The Lost World of Agharti- the Mystery of Vril Power

by Alec MacLellan

  These were at first thought to be prehistoric caves: near their mouths were found graffiti and human remains, but on inspection it turned out that the bones were of much later date than the drawings. It was also discovered that most of the caves led to tunnels carved in the mountainside … One large tunnel, which it was possible to follow for a considerable distance, led to a spacious underground hall or piazza more than 65 feet high. Clearly this was the work of intelligent beings, but for what purpose? No clue has yet been found; the answer to the mystery may lie further on, in the blocked portion of the tunnels.

  Mr Kolosimo is, I believe, right in his assumption, and even more right – though he may not realize it – in what he writes next in his book. ‘The main entrances to these tunnels are regular in form,, he says, ‘with handsome straight walls and narrow arches. The most curious fact about them is that they are almost identical with similar tunnels in Central America.’

  And so they should be, as they form part of the same global network!

  Mr Kolosimo tells us that some Soviet archaeologists believe that the tunnels are part of a huge network stretching out towards Iran and perhaps linked with those discovered near the Amu Darya in Turkmenistan and on the Russo-Afghan border. ‘Or even’, he adds, ‘the underground labyrinths of central and Western China, Siberia and Mongolia.’

  In Siberia there are stories of subterranean passages in the area of the Altai Mountains with their snowbound and dangerous passes. Somewhere close, a place called Ergor is said to be an entrance to what the local people call Belovodye – The Blessed Land, their interpretation of Agharti.

  According to an article by T. Beloshinov, ‘The History of Belovodye’, in The Journal of the Western Siberian Geographical Society in 1916, people in the area believe implicitly in the legend and say that the underground kingdom is an ‘earthly paradise where there are no persecutions’. Apparently an old man told the author: ‘If despite all the dangers your spirit is ready to reach this spot, the people of Belovodye will greet you, and, should they find that you are worthy, they may even permit you to remain with them. This rarely happens, however, and many people have tried to reach Belovodye.’

  Commenting on these remarks Beloshinov says: ‘These old believers made great efforts to find this fairy land; for some time Altai came to be looked upon as Belovodye, but gradually the legendary realm began to move in the direction of the Himalayas.’

  Moving south into Mongolia we find that the tradition of an ‘earthly paradise’ is even stronger. Robert Dickhoff reports:

  Tribes of Inner Mongolia believe that Agharti is a creation of an antediluvian civilisation, incredibly old and located in a recess of Afghanistan, and that this mysterious city is linked by means of tunnels coming from different regions of the world.

  Nicholas Roerich was convinced that not only the local people and learned lamas knew about this mysterious kingdom, but also members of the government, although they in particular were reluctant to speak about the matter to outsiders. Roerich also collected a folk tale at Ulan Bator about some strange stone circles which were supposed to mark one of the openings to Agharti. Pointing to the stones, an old man told him:

  Here the Chud went under the earth. When the White Tsar came to our Altai and when in our region the white birch-wood began to bloom, the Chud did not wish to remain under the White Tsar. They went underground and closed the passage with mighty stones – there, can you see it? But the Chud did not go forever. When a new era will come, when the people from Belovodye will return and will give to the people a new knowledge then the Chud will come back with all acquired treasures.

  Roerich tells us that the Gobi Desert has long been associated with the legend of Agharti, and there are those who think the capital city, Shamballah, lies beneath its sands. He adds: ‘In Mongolia we were not astonished to find many signs about Shamballah. In these countries psychic powers are rather developed.’

  However, on the southeastern edge of the Gobi, in Chinese territory, there is positive evidence of subterranean passageways. The place in question is called Tunhwang, and it sits on the very borders of Tibet.

