What kind of reality stands behind these stories? Is it at all possible to gain more precise knowledge about it? Are all these legends not only metaphors for a purely psychological event?

  Certainly it can be looked at this way. Certainly the true, the heavenly Shambhalah is within us. Nevertheless, there is a material correspondence to the heavenly Shambhalah.

  There were again and again people who tried to reach this material Shambhalah. As far as we know of their attempts they didn’t succeed.  

Only who is called by the grail itself is favoured!

In the nineteen twenties the Russian painter and artist Nichola Roerich undertook an expedition which took him 24'000 kilometres through Asia, across dozens of high Himalayan mountain passes and through barren deserts. This expedition ran under cover of scientific research, but in truth he was looking for Shambhalah. Probably he hardly ever really discovered it, but he presumably obtained safe tokens of its existence.

So it is not surprising that in various of his pictures many allusions of Shambhalah, the grail and its knighthood can be detected for those with the eyes to see.

In his treaty „Shambhalah, the Shining One“, Roerich speaks explicitly of Shambhalah.

There he reports on a conversation he had had with a high-ranking Lama:

„Lama, tell me about Shambhalah!“...

“But you from the West know nothing about Shambhalah. Maybe you ask only for curiosity’s sake; and you pronounce this holy word in vain.“  

„Lama, I’m not idly asking about Shambhalah. Everywhere people know this great symbol under different names...We sense how secret symbols carry a big truth within.“

 The Lama examines us with penetrating eyes. Then he says:

„The great Shambhalah is...the powerful heavenly realm. It has nothing to do with this planet. ... Only in few places, up North,  the brilliant radiations of Shambhalah can be perceived.“

„Lama, we know about the Greatness of Shambhalah. We know of the reality of this indescribable realm....On top we have seen a white demarcation post of one of the three outposts of Shambhalah. So please do not speak to me only about the heavenly Shambhalah, for you know as well as I do, that a Shambhalah on earth is connected with the heavenly one. And with this link both worlds are united.“

 The Lama replied:

 „We are not allowed to vocalize this mystery aloud! Many things may not be revealed. There is plenty that may not be crystallized in sound. In sound we reveal our thinking. In sound we project our thinking into space, from which big harm can result. Because everything revealed before the set time results in immeasurable suffering...“

At one time Roerich seems to have come quite close to physical Shambhalah. He writes:  

„...A Lama, the leader of a caravan covers mouth and nose with a scarf. We thought this strange, for it was not cold. He explains: „We have to take care now. We are approaching the forbidden country of Shambhalah. We will soon come upon the „Sur“, the poisonous gas that protects the boundaries of Shambhalah.“  

Our Tibetan, Konchok, catches up with us and tells us in a muffled voice: „Not far from here it happened, as the Dalai Lama went from Tibet to Mongolia, that all men and animals of the caravan started to tremble. The Dalai Lama told them not to be afraid: They were only touching the forbidden zone of Shambhalah, and their fear resulted only from not being used to its air vibrations.“

In the second half of this century specially the journey of an American called „Edwin Bernbaum“ gained public attention, who reports in his book „The Way to Shambhalah“ about his expedition into Inner Tibet:  

„...The following day we reached the last high mountain pass, and found us suddenly looking past heaving snowfields to the brink of a green valley that sloped down into mysterious depths hiding from our sight. ...A graceful ice-peak throned over the valley, and all around snow-covered mountains shimmered in the early morning sun...No way was leading downhill.

We went to the edge of the valley and looked down. Way below us stretched a dale as I had never seen yet in the Himalayas.“

Bernbaum and his crew found at last a hidden trail and started descending into the valley. They passed a wood of pine trees and rhododendron.

„...This wood was...mysterious. At the same time yet it felt very close and strangely familiar to me. I had the vague feeling as if I had a very, very long time ago already once been there. Although many miles and mountains were separating us from the help that we would need in case of an accident, I felt at home and safe. In an light opening, where a spring was bubbling forth from underneath a mossy rock, I bent down to drink. I felt the peace and the beauty of this valley flowing into my body. ...  I simply knew that this was the hidden valley that I had been looking for.“

Involuntarily this makes one think of the forest protecting the fortress of the grail.

The expedition had to return, and the participants nearly lost their lives, because sudden snowfall set in and they had barely to eat.

Returned to the monastery of Khumbu from where they had set out, Bernwald reported his journey to the Lama in power, who commented: „Yes, this must have been Khembalung.“

But Bernwald opinionated that it did not fit the descriptions of Shambhalah that he had heard. The Lama shrugged: „That doesn’t matter. This book has been written for Yogis, that would see things you can’t see. Where you have seen snow, rocks and lonely woods they would see something completely different.“

This matches with statements of another travel report Bernwald found later: „When time is not ripe yet...everything ...houses and palaces ...will be covered with grass and trees.  ....  

In the opinion of the Lama of Tenboche our journey led us only to the surface of Khembalung. Many Lamas think that a „hidden valley“ as Khembalung is made up from many layers....

If ever a common human being should succeed in reaching such a valley, he will only find a place of peace with meadows and woods. The special nature of the valley he will not perceive.

