Mystery of Shambhala
Back to Paradise by Richard Heinberg
Part One
By JASON JEFFREY
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, ShambhalaFor 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 tranquillity,” 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 traveller 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 lama’s 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 travellers to Tibet consistently told the same tale of a hidden spiritual centre 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 travellers as to the kingdom’s 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-Yves’s 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 l’Inde (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 earth’s 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-Yves’s 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
Ossendowski’s 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 Ossendowski’s 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 man’s 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.
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 world’s highest mountain passes.
As Victoria LePage puts it in her book Shambhala:
Roerich was a man of unimpeachable credentials: a famous collaborator in Stravinsky’s 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 Roerich’s 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 King’s 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 in Nicholas 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 AsiaNicholas 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 Arnold’s sighting in 1947.
Roerich’s 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 colour 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
The second part of this article looks at the Buddhist conception of Shambhala and its esoteric meaning.
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 l’histoire du Tibet, 1962, p.92N.
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By RICHARD HEINBERG
Ten years ago I was hard at work on what would be my first book, Memories and Visions of Paradise Exploring the Universal Myth of a Lost Golden Age. It was published in 1989, and since then I have periodically looked back on it to see how my thinking has changed and how much I’ve learned. I was able to incorporate some new information and ideas on the subject in the revised edition (Quest Books, 1995), especially in the Update chapter at the end.
In the book, I explored how the paradise myth may refer to a state of consciousness (related, perhaps, to deep meditative states or the near-death-experience), a recollection of infancy, a forgotten civilisation, a time prior to devastating world cataclysms, a lost homeland, or the era before the emergence of civilisation itself. Each of these interpretations, it still seems to me, has some validity.
Even since 1995 there is news to report concerning the paradise myth and these divergent ways of looking at it.
PARADISE: A LOST GLOBAL CIVILISATION
Standard views of human history leave little room for a lost paradise. But it seems that each year brings fresh evidence suggesting that our knowledge of the ancient human past is sketchy at best. For example, the recent discovery of a carved bone flute in a Slovenian cave, dated (by current estimates) at between 43,000 and 82,000 years old, suggests that humans have had music — and probably language and art as well — for a very long time indeed. What were people thinking and doing for all those millennia?
Answers to that question are difficult to come by, because most ancient centres of human habitation have likely been submerged or otherwise destroyed. People have always tended to congregate along rivers and sea coasts, and so the dramatic rise of the sea level roughly 12,000 years ago must have erased most of whatever signs of settlement then existed. Moreover, much of the material culture of the people who lived, say, 15,000 or 50,000 years ago probably consisted of highly perishable plant and animal materials that have long since disintegrated.
Nevertheless, tantalising clues continue to crop up. Newly discovered large, artificial stone structures submerged in the region of Okinawa and Taiwan suggest that the catastrophic rise in the oceans at the end of the Pleistocene may have obliterated an “impossibly” early civilisation in the western Pacific. And if the huge pyramids in Shensi Province, China, turn out to be older than the currently estimated 4,500 years (in 1912, two Australian traders reportedly met an old Buddhist monk who told them that the pyramids were described in the 5,000-year-old records of his monastery as being “very ancient”), then perhaps they are associated with the same, or a related, lost civilisation..
There are reasons to think that, even in the millennia after the late-Pleistocene (ca. 10,000 B.C.) catastrophes, whole chapters of human history may be missing from our current reconstructions. In his remarkable book Sailing to Paradise: The Discovery of the Americas by 7000 B.C. (Simon & Schuster, 1994), Jim Bailey marshals an extraordinary array of evidence suggesting that America was a world power many millennia ago, before being engulfed by wars, and that sea-bordering nations in nearly every part of the globe engaged in extensive trade long before the dawn of recorded history. These early traders, it seems, were motivated by the desire for rare metals such as copper and tin. Bailey points out, for example, that the sources for the copper and tin that fuelled the Near Eastern and European “copper Age and “Bronze Age” are unclear; meanwhile, around Lake Superior in North America there are huge, nearly-exhausted prehistoric copper mines, but no sign (in the Americas) of where all that copper went. Bailey also notes the presence in the New World of inscriptions in ancient Old World languages, and discusses evidence that early seafarers from the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean were well aware of the existence of the Americas. “Without reference to the transatlantic trade in copper and alluvial tin” , writes Bailey, “one cannot begin to understand the cultures and events of the Fertile Crescent between 6000 and 1000 B.C.; nor can one make sense of American prehistory.... Although the evidence available to us today is fragmentary and dispersed, it is conclusive in demonstrating that there was a long and influential relationship between the Old and the New Worlds. There are simply too many facts for which no other explanation is coherent.”
