Legends of many different cultures of the World tell us about a very inaccessible place where the Great Saints and Sages live. This Land of Wonders is situated on the highest mountain peaks where eternal spring and youth and the sacred spring of immortality are.
Different peoples name this place in different ways. Old Believers of Altai call it Whitewaters (Belovodye), Hindus call it Calapa and Tibet people call this place Shambhala.
One of the Old Believers told us, “Many people went to Whitewaters. So our grandparents did. They missed for three years and came to the sacred place. But they were not allowed to stay there, so they had to return home. They told us great wonders about that place. But the greatest ones were hidden from us”. One more legend about Whitewaters was saved for many centuries it had been kept like an innermost secret and only in a thousand years it became known. This story runs as follows:
“In 987 the Kiev prince Vladimir the Red Sun wanted to change the religion of his kingdom and sent six ambassadors to over-seas lands to gather information about their religions in order to choose the best one. However, the seventh secret ambassador was sent to the East, to an unknown country. This later ambassador was Father Sergey, a monk. Nothing was known about the subsequent fortune of him and only in the Twenty Century Father Sergey's story was revealed.
In 1043 in Kiev an old monk, feeling near death, confessed the secret, which hand to be passed by word of mouth as on innermost legend. He warned, “This legend will be the treasure of the peoples of the world only when the Date of the New Era comes.” That monk was Father Sergey who had headed the Prince Vladimir embassy to that mysterious country 56 years ago. He mentioned the following:
“The country of Whitewaters is not a fairy tale, but a reality. In different world legends it is called differently. In the marvelous abodes there live effulgent, mild, longsuffering, merciful, compassionate, and sagacious Great Sages, cooperators of the Highest World.
These Great Saint Hermits, who are the one with God and its Spirit, work as hard as they can together with the Light Force for the welfare of the Earth. This place is the kingdom of pure spirit, beauty, wonderful flames, exalted fascinating mysteries, light, joy, peace, and inconceivable greatness.
A lot of people from all over the world have tried to get to this secret Country, but only seven called people get there once a century, only six of them return taking away innermost Knowledge, new senses, and shining of spirit and heart. And only one of them is allowed to stay there.”
Some legends also mention the exact location of this country — somewhere in the Himalayas. Many people living near the Himalayas — where this mysterious Country lies, know about it, but hold sacred this great Knowledge and don’t share their confidence with newcomers. Nicholas Roerich the outstanding Russian artist, scientist, and traveler talked with a Lama (a Tibet monk). Their talk runs as follows.
“Lama, tell me of Shambhala”
“But you Westerners know nothing about Shambhala — you wish to know nothing. Probably, you ask only out of curiosity and pronounce this sacred word in vain.”
“Lama, I don’t ask about Shambhala aimlessly. Everywhere, people know of this Great Symbol under different names. We sense how, under Secret Symbols, a great Truth is concealed…”
It was not that simple to learn something about this sacred secret from the Eastern people who know (these days there are very few of them in the world) about it. It was important to show, that you didn’t ask simply out of curiosity, because only in this case you could be given an answer.
For a long time those remarkable legends had been supposed fantasy. But in the very end of the Ninetieth Century a Russian women Helena Blavatsky visited that mysterious country. And so did Nicholas Roerich with his wife Helena in 1926. They didn’t only visited that land, but they also talked to the Great Teacher of the Cosmos (the Himalayas Mahatmas) and got Great Knowledge from them.
What is this Knowledge about? It is about Life in the Universe, the manifested Cosmos, tight relationship with the Cosmos and our planet. The Knowledge also gives some information about death and immortally, great Cosmic Predestination of human beings. This Knowledge can answer many questions searched for by many people, by adults and children, and by our ancestors and contemporaries for many centuries. Let’s touch upon these Great SECRETS OF LIFE.
So, what did Nicholas and Helena Roerichs learn in Shambhala?
