Chapter XVIII: Hemis — Ladakh, 1927

Chapter XVIII: Hemis—Ladakh, 1927

fter breakfast, Baron von Sebottendorf proceeded to tell Maria the full story of his meeting Chapman Andrews.A

It had been evident that the American had followed on the tracks of Roerich for days. He, too, had seen the shining orb in the sky above the team and this had betrayed Roerich’s location.

Roerich had heard about the American explorer, who had been catapulted into stardom only three years earlier as the discoverer of the first dinosaur eggs. He was known to have spent most of his time in Central Asia, being a proponent of the theory that modern humans first arose in that continent. Roerich had welcomed the man with moderate eagerness — not least as they were both representing the United States. Yet the baron had regarded the newcomer with suspicion.

“I merely put two and two together and I didn’t like the ‘four’ that was the outcome,” he said. “His being there could not have been by pure chance. I had by then learnt that Roerich’s mission wasn’t merely an artistic and scientific enterprise. Even in Punjab, while waiting for his team to arrive, I had noticed that that the news of the expedition had attracted attention from both the agents of the foreign services as well as the Soviet intelligence. It was rumoured that Roerich would be attempting reconciliation with the new power, which he had previously attacked fervently, by offering to monitor British activities in the area. The closer we got to the Russian border, the clearer it became that he was assisted with logistics and funds by the Soviet government. Yet, the Western newspapers heralded him as a prominent member of the League of Nations on a goodwill mission.

“Roerich was obviously playing a double game. So there must have been something that he was able to offer to both sides; that made him equally valuable to both arch-enemies alike.

“The arrival of an American — be he called an explorer or an agent — only deepened my doubts.

“The references to the ‘Big plan’ and the mysterious object — a stone or a jewel of a kind — in his possession offered both an explanation as well as a new and progressively developing puzzle. The secret of the well-guarded crate seemed to be known only to Roerich and his closest team members. The only thing that I found out during this period was that he is about to return something of great value to Tibet. As he and the object arrived from the United States, I could only deduce that it must have been something that was at one point stolen from Tibet, or loaned to the League of Nations by the Tibetan government or by the country’s spiritual leader, Dalai Lama.

“Shortly after the arrival of the American, who then joined the team, Roerich announced that the expedition was not going to proceed along the initially planned route across the Gobi desert into Eastern Tibet, but would embark on a six month tour to Soviet Russia, eventually reaching Moscow. This came as a surprise to both me and Chapman Andrews, but not to his own team members. Soviet assistance in relocating the route towards Moscow became blatantly evident, with Bolshevik soldiers assisting the Mongol porters and Soviet cigarettes appearing in vast quantities.

“I had taken great care not to antagonize Roerich or his family in any way, but also not to appear overly toadying. As a result he considered me a harmless occultist, a wealthy eccentric who enjoys the company of a great thinker. I had completely won the approval of his wife Elena, who had found in me a dedicated spiritualist, always eager to attend her improvised séances. It was she who, on our last evening together, told me of Roerich’s final destination — the Kailash Mountain.

“I know of this place as being one of the most sacred locations in both Hinduism and Buddhism. It is a most remarkable natural structure like no other: a mountain that stands almost completely on its own, barely touching the mountain range. It has the shape of a pyramid and it towers above other peaks in the range. There are stories which claim that Kailash is not a mountain at all but a manmade structure, built by the very first civilization on Earth, hundreds of thousands — perhaps millions — of years ago, with the help of the superhuman race who engineered us. The winds have dulled the

shape of the pyramid, but people often say that a likeness of the Lord Shiva can still be visible on one side, as the setting sun accentuates the shapes on the mountain wall.

“This holy place has never been studied, nor has there ever been an attempt to climb it: it is forbidden even to set foot on it. Entrances to caves can be seen — yet the only stories that circulate tell us about those who have dared to overstep the ban and who have either disappeared or died. Three monasteries with hundreds of monks are guarding the mountain at a close distance. These monasteries are so well hidden in the caves in the walls of the surrounding hills that it is almost impossible to see them.

“So it is obvious that many people claim Kailash to be the entrance to Shambhala, the underworld city where the ruler of the world lives with his people in peace and prosperity. An ancient legend says that the army of the King of the World will one day ride forth from Shambhala, raining death and destruction on the world infested by greed, injustice and violence. A day of purge will arrive, and a new era of enlightenment will begin with the great king sharing his power with equally enlightened rulers of the five continents.

