingers held at armÂ’s length covered it completely. The other 
side of the ridge drops off in sheer cliffs, making the lake itself 
inaccessible. It was here that lamas stared at the surface of the lake in hopes 
of visions.

	Reminiscent of ATD

The quarters of the Qing wives and concubines are one of the big attractions in 
the Forbidden City and today most of the foreign tour groups seem to have 
congregated here. They are not searching for traces of Zanabazar, however. One 
large group is peering through windows into the bedchamber of the Empress 
Dowager Cixi, the controversial figure who in popular imagination hovered over 
the declining Qing Dynasty of the late nineteenth century like a huge and 
malevolent black spider, although some historians have recently cast her in a 
kinder light. Perhaps this is the very bedchamber where, if we are to believe 
the more salacious accounts of her life, the Empress Dowager indulged in a 
shocking array of recherché sexual practices. Perhaps the ripest of these tales 
was penned by the notorious Edmund Backhouse, an English scholar of Chinese who 
lived most of his life in Beijing and who achieved a dubious reputation as a 
pornographer, fantasist, and “the most remarkable scoundrel ever known in the 
Far East.” Although a homosexual, Backhouse claimed to have had an intimate 
affair with Cixi. During one alleged tryst the Dowager Empress, according to 
Backhouse’s overheated account, fingered his anus and then observed, “It’s seen 
some use, I’ ll abide.” This may have been the only true statement in the book.
  -- http://www.doncroner.com/BlogArchive/2004_01_01_cronerarchive.html
  Don Croner's World Wide Wanders Part 1


	Great page! - shambala - hollow earth - many references to works:
	Source of all remaining quotes...

  -- http://www.foundationwebsite.org/OnBulwerLytton.htm
  On Edward Bulwer-Lytton: Agharta, Shambhala, Vril and the Occult Roots of Nazi Power

The location of Shambhala / Agartha is specified either interior to the Earth or 
on its surface, in the latter case usually in or near the Himalaya Mountains, or 
in the far north. The apparent reason for the conflicting views on the exact 
nature of either is the fact that observation of either is evidently restricted 
to telepathic / telestic means (e.g., Akasha Chronicle / Akashic records, 
hypnotic regression, astral projection), which are notoriously unreliable and 
inconsistent. References to subterranean places includes not just cities and 
kingdoms, but vast networks of underground tunnels. As is the case for Shambhala 
/ Agharta, and for Hyperborea / Lemuria / Atlantis, these tunnels are never 
identified or located by physically objective or repeatable means.

	Like recent raison/orange/shadow discussion? Chums?

On his trip to search for Shambhala, Nicholas Roerich relates the following 
experience (Altai-Himalaya, (1929) pp. 361-362):

"On August fifth [1927] - something remarkable! We were in our camp in the 
Kukunor district not far from the Humboldt Chain. In the morning about half-past 
nine some of our caravaneers noticed a remarkably big black eagle flying above 
us. Seven of us began to watch this remarkable bird. At this same moment another 
of our caravaneers remarked, "There is something far above the bird." And he 
shouted in his astonishment. We all saw, in a direction from north to south, 
something big and shiny reflecting the sun, like a huge oval moving at great 
speed. Crossing our camp this thing changed in its direction from south to 
southwest. We even had time to take our field glasses and saw quite distinctly 
an oval form with shiny surface, one side of which as brilliant from the sun."

	ATD had such a spread.

By the way, the "vril" (kundalini, prana, chi) life force mentioned below was 
the inspiration for the "vril" suffix in Bovril ("Bovine vril"), the breakfast 
spread so popular in England (along with its vegetable counterpart, Marmite).

	1910:

Saint-Yves d'Alveydre's posthumous work Mission de l'Inde, first published in 
1910, contains a description of a mysterious initiatic center called Agarttha, 
and many readers have no doubt assumed that this was just an imaginary tale, a 
sort of fiction, with no basis in reality.

	sub-terranean (like my dream!); wanderers

astonishing similarity, even to points of detail. First of all, in one of his 
most improbable passages, Saint-Yves asserts the existence of a subterranean 
world with branches everywhere - under continents and even under the oceans - by 
means of which communications are invisibly established between all the regions 
of the earth; moreover, Ossendowski does not affirm this on his own authority, 
even declaring that he does not know what to think of it, but attributes it 
rather to reports received from people he met in the course of his journey. On a 
more particular point, there is also a passage in which the 'King of the World' 
is depicted in front of his predecessor's tomb and where the question is raised 
concerning the origin of the gypsies, who, among others, are said to have lived 
originally in Agarttha.

	Black stone. Lemme think...

and was so ignorant of anything touching on esoterism that he was manifestly 
incapable of grasping the true import of such things. For example, he tells the 
story of the 'black stone' that had originally been sent by the 'King of the 
World' to the Dalai Lama, and subsequently transported to Urga in Mongolia, 
where it disappeared approximately one hundred years ago; now, in many 
traditions 'black stones' play an important role, from that played by the symbol 
of Cybele to that of the stone enshrined in the Kaaba at Mecca. Here is another 
example: the Bogdo-Khan or 'Living Buddha,' who resides at Urga, preserves, 
among other precious items, the ring of Genghis Khan, on which is engraved a 
swastika, and a copper plaque bearing the seal of the 'King of the World';

The lamas told Roerich that the flying object he saw was the signature of 
Shambhala and the sign of its blessing. When it flies overhead one may know that 
august powers are at hand to succor struggling humanity and to help in 
enterprises of humanitarian value.

