Journey to Shamballa Land

Bruce Lyon

White Stone Publishing

Aotearoa - New Zealand


White Stone Publishing

70A Old Porirua Road, Ngaio, Wellington, New Zealand

Phone 64 21 188 6118
whitestone3@gmail.com

First published 2008

© Bruce Lyon, 2008

Except as provided by the Copyright Act 1962, no part of this publication may be
reproduced by any process, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form
or by any means without the prior permission of the author. Requests and enquiries
should be directed to White Stone Publishing.

Lyon, Bruce Philip, 1957-

Journey To Shamballa Land / Bruce Lyon
ISBN 978-0-473-13372-6

Editor: Barbara Maré

Photographs and diagrams by Bruce Lyon
Cover artwork by Barbara Maré
Printed by PrintStopPlus, Wellington, NZ




 Journey to Shamballa Land

It is written that for him who is on the threshold of divinity no law can be framed, no
guide can exist. Yet to enlighten the disciple, the final struggle may be thus expressed:
Hold fast to that which has neither substance nor existence. Listen only to the voice
which is soundless. Look only on that which is invisible alike to the inner and the
outer sense. Peace Be With You. —Light on The Path, Mabel Collins

This is the story of a journey to Shamballa Land in the Gobi desert

of Mongolia undertaken by my wife Sharon and I in August 2007.
Sacred pilgrimage is a simultaneous journey through both the
inner and the outer world in the attempt to reveal that which lies
behind and is the source of both landscapes. At times the outer journey
opens, through resonance, unexplored inner territories. At times the
inner journey ensouls and gives meaning to the outer terrain. But
always through both, the ear of the heart is being tuned to respond to
the voice of the silence; to the presence of emptiness; to the one non-
dual reality; to the sound of Shamballa.


 Along with the inner and outer
aspects of the journey itself there is also
the wider context in which it occurs.
Shamballa is a symbol for the supreme
planetary centre—a symbol that has
developed and embedded itself in the
collective consciousness and the mythology
of many cultures. In the individual sense
Shamballa represents the monad—the divine essence—that is source of
the experience of both the soul and personality selves.
It is beyond the scope of this
paper to outline the development of
the concept of Shamballa in both
the Eastern and Western traditions
and this has been adequately covered
by a variety of authors. (See the
bibliography.) There are themes in
common however—what we might call
the Shamballa motif—that recur wherever this symbol of the supreme
centre is found.

Shamballa motif
Firstly there is a centering symbol. It can be a mountain or a
cave. It can be a sacred island like White Island. It can be a sacred
tree or a fountain. The journey to the sacred centre is normally
associated with a search for a talismanic object—a stone, a lost word

or a grail. There are normally guardians (dragons, scorpions, archers
etc.) that protect a treasure (jewel, fruit, draught of immortality
etc.). The dualities of day/night, masculine/feminine and so on must
also be overcome in order to pass through the guardians and gain
access to the treasure or soma. Finally there is the story of the entry
of the energy of the centre into the world with both vitalising and
destructive results.
A number of authors have associated Shamballa with the Gobi
desert, including HP Blavatsky, Helena Roerich and Alice Bailey. The
decision to journey there in 2007 arose out of a number of inner and
outer experiences which I will briefly mention to the extent that they
are relevant here. Over a twelve year period between 1987 and 1999,
on the same date in October every three years, I received a series of
symbols in meditation that were developmental and associated with
Shamballa and the emerging new schools. The first symbol in the
series was a pyramid and the last an octahedron surrounded by a blue
sphere with eight rays of light emanating from the centre and passing
through each of the facets.
In 1999 the entire symbol burst into fire, coinciding with an
inner call to make the journey to Mt Kailas and the Wesak Valley
for the Shamballa impact of 2000. On return, Shamballa School was
set up—the esoteric school established for a time at Highden 1—and
the same process of working with the archetype of the octahedron
took place in group formation. The
group initiatory experience was guided
by the Mercury transmissions2 which
eventually led to a triangle of groups
working together focused on the
central diamond or the Life aspect.
This process might be represented
visually as follows:


 Individual

Group

Group of
groups


 The process is symbolic of the opening of the causal body, the
revelation of the jewel and then identification with the Life aspect
that allows for the transfer of identity into the triad and reorientation
to the monad—or in the group sense to Shamballa.
In the emerging esoteric schools the focus will be on connecting
monad to personality, while in the last dispensation the focus was on
contact with the soul.
The pyramid of ancient Egypt is a fitting geometrical symbol for
the last dispensation of the mysteries, indicating the building of the
four-square personality and orientation to the soul as the quintessence
or fifth principle.

The personality once formed, must be fused with its opposite—

which can be represented by the downward pointing pyramid. When
the fusion takes place the symbol of the diamond soul is created.