“Madame Roerich claimed to be in telepathic contact with the spiritual leader of Shambhala, therefore Roerich’s visit to Kailash Mountain can only be interpreted as an attempt to enter Shambhala, perhaps at the invitation of the ruler himself. And when he arrives at the mountain, we’ll be there, waiting.”

“So what happened with you and Roy?” Maria asked.

“We turned back at the foot of the Altay Mountains and rode three days to Ürümqi, where Chapman Andrews had left his aeroplane. He was kind enough to fly me to Srinagar, from where I travelled here. During these days together, we barely spoke; not because of any obvious hostility between us, but simply because he wasn’t really interested in having a discussion. Such subjects as the political climate left him cold. He wasn’t interested in the occult either, even though when I mentioned you, he showed interest and asked many questions about the nature of your received messages and about the character of the German expedition.”

Maria held her breath.

“Me? You discussed me?”

“We did,” the baron continued. “For two days you were our main topic. I knew that you were soon to arrive, but I had no idea Chapman Andrews was friends with Sven Hedin and would meet you through him. Had I known that, I would’ve held my tongue.”

“But we didn’t meet through Hedin,” Maria said pensively.

“What do you mean?” the baron was confused. “You told me that he offered to fly you to Leh, once you had met Hedin and received my letter.”

“Yes,” Maria replied, “but that wasn’t the first time I had met Roy.”

It was her turn now to tell baron her story; of what seemed to have been a chance meeting on a platform at the Bucharest railway station.

“So — in the light of what you have just told me,” she concluded, “it seems very difficult to believe that our meeting — or at least his inflexible wish to be on the Orient Express that morning — wasn’t premeditated.”

“I am so sorry,” the baron said after a short pause remorsefully and took Maria’s hand.

“Do you know why Roy needed to be in Bucharest in the first place?” Maria pondered.

“I’m not sure,” von Sebottendorf replied, “but I imagined he was in a hurry to report his findings about Roerich, about the change of his route and probably about something he had found out about the mysterious cargo. The most eastbound office of the League of Nations is in Bucharest. I thought he deemed the information to be of such importance and delicacy that it had to be conveyed personally.”

“And you told him that the German team — that I am on that specific train?”

“I think I did,” the baron admitted, wringing his hands apologetically. “Just before I took off with Roerich, I had received a cablegram from Karl Haushofer, giving me exact details of your departure and arrival.”

This news was disillusioning and Maria’s previous excitement and exhilaration suffered a severe blow. She needed to be alone for a while. She noticed that there was something else that the baron wished to tell her, but she was too upset to listen and the baron was too much of a gentleman to insist.

By dinnertime, however, he had reached a conclusion that a change in subject could be the welcome diversion Maria needed.

“You must be wondering,” he said, “why I asked you to join me here with such urgency.”

“With everything that has been happening around me, I’m losing my ability to wonder,” Maria replied.

“It’s forty years,” the baron wasn’t bothered by her reply, “since an occurrence, which was to result in a shameful scandal and distortion of truth. Had the world taken notice, we would perhaps live in a completely different reality today. Alas, the world fought back and tore to pieces that what could have been a new beginning.

“It was on that spring forty years ago that a horse bucked off his rider in these mountains. The rider, a young Cossack officer and war correspondent, suffered from a badly fractured leg and was in agony. His comrades carried him to the nearest place where help could be obtained — it was this one, the Hemis monastery. The Russian was left here to recover, while his fellows had to advance with their journey.

“The young man was called Nicholas Notovich and he soon became friends with the monks who attended him, and even with the chief lama himself. One day, the latter told him a story. It was a legend that was quite well known in India and Tibet, but had until then never reached a Christian — or had been swiftly dismissed by those it did as nonsense. The lama, who had only rarely met, let alone befriended, a white man, sought to amuse him by telling him of another white man, far away from home, who had ventured into these far-away lands a long time ago.

“This was the story of Saint Issa, Best of the Sons of Men — how he, a youth of thirteen, joined the merchants and travelled down the Silk Road for a long time, until he reached Sindh in the Eastern India. For many years the youth travelled around in India, studying

the laws of the great Buddhas and ancient religious texts. He studied and later taught in several holy cities, including Rajagriha and Varanasi, not far from the Himalayas, probably reaching Ladakh and Tibet on his journeys. His teachings weren’t always to the liking of the religious men, because Issa condemned several injustices of Hindu life, such as the caste system.

“The story then continues with Issa returning home at the age of twenty-nine, as an enlightened spiritual master. After a year on the road, he reached Jerusalem and started preaching there, eventually infuriating both the Jewish leaders and the Romans. He was apprehended, convicted and executed on a cross.”

Maria was unable to believe her ears.