	I'll have to share with him my nocturnal luminous omegaform sighting...

Dr. Kenneth Ring, professor of psychology at the University of Connecticut, has 
conducted an exhaustive survey of the subject. In his book The Omega Project, 
Ring, like other academics, has come to the conclusion that the UFO seems to be 
a psychophysical event that somehow has its origin in humanity itself, coming 
from an unknown terrestrial source; and that it may be the outward manifestation 
of a major evolutionary advance in human consciousness.

	This 7 over 4 is like in my 18-wheels of death tantric report:
	Holy...Righteous...Filty(esp.anal sodomy)...Unjust(and subterranean too).

...inasmuch as Blavatsky adopted a racial theory of human evolution. She extended 
her cyclical doctrine with the assertion that each round witnessed the rise and 
fall of seven consecutive root-races, which descended on the scale of spiritual 
development from the first to the fourth, becoming increasingly enmeshed in the 
material world (the Gnostic notion of a Fall from Light into Darkness was quite 
explicit), before ascending through progressively superior root-races from the 
fifth to the seventh.

Blavatsky claimed she received her initiation into the doctrines from two 
exalted mahatmas or masters called Morya and Koot Hoomi, who dwelt in a remote 
and secret Himalayan fastness.

When the Lemurians had fallen into iniquity and sin, only a hierarchy of the 
elect remained pure in spirit. This remnant became the Lemuro-Atlantean dynasty 
of priest-kings who took up their abode on the fabulous island of Shamballah in 
the Gobi Desert.

	Straniki

Under this imprint a wave of occult magazines appeared, including Der Wanderer 
(1906-8),

	GR: rocket scientist

Willy Ley, who emigrated to the United States in 1935 after a short career as a 
rocket engineer in Germany, wrote a short account of the pseudo-scientific ideas 
which had found some official acceptance during the Third Reich. Besides the 
World Ice Theory and the Hollow Earth Doctrine, which both found Nazi patrons, 
Ley recalled a Berlin sect which had engaged in meditative practices designed to 
penetrate the secret of vril.

the sons of the Outer Intelligences are said to have split into two groups, one 
following the "Right-hand Path" under the "Wheel of the Golden Sun," the other 
the "Left-hand Path," under the "Wheel of the Black Sun." The first group 
preserved the center of Agartha, that undefined place of contemplation, of the 
Good, and of the Vril force. The second supposedly created a new place of 
initiation at Shambhala, the city of violence in command of the elements and of 
human masses, hastening the arrival of the "charnel-house of time."

To Jacolliet (1837-1890) must go the dubious credit of creating the Agarthian 
myth. He was a magistrate in Chandernagor, South India; among his many popular 
books, he produced a trilogy on Indian mythology and its relationship with 
Christianity. in one of these books, Le Fils de Dieu (The Son of God, 1873), 
Jacolliot tells of how he made friends with the local Brahmins, who allowed and 
helped him to read ancient texts such as the Book of Historical Zodiacs in the 
Pagoda of Villenoor, took him to see a Shaivite orgy in an underground temple, 
and told him the story of "Asgartha."

>From references to Agartha and Vattan in the Sanskrit lessons and in Saint-Yves' 
own notebooks, it is plain that the conversations with Haji, during 1885 and 
1886, centered on this hitherto unknown alphabet and its homeland - which, far 
from having been destroyed thousands of years ago, was supposedly still in 
existence.

Saint-Yves could not get close enough to Agartha through his teacher, but he 
possessed other means of access: he had mastered the art of disengaging his 
astral body, and in this way was able to visit Agartha for himself.

Saint-Yves explains that he is a spontaneous initiate, bound by oath of secrecy 
to no one, and that the Brahmatma, once over his shock, will admit the wisdom of 
what he has dared to reveal.

But a work like Mission de l'Inde cannot be explained away by literary 
influences alone. I believe that 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.

	Anarchist, Unite!

The true Hindu Center, spiritual in essence, which none of the leaders of 
Blavatskyism have ever been in touch with, is "AGARTTHA." And let him who has 
ears, hear: it is located, so said Saint-Yves d'Alveydre, in "certain regions of 
the Himalayas, among twenty-two temples representing the twenty-two arcana of 
Hermes and the twenty-two letters of certain sacred alphabets," where it forms 
"the mystic Zero, the Unfindable. The Zero is All or Nothing: All for harmonic 
Unity, nothing without it; all through Synarchy, nothing through Anarchy."