Bailey’s theory finds support in recent discoveries of cocaine and tobacco residues in Egyptian mummies — discoveries implying that the international drug trade is nothing new. The mummy of Ramses II, for example, was found to have extraordinarily high nicotine levels. Tests by a Dr. Balabanov (reported in a Discovery Channel broadcast) on bodies from China, Germany, and Austria, spanning the years 3,700 B.C. to 1100 A.D., also showed incredibly high percentages of nicotine. The coca and tobacco plants are, of course, believed to have grown nowhere other than the Americas prior to the European invasion of the 16th century. [See previous New Dawn No. 47 for story ‘Contact: The Curse of the Cocaine Mummies’]
Then there is the book, Origin of the Olmec Civilization, by H. M. Xu, in which the author asserts that Central American civilisation originated in China. When the Shang Dynasty collapsed around 1122 B.C., 250,000 soldiers and civilians suddenly disappeared. Xu attempts to prove that some of these people landed in Central America and founded the Olmec civilisation. He points to written records on this side of the Pacific that include what appear to be Chinese symbols, and also to similarities in the art, architecture, religion, and astronomical knowledge of the Olmecs and Chinese.
The picture that is slowly emerging from such bits of theory and evidence (there is far more of the latter than I could possibly mention here) is one of widespread maritime trade and contact among cultures beginning about 7000 B.C. and lasting, in a few instances at least, until about 1000 A.D. But why were these contacts broken off? Bailey mentions several factors — a collapse in the price of bronze (following the Old World shift to the use of iron), climate change (the end of the climatic optimum that began around 8000 years ago and lasted till roughly 4000 years ago), the consequent deterioration of sea conditions in the North Atlantic, and signs of recurring natural disasters.
Charles Ginenthal, editor of the journal The Velikovskian, has speculated that the climatic optimum — or hipsithermal — was the “Golden Age.” This is a thought that bears further consideration as we gradually come to better understand what was actually happening in human cultures 4000 to 8000 years ago.
COMETS, CATASTROPHES, AND CIVILISATION
Increasingly, it seems that human history simply cannot be understood without reference to natural catastrophes. In Memories and Visions of Paradise, I called attention to worldwide myths of flood, fire, and celestial upheaval. These myths, I suggested, are central to any meaningful reconstruction of humanity’s psychological, spiritual, and social history. The catastrophic events referred to in myth were the key to what traditional cultures regard as “the Fall” — and also to the commencement of civilisation. In A New Covenant with Nature I suggested that the connecting mechanism might have been a kind of collective, intergenerational, post-traumatic stress disorder that caused people in at least a few cultures to defer to strong male leaders, to treat their infants and children harshly, and to regard nature as an enemy to be vanquished.
This way of looking at cosmic catastrophes and their effects on early human societies is looking less heretical all the time — though on this side of the Atlantic there are as yet few social scientists who appear to have grasped the implications.
In England, the Society for Interdisciplinary Studies held its second Cambridge Conference at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University from July 11 to 13, 1997. The subject of the meeting was, “Natural catastrophes during Bronze Age civilisations: archaeological, geological, astronomical and cultural perspectives.” I quote from the brochure:
“Historian Dr. Benny Peiser, of Liverpool John Moores University, who is helping organise the meeting, said the Bronze Age — a crucial time at the dawn of civilisation — appeared to have started more or less simultaneously in different parts of the world.
