I didn't know where to put it so I put it in history because it's part of history in the end but is also connected to religion, and we know that there is always a little bit of truth in it! I was interested in these subject because I found some interesting information in some books and articles, also C's mentioned information about underground civilizations!
Part 1
Nicholas Roerich, Song of Shambhala: Thang-La (1943).
In Tibetan Buddhist tradition, Shambhala (also spelled Shambala or Shamballa; Tibetan: bde 'byung, pron. De-jung) is a mythical kingdom hidden somewhere in Inner Asia. It is mentioned in various ancient texts, including the Kalachakra Tantra[2] and the ancient texts of the Zhang Zhung culture which predated Tibetan Buddhism in western Tibet. The Bön scriptures speak of a closely related land called Olmolungring. Whatever its historical basis, Shambhala gradually came to be seen as a Buddhist Pure Land, a fabulous kingdom whose reality is visionary or spiritual as much as physical or geographic.
It was in this form that the Shambhala myth reached the West, where it influenced non-Buddhist as well as Buddhist spiritual seekers — and, to some extent, popular culture in general. he Western fascination with Shambhala has often been based upon fragmented accounts of the Kalachakra tradition, or outright fabrications. Tibet was largely closed to Westerners until the twentieth century, and so what information was available about the tradition of Shambhala was haphazard at best. The first information that reached western civilization about Shambhala came from the Portuguese Catholic missionary Estêvão Cacella, who had heard about Shambala (which they transcribed as "Xembala"), and thought it was another name for Cathay or China. In 1627 they headed to Tashilhunpo, the seat of the Panchen Lama and, discovering their mistake, returned to India. The Hungarian scholar Sándor Kőrösi Csoma, writing in 1833, provided the first geographic account of "a fabulous country in the north...situated between 45' and 50' north latitude".
During the 19th century, Theosophical Society founder HP Blavatsky alluded to the Shambhala myth, giving it currency for Western occult enthusiasts. Blavatsky, who claimed to be in contact with a Great White Lodge of Himalayan Adepts, mentions Shambhala in several places without giving it especially great emphasis. (The Mahatmas, we are told, are also active around Shigatse and Luxor.) Blavatsky's Shambhala, like the headquarters of the Great White Lodge, is a physical location on our earth, albeit one which can only be penetrated by a worthy aspirant.
Later esoteric writers further emphasized and elaborated on the concept of a hidden land inhabited by a hidden mystic brotherhood whose members labor for the good of humanity. Alice A. Bailey has Shamballa (her spelling) to be an extra-dimensional or spiritual reality on the etheric plane, a spiritual centre where the governing deity of Earth, Sanat Kumara, dwells as the highest avatar of the Planetary Logos of Earth, and is said to be an expression of the Will of God. Nicholas and Helena Roerich led a 1924-1928 expedition aimed at Shambhala. Apparently inspired by Theosophical lore, Soviet agent Yakov Blumkin led two Tibetan expeditions to discover Shambhala, in 1926 and 1928. Similarly, Heinrich Himmler and Rudolf Hess sent a German expedition to Tibet in 1930, and then again in 1934-35, and in 1938-39. Some later occultists, noting the Nazi link, view Shambhala (or the closely-related underground realm of Aghartha) as a source of negative manipulation by an evil (or amoral) conspiracy. The "Shangri-La" of James Hilton's 1933 novel Lost Horizon may have been inspired by the Shambhala myth (as well as then-current National Geographic articles on Eastern Tibet).
Many New Age writers, notably James Redfield, have written about Shambhala.
Chögyam Trungpa used the "Shambhala" name for certain of his teachings, practices, and organizations (e.g. Shambhala Training, Shambhala International, Shambhala Publications) aimed at American Vajrayana practitioners. In Trungpa's view, Shambhala has its own independent basis in human wisdom that does not belong to East or West, or to any one culture or religion.
Shambhala has been appropriated in a variety of modern comic books including The Shadow, Prometheus, 2000 AD, Gargoyles #6, and Warlord.
