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lifetruetome
Hey guys

As much as I really think Serge needs to be exposed as the fraudulent cult he is and how hard this is for us who have spouses, family, friends etc involved, I am not really getting into the "us against them" mentality of this thread now. In that way we are just like Serge and if anyone read this from UM some of the posts would I imagine make them think that all this full on negativity is what they wanted to get away from in the first place. Maybe?

Anyway, there is truth in the body feeling before a thought (just not the way Serge talks about it) and there has been lots of research done in this area from scientists. Also the whole fight, flight, freeze response is automatic from the body, thoughts don't come into it until seconds afterwards. Lots of people are walking around with their nervous system on low level alert, especially in western countries. This is why people like Serge do well because he comes up with a belief system, and some gentle breath relaxations and the person who was stressed out, wanting a fix starts to feel better. Then comes the crazy life style stuff. He has got some stuff right otherwise no-one would like what he does at all.

Anyway as a woman, if I was going to try and show my female friend this webpage to try and get her out of UM, I would start to think twice. It just feels a little intimidating at the moment.

Please don't jump on this as me not being supportive on this forum. I am no way affiliated with UM whatsover and never would be.

Hi Lifetrutome- I understand your go softly approach but I think you need to know that we are preaching to the converted here. Most of the true UM People, outside of the inner core, are not looking at this site. They have been warned not to. If there is good information here maybe print that out and show it to her if you are scared the more confrontational stuff will upset her or she will push back from that. Also, I have met a few people who are ostensibly on the outside of UM but then one day announce... " You know what, I thought I was totally against it, but now I realise I WAS under some influence!" That happens because Serge does of course say some things that are right. He needs to in order to bait people in. It has to resonate and find accord with people in some way. That is the door opener. If a person changes some destructive behaviour or loses long held weight, then it 'proves' them that what SB is saying MUST be true, rather than the more obvious truth that they themselves have managed to alter their behaviour because for the first time thoughts are not under their control alone- From there he works his way in with his mind traps, fantastic cosmology and dogmatic clap trap, exclusive "I am right only" assertions, I am a descended masters, mind and body control mechanisms. But in order to do that he needs to make sure you are not thinking as you would normally.

So I need to correct you about this "and there has been lots of research done in this area from scientist"- what research? can you send us a link? I think this might be something you have heard or would like to believe for whatever reason. I sincerely doubt that any true peer reviewed research exists. It is self evident that thought is always involved in a bodily reaction. Serge insists that we are clairsentient or clairesomething and to ignore our thinking, because it underscores his unverified belief in other dimensions and other senses. But just do this thought experiment: If I put a bag over your head, and make it so you can hear and stand you in a room, besides feeling apprehension- is there any way of knowing that I am about to shoot you, kiss you, pull a trap door beneath your feet, dump jelly on you...? No there isn't. You would be using your imagination ( thoughts) and trying to pick up clues from light, muffled sounds and so forth. If I did get out a big gun to shoot you, your body would not react with "fight or flight" because there is NO INFORMATION GOING THROUGH YOUR BRAIN to tell it how to react. Do you think if we did the same with Serge he would know any better than anyone else what was about to happen ( other than a creeping sense that many people dont like him and he is in danger)?? No he would be the same as you or me or anyone when our senses are prohibited from recieving information. If Serge wants to committ to a scientific test of his cosmic-amazingness, there is one he could do tomorrow at his next show, and I am sure unless he cheats, he will fail.

I think you might mean that people react automatically when they recieve various stimuli- that is different to " the body feels what is going on and then a thought arises" which is the baseline assertion of Serge. I can tell you it is classic mind control technique to stop people thinking which is the goal of a cult leader. All of these groups use the same system to stop people using their critical functions to decide what is right or wrong so that the group member must defer back to them. If they can keep you looking at your naval, and thinking anything other than thoughts about whether it is right or wrong, then they have achieved control. Maybe you do need to check whether there isnt at least a small part of you that thinks Serge might be right. because if there is, you need to banish it. Anything he is correct about is only a segue to control and is far outweighed by his self interested agenda for making money and destroying familes across the world.