The threefold monad—soul—personality may be represented as follows:

And the two phases of the anchoring of the mysteries can be represented
symbolically in this way:

GC

Sirius

Gemini
Sun

Earth

Phase 1 Phase 2

 The seven pairs of the new schools all have their root in the
one fundamental school in Shamballa—which is to say that each of
the schools has as its symbolic centre the archetype or ‘signature’ of
Shamballa.
In Letters on Occult Meditation the Master DK outlines the
pattern for the advanced schools3:

If we take this as a cross-section of a three-dimensional geometric

figure we have:


 In effect the spheres represent areas of inclusivity or ring-pass-
nots, while the geometric figures represent the nested platonic solids
which give the energetic structure.
The central point is the doorway in and out of the system. It
is the eye within the triangle within the square within the sphere.
Or three-dimensionally it is the point within the double tetrahedron
within the octahedron within the cube.
Let the group together move the fire within the Jewel in the Lotus into the
Triad and let them find the Word which will carry out that task. (Rule XI)4
The three levels of personality, soul and monad are represented
by the outer universal ‘centres’ of planet, sun and black hole. These
three levels also have their correspondence in each centre, so for
example the Earth as a physical planet has a crust, a mantle and a
core corresponding to the three levels. The causal body has three
layers of petals, and so on.
A major context for the journey to the Gobi is that it coincided
with the seventh year of the Shamballa impact cycle beginning in the
year 2000, and also with the alignment between the galactic centre,
the sun and the Earth (as well as other significant planets).
The potential exists therefore for the anchoring of a ‘seed’ or
core pattern from the galactic centre corresponding to the sun’s monad
or cosmic Shamballa, and also for a corresponding activation of
planetary kundalini. This energetic impact passing through Shamballa
should have an effect on the etheric-physical plane (for this is the
seventh year in the cycle and the etheric-physical is the seventh plane).

So now let us switch from the inner archetype to the outer

journey. In 2006 a temple called Shamballa Land in the Gobi desert
was officially opened. A good background on the history of this centre
can be found here: http://www.tibetan-museum-society.org/java/arts-
culture-Shambhala-Rising.jsp

 But briefly, it is designed as a ‘portal’ to the Shamballa energy.
In 1853 the fifth Lord of the Gobi, a lama named Danzan Ravjaa,
put on a tsam (a three-day dramatic dance) called The Way to
Shamballa (developed by the third Panchen Lama) in this location and
designated it as a place for a future temple.
Sixty-four trunks of treasures were
buried in the desert during the Communist
occupation. The process of excavating them
again was begun by the sixth generation
custodian (takhitch) in 1989 (when Uranus
was conjoined the galactic centre).
On our arrival in Ulaanbaatar (the
capital city of Mongolia) we arranged to
meet with Altangerel, the man who is
the current custodian of the centre in the
Gobi and the driving force behind the
construction of the temple. His story is a
strange one. He was selected for this role
as a child because of a moon-shaped birthmark on his back that
had served as a sign for each of the custodians. His grandfather, the
previous custodian, took charge of his upbringing and education
which was conducted in secret. Part of that education was to be taken
regularly to the seventeen places in the desert where the trunks were
buried and to learn by rote the history and function of each item
inside them. He was also taught to locate them by the light of the
full moon on the 15th day of the middle month of the lunar year.
Through a translator we presented him with a large piece of
river-worn greenstone (pounamu) from New Zealand. This was the
piece that had travelled all over the three islands of New Zealand
when we were looking for the location for the school in 1999. Many
thousands of people had held this stone with the intent for right
spiritual emergence in mind. Intuitively we took it as a symbol of
spiritual connection between an emerging Seventh Ray centre in the
southern hemisphere and Shamballa the crown centre of the planet.
It was a moving exchange. Altangerel spoke of a stone that
was kept hidden away which his elders had told him was connected

to other stones in other parts of the world. He saw the arrival of
the greenstone as an outer confirmation of the work he had been
patiently engaged in for most of his life. (A man building a temple
in the desert in one of the most isolated places on Earth gets little
outer confirmation). He planned to place what he called the ‘travelling
stone’ with the hidden stone, and saw in the future a stone mandala
at the temple site composed of stones from different parts of the
world that might be drawn there for that purpose.
We also carried a donation gathered to support their work in
the Gobi, and he spoke of the stipulation that his teachers had given
him that the temple could only be constructed with what he called
‘pure money’, which we took to mean money given with pure intent.
He said that in some ways this had made the construction harder and
had meant that it took longer, but he understood through the process
how important this piece of guidance was.
After a quick visit to
see Nicholas Roerich’s King
of Shamballa painting in
the Zanazabar Museum of
Fine Arts, it was onward to
Sainshand where many of the
artifacts that had been dug up
are on display in the Danzan
Ravjaa museum. (Some of the
excavated objects remain at
the temple site and fifteen of
the trunks are still buried.)
Our guide at the museum was
Altangerel’s daughter Intiktik5,
who carefully explained each
piece.
Danzan was a poet,
teacher, physician, dramatist
and musician. He was the first teacher to allow women in his school,
and families from all over Mongolia and Tibet sent their daughters to
learn alongside the monks. His honouring of the feminine principle
10
 was one of the things that set this
lama apart from others and was also
to cause him conflict with the spiritual
hierarchy of his time. He built temples
to honour both the red hat and yellow
hat lineages. He was both an ascetic,
walling himself up for long periods,
and a libertine known for embracing
strong drink as well as women. Indeed
he had a tantric approach to all
dualities. Here is an example from his
poetry:

White and black are inseparable

Good and bad are inseparable
Yes and no are inseparable.
Everything has an opposite but no reality
Just names
Emptiness is the miracle
Which has no shape
No direction to come and go
No colour to identify
No space to exist
Emptiness is the miracle of being6