The American rock band Three Dog Night recorded the song spelled 'Shambala' in 1973 track 5 on the album cyan. Partial lyrics include "Wash away my troubles, wash away my pain with the rain in Shambala." Written by Daniel Moore.
Thomas Pynchon includes Shambhala in his 2006 novel Against the Day. In his portrayal, Shambhala is an underground city and the subject of intense searches by European powers in the early part of the 20th century, which include underground desert ships.
From the book Invisible eagle by Alan Baker:
The first hint of the Vril Society's existence was discovered in a scene that would not have been out of place in one of Dennis Wheatley's occult thrillers. On 25 April 1945, so the story goes, a group of battle-weary Russian soldiers were making their cautious way through the shattered remnants of Berlin, mopping up the isolated pockets of German resistance that remained in the heart of the Third Reich. The soldiers moved carefully from one wrecked building to another, in a state of constant readiness against the threat of ambush. In a ground-floor room of one blasted building, the soldiers made a surprising discovery. Lying in a circle on the floor were the bodies of six men, with a seventh corpse in the centre. All were dressed in German military uniforms, and the dead man in the centre of the group was wearing a pair of bright green gloves. The Russians' assumption that the bodies were those of soldiers was quickly dispelled when they realised that the dead men were all Orientals. One of the Russians, who was from Mongolia, identified the men as Tibetans. It was also evident to the Russian soldiers that the men had not died in battle but seemed to have committed suicide. Over the following week, hundreds more Tibetans were discovered in Berlin: some of them had clearly died in battle, while others had committed ritual suicide, like the ones discovered by the Russian unit. What were Tibetans doing in Nazi Germany towards the end of the Second World War?
The answer to this question may be found in a curious novel entitled The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), first Baron Lytton ( I recommend the book it’s very interesting). A prolific and very successful writer(his output included novels, plays, essays and poetry) Bulwer-Lytton was considered in his lifetime to be one of the greatest writers in the English language. Unfortunately, his reputation for vanity, ostentation and eccentricity attracted a good deal of hostility from the press and this has damaged his subsequent literary reputation to a disproportionate extent, with the result that today his books are extremely hard to find and his work is seldom - if at all - taught in universities in the English-speaking world. Throughout his career, Bulwer-Lytton wrote on many themes, including romance, politics, history, social satire, melodrama and the occult. It is perhaps unsurprising, therefore, that he should have turned to the subject of Utopian science fiction with The Coming Race, published in 1871. In this novel, the narrator, a traveler and adventurer of independent means, explores a mine in an unnamed location and discovers a vast subterranean world, inhabited by a superior race of humans called the Vril-ya. Once tenants of the Earth's outer surface, the Vril-ya were forced to retreat underground by a natural catastrophe similar to the biblical Flood many thousands of years ago. Their technology is far in advance of anything to be found in the world of ordinary humanity, and is based on the application of a force known as 'vril'. Befriended by a young female Vril-ya named Zee, the narrator asks about the nature of the vril force. Therewith Zee began to enter into an explanation of which I understood very little, for there is no word in any language I know which is an exact synonym for vril. I should call it electricity, except that it comprehends in its manifold branches other forces of nature, to which, in our scientific nomenclature, differing names are assigned, such as magnetism, galvanism, &c. These people consider that in vril they have arrived at the unity in natural energetic agencies, which has been conjectured by many philosophers above ground, and which Faraday thus intimates under the more cautious term of correlation:
'I have long held an opinion,' says that illustrious experimentalist, 'almost amounting to a conviction, in common, I believe, with many other lovers of natural knowledge, that the various forms under which the forces of matter are made manifest have one common origin; or, in other words, are so directly related and mutually dependent, that they are convertible, as it were, into one another, and possess equivalents of power in their action. According to Zee, all Vril-ya are trained in the application of vril, which can be used to control the physical world, including the minds and bodies of others, as well as to enhance the telepathic and telekinetic potentials of the human mind. The vril force is most often applied through the use of a device known as the Vril Staff which, like the vril force itself, requires many years to master. (The narrator is not allowed to hold one, 'for fear of some terrible accident occasioned by my ignorance of its use'.) The Vril Staff 'is hollow, and has in the handle several stops, keys, or springs by which its force can be altered, modified, or directed - so that by one process it destroys, by another it heals - by one it can rend the rock, by another disperse the vapour - by one it affects bodies, by another it can exercise a certain influence over minds'.
