The Secret of Shambhala: In Search of the Eleventh Insight (18 page)

I just looked at her, trying to absorb the new information.

“You look overwhelmed,” she said.

I nodded, managing a smile.

“Come on, I’ll show you at Pema’s.”

W
hen we arrived, the house was just like Ani’s, except that it was built into the side of a hill and had different furniture.
I noticed an identical black box outside, and we entered through the force field just as before. We were met by Tashi and
another woman, who introduced herself as Pema.

Pema was taller than Ani and slimmer. Her hair was jet black and long. She wore only a long white dress and was smiling, but
I realized that something was not quite right. She asked to see Ani alone and they walked into another room, leaving Tashi
and me sitting in a living area.

I was about to ask him what was wrong when I felt an electricity in the air behind me. I saw the rippled distortion open just
like the one I’d seen in the force field around Ani’s house, only this time it appeared in the middle of the room. I blinked,
trying to grasp what was happening. As I focused, I saw a field with small plants through the distortion, as though it were
a window. To my surprise a man walked through the opening into the room.

Tashi stood up and introduced us. The man’s name was Dorjee. He nodded politely to me and asked where Pema was. Tashi pointed
toward the bedroom.

“What just happened?” I asked Tashi.

He looked at me with a smile. “Pema’s husband arrived from his farm. Can’t some of you do this in the outer cultures?”

I told him briefly about the rumors and myths about yogis who could project themselves to distant locations. “But I’ve never
personally seen anything like this,” I added, trying to regain my composure. “How is it done exactly?”

“We visualize the place where we want to go, and the amplifier helps us to create a window into that place right in front
of us. It also creates an opening back in the other direction as well. That’s how we could see where he was before he came
through.”

“And the amplifier is the black box outside?”

“That’s right.”

“And all of you can do this?”

“Yes, and it is our destiny to do it without the amplifier.”

He stopped and stared at me, then asked, “Will you tell me about the culture you came from, in the outer world?”

Before I could answer, we heard a voice from the bedroom declare, “It’s happened again.”

Tashi and I looked at each other.

After a few minutes Ani led Pema and her husband out of the bedroom, and they all sat down in the living room beside us.

“I was so certain that I was pregnant,” Pema said. “I could see the energy and feel it momentarily, and then within a few
minutes, it disappeared. It must be the transition.”

Tashi was looking at her intensely, totally fascinated.

“What do you think happened?” I asked.

“We have intuited,” Ani said, “that it is some kind of parallel pregnancy and that the child has gone somewhere else.”

Dorjee and Pema looked at each other for a long moment. “We’ll try again,” Dorjee said. “It almost never happens twice in
one family.”

“We must be going,” Ani said, standing up and embracing the couple. Tashi and I followed her out through the force field.

I was still overwhelmed. In some ways the culture here seemed ordinary; in other ways, totally fantastic. I tried to take
it all in as Ani led us a dozen or so yards to a beautiful rock ledge overlooking the massive, green valley below.

“How could there be a temperate environment this large in Tibet?” I blurted out.

Ani smiled. “The temperature is controlled with our fields, and to those with less energy we are invisible. Although the legends
say that will begin to change when the transition grows near.”

I was startled.

“You know about the legends?” I asked.

Ani nodded. “Of course. Shambhala is the original holder of the legends, as well as many prophecies all through history. We
help bring spiritual information into the outer cultures. We also knew that it was only a matter of time before you began
to find us.”

“Me personally?” I asked.

“No, anyone from the outer cultures. We knew that as you generally raised your level of energy and awareness, you would begin
to take Shambhala seriously and that some of you would be able to come here. That is what the legends say. At the time of
Shambhala’s shift, or transition, people from the outer cultures will arrive. And not just the occasional adepts from the
East, who have always found us periodically, but people from the West as well, who will be helped to come here.”

“You said the legends predict a transition. What is that?”

“The legends say that as the outer cultures begin to understand all of the steps to extending the human prayer-field—how to
connect with divine energy and let it flow through with love, how to set your field to bring on the synchronistic process
and uplift others, and how to anchor this strong field with detachment—then the rest of what we do here in Shambhala will
become known.”

“You’re talking about the rest of the Fourth Extension?”

She looked at me knowingly. “Yes. That is, after all, what you’re here to see.”

“Can you tell me what it is?”

She shook her head. “You must take it one step at a time. You must first realize where humanity is going. Not intellectually,
but with your eyes and feelings. Shambhala is the model for that future.”

I nodded as I looked at her.

“It’s time for the world to know what human beings are capable of, where evolution is taking us. Once you grasp it fully,
you will be able to extend your field even more, grow even stronger.”

She shook her head and added, “But understand that I don’t have all the information about the Fourth Extension. I will be
able to guide you through some of the next steps, but there is more that is known only by those at the temples.”

“What are the temples?” I asked.

“They are the heart of Shambhala. The mystical place you imagined. It’s where the real work of Shambhala is done.”

“Where are they located?”

She pointed north across the valley at a strange, circular group of mountains in the distance.

“Over there past those peaks,” she said.

During the time we were talking, Tashi was silent, listening to every word. Ani looked at him and brushed back his hair with
her hand. “It was my intuition that Tashi would have been called to the temples by now… but he seems to be more interested
in life in your world.”

I
jerked awake, sweating. I had been dreaming of walking through the temples with Tashi and someone else, on the verge of understanding
the Fourth Extension. We were in a maze of stone structures, most of them sandy bronze, but out in the distance was a temple
that appeared bluish in color. A person in dramatic Tibetan attire was standing outside. In the dream I began running from
the Chinese official I had seen several times before. He was chasing me through the temples and they were being destroyed.
I was hating him for what he was doing.