All of you have heard the fairy tale about Maugli, a little boy, who grew up in the forest among animals and was brought up by a pack of wolves. Naturally, this can only happen in fairy tales. But in reality everything happens just the opposite way. When a child grew up among animals, he was devoid of communicating with adult people, and he couldn’t be as mentally developed as human beings. He couldn’t assimilate human speech and learn to think like a man. His mental development stopped at the level of animal mind. The whole mankind, including the most intelligent people of the planet, would have stopped in their development as well, if they had been devoid of communicating with the Cosmic Reason more developed than people.
There is Reason everywhere in the Great Infinite of the Universe. The man considerably excels plants and insects in mind, as do Cosmic Beings excelling human mind. People ask used to calling this Reason divine and those, who have this quality, they call Gods.
But what is Divine? Divine means more perfect than human. The same is required of you if want to become proficient in some knowledge or develop some abilities, you have to study for a long time. There can be no other way here. Those who are called Gods, used to be like we are now, but they steadily developed and gained. Divine level of Knowledge and abilities. The whole Life in the Cosmos is based on collaboration and mutual cooperation. It means that wise beings of higher planets help those planets, inhabitants of which are not as well developed.
Try to remember your early childhood, when you could do little yourself and you were helped and taught by your elder brothers and sisters, parents and teachers. So does happen in the Cosmos. The High Reason helps creatures on junior planets develop. These wise highest Beings say to people, that they are not Gods, but people’s Elder Cosmic Brothers.
The seven Cosmic Teachers came to Earth from other planets to help people in their development and to give them the Highest Knowledge. Many million years ago they founded SHAMBHALA, the cosmic Center of Knowledge on the Earth. For thousands of years people have been getting the innermost Knowledge from this very House of Light. This is the place described in many world’s legends.
In the ancient times, when people were not as vain and self-assured as they are now, the Great Teachers directly communicated with people of our planet and taught them their Wisdom. Nowadays people have cut themselves off the Cosmos by pride and self-dependence. They even have begun to suppose Earth is the only inhabited planet, and the highest intelligent creation in the Cosmos. Such thinking has led to discontinuance of contacts with the Highest Reason.
The Great Teachers stopped direct communicating with people, but even now they continue helping people and giving them the Knowledge they have collected. Now they do it through mediators, the best representatives of our humanity, but there are few of them in the world. In the Twentieth Century Nicholas and Helena Roerichs were such mediators between the Great Teachers and peoples of Earth. What did the Great Teachers tell the Roerichs about the Mysteries of the being?
The man is connected with the world around by means of his or her organs of sense. We hear sounds and see surrounding things, houses, trees, the sky, the sun and the stars. Our skin feels touches of things, heat of sunrays, humid air and blowing winds.
As scientists say that everything the man feels is built of Matter and the whole world is material. But the contemporary man is far from perfection. Our organs of sense develop continuously and we can’t feel and perceive a lot.
For example, we can’t see or hear radio waves, but our radio perceives them easily. We can’t hear any sound or read it on plane surface of a recording tape, but our tape recorder can. We can’t see the X-rays and feel radioactive emanation of nuclear reactors. Such thing could be counted endlessly.
The world, which is mostly accessible to our organs of sense, is called the Dense World by the Great Teachers. Its matter is round and easy of access to our imperfect organs of sense. But there are invisible Worlds around us. They also consist of matter, which is so subtle, that we can’t see and perceive it. In the world there can be met people who partially feel or even see this intangible matter, the matter of the Subtle World. This ability is unusual and supposed to be the highest level of eyesight.
In the 80s of the last century they used to talk about old Vanga, a Bulgarian woman. Children, many of you must have heard about her. That stone-blind woman could see images and beings of the Subtle World. In the present time, such abilities are rare, but in the future all people will have them.
In Nature there exists an imperceptible and super-subtle World, called the Fiery World. This World is of no access to human senses now, but it will certainly be, when people reach the level of development of their Divine senses. All the invisible and visible worlds surround us and they are inhabited and intelligent. The Highest Reason of the Universe is concentrated in the Fiery World. Every person (even an ordinary one) has elements of the Subtle and the Fiery Worlds inside. Human soul and spirit are the Subtle and Fiery elements of us.