11
 There is a woodcutting of
the stamp that he used to graduate
students in his school—the bottom
half of which could be removed
indicating a mastery of the higher
chakras only. He wrote music the way
it sounds in long looping strokes of
the quill. His music, poetry and plays
are still performed throughout the
country.
Of course there are many stories that weave the borderline between
mythology and history—the inner and outer realities—but one that I
particularly liked and actually saw the evidence of was a peace-making
mission that Danzan Ravjaa embarked upon. A man had been knifed to
death at the monastery and so the lama asked for all knives that could
be used as weapons from the surrounding area to be brought to him.
In the morning there was a pile
of knives on his doorstep, which he
arranged to be melted down and then
cast into the ‘Statue of 10,000 Knives’
(now on display in the monastery).
I could not help but wonder what
global sculpture could be made for the
United Nations if each country was
asked to give just one of its weapons
(tank, plane, missile etc.) to be melted
down and cast into a symbol for
global peace.
On the afternoon of August
12 we headed for the Gobi sunrise
ger camp and promptly lost our way
in the desert, arriving at the edge of
Shamballa Land itself before a large black bird hovered over the bonnet
of the car for long enough to attract our attention and call a stop. We
back-tracked, found the ger camp and spent a restless night’s sleep full of
strange dreams. In the morning I wrote this poem:
12
 Last Confession

The final destination is an anathema to the seeking soul

Shamballa a firing squad
For the surrendered rebel leader
Eating his last ego meal
On the edge of annihilation
Reading his will and last confession
In the winds’ calligraphy
On the desert sands

There is no original sin

It’s all derivative
Arising from the illusion
Of existence
I confess I have never really existed
In spite of this persistent illusion
Never having existed
Nothing I ever did thought or felt
Has left its mark on the
Stainless void

When they come for me

Tell them I have already slipped
Back behind the curtain
Of eternal innocence
This is not poison
On my soul’s lips
But the cure

I no longer want to be a bodhisattva

Or serve the greater good
These worthy goals seem pretentious now
The pre-dawn dreams of a waking soul
A rock pool’s brief kingdom
In the twelve hours between tides

13
 I would only be that which
I cannot not be
My only purpose to have no purpose
Of my own
Let this individual life be
A small and simple thing
A grain of sand
Shaped by 51,000 tides
Glinting in the Gobi
Nothing more and nothing less
Than the living face of the universe

Let there be nothing left of me

Capable of trying to achieve anything
However holy
Let me rest
In emptiness
To go forth no more
And by remaining
Permeate it all
Forever

14
 The temple itself is constructed of 108 stupas blazing white
in the open desert about an hour’s drive south-east of Sainshand.
Two great stone breasts mark a doorway that leads to two monastery
temples which have been rebuilt in honour of the two Buddhist
lineages. Then from the monastery one walks past petrified wood and
dinosaur bones to the Shamballa
site itself. This desert was once a
great swamp and this area around
the monastery and temple is
remarkable for the deep red colour
permeating the local geology.
The temple is laid out in the
familiar Shamballa square pattern
with openings in the four sides.
The southern gate is where one
enters and leaves, and at the northern gate is the ‘brain ovoo’ or
the symbolic crown chakra where vodka is transmuted into soma.
Procedures in this great open-air temple are followed according to
protocol (outlined adequately in the webpage referred to above).
Of particular interest to our theme are three old stone circles
in the centre of the site which are remnants of the original temple.
They align with a mountain through the western gate called Black
mountain and one of the rituals is to stand facing this mountain and
throw a cup of vodka in that direction.
There are three sacred mountains
in Mongolia. The first is Mother
mountain in the north, the second
is Golden mountain and the third is
Black mountain. Here we have the
threefold archetype of planet—sun—
black hole which is further reinforced
by the mythology of Black mountain.
The mountain is said to be
inhabited by the spirit of the third
Lord of the Gobi. He left his body
halfway up and travelled to the
15
summit in spirit because the Lord of Death had asked him to testify
concerning his own father’s sins. He truthfully reported them, but
by the time he got back to his body his followers had burned it
thinking he too was dead. Now he must hear the prayers of others
as they climb and intercede on their behalf with Death. The third
Lord corresponds to Saturn and the atmic plane, while the fifth Lord,
Danzan Ravjaa, corresponds to Venus and the mental plane. The
antahkarana between the personality and the monad is constructed via
the triad and completed at the Third Degree when Venus and Saturn
are united. This motif is further reinforced by Formula Five given by
the Master DK. This is the formula associated with Shamballa and
consists of three words in a triangular relationship: “THE SUN…
BLACK…ANTAHKARANA”.7 The Shamballa temple is positioned
between the sunrise in the east and Black mountain in the west and
is thus a living symbol for the construction of the higher antahkarana
between soul and monad.
Part of the beauty of the desert is its starkness. There is nothing
to draw the attention outward. Our bodies have journeyed far across
the globe, bumped along virtually non-existent tracks, slept fitfully
under starlight, eaten strange foods and squatted for relief in the open
desert. Now it is time for the consciousness to fall towards its source.
I closed my eyes on the image of a
falcon flying far above that triggered
two poems interweaving in my mind.
The first from Rainer Maria Rilke:

I am circling around God, the ancient tower

And I have been circling for a thousand years
And I still don’t know
If I am a falcon
Or a storm or a great song.8

16
And the second from Yeats:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?9

A vivid period of inner teaching followed, the essence of which

was the imminent emergence of the spiritual centre we call Shamballa
under whatever name, within the consciousness of humanity. I was
shown that just as uprising kundalini energy can cause earthquakes
and eruptions as the pressure from the core activates fault-lines in the
Earth’s crust, so the descending Shamballa fire also places pressure
on the fault-lines of consciousness that exist in the mental field—
religion, philosophy, politics and racial thoughtforms. The energy
that is designed to produce liberation can be destructive, which is

17
why it is held in reserve until the demand from humanity for the
revelation of synthesis is strong enough. When the soul is freed
from the mind and returns to its monadic source, it immediately
recognises its universal nature and an energetic quality becomes
active in the soul itself via the jewel. This quality, simply because it
is universal and simultaneously present in all souls, recognises itself
everywhere—and more specifically recognises through resonance
when it is consciously active. Put another way, souls that have been
home or are in conscious touch with the monad, automatically
through spiritual resonance recognise this same quality in others.
Historically these souls, while in touch with each other in an
ashramic sense, have remained isolated as points of centralising
influence in their different groups and centres of consciousness
around the world. Now as the Shamballic centre is emerging and
under the Law of Assembly, these souls are being drawn together
into more conscious contact and forming a centre within humanity
able to stand and withstand the Shamballic force. They come
from all spiritual traditions and disciplines and their consciously
recognised work is to collectively hold this energy as a reservoir
and a seed of the Will. As Pluto moves through Capricorn and
the power structures of the planet come under irresistible pressure
to transform, this seed will flower within the human centre as
an expression of spiritual governance based on the revelation of
universal principles.
After the ‘teaching’ we entered a period of profound silence
and energetic recharging that gave a new meaning to the phrase
‘rest in peace’. In that peace
was sound however—a
sound that I had recognised
in 2000 at the start of my
transmission work and written
about in this way:

18
The core assertion was an energetic ‘sound’, a fiat of freedom, which
would gradually clothe itself in ideas, and these ideas would be written
down in books and studied. The ideas and the books were not the
Teaching however, the Teaching was the reality of the affirmation
of inherent freedom ‘sounded’ by a Being with intent to liberate
those held within the illusion of mind. Any thoughts or ideas that
clothe that ‘sound’ will have at their core that purposeful reality.
The Teaching contains then the great Shamballic ‘sound’ stepped down by
Hierarchy in such a way that it liberates human consciousness from illusion and
then makes of it a sheath for anchoring that ‘sound’ in the depths of matter.10

It was therefore a natural

progression from the temple
to find a path to an enormous
bell standing alone on a desert
ridge. This bell is the perfect
symbol for the sound of
Shamballa, and a complement
to the invisible dorje or
lightning bolt that the temple
itself is designed to receive. We
had permission to ring the bell,
which is done with a large wooden post, and the tone was so deep
that you could feel the vibrations directly through the body.
Returning from the bell I found Sharon in deep conversation
with three women who
were escorting us. They
had exchanged gifts and
were speaking about the
importance of Danzan
Ravjaa’s role in empowering
the feminine principle,
when they sprang up and
motioned for us to follow.
They led us by jeep a little
way into the desert and
19
suddenly there was a well. An
old car tyre surrounded a hole
in the sand and a goatskin
on a rope served as a bucket
when lowered into the cool
depths. Intiktik raised the first
full load and without warning
I received about a gallon of
sweet cold water directly onto
my face and chest. The women
roared with laughter and then
one by one each was subjected to the same beautiful indignity until
we stood in a dripping circle beaming at each other.
A herd of goats arrived at full trot over the nearest dune, having
heard and smelled the water, which was promptly shared with them as well.