“He suggested this could have been triggered by a sudden change in global climate caused by a catastrophe such as worldwide impacts of small cometary fragments. ‘We also think violent rituals, such as human sacrifices, started in many cultures during the Bronze Age and then stopped at its end,’ Dr Peisner said. He said it was possible these were used by people to overcome the trauma many would have suffered during such times.
“Prof. Mark Bailey, director of the Armagh Observatory and another of the conference’s organisers, said recent research has suggested the quantity of asteroids and comets hurtling into the Earth’s neighbourhood was much higher than previously thought, boosting the likelihood of such disasters. ‘If a comet broke up and the stream of debris intercepted the Earth’s orbit, the planet could have been periodically bombarded with small objects and everyone would have known an event like the Tunguska impact in Siberia,’ he said.
“Palaeo-ecologist Prof. Mike Baillie, of Queen’s University, Belfast, said his studies of tree rings had uncovered evidence of ecological catastrophes coinciding with the dawn and end of the Bronze Age. ‘The series of events that show up in the tree rings could have been major turning points in human society,’ Prof. Baillie said. ‘There might be more to these events than just volcanoes — we cannot rule out comets.’”
Also from the brochure: “An increasing number of astronomers have suggested that a series of cosmic disasters punctuated the Earth in prehistoric times. Scholars such as Victor Clube, Bill Napier, Mark Bailey, Sir Fred Hoyle, David Asher, and Duncan Steel claim that a more ‘active’ and threatening sky might have caused major cultural changes of Bronze Age civilisations, belief systems and religious rituals....
“In the light of new astronomical and archaeological theories and the emergence of scientific neo-catastrophism, it seems necessary to re-assess the origins and cultural implications of apocalyptic religions and catastrophe traditions in ancient mythologies and rituals. In particular, the significant cultural and religious changes at the beginning of the Bronze Age and those which occurred after its final collapse will be re-evaluated.”
THE SITE OF PARADISE
Some paradise myths seem to describe a specific place, a lost homeland. Many legends speak of a sunken island or a great world mountain as the original paradisal home of humankind.
In Memories and Visions of Paradise, I mentioned the Tibetan legend of lost Shambhala — “a mystical kingdom hidden behind snowy peaks somewhere to the north” where “a line of enlightened kings is guarding the innermost teachings of Buddhism for a time when all truth in the outside world is lost in war and greed. Then, according to the prophecy, the King of Shambhala will emerge with a great army to destroy the forces of evil and bring in a new Golden Age.”
Tibetan and Western scholars have looked everywhere for Shambhala — from the Gobi Desert to the North Pole. Three recent books offer relevant new information and insight.
In Dawn Behind the Dawn: A Search for the Earthly Paradise (Holt, 1992), cultural historian Geoffrey Ashe theorises that the idea of a lost paradise began with a goddess-worshipping cult in the region of the Altai-Baikal region of northern Asia some 25,000 years ago. The book is erudite and impressively researched, touching on subjects ranging from Near Eastern mythology to Indo-European philology to modern feminism. Ashe summarises his reconstruction as follows:
“Tens of thousands of years ago, shamans in Siberia and Mongolia held the seven-star constellation [Ursa Major] in reverence. It was all the more important because the pole, which it ruled, was not marked then by a separate polestar of conspicuous brightness. ...The chief deity was a powerful Earth Mother and Mistress of Animals, with whom female shamans were closely associated. Her cult and symbolism, passing from tribe to tribe, played a part in forming the Paleolithic Goddess substratum across Siberia and Europe. Her chief animal form was a bear....
“The constellation built up a unique numinosity, partly because of its relation to the pole and hence to shamans’ ideas of comic centrality, expressed in the image of a central tree or world-mountain, which they climbed in their trances to meet superior spirits. In the Altai region, actual gold that gave the range a name, and an actual mountain cult, helped to evoke the divine world-mountain as golden....