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treefern
Hi lifetruetome,
I don't think you sound honestly serious about helping your 'friend' out of UM.
We on this site are supporting each other with a common problem and I for one and by the sounds of all the other partners/friends or family members are genuinely trying to help the people we love come to term with 'being taken for a very expensive ride'.
Why would YOU feel intimidated your name isn't Serge?

Hi Treefern

It is my opinion that going in really hard with some people wont work. Its just my opinion. Some of the posts here are getting really full-on and the style reminds me of the "us against them " meantality which is exactly what Serge uses "UM against the world".
Its all just my opinion. To be honest the workshop I went to of UM and what I found of UM, the one thing that turned me completely off, over everything else (and there was alot that turned me off) was the divisive ways of Serge. So when its used here I personally don't like it. I don't like it in world politics, I don't like it in religion and I don't like that black and white mentality of life.

To say I don't sound serious about helping my friend is just not true or fair. I really don't know how to help my friends to be honest. If I did I would have done it by now. They have been involved for years, there whole world revolves around Serge and UM belief systems. To be so harsh in the opposite direction just won't work. I am glad it did for you with your husband.

Some tough language about the relationship disruption and financial costs of UM should be made available so that persons targeted for UM recruitment can stand a chance of finding something objective online before they get too deeply reeled in.

We may not be able to get committed UM members out of UM, but providing inside dope about disrupted relationships and ruined marriages should be made available to anyone who wants to research UM before getting involved via a 'friend' or pushy office manager who is driving everyone nuts due to constant 'eso-speak'.

I live in a part of the world where UM is not active, and I hope it never gets a foothold.

In case you are in any doubt:

Its not on my mind facebook but from my body. And this is what my inner-heart says -- Mankind will one day re-learn that the first mind (choice making place) is in the body. The mind in the brain then follows with thoughts. But like all things temporal, why wait for the world to re-discover what the Ageless Wisdom knows now and has for time untold? And so - choose the simplicity in the body over the complexity in the head. And on that note -- what you feed the body so too will be the integrity of your thoughts. Its simple isn't it?

69 of Serge's 'friends' like this and 'feel' it is a revelation. 69 friends who have had their thinking turned upside down so they have no other choice but to keep going back to Serge for answers. Has anyone UM student ever developed Serge's alleged mastery whereby they can feel what is right? If so, then of course they would never go back to Serge for anything. Is that the case? Thought not- they are forever students. Ker-ching!
It is just plain confounding to tell people to listen to their bodies ( with their minds) to know what to think, therefore to feel. Talk about twisting people's noodle into a noodle.

No Serge, it is not simple. We all look forward to the day you are debating scientists who are dumbstruck with your profundity, putting the Dali Lama in his place who will be struck down in humility at your cosmic rays of ascendency, and amazing us with demonstrations of your hierarchal powers while the sky opens up and shines its heavenly light to reveal to us small, lost pranic resisters who foolishly use our minds, that you are indeed who you think you are ( that is your dream isnt it ;) )

Once again, this stuff is not unique. Putting the heart (or body) ahead of the mind is old New Age stuff.

A lot is said here about critical thinking. Krite, the root word from Greek, means the making of distinctions. Comparisons. Which is what is needed when deciding SB is superior to every other teacher.

However, true critical thinking is much more than making distinctions. It means examining claims against a criterion (means of comparison)--in this case, scientific evidence based medicine.

Now...look how old this heart versus head mindset actually is. (Another comparsion and a value driven judgement that heart is better than head)


From HPB (aka Helena Blavatsky: a channelled message from one of her alleged masters.

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The Voice of the Silence by H. P. Blavatsky
FRAGMENT II
THE TWO PATHS

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Saith the pupil:

O Teacher, what shall I do to reach to Wisdom?

O Wise one, what, to gain perfection?