During his protracted stay in the subterranean realm, the narrator learns of the system of government by which the Vril-ya live. They are ruled by a single supreme magistrate who abdicates the position at the first sign of advancing age.
Although their society is entirely free of crime or strife of any kind, they consider strength and force to be among the finest virtues, and the triumph of the strong over the weak to be in perfect accordance with Nature. Democracy and free institutions are, to them, merely the crude experiments of an immature culture. The government of the tribe of Vril-ya ... was apparently very complicated, really very simple. It was based upon a principle recognised in theory, though little carried out in practice, above ground - viz., that the object of all systems of philosophical thought tends to the attainment of unity, or the ascent through all intervening labyrinths to the simplicity
of a single first cause or principle. Thus in politics, even republican writers have agreed that a benevolent autocracy would insure the best administration, if there were any guarantees for its continuance, or against its gradual abuse of the powers accorded to it. There was ... in this society nothing to induce any of its members to covet the cares of office. No honours, no insignia of higher rank were assigned to it. The supreme magistrate was not distinguished from the rest by superior habitation or revenue. On the other hand, the duties awarded to him were marvellously light and easy, requiring no preponderant degree of energy or intelligence. (6)
After a number of adventures in the subterranean world -and a great many conversations with its denizens -the narrator comes to the following conclusion regarding the ultimate origins of the fantastic Vril-ya race:
[T]his people - though originally not only of our human race, but, as seems to me clear by the roots of their language, descended from the same ancestors as the great Aryan family, from which in varied streams has flowed the dominant civilisation of the world; and having, according to their myths and their history, passed through phases of society familiar to ourselves, - had yet now developed into a distinct species with which it was impossible that any community in the upper world could amalgamate: And that if they ever emerged from these nether recesses into the light of day, they would, according to their own traditional persuasions of their ultimate destiny, destroy and replace our existent varieties of man. (7)
Although greatly impressed with the knowledge and accomplishments of the Vril-ya, the narrator is nevertheless terrified by their power and the ease with which they wield it, implying at one point that, should he have angered them at any time, they would have had no compunction in turning their Vril Staffs on him and reducing him to cinders. This uneasiness, coupled with his natural desire to return to the upper world and the life with which he is familiar, prompts the narrator to begin seeking a means of escape from the subterranean world of the Vril-ya. Aid comes in the unlikely form of Zee, who has fallen in love with him and has attempted to persuade him to stay, but who nevertheless understands that an unrequited love cannot result in happiness for either of them. It is she who leads him back to the mine shaft through which he first entered the realm of the Vrilya. Upon his return home, the narrator begins to ponder the wonders he has beheld far below the surface of the Earth, and once again hints at the possible dreadful fate awaiting a blissfully unaware humanity at the hands of the 'Coming Race'. In the final chapter, we read:
[T]he more I think of a people calmly developing, in regions excluded from our sight and deemed uninhabitable by our sages, powers surpassing our most disciplined modes offeree, and virtues to which our life, social and political, becomes antagonistic in proportion as our civilisation advances, - the more devoutly I pray that ages may yet elapse before there emerge into sunlight our inevitable destroyers. (8)
It is an assumption of many occultists that The Coming Race is fact disguised as fiction: that Bulwer-Lytton based his engaging novel on a genuine body of esoteric knowledge. He was greatly interested in the Rosicrucians, the powerful occult society which arose in the sixteenth century and which claimed to possess ancient wisdom, discovered in a secret underground chamber, regarding the ultimate secrets of the Universe. There is some evidence that Bulwer-Lytton believed in the possibility of a subterranean world, for he wrote to his friend Hargrave Jennings in 1854: 'So Rosenkreuz [the founder of the Rosicrucians] found his wisdom in a secret chamber. So will we all. There is much to be learned from the substrata of our planet.' (9)
Some writers, including Alec Maclellan, author of the fascinating book The Lost World of Agharti (1996), have suggested that The Coming Race revealed too much of the subterranean world, and was as a result suppressed in the years following Bulwer-Lytton's death in 1873. Indeed, he describes the book as 'one of the hardest to find of all books of mysticism', (10) and informs us of his own search for a copy, which for some years met with no success. While doubtless an intriguing piece of stage-setting on Maclellan's part the rarity of the book can surely be accounted for by the unjust waning of Bulwer-Lytton's posthumous literary reputation (mentioned earlier). The present author searched for some months for a copy of The Coming Race, before finding an extremely affordable paperback edition in a high-street bookshop. What is the connection between Bulwer-Lytton's strange novel and Nazi Germany? If there really was a large colony of Tibetan monks in Berlin in the 1940s, what were they doing there?