“Late in the fourth millennium B.C., around the Altai, Indo-European groupings such as the Afanasievo came under shamanic influence and acquired a mythical ‘package’ comprising some of the ancient themes, which in the hands of these new people took on a rekindled life and energy. The package included the golden world-mountain... this eventually evolved into golden Meru, central to the universe, a paradisal abode of gods. It also included the seven stars... and something of the connected [mystique surrounding the number seven]. The mythical package was carried south and southwest in Indo-European expansion.” Ashe cites the Tibetan Shambhala legend as referring to the original Altaic homeland.
Victoria Le Page’s Shambhala: The Fascinating Truth Behind the Myth of Shangri-La (Quest, 1996) is an esotericist’s view of the same materials. Le Page has read Ashe carefully — as well as earlier scholars on the subject, such as René Guénon and Nicholas Roerich. Guénon interprets the paradise mountain — Mount Meru in Buddhist lore — as not a mountain at all, but “a metaphor for a conduit of terrestrial energy constituting the earth’s primary power source whose nature, location, and function is presently unknown to us. [Guénon] suggests that the knowledge of this fact belongs to a most arcane and little-known branch of the tantric science that is concerned with cosmic Shakti and the building of worlds, and which for that reason has been jealously guarded from the public view for many thousands of years.”
Le Page follows occultist Nicholas Roerich in his quest to find the true geographical Shambhala — in the Altai mountains. But she has more than a historical interest in decoding the myth. For her, Shambhala — the realm of jewel lakes, wish-fulfilling trees, and speaking stones — is central to the “new world model,” the ideology of the New Age. “Shambhala has had many locations, many names, many forms; over the ages it has been known as a taboo region of Paleolithic magic, a vast Megalithic sanctuary, a sacred kingdom, and underground Wisdom center, a modern complex of ashrams and training-schools.... Its credibility has probably never been so severely tested as in this age of high technology, dense population and intensive exploration; and yet in another sense we have never been more open to transcendental ideas, to the possibility of dimensions unseen, of higher-order beings and energies and presences celestial, of guidance from above.”
Olga Kharitidi, M.D., provides still more insight into the Shambhala myth in her recent book, Entering the Circle: Ancient Secrets of Siberian Wisdom Discovered by a Russian Psychiatrist (Harper Collins, 1996). This riveting autobiographical narrative is the latest entry in the New Age/shamanic adventure genre pioneered in the books of Carlos Castaneda and Lynn Andrews (and more recently in the Celestine Prophecy and Mutant Message from Down Under). Fortunately, Entering the Circle is not just an attempt to cash in on a publishing trend; in fact, it may be the best-written book of its kind so far.
The author, formerly a psychiatrist in a Siberian mental hospital, is invited by a former patient to meet his new teacher, a female shaman who lives in a remote village in the Altai mountains. The curious but skeptical psychiatrist soon finds herself launched into a chain of events that will forever change her views of healing, science, and consciousness.
Like Castaneda, Kharitidi is taken into apprenticeship by a magician with baffling powers, illogical habits, and a bizarre sense of humour. But Uma — the author’s spiritual teacher — offers more than the standard lessons in transcending time, space, and rationality; she also unlocks a gateway to what could be the fountainhead of the world’s spiritual truths.
Nearly every culture maintains some vestige of shamanic rituals, practices that date back to Paleolithic times. In his classic study of shamanism, historian of religion Mircea Eliade traced the phenomenon to the natives of Siberia. And as we have just seen, Geoffrey Ashe and Victoria Le Page, in their books, have suggested that the universal ancient myth of a lost paradisal kingdom — the birthplace of civilisation and religion — may refer to a site somewhere in the Altaic mountains bordering Siberia and Mongolia. Thus when Kharitidi’s Altaic spiritual guide begins to tell her about Belovodia (the local name for Shambhala), one gets the sense that a tremendous secret may be on the verge of disclosure.
Back in the city of Novosibirsk, Kharitidi meets a nuclear physicist whose research into the fringes of human consciousness dovetails with her own exploding interest in the mysteries of the soul.