Who has experience in meditation and has realized a certain Level of consciousness will perceive another „invisible“ layer, which remains inaccessible to common people. This so called „inner“ hidden valley can be located exactly at the same site as the outer hidden valley, but it may also lie even deeper in the mountains...

The invisible palace is possibly situated in this inner or concealed layer of the hidden valley.“

To me personally it seems beyond any doubt that the oriental Shambhalah  and our fortress of the grail rsp. the site where they stand are one and the same. Whereby both are only legendary conversions of one reality that reaches far beyond the partly fairy tale like, partly even kitsch pictures that have taken on shape during the course of time. The for me only really authentic account of this reality outshining all fantastic pictures of „the sanctuary on top of the mountains“ is in my opinion to be found in the literary and painting work of Bô Yin Râ.

Bô Yin Râ, who makes in his work many references to the hidden sanctuary in the Himalayas, and who, although not with his body physical but as a Carrier of Consciousness had access to this realm, discerns the sanctuary standing hilltop, the fortress of the grail - or „temple of eternity“ as he calls it, from the nearby earthly dwellings of the „priesthood“ of this temple, who reside there in absolute isolation.   

Bô Yin Râ writes among other things:

„The spiritually fronted constituting of „the Temple of Eternity“, of which I speak in my teachings, could take place only at this sole locality on this planet, which I have characterized here once again.

From this locality only, by a most subtle field of force inherent only in this place, as also physically being an extremely meaningfully separated site that stretches over a immense earth-area indeed, Eternal Spirit achieves to come to unite again with the sparkles of spirit that have fallen into physical outward appearance searching for salvation in mankind of this planet.

On this site solely, moreover, the absolute „Unio Mystica“ of earthly human beings in which the Shining ones of Premordial Light offer themselves, is on this planet attainable.

It goes without saying that the geographical naming of this site must be denied even to the human beings in which the Shining ones of Premordial Light experience themselves, since the mere knowledge of the exact geographical position of this location in the human brain would suffice to create vibrations that would disturb all purely spiritual impulses severely, if not even totally hindering them in their expression.

That the impulses from Eternal Spirit take their course via the inner of the earth, since the earth’s aura, as a consequence of the abuse of the - in its broadest sense -given possibilities in his animal nature, has been horribly soiled by man, became likewise cause of the shaping of the symbols: - Holy grottoes and caves!- just as the spiritual event itself, emanating forth from high up in the mountains!

The earth’s aura, like a scroll written over and over, filled up with the dark scribbles of the earthly human being, is the killing „letter“, whereas the Spirit of Eternity renders life from the inside of the earth, - entering into the soil some place where the earth’s aura has not been desecrated by humans, and capable as nowhere else to let in spiritual radiation.

By spiritually guided occurrences, this in the highest sense most holy place on earth has been made already in early adolescence inwardly accessible to me.

At that time I had no anticipation that it would so very much later become then at any time inwardly accessible to me, and I understood little of what I know now.

I found myself only, when „fetched“, without any dimmed awareness for my normal surroundings, at once conscious at this so far away mysterious place on earth, but there in a unnamable shaking festive ecstasy, and I cried fearful tears after „return“, when I became  scared that I had maybe for the last time „been taken there“.

Many years followed then indeed, in which I would not in my dreams believe anymore the same site could ever again become attainable for me. That was conditioned by developments of multifold kind, which I only learned to survey after undergoing them.

Certainly it is not the outward being able to experience incomparable high-alpine landscape that draws us here, as powerful as the impression of these uncountable pyramid- peaks, ice-needles and walls of steep, rugged rock, emerging from a sea of immeasurable snowfields and glaciers, erect the soul.  

Well, there happens a transfer of that which would be perceivable to the physical eye, if it found itself on the spot, to the far cerebral regions of the physical body that normally brings into awareness impressions received by the eye!

Who in his young years, as it happened to me, experienced equivalents to all these impressions be it only in alpine regions, which here cannot even be named as comparative objects, to this person it is surely like a inconceivable miracle, when he here amidst these elemental forces also comes to a experience that would have destroyed him if it had been physical.

But all this is truly not the reason of our shared experience in this region!

The spiritual Carriers of our Consciousness are much more only directed here because we can only from here effect what we are commissioned. What this is all about is often described in my teachings.

In this icy region I only too much would like to have sometimes one of the philosophers -of the ones of antiquity to the ones of more modern times - besides me, from whose intellectual speculations all conception of Eternal Spirit is fed till today. How would these truly venerable men, whose names are sacrosanct to every brain-worshiper, confirmed by the infallibility of their intellectual conclusions, quiver in front of the reality of Spirit and shrivel, just because their honesty could not bear to still keep up what before this experience they in best belief thought the intellectually most safe understanding!“

 (By extract of the book: Bô Yin Râ , „Kodizil zu meinem Geistigen Lehrwerk“ (Codicil to my Spiritual Teachings), kober press, Berne, Switzerland; not published in  English language yet).

 Basel, Switzerland, 12.August 1996 WE / PA 15.09.99