If the Polaires' center was somewhere in Asia, then one might ask what was 
"polar" about them. The Bulletin des Polaires, 9 June 1930, explained:

The Polaires take this name because from all time the Sacred Mountain, that is, 
the symbolic location of the Initiatic Centers, has always been qualified by 
different traditions as "polar." And it may very well be that this Mountain was 
once really polar, in the geographical sense of the word, since it is stated 
everywhere that the Boreal Tradition (or the Primordial Tradition, source of all 
Traditions) originally had its seat in the Hyperborean regions.

	Great Adenoids!

Maurice Girodias paints a lively picture, in his autobiography The Frog Prince, 
of the vaguely Theosophic community run by Du Mas and Jeanne Canudo, and of 
their efforts to fight Hitler and Mussolini on the astral plane by directing 
thought-waves, just as the Polaires had tried to influence world events and heal 
lost souls by mental projection.

	I have a countess

One possible link between Rahn and the Polaires was in the person of the 
Comtesse Pujol-Murat, one of Rahn's main patrons in the Ariège, who had been 
associated with the order."

Luzifers Hofgesind (Lucifer's court, 1936), written at the command of Heinrich 
Himmler:
|
By the name of "Lucifer's Courtiers" I mean those who are of Nordic blood and 
who, faithful to this blood, have chosen as the supreme object of their quest 
for the Divine a Mount of Assembly situated in the farthest midnight North, and 
certainly not Mount Sinai, or Mount Sion, in the Middle East.

	So many words, so little room...

We will meet these serpents again when we come to Antarctica. For now, it is 
enough to say that Dickhoff had probably been reading Amazing Stories rather 
than Guénon


Chapter Eight: Sbambhala


Still, if you lay out a map and search for Shambhala, it is not findable; 
rather, it seems to be a pure land which, except for those whose karma and merit 
have ripened, cannot be immediately seen or visited.

Since Buddhism does not limit the possible rebirths of human beings to fleshly 
bodies, life in a realm that, from the physical point of view, is immaterial, is 
a distinct possibility and may even be a desirable one.

"Its appearance," he says, "depends on one's spiritual status [... j therefore 
it is difficult to define it precisely." However, the Kalachakra teachings say 
that Shambhala is made from atoms of the five elements with their 
potentialities, projected into the center of unconditioned empty space. The 
result, as Thondup describes it, is the typical palace of fantasy, with pillars 
of precious gems, wish-fulfilling cows, and more, inhabited by gods and 
god-kings.

Since to the Buddhist all existence, even that of the gods in their heavens, is 
illusory, the distinction between a "real" city that one can find on a map or at 
the end of a road, and an "unreal" one like Shambhala, is not as clear-cut as it 
seems to the materialist.

Bailey's Shambhala is the seat of the "Lord of the World," who has made the 
sacrifice (analogous to the Bodhisattva's vow) of remaining to watch over the 
evolution of men and devas until all have been "saved" or enlightened."

These are the twin sources of evil in the cosmology of Rudolf Steiner, who had 
little regard for the wisdom of Tibet. "The Initiates of Agarthi," writes 
Ravenscroft, "specialised in astral projection and sought to inspire false 
leadership in all civilizations in the world. The Adepts of Schamballah sought 
to foster the illusion of materialism and lead all aspects of human activity 
into the abyss."

	Aha! It's ours.

But a man who could get excited when the Mongolians said, on looking at his 
photographs of New York City, "this is the land of Shambhala!" had evidently not 
fully descried the nature and the trajectory of the modem West.

	A stone! A stone!
	Like Tesla's free energy?

There is a hint that the Roerich Expedition had an active part to play in this 
changing of the Ages. It concerns a Stone from a distant star that belongs to 
Shambhala; it is likened to the lapsit exillis, the Grail Stone of Wolfram von 
Eschenbach's romance Parzival (IX, 469), as also to the Philosophers' Stone of 
Western alchemy. "The greater portion of this stone remains in Shambhala, while 
part of it is circulating throughout the Earth, retaining its magnetic link with 
the main stone." The latter is said to be "on the tower of the Rigden-jyepo," 
whence it radiates for the benefit of humanity.

For all the intellectual gulf between Shaver and Palmer on the one hand, and 
Saint-Yves and Roerich on the other, one can see the same contrast in each pair 
of the material versus the immaterial explanation.

Finally, Shambhala furnishes an illuminating parallel to the various 
interpretations of the primordial Paradise and the Arctic homeland discussed in 
Chapters Two and Three. Some situate them on the physical earth, others in what 
to us is an immaterial or etheric state, attainable only by beings of like 
nature, or by humans exceedingly "rich in merit." The Way to Shambhala as the 
Dalai Lama has described it is precisely the return to that primordial 
condition, which, irrespective of outer conditions, brings about in the 
individual the transition from the Iron to the Golden Age.
  -- http://www.foundationwebsite.org/OnBulwerLytton.htm
  On Edward Bulwer-Lytton: Agharta, Shambhala, Vril and the Occult Roots of Nazi Power


Yours truly,
Glenn Scheper
http://home.earthlink.net/~glenn_scheper/
glenn_scheper + at + earthlink.net
Copyleft(!) Forward freely.