The Mystery of Shambala

Researcher from Buryatia unveils the secrets for all
The legends of Shambala are one of the few oriental subjects that have become really very popular even outside the Eastern world. However, there are practically no fundamental scientific works dedicated to Shambala. Scientist Andrey Strelkov from Buryatia wrote a dissertation on Shambala which looks rather significant at the time when there are few works on the subject at all.

Candidate of historical sciences Andrey Sterlkov, the head of the educational philosophy laboratory in the Bashkir Institute for raising the level of teachers' professional skills told about Shambala. Shambala is a legendary country described in ancient texts; the country is inhabited with creatures that are more superior to ordinary people in their wisdom and capabilities.

He says that Shambala is some kind of a lost magic world which at the same time actually exists now. That is why Shambala is attracting different people, famous figures such as Hitler, Lenin and Stalin among them. The Nazi government sent several expeditions to Tibet and other Himalayan countries; the idea of Shambala agreed with the theory of the Aryan descent of Germans. Even atheist communists understood that tanks and guns were less effective as control over people's consciousness. Some archival data reveal that Rerich's expedition had been financed with money of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (known as NKVD for the initial letters).

The legend about Shambala is very popular in the West, although it was involved in different speculations and survived lots of false interpretations. At the same time, the true knowledge, the traditional one that is fixed in ancient texts, is kept secret in Tibet. Andrey Strelkov says that these texts are rare now; only highly educated lamas comprehend the texts. All attempts of the uninitiated to penetrate into the secret of Shambala resulted in nothing, or were a bad luck.
Andrey Strelkov says that majority of western researchers of Shambala died tragically. German orientalist Albert Gruenwedel (lived in the first quarter of the 20th century) went crazy while working on translation of Shambala texts. He threw himself out of the window being in a state of temporary insanity and died. There were more instances of that kind. But each time when western researchers tried to investigate Shambala from a scientific point of view or pursued their personal interests during investigations, the result was sad.

The tragic experience of predecessors didn't stop the scientist from investigation of the "closed" subject. Andrey Strelkov says the problem requires a correct approach. It is not enough only to be blessed by consecrated lamas. A scientist who wants to investigate the legend of Shambala must profess the Buddhist teaching of Kalachakra-Tantra himself; the sacral texts of the teaching describe the mythical country in detail. That is why it was quite logic that Andrey Strelkov started investigating Shambala: he is a Buddhist practicing the teaching of Kalachakra-Tantra. He says that anyone studying the teaching will inevitably come to Shambala. There is even a saying that Shambala is a post-graduate course for those who study Kalachakra-Tantra. As for Andrey himself, he says he had no objective of writing a dissertation on Shambala; he just felt it was time to cover the subject adequately. Probably, time has come to tell about the mysterious country, and when a moment is appropriate for this, the country opens up and lets researchers know about it. Andrey says he felt it was necessary to share the knowledge about Shambala with other people. If it were otherwise, he wouldn't be a success with his work on the dissertation.

Strelkov's dissertation is called "The Legend of Shambala as seen from Tibet Buddhist sources of the 18th - early 20th centuries". In the words of the researcher, that was the period when the legend considerably developed. Probably, at that very period the legend opened up once again. Andrey Strelkov studied Tibet texts and followed mythology and historic realities of the Shambala legend. The dissertation is aimed at adequate textual description of the legend without mentioning fantasies, parallel worlds and aliens. The dissertation describes Shambala just exactly in the form in which it was known to the traditional culture of Tibet.

When the researcher from Buryatia was asked if he treated Shambala as an ancient legend or sacral reality, Andrey decided to answer the question in a particular form. Now he is working on a book. The researcher is trying to write it in a language understandable for ordinary people, not only for scholars. Andrey plans to reveal many secrets of the mysterious country, many but not all. He thinks that the deeper one is penetrating into the secret of Shambala, the more things must remain secret.

Photo: Andrey Strelkov
Inform-Polis