Maybe they were doing work for their masters!
What did C’s said about underground civilizations and nazi link with them and STS Orions:
Session 960831
Q: (L) Question, this may take us somewhere. I noticed when I was redoing these transcripts for Ark to read that when we were discussing the origin of the Celts, that the question was asked, by me, were they in any way superior to the indigenous people of this planet? And the remark was, that they were sturdier in some way. And then I commented that they didn't appear to be sturdier than, say, some of the big Black people, because Celts are very fair, and very thin- skinned looking, and very delicate. It just seemed to me to be kind of an odd remark to make. However, the response that I received, which I didn't pick up on at the time, which blew mw out of the water, was that they were sturdier, but not necessarily on the surface of the planet... (J) No, they didn't say on the surface of the planet. They just said, on the surface. (L) On the surface... Uh huh. So, does that surface mean surface of their appearance, or does that surface mean surface as in underground? That's my question.
A: Both.
Q: (L) Now, in talking about these large underground cities or enclaves that we've talked about on a couple of occasions, it has been said that these beings come and actually may take human babies. I mean, this is like fairy lore, legends, of different kinds of creatures that come and steal people's babies, and they go and live underground, and sometimes, one or another will escape. Is this what we're talking about here? These kinds of situations, these underground cities and caves and civilizations and so forth?
A: Vague.
Q: (L) Well, I know it's vague... (T) Are the Celts part of these underground civilizations?
A: Yes.
Q: (T) And they came to the surface some time ago...
A: No.
Q: (L) No, they came here, and they were taken underground...
A: No.
Q: (L) No, well, what's the story?
A: Went.
Q: (L) They went underground? Is that it? (T) When did they go underground?
A: Several occasions, the most recent being, on your calendar: 1941 through 1945.
Q: (L) That's when they went underground? 1941 through 1945?
A: Last episode of mass migration, mostly Deutschlanders.
Q: (T) Underground. We're talking underground, as in under the surface of the earth. Is this what we're talking?
A: Antarctica. Under there.
Q: (T) Under Antarctica, under... Oh, in one of the big... OOOhhh!
A: Entry port.
Q: (T) They went underground in Antarctica, they built a large underground base there, this is where the Germans, as in the Nazi Germans, claimed as Vineland, I think it is, where the older maps that show Antarctica, where the German territory was claimed, it's in that section that's south of...
A: Yes, but they entered through their constructed base, as instructed, then were assimilated.
Q: (L) They were assimilated into the population already existent? Underground cities, underground bases?
A: Yes.
Q: Laura) So, they didn't build them, they entered into them as instructed, and were assimilated into the population?
A: They did build a base.
Q: (T) Well, they'd have to keep expanding! Now, you said instructed... (L) Instructed by whom? (T) They were instructed to go there?
A: Those identifying themselves as "Antareans."
Q: (L) And who are the Antareans?