Search for the Paths. But, O Lanoo, be of clean heart before thou startest on thy journey. Before thou takest thy first step learn to discern the real from the false, the ever-fleeting from the everlasting. Learn above all to separate Head-learning from Soul-Wisdom, the "Eye" from the "Heart" doctrine.

Yea, ignorance is like unto a closed and airless vessel; the soul a bird shut up within. It warbles not, nor can it stir a feather; but the songster mute and torpid sits, and of exhaustion dies.

But even ignorance is better than Head-learning with no Soul-wisdom to illuminate and guide it.

The seeds of Wisdom cannot sprout and grow in airless space. To live and reap experience the mind needs breadth and depth and points to draw it towards the Diamond Soul (4). Seek not those points in Maya's realm; but soar beyond illusions, search the eternal and the changeless SAT (5), mistrusting fancy's false suggestions.

For mind is like a mirror; it gathers dust while it reflects (6). It needs the gentle breezes of Soul-Wisdom to brush away the dust of our illusions. Seek O Beginner, to blend thy Mind and Soul.

Shun ignorance, and likewise shun illusion. Avert thy face from world deceptions; mistrust thy senses, they are false. But within thy body — the shrine of thy sensations — seek in the Impersonal for the "eternal man" (7); and having sought him out, look inward: thou art Buddha (8).

So..mistrust ones senses, even if your friends and spouse are telling you that you are looking unhealthy, moving more slowly, after having decided to follow the UM diet.

Alice Bailey puts intuition ahead of intellect, and tantalizes us with the assertion that intuition led to the "sudden illuminations and apprehensions of truth which are the gifts of our greatest thinkers."

Note from Corboy (Bailey lived during the time when Pasteur and Koch and von Behring were creating the foundations of modern infectious disease research and the development of immunication. These and many scientists had breakthrough ideas, but these occurred in a context of a methology which required record keeping, stating ones hypotheses and then testing these hypotheses and then demonstrating that findings could be replicated by other researchers--conferances and journal publication being of the utmost importance. These were great thinkers, but they worked by very much more than 'intuition'.

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We have, therefore, this interesting triplicity - instinct, intellect and intuition - with instinct lying below the threshold of consciousness, so to speak, with the intellect holding the first place in the recognition of man, as human, and with the intuition lying beyond both of them, and only occasionally making its presence felt in the sudden illuminations and apprehensions of truth which are the gift of our greatest thinkers.

[www.light-weaver.com]

From Intellect to Intuition

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Both East and West seem to feel that an educational system that does not eventually lead a man out of the world of human affairs into the wider consciousness of spiritual things has failed in its mission and will not measure up to the soaring demand of the human soul. A training that stops short with the intellect, and ignores the faculty to intuit truth which the best minds evidence, lacks much. If it leaves its students with closed and static minds, it has left them without the equipment to touch that intangible and finest

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"four-fifths of life" which Dr. Wiggam tells us, lies outside the realm of scientific [30] training altogether.

- Wiggam, Albert Edward, The New Decalogue of Science.

The door must be opened for those who can go beyond the academic training of the mind with relation to physical plane living.

[www.light-weaver.com]

Note here that Bailey, puts a stress on "awakened intuition"

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In the book, From Intellect to Intuition, Alice Bailey puts an emphasis on fire.

Note too that Alice Bailey who lived from the 19th into the early 20th century did what many New Age authors do today--quoted scientists to support her assertions.

Putting the heart (or intuition) ahead of the mere intellect is old New Age stuff.

It must be said that Blavatsky and Bailey wrote in complex sentences, and in old fashioned styale. But at least can expose oneself to their texts, decide whether to agree or disagree disagree. And then one can put Blavatsky and Bailey's writing aside, close their books and not have one's own mind feel bruised and exhausted.

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corboy
Once again, this stuff is not unique. Putting the heart (or body) ahead of the mind is old New Age stuff.

A lot is said here about critical thinking. Krite, the root word from Greek, means the making of distinctions. Comparisons. Which is what is needed when deciding SB is superior to every other teacher.

