Secret of Shambhala

by James Redfield

  As though to punctuate what Ani had just said, we both heard a faint roaring sound in the distance, which quickly disappeared.

  She looked confused. “That’s nothing I’ve ever heard before.”

  A chill went through me. “I think it might be a helicopter,” I said.

  Again I thought about telling her about my dream, but before I could she began talking again.

  “We have to hurry,” she said. “You have to know who we are, the culture we’ve created. We were talking about the importance of young people understanding the sequence of generations that came before them. This history is something that all individuals in the outer rings become aware of at an early age—as they wake up to their own spirituality and sense of what they came here to do.”

  She raised her finger. “Everyone here is clear that the human world evolves through the succession of generations. One generation establishes a way of life and meets certain challenges, and the next generation comes along and extends that worldview. Unfortunately in the outer cultures this evolution is just beginning to be taken seriously. More frequently what occurs is that parents want children to be just like them, to take the same view of everything. This desire is natural in a way because we all want our children to reinforce the choices we have made.

  “But often the process becomes antagonistic. The parents criticize the interests of the children, and the children criticize the old-fashioned ways of the parents. To some degree it is part of the process: Children look at the lives of the parents and think, I like most of how they live, but I would have done certain things differently. All children have a sense of what is incomplete in their parents’ way of life. After all, that’s the system: We chose our parents in part to be awakened to what is missing, to what needs to be added to human understanding, and we begin that process by being dissatisfied with what we find in our lives with them.

  “Yet all of this doesn’t have to be antagonistic. Once we know the life process, we can participate consciously. Parents can be open to the criticisms of their children, and be supportive of their dreams. Of course, doing this causes the parents to have to stretch their own ways of thinking and evolve along with their children, which can be difficult.”

  I had heard that before. She was going out of her way to make the process of evolution very clear to me. I asked a few more questions, and she spent another ten minutes giving me the details of life in the outer rings of Shambhala. She explained that once children gained an understanding of history and family, the next step for them was to learn to extend their creative prayer field, just as I had. They then went on to find a way to advance the culture, either teaching in the outer rings or using their prayer-field at the temples.

  “This will eventually be the lifestyle in the outer cultures as well,” she added. “Some will be devoted to the teaching of children, and others will enter the many institutions of human culture and help move them toward the spiritual ideal.”

  I was about to ask more about what they did at the temples when the door to Tashi’s room swung open. Tashi came out, followed by his father.

  “Father wants to see you,” Tashi said, looking at me. The older man bowed slightly and Tashi introduced us, then both sat down at the table. Tashi’s father was dressed in the traditional sheepskin pants and vest of a Tibetan herdsman, except that his clothing was immaculately clean and a light tan color. He was short and stocky and looked at me with kind eyes and an expression of boyish enthusiasm.

  “You know that Shambhala is about to go into transition?” he asked.

  I looked at Ani and then back at him. “Only what some of the legends say.”

  “The legends say,” the older man replied, “that at a precise time in the evolution of Shambhala and the outer cultures, a great shift will occur. This shift can only happen when the level of awareness in the outer cultures has reached a particular point. But when it does, Shambhala will move.”

  “Move where?” I asked. “Do you know?”

  He smiled. “No one knows exactly.”

  His statement filled me with a wave of anxiety for some reason, and a slight dizziness. For a moment I had a hard time focusing my eyes.

  “He’s still not that strong yet.” Ani said.

  Tashi’s father looked at me. “I’m here because of my intuition that it is important that Tashi join us at the temples during this transition. The legends say it will be a time of great opportunity but also of dire peril. For a time what we have been doing here in the temples will be disrupted. We will not be able to help as much.”

  He looked over at his son. “This will happen just as the situation in the outer cultures becomes critical. Many times during the hidden history of mankind, humans have developed spiritually to this point and then have lost their way and fallen back into ignorance. They began to misuse their technology, disrupting the natural course of evolution.

  “For instance, right now in the outer cultures, some people are taking the natural process of food and distorting it by genetically manipulating seeds to have unnatural characteristics. This is primarily done in order to patent these seeds and control them in the marketplace.

  “The same thing is occurring in the pharmaceutical industries, where a known herbal remedy, free to all, is genetically altered in order to sell it. In the precise energy system of the body, these manipulations can have terrible consequences on health. The same is true of irradiated foods, chlorine and other additives to the water supply, not to mention so-called designer drugs.

  “At the same time, the technology of the media has reached a point where it can have dramatic influence. If it responds only to the needs of corporations and corrupt politicians, it can create realities for humans that are distorted and unnatural. As corporations merge, so that they control more and more of the technology and want to use more advertising to create false needs, this problem will grow.