A: STS Humanoid Orion linkage.
Q: (L) What is an STS Orion Linkage? (T) That's the... (L) We have a new concept here. (T) They would be... the... the...the... (V) Mutant Race! (T) Yes! Those that were part of the creation...
A: No.
Q: (L) What is an STS Humanoid Orion linkage? [Part of tape seems to be missing here, questions in [ ] are reconstruction]
A: An STS race from Orion that is humanoid.
Q: [something about who or how they got hooked up with the Nazis. Probably a question related to the group that "handled" Hitler.]
A: The Thule Society originated contact.
Q: [something about them "waiting to take over the world"]
A: Waiting?
Q: [undoubtedly TR's question about what Admiral Byrd may have seen over the pole.]
A: Yes, but he was led to believe he was chasing what amounted to merely an encampment of detached Nazis.
Q: [So Byrd must have SEEN something and was then led off the track...]
A: Yes
Q: (T) ...the U.S. just assumed, and Churchill, between the two of them, was it Roosevelt and Churchill? They didn't even tell the Russians too much about what they were doing down there. They just assumed that this was a base, another one of their underground bases that was manned by the Nazis, but there wasn't anything that they could do, because they were too far away, and we were keeping them out of the war. So, there wasn't much that they could send back. So, they let them come in, and figured they were stranded. (V) Are they coming back out now in the... (T) They've been coming back out... (V)... shape of the White Supremacists that are like popping up all over the place? (T) They've been coming and going all along. Admiral Byrd was sent down there, supposedly to go to the South Pole, the first Admiral Byrd expedition to the South Pole; but he took a large military force with him. He was still a U.S. Admiral at the time. The large military force encountered resistance and got their asses whupped real good down there. But, they kept it real quiet, because nobody knew what was really going on down there. So, they just said, oh, it was a scientific expedition. It was really Captain Picard and the Enterprise going to find a new planet! And in reality, what they'd done was to go down there to root out this base out after the war, and they didn't do real well at all! (J) Bit off more than they could chew. (T) They lost a whole lot of people and a whole lot of ships, and a lot of equipment down there. That's why all these bases ring around the outside, all the scientific bases from different countries; Russia, the U.S., Great Britain; all these countries have these scientific bases all along the outer edge of the Antarctic. They're scientific, they use them for study, but they are there to monitor what's going on, that's why they don't go into the Antarctic. (V) You know, my father was a Seabee down there. (T) I'll bet he has some very interesting stories about it. (V) That's why my father is an alcoholic and can't see straight.
A: Yes.
Q: (L) What do these guys plan on doing?
A: This is where "The Master Race" is being developed.
Q: (L) And what is the timeframe they have planned for this activity?
A: Never mind.
Session 961123
Q: (T) Is Courtney able to do remote viewing?
A: Yes.
Q: (T) But he did not use it with this book?
A: No.
Q: (T) So, the book was made up the way it is. It is a story. Some
factual information, some invented information, some pure BS
thrown in to fluff it out. So, the book is NOT an account of work that
has come from remote viewing sessions?
A: No, but not needed.
Q: (L) You have said twice that remote viewing was not "needed."
Where did he get his information?
A: Secret sources. Agents of the nation "of the third eye."
Q: (J) What or who - is the "Nation of the Third Eye?"
A: Terran civilization under the surface.
Q: (L) Now, wait a minute. I remember that when they said the
Aryans were brought from Kantek and that they were "sturdier or
something like that, and I remarked that it seemed that they would
be less sturdy - and the C's answered "on the surface." Now, that
has always bothered me. I don't think they meant "surface
appearances." Have the Aryans been glorified as the "master race"
because they are more suited to living underground?
A: Close. All types there are "Aryan."
Q: (L) Okay, is this a Terran underground civilization that has been
'managed' by Orions, or did it develop on its own?
A: One at a time.
Q: (L) Did the underground civilization develop on its own?
A: Yes.
Q: (L) Is it managed or manipulated by Orions as well?
