A Legend That Is Alive to This Day
Helena P. Blavatsky

A statue of Helena
Blavatsky, made by
Alexey Leonov, with our planet in the background
Alexey Leonov, with our planet in the background
Editorial Note:
Mr. T. Subba
Row’s short life constitutes a unique example of how an advanced learner of
esoteric wisdom can be defeated by national prejudice and personal pride.
Soon after joining the theosophical movement, the
young, unexperienced Subba Row started making polemics and challenging Helena
P. Blavatsky. Purporting to know more than she did about esoteric matters, he
refused to fully cooperate with the theosophical project, as one can see in
“The Mahatma Letters”. It was by this
time, not long before leaving the movement, that Subba Row wrote the brilliant
article “The Aryan-Arhat Esoteric Tenets on the Sevenfold Principle in Man”.
In the article, a message personally addressed to HPB
and published by “The Theosophist” in January 1882, he says:
“…The real esoteric doctrine as well as the mystic
allegorical philosophy of the Vedas
were derived (…) perchance, from the divine inhabitants-gods of the sacred
Island which, as you say, once existed in the sea that covered in days of old
the sandy tract now called Gobi Desert. However that may be, the knowledge of
the occult powers of nature possessed
by the inhabitants of the lost Atlantis was learnt by the ancient adepts of
India and was appended by them to the esoteric doctrine taught by the residents
of the sacred Island.”
To this, Blavatsky, then the editor of the
“Theosophist”, added a footnote saying:
“A locality which is spoken of to this day by the
Tibetans and called by them ‘Shambhala’, the Happy Land. See Appendix,
Note III.” [1]
The following paragraphs reproduce “Note III”, by H.P.B., on the Sacred
Island.
(Carlos Cardoso Aveline)
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On the Island of Shambhala
Helena P. Blavatsky
To ascertain such
disputed questions, one has to look into and study well the Chinese sacred and
historical records - a people whose era begins nearly 4,600 years back (2697
B.C.). A people so accurate and by whom some of the most important inventions of modern Europe and its so
much boasted modern science were anticipated - such as the compass, gunpowder,
porcelain, paper, printing, etc., known, and practiced thousands of years
before these were re-discovered by the Europeans - ought to receive some trust
for their records. And from Lao-tze down to Hiuen-Tsang their literature is
filled with allusions and references to that island and the wisdom of the Himalayan
adepts.
In A Catena of
Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese, by the Rev. Samuel Beal, there is a
chapter “On the Tian-Ta’i School of Buddhism” (pp. 244-258) which our opponents
ought to read. Translating the rules of that most celebrated and holy school
and sect in China founded by Chinche-K’hae, called Che-chay (the wise one) in
the year 575 of our era, when coming to the sentence which reads: “That which
relates to the one garment [seamless] worn by the GREAT TEACHERS OF THE SNOWY
MOUNTAINS (the school of the Haimavatas)” (p. 256) the European translator
places after the last sentence a sign of interrogation, as well he may. The
statistics of the school of the “Haimavatas” or of our Himalayan Brotherhood,
are not to be found in the General Census Records of India. Further, Mr. Beal
translates a Rule relating to “the great professors of the higher order, who
live in mountain depths remote from men”, the Aranyakas, or hermits.
So, with respect to the traditions concerning this
island, and apart from the (to them) historical
records of this preserved in the Chinese and Tibetan Sacred Books: the
legend is alive to this day among the people of Tibet. The fair Island is no
more, but the country where it once bloomed remains there still, and the spot
is well known to some of the “great teachers of the snowy mountains”, however
much convulsed and changed its topography by the awful cataclysm.
Every seventh
year, these teachers are believed to assemble in Shambhala, the “happy land.” According to the general belief it is
situated in the North-West of Tibet. Some place it within the unexplored
central regions, inaccessible even to the fearless nomadic tribes; others hem
it in between the range of the Gangdisri Mountains and the northern edge of the
Gobi Desert, South and North, and the more populated regions of Kunduz and
Kashmir, of the Gya-Pheling (British
India), and China, West and East, which affords to the curious mind a pretty
large latitude to locate it in. Others still place it between Namur-Nor and the
Kuen-Lun Mountains - but one and all firmly believe in Shambhala, and speak of it as a fertile, fairylike land, once an
island, now an oasis of incomparable beauty, the place of meeting of the
inheritors of the esoteric wisdom of the godlike inhabitants of the legendary
Island.
In connection with the archaic legend of the Asian Sea
and the Atlantic Continent, is it not profitable to note a fact known to all
modern geologists - that the Himalayan slopes afford geological proof, that the
substance of those lofty peaks was once a part of an ocean floor?
NOTE:
[1] The article “The
Aryan-Arhat Esoteric Tenets on the Sevenfold Principle in Man” and the HPB
Notes to it can be found in the volume III of the “Collected Writings” of H.P.B.
See p. 402 for her footnote reproduced above, and pp. 420-422 for “Note
III”. The article and her Notes are also
at the book “Esoteric Writings”, by
T. Subba Row. Click to see it in one of our associated websites.
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The above text is
reproduced from “The Aquarian
Theosophist”, April 2018, pp. 1-3.
“On the Island of Shambhala” was published in our
associated websites as an independent article on 25 January 2019.
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