Working together, they retrieve more knowledge about the fabled Belovodia. “There have always been people within each [spiritual tradition] who were directly in touch with Belovodia,” writes the physicist during an exploratory trance session. “From time to time, knowledge from there has been opened up to your own civilisation. This has happened at moments of real threat to humanity. It is becoming open to you again now, because the power and energy you have accumulated are capable of causing many different kinds of catastrophes. Belovodia is becoming accessible to your consciousness to protect you by showing you other ways to live.”
Kharitidi’s story — convincingly told — seems destined to become a classic and deserves at least as wide a readership as the spectacularly successful (but fictional and clumsily written) The Celestine Prophecy.
HUMAN NATURE, CHIMPS, AND BONOBOS
The paradise myth tells us that we humans are not inherently or innately as destructive as we are in the context of civilisation. If today we are warlike and ecocidal, these are acquired tendencies that can also be un-acquired. In other times and places, people have been far more gentle, and have lived in far greater harmony with one another and with nature. In this regard, the paradisal worldview is starkly at odds with the Hobbesian notion that human beings in their “natural” state are violent and selfish, and that civilisation serves to moderate our deep-seated brutish inclinations.
Discussions about human nature inevitably turn on evidence drawn from studies of apes, who are genetically our closest relatives. Revelations about the territoriality and irascibility of chimpanzees have tended to favour the Hobbesian, as opposed to the paradisalist, view. Thus it was refreshing to see an article in the New York Times of April 22, 1997, by Natalie Angier, titled, “Bonobo Society: Amicable, Amorous.” The article is essentially a preview of a new book — Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape, by primatologist Frans de Waal of Emory University.
Bonobos — sometimes called pygmy chimpanzees — are more graceful and slender than their cousins, with smaller heads, longer legs, straighter backs, and more human-like posture. But their most glaring departure from chimps is in the area of social behaviour. According to the Times article, “Bonobos are much less aggressive and hot-tempered than are chimpanzees, and are not nearly as prone to physical violence. They are less obsessed with power and status... and more consumed with Eros.... Infanticide has never been seen among Bonobos.”
Among bonobos (quoting the Times again), “the female... is the dominant sex, though the dominance is so mild and unobnoxious that some researchers view bonobo society as a matter of ‘codominance,’ or equality between the sexes.”
Why are the bonobos so peaceful? It may be because, as de Waal writes, “The chimpanzee resolves sexual issues with power; the bonobo resolves power issues with sex.” The Times writer notes that “Bonobos lubricate the gears of social harmony with sex, in all possible permutations and combinations: males with females, males with males, females with females, and even infants with adults. The sexual acts include intercourse, genital-to-genital rubbing, oral sex, mutual masturbation and even a practice that people once thought they had a patent on: French kissing.”
“Bonobos use sex to appease, to bond, to make up after a fight, to ease tensions, to cement alliances.” According to de Waal, “all this sex is not driven by orgasm or seeking release. Nor is it often reproductively driven. Sex for a bonobo is casual, it’s quick, and once you’re used to watching it, it begins to look like any other social interaction.”
Dr. de Waal questions the prevalent view that, since chimpanzees are genetically our closest animal relatives, and since chimps appear to be driven by “aggression, hierarchical machinations, hunting, warfare and male dominance,” therefore these characteristics may to some degree be “hardwired” into humans as well. He reminds us that bonobos are as genetically close to us as chimpanzees are, sharing 98 percent of humans’ DNA. “There’s more flexibility in our lineage than we thought” , according to de Waal.
If there is “more flexibility in our lineage,” that suggests there may also be more flexibility in ourselves — and that a great deal of what we think of as “human nature” may in fact be culturally conditioned.
The primary way cultures inculcate attitudes and behaviours is through patterns of child-rearing. Clearly, if we wish to produce a culture that is creative, peaceful, and happy, we must begin by treating infants with the care and interest that evolution has led them to require. Otherwise, we shall have still more generations of traumatised, unhappy, often violent adults.