However, true critical thinking is much more than making distinctions. It means examining claims against a criterion (means of comparison)--in this case, scientific evidence based medicine.

Now...look how old this heart versus head mindset actually is. (Another comparsion and a value driven judgement that heart is better than head)
......

The door must be opened for those who can go beyond the academic training of the mind with relation to physical plane living.

[www.light-weaver.com]

Note here that Bailey, puts a stress on "awakened intuition"

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In the book, From Intellect to Intuition, Alice Bailey puts an emphasis on fire.

Note too that Alice Bailey who lived from the 19th into the early 20th century did what many New Age authors do today--quoted scientists to support her assertions.

Putting the heart (or intuition) ahead of the mere intellect is old New Age stuff.

It must be said that Blavatsky and Bailey wrote in complex sentences, and in old fashioned styale. But at least can expose oneself to their texts, decide whether to agree or disagree disagree. And then one can put Blavatsky and Bailey's writing aside, close their books and not have one's own mind feel bruised and exhausted.

Hi Corboy,

This is a direction we need to go a bit deeper into for the sake of the student, because I dont think they understand his sources and how he has simplified significant insights into meaningless paradoxes. Without writing a 'treatise' I think it is important to outline how Serge has taken the New Age ethos and redeveloped into his own doctrine. He has taken some key mystical concepts that the New Age itself has borrowed from the Gnostics, Buddhists, Hindu's, mystery schools and secret Christian societies, channelled through Bailey's incomprehensible outputs and into his own equally artless version.

Some recent study across the developed world has found that many people who claim NOT to be "New Age" have actually adopted many key new age beliefs. Even those that identify as Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Atheist, Agnostic or other accept certain precepts that have been born out of the new age as "axiomatic" or more right, 'automatic"- The New Age movement took focus away from Societal Religion and the purpose it served when group co-operation was desirable, and towards individual realisation and liberation.; paralleling the shift in social interaction and function and the relative wealth and liberty of the members of those societies. In a way, the New Age is a mirror of how modern liberal societies function, with democratised individual freedom of expression taken as a precedent over the great social need.

The New Age itself cherry picks key elements of religions and philosophies to design a sort of all purpose path. Interesting in the last 100 years as science has made significant ( actually amazing, unprecedented, staggering, mind boggling) inroads into understanding nature ( but, not the meaning of life)of the Universe and how the stuff it is made of, New Age thought has adopted key revelations or made the philosophy fit within its context.

Universal Medicine claims not to be New Age which it identifies as being “Pranic/Spiritual”- there are two reasons for this. The Primary is Serge is claiming a lineage (while denying lineage as relevant) to knowledge which he is calling Ancient Wisdom, going back to the early times of mans recorded history and its investigations into the nature of man and the universe. And the second serves to gives his version precedence over any competing new age ideology that the student may be attracted to. None the less, some of the key new age ideas are contained with the philosophy, chiefly self-enlightenment and an unrealised divine nature. For any student interested in the roots of Serge’s Ancient Wisdom here is a good place to start. [en.wikipedia.org]

I think there is a few primary assumptions that need to be challenged and the student needs to consider.

Firstly, is an idea because it is old or Ancient more wise than what is known today?- In all other areas of human endeavour it is evident that in the past people knew less than they did today. For thousands of years, humans as a group and individually have pondered their nature. For centuries this was done without tools and within the context of the thought forms and paradigms of the day. Is there such a thing as Ancient Wisdom or is this simply the musings of our forbearers from antiquity doing exactly what we do now, but without the benefit of our sharpened ‘tools’ and better understanding, some of course as a result of their insights, but none the less an evolution? I contend that it is NOW that we are collectively at our wisest. Of course, there is much we don’t know, but does that mean we just don’t yet know, or that “esoteric” knowledge exists in those gaps? (* I know there is a lot of Myth about ancient civilisations that existed in truth or were living aligned to the Ancient Wisdom, root races, spirits coming from other planets and so forth, but for the sake of this argument I am sticking to the observable universe. It is by introducing those ideas that Serge is able to win the minds of students because they cannot be disproved and that is a pre-requisite of having a religion or faith based belief system, which Serge claims UM is not)