  “Most imperative is the situation of government power and surveillance, even in the democratic countries. Citing a need to combat drug dealers or terrorists, the government has infringed more and more on the privacy of the common man. Already, cash transactions are being restricted and the Internet fully monitored. The next step will be forcing the move to a cashless society controlled by a central authority.

  “This growth toward a central, spiritless governmental authority, in a high-tech virtual world divorced from natural processes, where food, water, and the routines of living have been trivialized and distorted, leads to disaster. When health is subverted into just one more commercial cycle of worsening food, new diseases, and more drugs, Armageddon is the result, and it has occurred several times in prehistory. It could happen again, only this time on a much larger scale.”

  He smiled over at Ani. “But it need not happen. In fact, we are one small step in awareness from turning the corner. If we could just move fully into the idea that we are spiritual beings in a spiritual world, then food, health, technology, media, and government would all move into their proper roles in the evolution and perfection of this world. But for this to happen, the prayer extensions must be completely understood in the outer cultures. They must understand what we do at the temples. The transition of Shambhala is part of this process, but the opportunity has to be seized.”

  He looked deeply at Tashi. “For this to happen your generation must merge with the last two into an integrated prayer-field—one that includes a final unity of all the religions.”

  Tashi looked confused, and his father moved closer to him.

  “All over the world, the generation born in the first decades of the twentieth century, what our friend from the West would call the World War II generation, used courage and technology to save democracy and freedom from the threat of dictators seeking empire. They won, using technological might, and continued to expand this technology into a worldwide economy. Then the next generation—what Americans call baby boomers—arrived on the Earth, and their intuitions told them that the focus on materialism, on technology
alone, was not quite correct. That there was too much pollution, too much corporate influence on government, too much surveillance by the intelligence organizations.

  “This criticism was the normal way that a new generation expands and intuitively leads us forward. They grew up in a hard-won materialism, or in some countries, the desire for the material, and began to react, to voice the idea that there was more to life. There was a spiritual purpose behind human history that could be grasped in more detail.

  “That’s what was behind all that happened in the sixties and seventies in the West: the rejection of a material-based system of status, the exploration of other religions, the popularity of philosophy, the explosion in thought of the Human Potential Movement. It was all the result of a series of insights that there was more to life than our material worldview knew.”

  He regarded me with a twinkle, as though he knew everything about my experiences with the Insights.

  “The intuitions of the baby boomers were very important,” he went on, “because they began to put technology and material abundance into perspective, and to grasp the deep intuition that technology is being developed on this planet to support a culture where we can focus not just on surviving, but on our spiritual development as well.”

  He paused for a moment. “And now, since the late seventies and into the eighties, a new generation has been arriving to push human culture even further.” He looked at Tashi. “You and your age group are the final members of this generation. Do you see what emphasis you are bringing into the world?”

  As Tashi pondered the inquiry, I thought about the question myself. The sons and daughters of the boomers have been characterized as reacting to the boomers’ idealism and ambivalence toward technology by becoming more practical and, in fact, developing a love for technology beyond anything seen before.

  Everyone looked at me as though they had heard my thoughts. Tashi was nodding in agreement.

  “We sensed that technology has a spiritual purpose,” he said.

  “Now,” the older Tibetan continued, looking at all of us, “do you see how the three generations flow together? The World War II generation fought against tyranny and proved that democracy could not only flourish in the modern world but expand tremendously and connect the world’s economies. Then, in the middle of the abundance, the boomers arrived to say that there were problems with this expansion, that we were polluting the natural world and losing touch with nature and a spiritual reality that exists beneath the whims of history.

  “And now the next generation has come along to focus again on the economy, to refashion technology so that it can consciously support our mental and spiritual ability, the way it has occurred here in Shambhala—instead of allowing technology to fall solely into the hands of those who would use it to restrict freedom and control others.”

  “But this new generation isn’t fully conscious of what they are doing,” I said.

  “No, not completely,” he replied. “But this self-awareness and insight is expanding every day. We must set a prayer-field that lifts them in this direction. It must be a large and strong field. The new generation must help us unify the religions.

  “This is very important, because there will always be controllers ready to manipulate this generation into creating negative uses for technology or taking advantage of their alienation.”

  As we sat there, we all heard the low drone of helicopters again, still far in the distance.

  “The transition is beginning,” Tashi’s father said, looking at him. “There are many preparations to make. I wanted only to convey that the generation you represent must now help push all of us forward. You personally have some role in expanding into the outer cultures what Shambhala has been doing. But only you can decide what you must do.”

  The young man looked away.

  His father went over and put his arm around him for a moment. Then he embraced Ani and left the house.

  Tashi followed him with his eyes as he walked through the door and returned alone to his room.