Many mystical stories surround the locating of the well and the
curative properties of the water, but standing there I was struck most
by the simple everyday miracle of any well in the middle of any desert.
Suddenly in the very heart of this seared land there was life,
and all living things were glad and refreshed by it. And here were
three young women released from the solemn and reverent affairs of
museum and temple, bursting with a natural and irrepressibly sensual
and sensible spirit which was waiting to bubble up and renew us.
Our next stop was Black mountain, a rather ominous mound of
dark volcanic sand and rock that reminded me a little of Mt Doom in
20
The Lord of the Rings.
This is the mountain
that we threw vodka
towards at the Shamballa
temple and is said
to house the spirit
of the third Gobi
Lord. Halfway up the
mountain I paused at
a small shrine said to
mark the spot where his body was burned, lit a candle for my own
father and contemplated the mysteries of death, truth and sacrifice. It
is local tradition that women climb only to this point, so I left Sharon
listening to the exquisite music of a lone flautist performing one of
Danzan Ravjaa’s songs and trudged up the last few hundred metres.
On the peak with the desert all around and the sun dropping
into the west in Leo, I was meditatively aware of the black hole at the
galactic centre overhead.
Looking back, the symbology is obvious. In the triad it is Venus
or the feminine principle of the soul that builds the causal body on
the higher mental plane which allows for the soul’s full expression in
the three worlds, and is the base camp for the soul’s ascent to the
monad. Mercury or the masculine principle of the soul must climb
the mountain (atma ruled by Saturn) and receive the dark fire of the
monad, which upon return ignites the causal body. After the burning,
nothing remains but fire—spirit and matter are at-oned—which
is represented by the spirit
ensouling the mountain.
This theme of the
relationship between soul and
spirit continued as we sought
a place to camp for the night
and experience the stillness of
the desert. Years before, Sharon
and I had both separately
discovered two pictures and
21
bought them for each other, only to find they were almost identical
images of a naked woman wrapped by a dark figure in the desert.
That night lying down to sleep, it felt as if we were that naked and
vulnerable figure surrendering into the velvet darkness of the Gobi.
We had camped on a small promontory where we found the bones
of a mountain goat or sheep and a small cave that might have once
housed a meditating ascetic.
During the night we woke to a distant rumbling like thunder,
which built slowly into an almost impossibly loud growling, as if
a gigantic lion was roaring right outside the tent. And then the
sandstorm hit with prolonged gusts, followed by eerie silence and
then the same build-up to another crescendo. Several times I had to
stumble out into the dark stinging sand to re-secure the tent, and by
morning the storm had almost passed. Looking out at dawn, the gusts
were made visible across the face of the desert as they lifted before
them sails of sand like enormous yachts, following each other in
tacking duels across what was once a great sea.
We travelled south towards a canyon in the desert that is deep
enough that a frozen glacier can be found there even in summer, and we
stopped at an oasis of another sort—the three camels ger camp, which it
must be said, was the finest accommodation we found in Mongolia.

Journal extract
Three Camels Ger Camp, Gobi Desert 16 August 2007
I had spent the day writing an esoteric treatise on the stone/wine
mysteries that trace the symbolic ascent of the soul from a stone
buried in the earth at the base chakra to bread at the heart, to
the wine of soma experienced at the crown chakra. Little did I
know how quickly an experiential component of my studies was
approaching. Dusk was near and my shoulders were cramped from
being hunched over the computer, so I decided to take a walk
around the hill where we were camped and watch the sun set behind
the Altai mountains.
22
 Sitting amongst the rocks, I was approached by four children
from a nomadic horse-herding family. I assumed they were hatching
some clever scheme to obtain something from a foreigner. Three girls
and a boy ranging in age from four to ten, they sat down about
six feet away from me and conferred with each other. One by one
they approached, held out their hands and introduced themselves in
Mongolian. I returned their greeting and stated my name four times
and then there was more conferring.
The youngest, a girl, then approached and held out her hand as
if to lead me. “Okay”, was my first thought, “here comes the scam”.
But she was so innocent and vulnerable in her reaching towards me
that my own child-self ignored my cynic, took her hand and followed.
They led me a fair way through the rocks to a small mound
where they had created a circle of stones in the outline of a ger
(nomadic tent home). They entered
solemnly through the ‘door’ and sat in a
cross, leaving the north and south open. I
was then invited to enter and sit to the left
of the door, and then the young girl again
took the lead by producing from under a
dirty piece of cloth a rock which had two
depressions in the centre of it, which each
held a stone. One was elongated and the
other round, rather like a small baseball
bat and ball.
Like a sacred sacrament she lifted the
long stone and ‘poured’ a long draught as if from a bottle, into the
circular stone which she then passed to me. Holding that ‘cup’—for
there was no doubt that such it was—I entered a timeless space that
is as much a part of the human psyche as its fascination with fire. I
was in a ritual as simple and as sacred as life itself. I drank. Deeply.
And then I passed the cup and so did they. After the little girl had
drunk they all looked at me to see my reaction. And I knew that
look. It was the look every child, lost in the mystery, gives to an
adult. Was I going to break the spell? The eldest was ready to scoff if
I showed the slightest sign.
23
 So I baked an imaginary loaf of bread in the centre, broke it
and offered them each a piece to eat. They did so with a delicious
light in their eyes which said both “yes, we were right to trust you”
and “hey, at least we had a stone symbol for our cup and this bread
is totally without substance!”
We shared the few surface exchanges that our lack of each
other’s language made possible and sat in the silence of the soul’s
communion for as long as we could possibly justify, and I thought my
heart would burst with the simplicity of it all.
No big deal—a childish game—and yet I felt more honoured by
the presence that manifested itself through this synchronicity than any
adult ceremony I have ever attended. It was getting dark and their
mother had begun to call in the universal language of mothers.
I went back to my four-star tourist ger tent and wept with joy
and the aching recognition of the vulnerable and yet invincible beauty
of the human soul.
The sip of that stone wine was a life-giving elixir straight from
the real fountain of youth—the incarnating dignity and divinity of the
next generation of the human spirit.