So when Serge says “ In the past people had this Ancient Wisdom” what is he talking about? People were living to 30 years of age in desperate conditions in a times of lack and ignorance while a few privileged families with slaves ( Plato for example) mused on the nature of the universe by gazing at the stars -which they presumed lights coming out of heaven,- and ruminated on the nature of man. What they were really amazed at, was that they had the ABILITY to consider these questions, which leads all of us to the same conclusion. I can think, I can observe myself and my thoughts...that is amazing...therefore...

Of course we want to believe in our divinity, or more properly life beyond the one that we are now experiencing. As possibly the only species AWARE of the future ( which is why we have evolved as we are able to plan and strategise for future contingencies) we are necessarily aware of our mortality. Our brains are naturally disposed to optimism to compensate for our certain mortal end. Is it possible our desire for more is an extension of this optimism and an inbuilt check mechanism against fear of an inevitability?

Secondly, Serge talks constantly about forgetting thought in favour of “feeling”- in doing so he has jumped over the most important parts of the Theosophy, Alice Bailey and the Mystical Traditions which are about Observing your thoughts and drawing back into your higher awareness to both understand whence your thinking originates and to connect with “your higher/inner/divine/god self”. Serge simply short circuits this with “ ask your body how it feels”- People need to deal with their thinking because that is the primary source of how and why they feel. It is by altering and modifying your thoughts that you can modify how you feel and how you behave. This is done through self awareness, not simply by adopting ideas of “Ancient Wisdom” (without even knowing what they are..) or Serge’s re-interpretation of a re-interpretation of some theosophists a century ago. The long held key idea of the mystical traditions is that by going beyond your thinking into the “greater mind” is the path to enlightenment; and the realisation of the illusory nature of the mundane mind that keeps us moribund in our temporal and futile existences. If you doubt this, read the Tibetan book of the Dead, the Bhagavada Gita, Patanjali and even Rumi. Read them yourself, not Serges unpoetic flaying of their beauty into his lifeless and uninspired ‘impressions’.

So is Serge offering you a path to self understanding, or a Confucian style paradox of using your mind to ignore your mind; rather than a system of how to use your mind to understand your mind- how to feel and how to grow into more than you are in this life or spiritually?

Students, it is like Serge has an elementary understanding of the stuff he claims to be a master of, or alternatively, he treats you like fools and doesn’t empower you to know thyself. Life and truth is much richer than the shallow offering he markets- [en.wikipedia.org]

The following review of Benhayon's second book 'A Treatise On Consciousness' illustrates the complete lack of critical thinking on behalf of UM students when consuming Serge's ideas in written form:

[www.goodreads.com]

The reviewer even admits:

'Whether Sci-Fi or not is besides the point'

That's right. It doesn't matter whether it's completely fictional, because it will change the way you perceive reality, if only you stop resisting and just believe.

Hi MacReady, I guess you realize that the reviewer of this i
heinous tome ,i believe ,is one Rebecca Baldwin, and according to her biography she is a member of the Esoteric Practioners Association and a web site designer with a business in ,yes you guessed it -Byron Bay. Are you getting it yet? Employ a friend / colleague to review your shitty book but make sure it's not a real book reviewer just a web designer.It's a bit like asking a JUNIOR TENNIS COACH to take your money and run your life for you. Regards Eric

I know Pythagoras's Theorem but here is Eric's Theorem - (SB + UM )= (BS + $$$) ,Cheers Eric

Just in case Shamballa (aka Shambala) comes up, please know there are very many interpretations of this.

This Shambala is a malleable idea that has taken a multitude of variations depending on who gets his or her hands on it.

Blavatsky, who first presented Shamballa notions to the reading public of the West, saw it as a place.