A: Yes.
Q: (L) Are these "managers" Orions from other densities?
A: Yes and no.
Q: (L) I don't understand. Are there some that are 4th and some that
are 3rd?
A: The human types there are "bi-density."
What do buddhist have to do with it?
Tuerin monastery
The secret of the Tuerin monastery was mentioned for the first time in the Adventure magazine in 1922. Traveler William Thompson was describing there an odd episode that happened to him in 1920 when he was in Mongolia. While touring the Tuerin monastery he met with a gun and drug dealer John Spencer who was on a run from Manchuria to Tibet. The Lamas found him and took care of him when he felt unconscious in a fever on a path leading to their monastery. When Spencer started feeling a little better he showed a great interest in the monastery and its surroundings.
One day as he was walking near the monastery he discovered a hidden rotten staircase that lead somewhere under the ground. Without much effort he opened a little metal door at the end of the staircase and found himself in a room of an unusual shape which had perhaps twelve or thirteen walls. Each wall carried a painting with some of them representing the signs of zodiac. Spencer recognized Taurus, his zodiac sign. In deep pondering over what he was seeing his fingers were thoughtlessly copying shapes on the walls and at one point, he late remember it was when he touched the Pleiades he felt as if the wall began moving. It did indeed and showed an entrance to a corridor. Spencer stepped into the tunnel that appeared behind the wall, it was illuminated with feeble green light coming right out of the walls and the ceiling.
As he walked through the corridor he saw paths split off, however he stayed on what seemed to be the main one and after a while it brought him to a room with brighter light. Along the wall of the room he saw thirteen coffins that were floating above the ground, maybe some half a meter high. He curiously began lifting lids of the coffins and saw that three of them carried bodies of monks and the others contained bodies of men and women in well preserved clothes that belonged to deep history. The body in the last coffin however was different, it was an unknown being dressed in something silver. The being had a silver ball instead of a head with round holes for eyes and with a "thing" sticking out instead of a nose with little holes for nostrils. And It didn't have a mouth. Spencer, shocked as he was, wanted to touch the strange being but as he stretched his arm the eyes of the monster widely opened and a green light shot out of them. Spencer dropped the lid of the coffin and ran out of the underground as fast as he could.
He tried to tell one of the lamas about what he saw but the lama blamed it on Spencer's imagination exaggerated by fever. However he yielded to Spencer's pleading and went to the underground with him. They walked through a short corridor which ended with a small room with an altar. On a shelf by one of the walls there were 13 little coffins about 12 centimeters long with little figures inside of them that looked like perfect copies of the bodies Spencer had seen the first time.
"What you really saw was this," the lama said smiling. "They are models of personalities that enriched this country with their wisdom and who we worship. The last one with the silver head is Great Master who came down from the stars." Then lama pointed at a painting above the altar and Spencer noticed that it was again Taurus with Pleiades.
When Spencer met with Thompson he tried to explain to him that he had suffered no hallucinations when he had walked through the underground and that he really saw what he saw. Thompson wrote in his story that Spencer kept on repeating that the lama purposely took him to a different corridor to confuse him. He said he had seen the lama to open a wall right opposite the entrance while the wall with the Plejadas that had opened for Spencer had been to the left. Spencer probably paid for his discovery with his life because according to Thompson's story he disappeared shortly after meeting with Thompson and no one ever saw him again.