  I followed Ani out into a sitting area in the garden, full of questions.

  “Where did Tashi’s father go?” I asked.

  “He’s getting ready for the transition,” she replied, glancing back at me. “This may not be easy. We may all be displaced for a while. There are many who are coming back from the temples and helping.”

  I shook my head. “What do you think will happen?”

  “No one knows,” she replied. “The legends are not specific. All we know is that there will be a transition.”

  The uncertainty began to diminish my energy level again, and I sat down on one of the benches nearby.

  Ani followed and sat beside me. “I do know what you must do,” she said. “You must continue to pursue the rest of the Fourth Extension. Everything else will take care of itself.”

  I nodded halfheartedly.

  “Focus on what you have learned here. You have seen how technology must evolve, and you have now begun to see how our culture focuses itself on the life process, the miracle of birth and conscious evolution. You know that this is the focus that creates the most inspiration and the most fun.

  “The materialistic life in the outer cultures pales when compared to it. We are spiritual beings, and our lives must revolve around the mysteries of family and talent and the search for individual mission. Again, you now know what such a culture looks and feels like.

  “The legends say that knowing with certainty how cultures can evolve extends everyone’s prayer-field and gives it more power. Now when you connect within and see your field flowing out in front of you, acting to bring synchronicity and uplifting others into the synchronistic process, you can do so with greater expectation, because you know with certainty where this process is taking us all, if we stay true to it and avoid fear and hate.”

  She was right. The extensions were all falling into place.

  “But I haven’t seen it all,” I said.

  “She looked deeply into my eyes. “No, you must continue to understand the rest of the Fourth Extension. There is more. Your prayer-field can become more powerful yet.”

  At that moment we could hear the helicopters again, and the sound of them filled me with anger. They seemed to be getting closer. How was this possible? How could they know where Shambhala was?

  “Damn them,” I said, which produced a horrified look on Ani’s face.

  “You have much anger,” she said.

  “Well, it’s hard not to be angry when you realize what the Chinese military is doing.”

  “This anger is a pattern in you. I’m sure you have been warned of its effect.”

  I thought back to all Yin had tried to explain. “Yes, I have. I just keep messing up.”

  I could tell she was concerned.

  “You’ll have to master this problem,” she said. “But don’t get down on yourself too much. That sends out a negative prayer that keeps you where you are. On the other hand, you can’t just ignore your anger. You must keep the problem in mind, remind yourself, stay conscious, and at the same time set your prayer-field that you will break through and discard the old pattern.”

  I knew that was a very fine line to walk and would take conscious work on my part.

  “What should I do now?” I asked.

  “What do you think?”

  “I’ve got to go to the temples?”

  “Is that your intuition?”

  I thought again about my dream and finally told her about it. Her eyes grew wide.

  “You dreamed of going to the temples with Tashi?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I replied.

  “Well,” she said sternly, “don’t you think you should tell him about it?”

  I walked up to Tashi’s room and touched the wall.

  “Come in,” he said, and an opening appeared.

  Tashi was stretched out on his bed. He immediately sat up and gestured to a chair across from him. I sat down.

  For a moment he was s
ilent, the weight of the world on his shoulders. Finally he said, “I still don’t know what to do.”

  “What are you thinking?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, I’m confused. All I can think of is getting to the outer cultures. My mother says I must find my own way. I wish my grandmother was here.”

  “Where is your grandmother?”

  “She’s at the temples somewhere.”

  We stared at each other for a long time and then he added, “If only I could understand this dream I had.”

  I sat up straight. “What dream?”

  “I’m with another group of people. I can’t see their faces, but I know that one of them is my sister.” He paused for a moment. “I could also see a place with water. Somehow I’d gotten to the outer cultures.”

  “I’ve had a dream too,” I said. “You were with me. We were at one of the temples… it was blue… and we found someone else there.”

  A trace of a smile crossed Tashi’s face.

  “What are you saying?” he asked. “That I’m supposed to go to the temples instead of to the outer cultures?”

  “No,” I said. “That’s not what I mean. You told me that everyone thinks it’s impossible to get to the outer cultures through the temples. But what if it’s not?”

  His face lit up. “You mean, go to the temples and try to get to the outer cultures from there?”

  I just looked at him.

  “That must be it,” he said, standing up. “Perhaps I have been called, after all.”

  9

  THE ENERGY OF EVIL

  No sooner had we walked out of the bedroom than the sounds of the helicopters in the distance increased.

  Ani came into the house and pulled out three heavy backpacks from a storage bin. She handed them to us along with two parkas. I noticed that they seemed to have been conventionally made with cloth and stitching. I was about to ask about them, but she quickly ushered us out of the dwelling and led us down the path to our left.