  Located in rocky terrain about sixteen kilometres to the north of the city is an artificial series of grottoes known as ‘The Caves of the One Thousand Buddhas’. They were constructed at some time between AD 357 and 384, when Buddhism came to China, and were to serve as a monument to the religion. What makes the caves fascinating from our point of view is that a concealed stairway leads from one of the grottoes into a labyrinth of tunnels which disappear in Stygian gloom in a due south direction. This fact clearly fascinated Peter Kolosimo, whom I quoted earlier, for in another of his books, Not of The World (1969), he writes:

  It is said that the first caverns were not actually built by Buddhist monks but by someone who had preceded them by thousands of years; and such structures must have hidden the entrance to the labyrinths stretching under vast areas of Central Asia. They are the tunnels of the legendary kingdoms of Shamballah and Agharti. It is also said that the first section of the galleries would have been blocked up by the priests to stop bandits getting inside and stealing their hidden treasures.

  But there is one certain thing about Tunhwang: in the grotto numbered 58 by the archaeologists there is an altar showing a sleeping Buddha, behind whom are crowds of the faithful, together with good and bad genii. We can ignore the latter as being unknown or simply due to the artists’ whims – but there are some which clearly show by their clothes and facial features that they are just like the American Indians!

  Is this yet another extraordinary piece of evidence of contact between the American continent and the remote heartland of Asia? It is difficult to find any other explanation.

  With these details from China, our circumnavigation of the Earth by way of the subterreanean system is all but complete. We have traced it through the length of America, via Atlantis, to the south and on across Africa, Egypt and India to the Himalayas; and to the north by way of the Bering Straits across Russia, Mongolia, Siberia and China. One country now lies between a junction of these two arteries: the mysterious land of Tibet. And it is below this remote country perched on a barren plateau that I believe the tunnels converge on the subterranean kingdom of Agharti, actually meeting at the place called Shamballah, its fabled and much sought after capital city, the legendary Shangri-la.

  Tibet is surely one of the most mysterious places on Earth, and has been shut off from the rest of the world for generations. Although under only nominal Chinese suzerainty from about 1700 to the present century, this claim was made effective in 1951, when the historic ruler, the Dalai Lama, was driven out of the country, and the large percentage of the population who were monks, forced out of their monasteries. In 1965 the Chinese control was made absolute when Tibet was declared an autononous region of China. The veil of secrecy which hangs over the 471,000 square miles of country is now, if anything, more impenetrable than ever.

  Already, of course, a number of the experts quoted in this book have made their suggestions as to where Shamballah might be. Some have said it lies in the fastness of the Hindu Kush, others below the hostile sands of the enormous Gobi Desert. A case has been made for poor Afghanistan, recently overrun by Russian forces, and no less than two sites are proposed in China. Robert Dickhoff is in no doubt that it is located in the Sangpo Valley, China’ though he gives no facts to support his claim, while Eric Norman quotes an American explorer named ‘Doc’ Anderson who says the entrance lies beneath ‘seven pyramids (?) near Sian-fu, the capital of Shensi province’. Apparently an old Chinese lama told Anderson that the secrets of Agharti were concealed in these mysterious structures. ‘He said there were tunnel entrances beneath the pyramids. The tunnels are said to connect up with the pyramids in Egypt, the highest monasteries, and they run under the oceans to connect every land.’

  Reasonable though most of these suggestions are, I am convinced from my own research that Shamballah undoubtedly lies beneath Tibet. More specifically
it is below an area at the head of the valley of the River Brahmaputra, one of the few places in the country from which air and water, prime requirements of any underground settlement, may be drawn easily and unobtrusively.

  My conviction is based on a detailed study of the classic Tibetan work, The Way to Shamballah, written by the Tashi Lama III about three hundred years ago. Only one translation from the Tibetan has ever been made, by the great German Oriental scholar Albert Grunwendel, in 1915. Grunwendel, an expert on both China and Tibet, and the author of two classic works on the mystical beliefs of the countries, Mythologie du Buddhisme au Tibet et en Mongolie (1900) and Altbuddhist: Kultstatten in Chinesisch-Turkestan (1912), was an ideal person to tackle a translation of the Tashi Lama’s book. For its mixture of geographical hints and symbolic allusions make it a difficult work to read and even harder to interpret, and it is Grunwender’s helpful notes that actually make it possible to draw positive conclusions. Nicholas Roerich, who also studied the book, has written as follows of the complexities facing the seeker after Shamballah:

  In the east, they know that there exist two Shamballahs – an earthly and an invisible one. Many speculations have been made about the location of the earthly Shamballah. Certain indications put this place in the extreme north, explaining that the rays of Aurora Borealis are the rays of the invisible Shamballah. This attribution to the north is easily understood – the ancient name of Shamballah is Chang-Shambhala, and this means the Northern Shamballah. The epithet of this name is explained as follows: The teaching originally was manifested in India where everything coming from beyond the Himalayas is naturally called the North.

  Several indications, blended in symbols, have put the position of Shamballah on the Pamir, in Turkestan or Central Gobi … This relativity and the many misconceptions of these geographical locations of Shamballah have quite natural reasons. In all books on Shamballah, in all verbal legends, speaking of the same place, the location is described in a most symbological language, almost undecipherable to the uninitiated. Only great knowledge of old Buddhist places and of local names can help you to disentangle somehow this complicated web.

  Undeterred by these pitfalls, however, I worked methodically through the German translation and finally discovered what I believe are the important clues to the location of Shamballah.

  Firstly, the Tashi Lama is quite specific in his book that the underground kingdom lies ‘in a valley to the west of Lhasa’ and makes a number of enigmatic references in this context to a large community called ‘Mount Sumeru’ somewhere in the vicinity. By looking at a map of Tibet, it is not difficult to spot the valley running to the west of the capital city, that of the River Brahmaputra. On the banks of this picturesque river, about 150 miles from Lhasa, stands Shigatze, the second largest town in Tibet, with its immense fort spread out across the valley and the magnificent monastery of Tashi Lhunpo. A little research establishes that the name of Shigatze means ‘a glorious mass’ or ‘Mount Sumeru’ – the explanation, surely, of the Tashi Lama’s reference? ‘Mount Sumeru’, apparently, was a legendary mountain in Buddhist Scriptures.

  Secondly, the Tashi Lama declares that Shamballah is ‘bounded on its further side by a sacred lake’. By tracing up the valley of the Brahmaputra beyond Shigatze we can again find the ‘sacred lake’ he clearly describes: Lake Manasarowar. This stretch of water, octagonal in shape and covering an area of about 100 square miles, is said to be the highest body of fresh water in the world, its elevation being about 15,500 feet above sea-level. It is called simply Tso Rinpoche (Sacred Lake) by the Tibetans, and it has a special place in Hindu mythology because within a radius of a few miles rise four of the greatest rivers of India, the Indus, the Sutlej, the Ganges, and, of course, the Brahmaputra. If I had any doubts that this was the lake, these were dispelled by the Tashi Lama’s further reference to a ‘holy mountain in whose shadow it stood’. For on the northwestern corner of Manasarowar stands Kailas Parbat, or Peak, esteemed by the lamas and towering above the other mountains lying to the north of the lake. It rises about 7,000 feet above the surrounding plain, is snowcapped, and is said to have a number of caves and ravines about its base.

  Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly of all, the Tashi Lama says that it was through openings in a holy mountain that ‘certain lamas have met with the holy men of Shamballah in days gone by’. Once again by diligent research I found confirmation that I had not been mistaken in my calculations. In Captain C. G. Rawling’s classic study of the locality, The Great Plateau (1905), was a description of Kailas Perbat which said: ‘This spot is believed by Hindus and Mahomedans alike to be the home of all the gods, that of the waters of its lake they drink, and that in its unexplored caverns they dwell; to them it is the Holy Mountain.’