"Accordingly, she explained Shambhala in terms of the Hindu presentation in this text: it is the village where the future messiah, Kalki Avatar, will appear. The Kalki, Blavatsky wrote, is “Vishnu, the Messiah on the White Horse of the Brahmins; Maitreya Buddha of the Buddhists; Sosiosh of the Parsis; and Jesus of the Christians.” She also claimed that Shankaracharya, the early ninth-century founder of Advaitya Vedanta, “still lives among the Brotherhood of Shamballa, beyond the Himalayas.”
"

Alice Bailey re-interpreted Shamballa as a force.

Reminiscent of Roerich, she took Shambhala to be “the seat of Cosmic Fire,” which is a force for purification. Rather than conceiving of this force as benevolent agni, however, she followed Steiner’s lead and associated it with Lucifer. Thus, she spoke of it as a source of destructive power to eject degenerate forms of teachings and to establish a pure New Age.

The Shambhala Force, Bailey explained, is the highly volatile energy of self-will. In itself, it is extremely destructive and can be the source of “Evil.” When seen as the Divine Will, however, initiates can harness it for the ultimate “Good.” A “Hierarchy” in Shambhala, headed by Maitreya, protects the Force and, at the proper time, will initiate the ripe into “the Mysteries of the Ages,” “the Plan.” One wonders if her ideas inspired the Star Wars vision of “the Force,” as a power that can be harnessed for good or evil, and which is guarded by a brotherhood of Jedi Warriors.

If SB refers to it, his version is just one among many. One among many.

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The Berzin Archives. This article in full runs to 25 plus pages.

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Alexander Berzin

November 1996, revised May and December 2003
[This article is also available in Slovenian translation.]
Introduction

Many foreign myths have grown around the legend of Shambhala found in the Kalachakra literature.

Some were spread to win military or political support, such as the identification of Russia, Mongolia, or Japan as Shambhala. Others appeared within occult movements and mixed Buddhist ideas with concepts from other systems of belief. Several even spawned expeditions to find the fabled land.

Two camps arose among the occult versions. One side regarded Shambhala as a utopian paradise whose people will save the world. The British novelist, James Hilton, fits into this camp.

His 1933 work, Lost Horizon, describes Shangrila as a spiritual paradise found in an inaccessible, hidden valley in Tibet. Shangrila is undoubtedly a romantic corruption of Shambhala.

The other side depicted Shambhala as a land of malevolent power. Several postwar accounts of the connection between Nazism and the Occult present this interpretation. It is important not to confuse either of these distortions with Buddhism itself.

Let us trace the phenomenon.

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Theosophy

Madame Helena Blavatsky (1831-1891) was born in the Ukraine to Russian nobility. Endowed with extrasensory powers, (Berzin is being generous here-Corboy)she traveled the world in search of occult, secret teachings and spent many years on the Indian subcontinent. From 1867 to 1870, she studied Tibetan Buddhism with Indian masters, most likely from the Tibetan cultural regions of the Indian Himalayas, during her purported stay at Tashilhunpo Monastery in Tibet.

Blavatsky encountered Tibetan Buddhism at a time when European Oriental scholarship was still in its infancy and few translations or accounts were available.

Further, she was able to learn only disjointed fragments of its vast teachings.

In her private letters, she wrote that because the Western public at that time had little acquaintance with Tibetan Buddhism, she decided to translate and explain the basic terms with more popularly known concepts from Hinduism and the Occult.