Our next stop was Khogor els—great

dunes of sand that accurately reflect the
image that comes to mind when one thinks
of the Arabian desert. Lawrence here, did
not look so composed that night doubled
over in the desert while the watermelon
he had so gleefully scoffed during the day
tried to leave through every available orifice
at once.
Still impacted by the experience
of Black mountain, we found a small
reference to a place called White mountain
24
in the Altai range and so—ever ready to reconcile dualities—we set
out to find it. It must be said that no roads exist in this or practically
any other area of Mongolia. One simply heads in the general direction
of the target and stops at one nomadic tent after another asking the
way to the next one, careful not to imbibe the inevitably offered
aairag (fermented mare’s milk) in the process.
After two days in such pursuit we met a Russian van coming
in the other direction that had been trying to find the same place.
They reported that it was closed, having being commandeered by the
Chinese military, and the local people were staging a hunger strike in
response. We decided to go on regardless and found a nomad who
said he could guide us to it. We never encountered anyone else and
had the best part of a day to explore this fascinating site.
In the mountain is a cave, called
White cave, where they have found
Stone Age human fossils rivaling those in
Africa, from 700,000 years ago.
One can see why Stone Age
humans would have thrived here—there
are natural streams with berries and
wild flowers, and the cave itself is
a house-and-garden affair. A natural
chimney vault in the centre is further
enhanced by a stunning décor. The
whole of the central chamber is covered
in quartz crystal so that when a fire is lit the light is reflected from a
thousand facets, like being on the inside of an enormous chandelier.
Sitting there it was easy to recognise that while civilisation adds
layers of accumulated knowledge
and sophisticated technology,
the source of creativity and
the inherent perception of the
mysteries of divinity are timelessly
present in the human soul.
The linking of the mountain
with the cave and the crystal also
25
brought to mind the diamond and the reconciliation of dualities. All
injunctions to find the centre are similar:
In the ocean find an island. On the island there is a tree. On the tree grows a fruit.
In a mountain there is a cave. In that cave there is a jewel. Find the jewel.
In the desert there is an oasis. At that oasis there is a well. Drink from the well.
When in one duality, find the other and then find that which
lies behind and gives life to both. The guardian in all cases is some
version of dragon or kundalini manifestation—the overcoming of
which indicates the conquering of death, or more correctly the illusion
of death that gives rise to attachment to one half of a duality.
Geometrically we can represent this process as spheres within
spheres (circles inside circles). Or diamonds within diamonds. It
has been said that the soul is a doorway to infinite tenderness and
diamond clarity and these dual components of Love-Wisdom are
found in most traditions. Their expression in the occult physiology of
the human soul is the jewel in the lotus.
Once the form is fully built and the jewel revealed or the centre
reached, then lightning strikes and the experience of Life begins as the
soul is increasingly liberated from its ‘halfway house’.
At this stage in the journey we were looking for a place to hole
up for a while and integrate, without the driver and translator, so it
was with some relief that we watched the terrain change from desert to
the lush mountains of the Mongolian heartland—the Khangai range.
Coming over a steep pass the track was deeply eroded by water and
our jeep finally succumbed to gravity as some important piece of steel
shattered in the front axle. These mechanical horses can be literal life-
lines—as one group had discovered the previous winter in the Gobi—
four people were found frozen to death in their broken-down jeep,
having spent their last energy compiling a four-page diatribe on the
inadequacy of Russians and Russian jeep manufacturers in particular.
We never saw our driver again. We found out later that he had
borrowed a local horse and ridden to a nomadic camp where he had
to repair their only motorcycle, which promptly broke down again
each time he traversed one of the dozen rivers to a ‘town’ where he
borrowed a car to get to a ‘town with a phone’.
26
 Meanwhile we left the
translator to mind the car and
headed out to find an idyllic
campsite next to a river in a
remote mountain valley, where
we spent the next three days
eating our meagre supplies and
thoroughly enjoying ourselves.
The first night our after-dinner
entertainment was a spectacular thunderstorm framed through the
mouth of the valley. For five hours lightning flashed like great pillars
of flame between the clouds and the desert over such a large area that
there were always five or six standing bolts at any one time. It was
a stunning display that made me think of the huge copper deposits
that have recently been found
in the Gobi11 and wonder if
there were also some outer
electromagnetic component to
the inner electric fire of the
Shamballic centre.
At night the temperature
dropped so steeply that we
couldn’t sleep and had to roll
heated river stones from the fire into our sleeping bags. The days were
hot and we ventured into the forest. One afternoon we managed to
‘rent’ the horses of two herding boys passing through the valley, and
found our way across rivers and passes to a serene glade. On another
occasion two local girls came to our campfire and entertained us. One
came from a family whose ger tent had a small satellite that received
CNN! She had decided that she wanted
to be a singer like those she saw on TV
and to her we were a connection to that
world and that ambition. And so it was.
We got her to audition for us—using a
stick as a pretend microphone and the
video function on our camera. Once we
27
edit it we will put it on YouTube and get our translator to help her
get to a local town with internet and see it! Who knows, maybe that
will provide the impetus for her to pursue her dream. We were given
ample evidence for the intersection of different global cultures the
next day when our rescuer arrived in a brand new 2007 Toyota freshly
imported from USA.
Our driver had got word to our translator’s brother, who then
set out to retrieve us. A decade before he had been a simple herder
with a dream. In Mongolia there is an annual festival where people
compete in the three local sports wrestling, archery and horse racing.
He won the wrestling and with that, overnight fame and subsequent
wealth. Now he was ‘a river to his people’ helping horse breeding
programmes, building temples and—luckily for us—riding out on his
white charger to rescue stranded foreigners.