  All the clues I had unearthed seemed to tie in perfectly with the holy lama’s words, and I was sure I had found the locality of Shamballah – lying beneath the Brahmaputra Valley, bounded by Shigatze to the east and Lake Manasarowar to the west. There seemed every indication, also, that there was an entranceway to the underground city in Kailas Parbat. In a second book I consulted as a result of my careful examination of Grunwendel’s translation, I found another reference which further strengthened my belief, The work was Three Years in Tibet, by the Japanese Theosophist Ekai Kawaguchi, published in 1909. In describing Manasarowar and its environs he wrote:

  It is the only real paradise on earth, with a living Buddha and five hundred saints inhabiting Mount Kailasa on its north-west, and five hundred immortals making their home on Man-ri, that rises on its southern shore, all enjoying eternal beatitude… I believe that anybody would desire to see the spot; but the things mentioned in the Scriptures cannot be seen with our mortal eyes. The real thing is the region in its wonderfully inspiring character and an unutterably holy elevation is to be felt there.

  Knowing what we do of the Theosophists and their belief in Agharti, Shamballah and the King of the World, does this not seem like another clear indication that someone else also shares my conviction?

  Such facts, I believe the reader will agree, present a very strong possibility that the heart of the subterranean world of Agharti lies directly beneath this area of Tibet. It is only to be regretted that until the country is once more open to visitors from the West, neither I nor anyone else will be able to put this theory to the test.

  However, whether this solution answers the mystery or not, we still have some unresolved issues concerning the underground world to consider. In particular the tunnels which converge on Agharti. Is it possible that human beings could have used the passageways to cover the enormous distances we know are involved, and if so, by what means of transport? And, more importantly, who could such people have been, and what modern evidence might there be of their continued existence? And, finally, who is the mysterious ruler of the kingdom known only as ‘The King of the World’?

  These are the points which I propose to examine in the final chapter of our strange story.

  THE REALM OF ‘THE KING OF THE WORLD’

  During the years in which I was researching this book, I occasionally came across references to subterranean passageways in connection with Agharti which, at the time, seemed to be far away from the global route I traced in the previous chapter. It would, of course, have been convenient to ignore these stories, to assume that they were not in any way associated with the subject I was investigating. Yet there was something about a group of them which told me I would be being less than honest if I took this course of action. So I filed away those various pieces of information, deciding to return to them at the conclusion of my inquiries.

  Now that I have had a chance to look back over the references concerning these out-of-the-way underground tunnels, a startling conclusion seems likely to me. That the tunnel system to Agharti might just have a number of subdivisions which give it access to an even wider area of the Earth’s surface! It seems probable that these diversions may have been constructed to lead off from the main network and
thereby link more countries on the major continents to the ‘golden road’, as a South American legend describes the main tunnel system to Agharti. And this fact stated, I can see no reason why Great Britain, as well as its European neighbours France and Germany, are not among those places also linked to the underground kingdom by a secret route. Certainly there is evidence to be found – as well as that extraordinary experience of my own which I recounted right at the start of this book! Let us look, then, at some of these references.

  One of the first to catch my eye occurred in a book called The Mysterious Unknown by the French archaeologist and journalist Robert Charroux, published in 1969. This proved to be a fascinating collection of strange and secret facts said to be known only to Initiates, and in it the author claimed that man had actually lived on this planet for a very much longer period than was generally supposed: indeed, he was just the latest of many races to inhabit Earth.

  In the book, Charroux devotes a chapter to ‘The Mystery of Agartha and of Shamballah’, in which he writes:

  Agartha is a mysterious subterranean kingdom that is said to lie under the Himalayas and where all the Great Initiators and the Masters of the World in the present cycle are still living. Agartha is an initiatory centre, and is understood to function on a principle similar to that of the pyramids, the Himalayas forming the external monument, and the crypt being the kingdom far removed from earthly and cosmic contamination. But how could the higher powers of the spirit, intensity of thought and contemplation, be developed in a neutralised cavity? All in all, it seems probable that the vast potentialities of the human and superhuman ego can manifest more successfully in a secluded retreat than in the open, exposed to the contagion of its surroundings. On the other hand, one might think that, theoretically, perfection had no need to evolve further.

  Charroux then follows up this interesting observation with the information: