According to the Prophecy of Shambhala the Closer a Traveler
The Way to Shambhala…
By Edwin Bernbaum
Published by Anchor Book/Doubleday, New York 1980
This book is a classic for anyone interested in adventure, mythology and spiritual evolution. Written by Edwin Bernbaum who while education in the Peace Corps in Nepal in the mid-late seventies studied Tibetan religion, mythology and art and became interested in Shambhala – a mythical kingdom somewhere across the snowfall mountains north of the Himalayas.
"For centuries the people of Tibet and Mongolia have believed in the existence of Shambhala where a line of enlightened kings is said to exist guarding the highest wisdom for a time when all spiritual values in the world exterior will be lost in war and devastation. And so, according to prophecy, a peachy king volition come out of this sanctuary to defeat the forces of evil and establish a gilded age.
"Drawing on Tibetan and Sanskrit texts, interviews with lamas in Nepal and India, and his ain experiences in the Himalayas, Edwin Bernbaum gives a detailed account of this fascination tradition, examining its basis in organized religion and history and its connection to the archetypal myths that take influenced both Eastern and Western cultures. As he explores the myth of Shambhala, showing how it symbolises an inner, spiritual journeying to enlightenment, Bernbaum leads the reader through the actual terrain of the Himalayas, the mist-filled valleys and snowfall-covered peaks that have helped to inspire the idea of a mysterious sanctuary hidden in the remote mountains of Central Asia.
When filming in the Himis Monastery in Ladakh in the mid eighties nosotros had the opportunity to visit the caput lama. After speaking quietly with him and an interpreter for an hour he asked if we had any questions. I asked him, "where is Shambhala?" He waved his hands in a n management and indicated it was beyond the Himalayas, somewhere in the Gobi Desert region.
"Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges –
Something lost backside the Ranges. Lost and waiting to be plant. Go!"
Rudyard Kipling
"Behind the ice walls of the Himalayas lie the empty deserts and remote mountains of Cental Asia. There, diddled clear of habitation by the harsh winds of high altitude, the plateau of Tibet extends north over thousands of square miles up to the Kunluns, a range of unexplored peaks longer than the Himalayas and nearly as high. Beyond its little known valleys are two of the most barren deserts in the world; the Taklan Makan and the Gobi. Sparsely populated and cutting off by geographical and political barriers, this vast region remains the most mysterious office of Asia, an empty immensity in which nearly anything could be lost and waiting to be found."
Edwin Bernbaum
Although there are differing opinions equally to where Shambhala really is, the lamas all concord that information technology is a place of royal beauty. They are more than specific well-nigh the kingdom itself and give a remarkably clear and detailed film of it. According to their descriptions, a great ring of snowfall mountains glistening with ice completely surrounds Shambhala and keeps out all those not fit to enter. The texts imply that ane tin can cross the snowfall mountains only by flight over them, merely the lamas point out that this must exist done through spiritual powers and not by material means.
The inhabitants of the kingdom live in peace and harmony, free of sickness and hunger. They all have a healthy appearance, with beautiful features, and wear graceful robes of white cloth. They speak a sacred language and all have cracking wealth but never have to apply it. Tibetans have, in fact, taken the Sanskrit name Shambhala to mean "the source of happiness."
Many Tibetans insist on the necessity of purifying the heed in order to go to Shambhala. Most forms of meditation used for this purpose tend to cut off, or silence, the habitual thoughts and preconceptions that block the kind of mystic vision, the vision that may actually penetrate into other worlds every bit solid and equally physical as ours. By clarifying his mind in this way, ridding himself of the mental workout that limits his awareness, the traveller to Shambhala may be gaining the ability to encounter into the fourth dimension and take an actual journeying through a foreign, but real, landscape of fantastic deserts and mountains that lie parallel to the ones we find on maps of Central Asia.
If the high lamas of Tibet consider this imperial paradise to be symbolic so a powerful symbol like Shambhala tin can practice more than stand for some hidden truth or aspect of reality; it can besides act as a window that opens upward a view of something beyond itself.
Maybe the "subconscious valley" exists in the inner consciousness of the heed, reached only through the practise of disciplined meditation. Co-ordinate to ane high priest, reaching Shambhala mentally means that one has reached the innermost mind locked in the center centre. According to prophecy, the future king of Shambhala volition come not only to deliver the world from the external tyranny, simply also to liberate its inhabitants from the internal bondage of their own delusions. The primary purpose of the final battle and the golden historic period is to bring about the conditions and teachings needed to accomplish enlightenment, to help people awaken the innermost mind and know the true nature of reality.
The prophecy implies that the solution of the world'due south bug will come from an inner source hidden inside each of us. Some of these myths exert a considerable influence on our lives, affecting not only what happens to us every bit individuals, but also what happens to society and the course of history itself…..the modernistic myth of progress…..the conviction that science and industry will transform the earth into a material paradise and establish a golden age of prosperity for all. This conviction lies behind much of the push for social reform and economic development that now determines the policies, every bit well as the fate, of governments throughout the world, regardless of their particular ideology. The myth of progress seems in fact, to have led united states into the degenerate period of materialism that is supposed to precede the gold historic period of Shambhala.
Nosotros take come to this quandary in big role because we have lost sight of the inner side of the myth of progress. In striving to create an earthly paradise, nosotros have overlooked the needs and nature of those who must alive in it. A fascination with the problem of ever increasing material prosperity has led u.s. to develop a 1 sided view of the myth that emphasises external progress at the expense of inner development…
Nosotros demand to recover a balance and perspective that will enable u.s.a. to use, rather than be used by, the power of the myth of progress. The kind of insights we have gleaned from the Tibetan myth of Shambhala may be able to help us do this by redirecting our attention toward the inner meaning of the myths that shape our lives. We may even exist able to use the myths of progress itself equally a symbol to awaken the deeper heed and liberate ourselves from the bondage of our illusions.
Ultimately, nonetheless, each 1 of us needs to notice and seek his own equivalent of Shambhala, that place, thing, person, or even idea that has the power to inspire us to accept the inner journeying to greater liberty and awareness. The myth of Shambhala is meant to encourage us to find a form of our own that reveals, rather than replaces, the essence of the kingdom itself.
In seeking the essence of Shambhala through whichever form nosotros find to be ours, we come up to realise that it lies subconscious right hither in the world effectually us. This realisation opens the states to a growing sense of the sacred in everything nosotros see. People and things that we had regarded with scorn or indifference becomes sources of wonder and awe. As nosotros become enlightened of the sacred nature of all that surrounds us, nosotros stop to see people and things to exist driveling and exploited. Nosotros come, instead, to cherish them for what they are, and to care for them with the utmost care and respect. If we tin awaken this sense of the sacred in the world effectually united states, then we may have a chance of bringing nearly the golden historic period of so many myths and dreams.
Only exaltation of spirit
Enables ane to cross the radiant bridge
Permit each one who is illumined past spirit
Walk boldly into the temple
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