During the three days at our campsite we had time to integrate

and contemplate the Mongolian experience, and one of the things
I thought about was power. Mongolia forms an obvious triangle
with Tibet and China, with Mongolia holding the First Ray point,
Tibet the Second Ray and China the Third.
There were said to be three types of ruler
at Shamballa (equated in a way to the three
kings of the Orient and also to the three
Buddhas of Activity). One of these rulers
holds the outer ‘king’ function—rulership
of civilisation. The second holds the ‘priest’
function, and the third is the ‘priest-king’ or
Melchisedek. Out of Mongolia came Genghis
Khan to create the largest empire the world
had known. His brief was simple. God had
told him that he was chosen to be Master of
all the world. He simply rode up to a town
28
or city and informed them of this fact and presented them with two
options: Accept this divinely ordained reality and surrender, in which
case the local king could continue to rule under the Khan’s dominion
(and pay taxes)—or be annihilated. The more thoroughly some
cities were annihilated the more sensitive it seemed others became
to hearing the word of God. The Mongolian empire subsequently
centered itself in China—first at Xanadu and then Beijing. Most
kingdoms in history were created and maintained in a similar fashion,
with increasing diplomacy and sophistication gradually forming a layer
over the underlying threat of force. This type of power must always be
protected however, because rebels are always arising within or without
the empire seeking to test the reality of the ever-present whispers of
spirit as heard by the personality “YOU are the one”.
The power of the priest is more subtle.
He hears the same whisperings but the
emphasis is different: “You are the ONE”.
The good of the whole is not now an
immediate extension of the instinctual drives
of the individual—a mediating world of
consciousness appears. This mediating world
crystallises into philosophies, religions and
political parties. The consciousness becomes
principles and then ideas and then belief
systems. This type of power must also be
defended. New ideas and belief structures—
new heresies to the status quo—are always arising and must be
absorbed or eliminated.
We are more used to the way these power issues are at work in
Western society, but we had a unique insight into a similar situation
in the Oriental system. At a small temple we visited, monks from all
over the land had gathered for a three day festival to celebrate the
recognition of a local lama as an ‘incarnation’. This young man had
had what seemed like a terminal heart problem in 2000 and had
been allowed to travel to Tibet when it seemed likely he was going
to die. In Tibet he was recognised as an incarnation in a particular
lineage and from then on his heart was fine, and now he was being
29
officially ordained. Watching him I was aware of two very human
reactions that must come with this particular territory: On the one
hand he was obviously pleased in a very humble way to be recognised
and honoured. On the other hand there was also a slight air of
resignation, and I realised just what a sacrifice of freedom must also
be entailed. The lineage contains its own hierarchies, traditions and
beliefs which serve both as a wisdom harvest to nourish the human
soul, but also as a confinement—perhaps more like the banks of a
river than a prison, but a limitation none the less.
In the West these two forms of power have been separated into
papacy and empire, or church and state; although there are elements
in Christianity and especially in Islam that seek both a higher and
lower unification. In modern times science has almost taken over as
a form of priestly power and therefore is part of the consciousness
power-base.
Behind these two forms of power and at their root is the
Third (or First) Aspect of the monad. Hinduism has the concept of
Vishnunabi, Buddhism that of Chakravati, and Western esotericism
the Central Spiritual Sun—all conveying the idea of a hub or centre
of a greater wheel. Power is always associated with the unmoving
mover or the centre of any field of motion. But there are different
kinds of power as there are different fields of activity.
Planetary power is related to the personality, the king and the planetary
pole or core.
Solar power is related to the soul, the priest and the sun as the light
and knowledge centre of the solar system.
Galactic power is related to the monad, the priest-king and the black
hole at the dark centre of the galaxy.
Universal power is related to the fourth quality and the universal centre
which is everywhere and nowhere.
The three powers that when balanced reveal a fourth, are
represented by the three Buddhas of Activity around Sanat Kumara, or
the three kings that attended the birth of the Christ.

30
 If China is related to the power
of the personality, Tibet to the power
of the soul and Mongolia to the power
of the monad, one wonders how they
will come into right relationship as a
triangle. China has already absorbed
Tibet and one does not have to spend
much time in Mongolia to notice how
deep the resolve to avoid a similar fate
runs in the Mongolian soul. The legend of Shamballa itself may have
something to say about how this power will manifest itself. It is said
that a time will come when the Barbarian king will dominate the
entire world. The female Buddha manages to incarnate as the wife of
the Barbarian king and tells him of a pure land—Shamballa—that
is not under her husband’s dominion. The king then directs all his
armies to conquer Shamballa, and the King of Shamballa representing
a higher form of power, is able to ride out and take control of the
outer world.
In this analogy we could see the Barbarian king as the
personality, the female Buddha as the soul and the king of Shamballa
as the monad. While it is the source of the power of both soul and
personality, the monad has no active power in the three worlds where
it is unknown by the personality, and limited power in the triad where
it is known by the soul. Once the personality has mastered the lower
worlds and been informed of the higher by the soul, it then attempts
to master them as well. That attempt invokes the response of a much
deeper power that can then take conscious control of all its ‘sheaths’.
An analogy can be found in the attempts made by early
scientists to prove that the sun revolved around the Earth. The more
they worked on the problem and the more data they obtained, the
more they had revealed to them the underlying truth which was the
opposite of their starting perspective.
The monad then—as the First Aspect of the trinity—is the last
to be revealed, and its power is only drawn upon in emergencies until
that point in the evolutionary cycle when both the forms and the
consciousness have been prepared for its revelation. The personal self
31
calls on this power in times of survival emergency via the kundalini
force or Agharti. The soul calls upon this power in times of ‘purpose
emergency’ via Shamballa. The extremity of the soul in service calls
forth the monad.12
We are currently just past the midway point of the second
solar system where the emphasis is on the development of the
Second Aspect or the soul, and so we are at the equivalent of a
‘purpose emergency’ that is coinciding with a planetary ‘survival
emergency’. What is needed is a synthesis in consciousness so that
the various religions, philosophies and nations can recognise a
common unity and create a global governance structure that balances
both the kingly and priestly forms of power. Both Humanity and
Hierarchy are calling on Shamballa in its dual expression directly and
simultaneously. One of the results is the creation at the midway point
between Humanity and Hierarchy of the centre called the New Group
of World Servers who are able to work with the Will force directly.
Another is the anchoring of a ‘seed of the Will’ in the consciousness
of this system that will form the germ for the development of the
next system.
The central idea here is that it is not a central idea that will
form the core of the needed and emerging centres. They will not be
developed around vision statements or philosophy, no matter how
developed or refined. Shamballa is a centre of energy and not a centre
of ideas. The soul is the source of ideas. The monad is the source of
a spiritual instinct that is always sourcing both ideas and actions for
the greater good of the larger system. These ideas and actions are not
self-consistent on their own level of operation, but ever-changing as
they remain faithfully connected to a higher synthetic principle. These
centres will be neither uniform (one form) or unanimous (one soul)
but—to coin a new word—‘univital’ (One Life).
This deeper instinct is not the intuition, but is revealed by the
intuition as the soul becomes ‘Self-taught’, locating its authority in the
monad and not in any outer system of thought or behaviour.
One way then, of noticing the release of this higher form of power
in the world is to notice where both the personality and the soul power
structures turn at times of emergency. As we build towards 2025 and the
32
re-entry of the Fourth Ray of harmony through conflict, we might expect
the tension between the personality and soul in both the individual and
planetary sense to increase as part of the revelatory process.
Experientially I tend to think of this Third (or First) kind
of power as a simple fool-like freedom that does not seek and is
unaware of any kind of status or recognition in either of the lesser
kingdoms. Identified with ‘being’ as a primary orientation, it does
not concern itself with knowing or doing. It does not even know
that it exists in a relative sense to other identities because it partakes
of the One identity. To the universal self it matters little ‘who’ is the
embodiment of which principle or idea, and ‘who’ has conquered
which piece of the surface of the planet. There is a simplicity based
on essentialisation that is not naïve but disinterested. Archetypally
this energy is related to the fool who seems to have no power at
court and yet is more free than both the ruler and the pontiff to say
and do whatever he or she wants, usually at the times of greatest
tension when all else has failed.
When Humanity is able to respond directly to the Shamballa
force then energy will flow in both directions around the triangle of
Humanity, Hierarchy and Shamballa. The three forms of ‘planetary
power’ will be in active relationship with each other and the result
will be the revelation of a fourth quality of deity—the energy of the
‘saving force’.13
Thus response to the Shamballa force and the emergence of this
centre into human consciousness is the precursor to a deeper synthetic
drama involving the planet as a whole. And that is a journey we are
all making together.

33
Endnotes

1. Highden Manor in Awahuri near Palmerston North in New Zealand.

2. Bruce Lyon, Group Initiation: The Mercury Transmissions, White Stone
Publishing, 2005; and Mercury, White Stone Publishing, 2004.
3. Alice Bailey, Letters on Occult Meditation, p.323. Permission to reproduce
this diagram was granted by the Lucis Trust which holds copyright.
4. Alice Bailey, The Rays and the Initiations, p.23.
5. This is very likely not the correct spelling of her name but it is the
author’s phoenetic interpretation.
6. From Sutandaa Tukh Khairyai, quoted in Michael Kohn, The Lama of the
Gobi, pp.48-9.
7. Alice Bailey, Discipleship in the New Age II, p.321.
8. Rainer Maria Rilke, “Ich lebe mein Leben in wachsenden Ringen” (1905),
Robert Bly (ed. & transl.), Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1981.
9. William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming” (1920), from Michael
Robartes and the Dancer, 1921.
10. Bruce Lyon, notes on receiving the Mercury transmissions, Mercury,
White Stone Publishing, p.152.
11. See article about the Oyu Tolgoi copper mine in the Gobi desert,
Mongolia: “Mining Brings the Gobi Desert to Life”, International
Herald Tribune, 15 October 2004. http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/
10/14/business/tugrik.php
12. “The extremity of the disciple in service finally draws out the interest of
the soul. After the third initiation, the extremity of the soul…evokes
the cooperation of the Monad.” Alice Bailey, Discipleship in the New
Age I, p.269.
13. See Alice Bailey, The Externalisation of the Hierarchy, pp.275-6.

34
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