I sat up and tried to focus, barely remembering the walk back to Ani’s house. I was now in one of her bedrooms and it was
morning. Tashi was sitting in front of the bed on a big chair, staring at me.

I took a deep breath and tried to calm down.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Just a scary dream,” I said.

“Will you tell me about the outer cultures?”

“Can’t you just go there through a window or wormhole, or whatever you call it?”

He shook his head. “No, this is not possible, even at the temples. My grandmother intuited that it could be done, but no one
has succeeded because of the differences in the energy levels between the two places. Those at the temples can see what is
happening in the outer cultures, but that’s all.”

“Your mother seems to know a lot about the outer world.”

“We get our information from those who reside in the temples. They come back often, especially when they sense that someone
is ready to join them.”

“Join them?”

“Almost everyone here aspires to acquire a place in the temples. It is the greatest honor and an opportunity to influence
the outer cultures.”

As he spoke, his voice and level of maturity reminded me of someone thirty years old. Even though he was large, it was disconcerting
to look at his fourteen-year-old face.

“How about you?” I asked. “So you want to go to the temples?”

He smiled and looked toward the other room as though he didn’t want his mother to overhear.

“No, I keep thinking about somehow going to the outer cultures. Will you tell me about them?”

For half an hour I told him as much as I could about the current state of affairs in the world: the way most people lived,
the diets most ate, the struggle to institute democracy around the globe, the corrupting influence of money on government,
the environmental problems. Far from being alarmed or disappointed, he soaked it all in with enthusiasm.

Presently Ani came into the room, sensed that there was a conversation of note going on, and paused. Neither of us said anything,
and I slumped back down on the pillow.

She looked me over.

“We’ve got to get more energy into you,” she remarked. “Come with me.”

I put on my clothes and met her in the living area, then followed her outside and around to the back of the house. Here the
trees were very large and spaced about thirty feet apart. Between them was a coarse grass, like sage, and dozens of other
plants that looked like huge asparagus ferns. She urged me to move my body and I attempted the exercises Yin had showed me.

“Now sit here,” she said when I finished. “And raise your energy again.”

As she sat beside me, I began to breathe in and focus on the beauty around me, visualizing the energy coming into me from
within. As before, the colors and shapes began to stand out very easily.

I looked over at Ani and saw an expression of deeper wisdom on her face.

“That’s better,” she said. “You still weren’t all here yesterday when we visited Pema. Do you remember what happened?”

“Sure,” I replied. “Most of it.”

“Do you remember what happened when she thought she had conceived?”

“Yes.”

“One moment it seemed to have been there and then it was gone.”

“What do you think happened?” I asked.

“No one really knows. These disappearances have been occurring for a long time. In fact they began with me, fourteen years
ago. At that time, I was sure I was pregnant with twins, a boy and a girl, and then in an instant one of them was gone. I
gave birth to Tashi, but I’ve always felt that his sister was alive somewhere.

“Since then, couples here have routinely had the same experience. They feel sure that they conceived and then suddenly they
realize their wombs are empty. All of them go on to have other births, but they never forget what happened. This phenomenon
has been occurring with regularity throughout Shambhala all these fourteen years.”

She paused for a moment, then said, “It has something to do with the transition, maybe even with you being here.”

I looked away. “I don’t know.”

“Aren’t you having any intuitions?”

I thought for a minute and then remembered the dream. I was about to tell her about it, but I couldn’t decide what it meant,
so I didn’t.

“Not really any intuitions,” I said. “Just a lot of questions.”

She nodded, waiting.

“How does the economy work here? What do most people do with their time?”

“We have evolved to a place where we no longer use money,” Ani explained, “and we no longer manufacture or build items like
in the outer cultures. Tens of thousands of years ago we came from cultures that made the things they needed, like you do.
But as I told you, we gradually came to understand that the true destiny of technology was to be used to develop our mental
and spiritual abilities.”

I felt the soft sleeve of my parka. “You mean everything you have is a created energy field?”

“That’s right.”

“What keeps it together?”

“Once created, these fields last for as long as the energy is not disrupted by negativity of some kind.”

“What about food?”

“Food can be created in the same way, but we found that food is best grown by individuals in a natural process. Food plants
respond to our energy and give it back to us. Of course, we no longer have to eat very much to stay vibrant. Most in the temples
don’t eat at all.”

“What about power? How are the amplifiers powered?”

“Energy is free. A long time ago, we discovered a device using processes that you would call cold fusion. It created virtually
free energy for our culture, which liberated us from spoiling the environment and enabled us to automate our mass production
of goods. Gradually all our time became focused on our spiritual paths, on synchronistic perception, and on discovering new
truths about our existence and providing this information to others.”

As she spoke, I recognized that she was describing a human future I first leaned about in the Ninth and Tenth Insights.

“As we developed spiritually here in Shambhala,” she went on, “we began to understand that human purpose on this planet was
to evolve a culture that is spiritual in all its aspects. And then we realized that we had a greater power within us to help
us accomplish what needed to be done. We learned the prayer extensions and used them to further evolve our technology, as
I’ve already explained, to help facilitate this creative power. At this point we live simply in nature and the only technology
that remains are these units that help us mentally create everything else we need.”

“Did all that evolution take place right here?” I asked.

“No, not at all,” she said. “Shambhala has moved many times.”

Her statement shocked me for some reason and I questioned her further.

“Oh yes,” she clarified. “Our legends are very old and come from many sources. All the myths of Atlantis and the Hindu legends
of Meru stem from old civilizations that really existed in the past where the early evolution of Shambhala worked itself out.
Developing our technology was the most difficult step, because to place technology fully in the service of our individual
spiritual development, everyone must move to a point where spiritual understanding is more important than money and control.