*(Resulting in distortion Corboy. Blavatsky was greatly influenced by Bulwar Lytton's novel, Zanoni, and incorporated its ideas into her own system--see Peter Washington's Mme Blavatsky's Baboon)

For example, she translated three of the four island-worlds (four continents) around Mount Meru as the sunken lost islands of Hyperborea, Lemuria, and Atlantis. Likewise, she presented the four humanoid races mentioned in the abhidharma and Kalachakra teachings (born from transformation, moisture and heat, eggs, and wombs) as the races of these island-worlds. (This is a distortion of the Buddhist Pali scriptures. Buddha states that beings are born from heat, eggs, wombs, but didnt presume to classify them as 'races'--thats the 19th century hang up sneaking in. And the claptrap about "island-worlds" and Hyperboria, Lemuria, Atlantis and root races, are NOT from authentic Buddhist scriptures at all.-Corboy. But as noted, Buddhist scholarship was in its infancy in the West, and mass circulation of Blavatsky's material reached a reading public that lacked means of comparison.)

Her belief that the esoteric teachings of all the world’s religions form one body of occult knowledge reinforced her decision to translate in this manner and she set out to demonstrate that in her writings.

Together with the American spiritualist Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, Madame Blavatsky founded the Theosophical Society in 1875 in New York. Its international headquarters moved to Madras, India, shortly thereafter. When her colleague Alfred Percy Sinnett identified Theosophy with esoteric Buddhism in Esoteric Buddhism (1883), Blavatsky refuted his claim. According to her posthumously published Letters of H. P. Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett, Blavatsky’s position was that Theosophy transmitted the “secret occult teachings of trans-Himalaya,” not the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism.

*Nevertheless, through her writings, the West first came to associate Shambhala with the Occult and many subsequently confused this connection with the actual teachings of Buddhism.

In 1888, Blavatsky mentioned Shambhala in her main work, The Secret Doctrine, the teachings for which she said she received telepathically from her teachers in Tibet. She wrote in a letter that although her teachers were reincarnate “byang-tzyoobs” or “tchang-chubs” (Tib. byang-chub, Skt. bodhisattva), she had called them “mahatmas” since that term was more familiar to the British in India.

The Tibetan source of the teachings in The Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky claimed, is The Stanzas of Dzyan, the first volume of commentaries to the seven secret folios of Kiu-te. “Kiu-te” transcribes the Tibetan “rgyud-sde,” meaning “tantra division,” which is the title of the first section of the Kangyur, the Tibetan translations of Buddha’s words.

“Dzyan” transcribes the Sanskrit “dhyana” (Jap. zen), meaning mental stability. Blavatsky was aware that The Kalachakra Tantra was the first item in the tantra division of the Kangyur, since she mentioned that fact in one of her notes. She explained, however, that the seven secret folios were not actually part of the published Kiu-te, and thus we do not find anything similar to The Stanzas of Dzyan in that collection.

It is unclear to what extent Blavatsky actually studied the Kalachakra texts directly. The earliest Western material on the topic was an 1833 article entitled “Note on the Origins of the Kalachakra and Adi-Buddha Systems” by the Hungarian pioneer scholar Alexander Csomo de Körös (Körösi Csoma Sandor).

De Körös compiled the first dictionary and grammar of Tibetan in a Western language, English, in 1834. Jakov Schmidt’s Tibetan-Russian Dictionary and Grammar soon followed in 1839. Most of Blavatsky’s familiarity with Kalachakra, however, came from the chapter entitled “The Kalachakra System” in Emil Schlagintweit’s Buddhism in Tibet (1863), as evidenced by her borrowing many passages from that book in her works. Following her translation principle, however, she rendered Shambhala in terms of similar concepts in Hinduism and the Occult.

The first English translation of The Vishnu Purana, by Horace Hayman Wallace, had appeared in 1864, three years before Blavatsky’s purported visit to Tibet.

Accordingly, she explained Shambhala in terms of the Hindu presentation in this text: it is the village where the future messiah, Kalki Avatar, will appear. The Kalki, Blavatsky wrote, is “Vishnu, the Messiah on the White Horse of the Brahmins; Maitreya Buddha of the Buddhists; Sosiosh of the Parsis; and Jesus of the Christians.” She also claimed that Shankaracharya, the early ninth-century founder of Advaitya Vedanta, “still lives among the Brotherhood of Shamballa, beyond the Himalayas.”