An excellent new book that explores the implications of this subject is Early Child Care: Infants & Nations at Risk, by Dr. Peter Cook (News Weekly Books, Melbourne, 1996). Cook writes, “It remains indisputable that the early experiences of infants and young children in the western industrialised world have changed dramatically over the past several decades. Whereas it was once normative for mothers to remain at home to care for their children through the infant and toddler years, particularly if the family was not poor, it is no longer unusual to find mothers of children of under one year of age in the work force.... Needless to say, this change in maternal work patterns, stimulated by both economic needs and changing views of the role of women in society, has radically altered the world of the young child.”
Cook marshals a wide range of evidence showing that this change has ominous implications for society at large, and passionately argues for alternatives, such as Sweden’s program of work leave and financial support for mothers of young children. He also advocates more cultural support for breastfeeding, and calls carrying the baby in arms “the best ‘behavioural vaccine’ for healthy development.” This is a very important book for anyone who has or cares for young children.
THE GARDEN BECKONS STILL
At lectures and in discussions I still often encounter the idea that it’s psychologically, politically, or philosophically wrongheaded to look back to an imaginary time in the past when life was somehow better; that if we are to imagine any paradise at all, we should locate it in the future, not the past. However, it occurs to me that this way of thinking is very much conditioned by modernism. The delegitimisation of the paradise myth was essential to the purposes of industrial civilisation, which substituted for the universal, ancient belief in a lost Golden Age the idea of brutish origins and continual progress. Among traditional peoples, the paradise myth appears to implant a feeling of security and stability; it is perhaps the cultural equivalent of the memory of loving parents and a happy childhood. The evolution-from-barbarism myth, on the other hand, imparts a sense of primal insecurity, which well serves the purposes of a civilisation that must continually disrupt existing social bonds in order to rebuild society in a way that serves the interests of a wealthy elite.
Other people object that, even if the paradise myth makes us feel good, it is pure wishful thinking; there is no evidence that such a condition ever actually existed. The assumption at the heart of this view is that paradise must refer to a perfect, unblemished state. Given that definition, I would agree. It is indeed preposterous to suppose that there was a time when there was no suffering of any kind, when whatever one wished for immediately became reality. The historical paradise, if it existed, was almost certainly not perfect in this absolute sense.
There is evidence — not of that imaginary paradise, but of ancient civilisations, cultures, and conditions that simply do not fit the conventional view of humans as slowly and steadily emerging from darkness into light, from barbarism to civility. A sympathetic view of the paradise myth encourages us to open ourselves to this new evidence, and also to admit that what we know of human prehistory is still sketchy at best.
The Great Tradition of which the paradise myth is a part tells us that there has been a succession of world ages. Our era is not the only one in which people have grasped at Promethean powers. Civilisations have come and gone; like the others, ours too will pass away. But the greater story continues. There have been — and will yet be — times when human society will strive more for material simplicity and spiritual depth than for wealth and power.
The worldwide myths of cosmic catastrophe remind us that we are wounded creatures who are dependent upon systems far larger than any we can control. We live by the grace of the gods of nature and cosmos, and we would do well to serve them by protecting and healing, wherever possible, the web of life.
The cynicism that denies the Great Tradition protects us from having to face the spiritual chasm that has grown between our present way of being and both our heritage and our potential. But it is only when we acknowledge that such a gap exists that we can begin to bridge it.
For those of us who hold to that Great Tradition, our job in the present world is clear: to keep the paradisal vision alive through the end of this dark age, and to build the foundation for a Golden Age yet to come.
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Reprinted with permission from MuseLetter No. 66, June 1997. Richard Heinberg is the author of Memories and Visions of Paradise: Exploring the Universal Myth of a Lost Golden Age (Quest Books: 1995), and Celebrate the Solstice: Honoring the Earth’s Seasonal Rhythms through Festival and Ceremony (Quest Books, 1994). He also publishes MuseLetter, an excellent monthly newsletter exploring issues in cultural renewal. Subscriptions are US$20 per year. Send to: 1433 Olivet Road, Santa Rosa, CA 95401, USA.
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