“Are we talking about…?”

“We are,” the baron confirmed. “These are the lost eighteen years of Jesus Christ, or Jezeus Krishna, as the Frenchman Jacolliot called him. For Issa is the name of Jesus in the countries that follow Mohammad, and even there the travels of the Jewish prophet are recorded in ancient texts.”

“Then how is it possible that we have never heard of His travels to these regions?” Maria asked.

“The Holy Scriptures are silent about the life of our Saviour between the ages of 12 and 30,” the baron replied. “And where there is nothing — there could be everything.”

“So why didn’t this discovery reach the world?” Maria insisted.

“Notovich learnt that here, in the vast library of the monastery, the ancient text was being preserved, translated from Pali more than a thousand years ago. With the help of a translator, the legend of Saint Issa was read to him. He made notes and tried to arrange the verses into a coherent text. Upon reaching Europe, Notovich published his findings with the translation of the text in a book ‘Unknown life of Jesus Christ’.

“As one could expect, he fell under attack from all directions. What wasn’t known, was that the most ferocious attackers were those few who knew that his tale was the truth but who had sworn to protect the secret. Several famed orientalists and Indologists, but in fact Freemasons, such as Leopold von Schroeder and Max Müller,

fabricated counter-evidence, which included alleged correspondence with and the visit to the lama of the Hemis monastery, who was reported as stating that no such manuscript had ever existed and that neither Notovich nor any white man had ever set foot in Hemis.

“Notovich was issued an ultimatum by the representatives of several secret societies, and in conclusion he was forced to recant, confessing to deliberate forgery. Thus, the world soon forgot about the ‘hoax’. Notovich himself was mysteriously lost a few years later, and with him the sole witness of the mysterious manuscript.

“When in Karachi last year, I heard of a man who had set out to debunk Notovich, but instead had arrived at astonishing findings. His name is Swami Abhedananda. In his youth, he spent years in New York and London, where he also befriended Max Müller of Oxford. Hearing of and disbelieving Notovitch’s story, he took a decision to investigate it but only got around to do so five years ago. He crossed the Himalayas on foot and arrived here at the Hemis monastery.

“To his bewilderment he observed the lama take the manuscript from the shelf in the library at his request and hand it to him. It was indeed the very manuscript, the existence of which had been ‘debunked’ by scientists.

“Swami then produced his own translation from Pali to Bengali, which is essentially the same that was published by Notovich. But his research led him a step closer to the original: the lama here had told him about the location of the original manuscript in the Pali language. He was reluctant to betray the secret, so I decided to find this out on my own. My pre-war connection with the Yellow Hats now paid off handsomely — the lama here agreed to receive me and to help me in my research. He knew that I am bound by oath to guard the knowledge that has been revealed to me in secrecy, so after some hesitation, he told me that the manuscript was kept in one of the hidden monasteries surrounding the Kailash Mountain.”

“So, you believe Roerich is interested in the manuscript?” Maria asked, even though overwhelmed by the amount of information and struggling to follow each new disclosure.

“What I have come to believe,” the baron lowered his voice, “is much more. I have been working on a puzzle, and what emerges is

nothing short of revelation. Yes, I am convinced that Roerich knows about the original manuscript being at the monastery in Kailash. But perhaps he also knows more: that the mountain is the actual entrance to Shambhala, where he needs to go to return a mysterious Stone. If Shambhala is real, guarded by monasteries, one of which has in its possession the original record of the lost years of Jesus — can’t we allow ourselves to speculate, that Jesus Himself visited these ancient monasteries and the mountain? And, if He visited the mountain, can it be that He was in Shambhala and emerged from there with the wisdom of the Ruler of the World and the power to spread His message? And perhaps more than just wisdom: Meher Baba is convinced that Jesus learnt the secret of Vril, learnt to harness the creative power of it. He didn’t die on the cross as we understand it — he entered a state without bodily consciousness. The power of Vril then activated him on the third day — leaving as proof the Turin Shroud where His image remains irradiated. And what if there is more proof in Kailash — wouldn’t that change everything?”

The baron was ecstatic. “Just think, what this would mean to our cause: it would offer proof that Jesus was gathering knowledge from our ancient Aryan forefathers and was able to overcome death with the power of Vril! The Jewish-Christian religion would at once be revealed as Aryan-Christian! Would anyone be able not to recognize and bow to the godliness of the Aryan race?”

It was evident that in this predicted discovery Baron von Sebottendorf saw not only the beginnings of a new global religion, but also his personal redemption: it was to be his ticket back to the list of the highest-ranking political elite of Germany.