Czech explorer Ivan Mackerle wrote this in his search for the tomb(he mentions Agartha and C's said it's a fiction):
Is everything a lie or just a fantasy? The story though happened at a time when no one was talking about extraterrestrial. Erich von Daniken came with his hypothesis about extraterrestrial bringing intelligent life on Earth much later. Does it mean that the underground of the monastery holds a remainder of an alien or is it an entrance to the Underground Agharti Kingdom? According to an old Buddha legend, the Aghartians were a peaceful nation lead by a holy person Rygden Jyepo - the Ruler of the World. Others say that Aghartians were the Biblical sons of God, perhaps visitors from the space who hid under the Earth's ground after a disaster that had happened many thousands of years ago. Supposedly they wear silver suits and live in underground tunnels where they travel on special flying machines called vimanas that are run by a power called vril. And the tunnels are lid by luminescent light of green color. The legend says that the flying machines from time to time appear above the ground as the Aghartians maintain contact with chosen humans. Some travelers at the beginning of this century mentioned unknown flying objects in Mongolia. Ferdinand Ossendowski describes in his book Beast, Men and Gods (1923) "vehicles absolutely unknown, flying above sky-high peaks and descending in the depths of Earth." Nicholas Roerich in his book Heart of Asia (1928) writes about "objects of a round shape with shiny surface appearing above Mongolia."
During my trip to Mongolia in 1990 I was determined to find the Tuerin monastery and to research its underground. I knew that the lamas and keepers of mysteries carefully guarded their secret. But I knew that by now monasteries had been surely in ruins and deserted for a long time. That was the destiny of all monasteries in Mongolia after the Communists seized the power in the 30Os. So I expected to find no one guarding in the ruins.
I ran to a problem though. It was impossible for me to find out where the Tuerin monastery used to be as no available map of Mongolia carried such a name, nor did any list of old Mongolia monasteries. However, after studying old travel books about Mongolia, I found out that the monastery used to be on an old trade road going from Urga (today's Ulanbatar) to Beijing and that the place was about 130 kilometers away from Urga. It used to be by a telegraph station and at a bottom of some rocky mountains. So with my friends we traveled across the country, climbed deserted ruins and inquired in local villages and nomad dwellings.
Statuette of mysterious strangers in silver suits with round head really used to be worshiped in the underground of the Tuerin monastery and not only there. Everywhere where, according to the legend, used to be cities of the gods from stars and where underground tunnels had their beginnings.
If you are lucky you can find those figures on the black market these days. I was offered one by a young man who was secretly trading antiquities and minerals which were banned for exporting. The statuette was in a paper box among figures of traditional silver and bras lamaistic gods called burchans that were lifted out of ruins of many monasteries. The figure which was some 10 centimeters long distinguished itself from the other ones. The shapes were smoothed down by centuries, as the figure was surely clutched by generations of hands. It had the round head with holes instead of eyes and where the head was adjusted to the body it was symbolized by a ring, sort of like a diving and space suit. Arms were pressed against the chest and held some sort of sickle-like-subject that resembled a driving wheel. Stomach of the figure carried an illegible symbol in Tibetan language or something that UFO believers might have identified as a modern electric device. I held it in my hands for a long time and carefully looked at it. Unfortunately I didn't have enough money to buy it.
After we spent days asking around to see if anyone knew about the monastery, we finally met someone who knew what we were seeking.
"I know really well the monastery you are looking for," said an old lama, Namdzil from Choir. "The monastery used to be called Choirin and I served there as a boy for 13 years before it was destroyed. But you won't be able to find the place where it stood. Almost nothing is left."
And he was right. If we had not taken him with us we would have been walking at the bottom of the hill for a long time before finding anything. Only after we got out of the car at the place he told us we recognized fundaments of buildings that were covered by overgrown grass. It was a sad view. Walking in the area, we heard our boots crushing fragments and crocks of religious relics that laid scattered all around.
"Here used to be the temple where I served," said Namdzil in a trembling voice pointing at a heap of ruins and a row of deteriorated bricks. "The monastery used to have three temples with over 2,800 monks serving here."
"But I know nothing about any underground crypts," he said. "It would not be even possible to hide it here because this was a very live place. The surrounding area was filled with yurtas and houses."
He was right. Stretching hundreds of meters to all sides there were rows of stones set up in squares, oblongs and circles.
We were walking away from the walls of the monastery but more and more fundaments of houses kept on popping up from the grass.
"Pilgrims and strangers never lived in the monastery. They lived in the houses behind the rocks," The said and waived toward the mountains. "You may find something there."
The next day we spent by a thorough research of ruins of the monastery, fundaments of the houses and the houses behind the rocks, or at least of what was left of them. But in vain we searched bushes and turned stones upside down - a mysterious staircase leading to an underground was nowhere to be found.
Then we thought of breaking into the underground through a ceiling of a crypt if could only find one. One member of the expedition dowser and before the trip he had learned how to find underground spaces. His rod moved for the first time above a place covered by grass that looked the same as its surroundings. We began digging our first probe but when our Mongolia driver Chimed saw what we were doing he started toward us and was waving his arms full of excitement. We couldn't dig there, he was saying. It was the holy ground and to dig there or even more to look for underground tombs was absolutely out of question. We could get into a big trouble for that, he said.
We noticed that he was looking behind our shoulders with a fear in his eyes and when we turned we saw silhouettes of several riders on horses on the top of the hill behind us. They were standing still as if carved out of stone with their eyes fixed on us. We couldn't find and explanation for where they come from all of a sudden in this otherwise deserted area. As if nothing was going on, we put down the spade and started bringing stones to set up a fire place. When we really started the fire and began making tea, Chimed finally calmed down.
"It wouldn't be a good thing to break old customs. The lamas say that if graves were again opened, the evil spirits would be freed," he said. He told us stories about people that searched for the underground kingdom and Genghis Khan's grave and who were being presecuted afterwards.
We were not the first people in Mongolia whose explorations had won them a frosty reception. Chimed said the pre-war pest epidemic was blamed on Russian archaeologists working in the country. Another French researcher, maybe it was Pierre Boutroux, who's research in Tibet caused a big sensation, traveled to holy hills northeast from Urga hoping to find the tomb, despite the ban from Dalai Lama. Lamas from Bogdo-Kure were ordered to kill him, however, something was faster than them. The legend has it that the lamas, who themselves cannot enter the hills, were waiting at the edge of the forest for the Frenchman to return but he never came. It was an accident they found him later on dead and with broken limbs under the rocks on the south side of the hills. His forehead was shot with an arrow whose shape is unknown in Mongolia and made out of wood that doesn't grow anywhere in Asia. The lamas then began spreading a legend that the traveler was killed by a guardian of the King of the World. This way they tried to prove that there really was an underground kingdom of Agharti whose eternal King controls millions of people around the world.
"Digging in the ground is not forbidden only by our traditions but also by current laws," said Chimed. "Archaeological research is strictly forbidden to foreigners but not only to them. Neither Mongolia archaeologists can open the old graves they had found during their search for old cultures. At least not now."
The fire was slowly dying away and we threw a few careful looks at the hills behind us. The riders were not there any more, however that day we had more strange and unbelievable episodes that seemed unreal and scared us out quite a bit.
Late that afternoon I went for a short walk and headed toward the rocks behind the camp. A blue dawn was sitting on the country and a warm wind was bringing a heavy aroma of grass from the steppe. Sitting on a big rock I watched clouds lighted by the sitting sun and one question after another was popping up in my head. Are the underground corridors and the mystic tomb with an extraterrestrial really only a few meters under me? Is that place guarded by someone, even by some higher powers? How to overcome the last obstacle when we had almost reached our goal? And are we allowed to break the traditional taboo and laws of this country?
Then I recalled the words of one wise lama: "Many unwelcome people try to find the underground kingdom. Most of them fail and some of them even disappear forever. Only a few destined ones can reach the holy place - when their karma is ready."
I could not say if our karma would allow us to break into a holy crypt, but I had a foreboding feeling. We were four poor Europeans, traveling without permission, and without weapons to defend ourselves. In the end, we decided not to play with fire.
This happens to many explorers who put their nose to deep. It isn’t really friendly to kill someone especially if you’re Dalai Lama or Buddhist, it doesn’t really fits to their religion that is peaceful, does it? Or maybe they have some agenda that is in the first place?
Sources:
Wikipedia, http://en.mackerle.cz, The Coming race, Invisible eagle.