Elsewhere, she wrote that when Lemuria sank, part of its people survived in Atlantis, while part of its elect migrated to the sacred island of “Shamballah” in the Gobi Desert. Neither the Kalachakra literature nor The Vishnu Purana, however, has any mention of Atlantis, Lemuria, Maitreya, or Sosiosh. The association of Shambhala with them, however, continued among Blavatsky’s followers.
Blavatsky’s placement of Shambhala in the Gobi Desert is not surprising since the Mongols, including the Buryat population of Siberia and the Kalmyks of the lower Volga region, were strong followers of Tibetan Buddhism, particularly its Kalachakra teachings. For centuries, Mongols everywhere have believed that Mongolia is the Northern Land of Shambhala and Blavatsky was undoubtedly acquainted with the Buryat and Kalmyk beliefs in Russia.

Blavatsky might also have received confirmation of her placement of Shambhala in the Gobi Desert from the writings of Csoma de Körös. In an 1825 letter, he wrote that Shambhala is like a Buddhist Jerusalem and lay between 45 and 50 degrees longitude. Although he felt that Shambhala would probably be found in the Kizilkum Desert in Kazakhstan, the Gobi also fell within the two longitudes. Others later would also locate it within these parameters, but either in East Turkistan (Xinjiang, Sinkiang) or the Altai Mountains.

Although Blavatsky herself never asserted that Shambhala was the source of The Secret Doctrine, several later Theosophists made this connection.

Foremost among them was Alice Bailey in Letters on Occult Meditation (1922). Helena Roerich, in her Collected Letters (1935-1936), also wrote that Blavatsky was a messenger of the White Brotherhood from Shambhala. Moreover, she reported that in 1934 the Ruler of Shambhala had recalled to Tibet the mahatmas who had transmitted to Blavatsky the secret teachings.

Alice Bailey

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Alice Bailey and the “Shambhala Force”

The British Theosophist Alice Bailey (1880-1949) was a medium who claimed to channel and receive occult letters from a Tibetan master.

After losing her battle with Annie Besant for leadership of the Theosophical movement, she founded the Lucifer Trust in 1920 in the United States.

Originally calling her trust the Tibetan Lodge, she changed its name once more in 1922 to the Lucis Trust. Her lectures and writings spawned the New Age movement. She called the New Age both the Aquarian Age and the Age of Maitreya.

In Initiations, Human and Solar (1922), Letters on Occult Meditation (1922), A Treatise on Cosmic Fire (1925), and A Treatise on White Magic (1934), Bailey wrote extensively about “the Shambhalla Force.” Reminiscent of Roerich, she took Shambhala to be “the seat of Cosmic Fire,” which is a force for purification. Rather than conceiving of this force as benevolent agni, however, she followed Steiner’s lead and associated it with Lucifer. Thus, she spoke of it as a source of destructive power to eject degenerate forms of teachings and to establish a pure New Age.

The Shambhala Force, Bailey explained, is the highly volatile energy of self-will. In itself, it is extremely destructive and can be the source of “Evil.” When seen as the Divine Will, however, initiates can harness it for the ultimate “Good.” A “Hierarchy” in Shambhala, headed by Maitreya, protects the Force and, at the proper time, will initiate the ripe into “the Mysteries of the Ages,” “the Plan.” One wonders if her ideas inspired the Star Wars vision of “the Force,” as a power that can be harnessed for good or evil, and which is guarded by a brotherhood of Jedi Warriors.

Like Steiner, Bailey adapted the concept not only of Lucifer, but also of the Antichrist, and this time associated it with the Shambhala Force.

Borrowing Theosophical concepts, she said that the Shambhala Force had made its presence known twice before in history. The first time was during the Lemurian Age, heralding the individualization of mankind.

The second was “during the Atlantean days of struggle between the Lords of Light and the Lords of Material Form, the Dark Forces.” Nowadays, she continued – referring to the period between the two World Wars – it is manifesting as the force to destroy what is undesirable and obstructive in present world forms of government, religion, and society.