June 2011 FROM EXOPOLITICSJOURNAL WEBSITE
Contrary to modern humans, the other creatures described throughout Indian ancient and medieval literature, have not declined but remained in their original condition, with all the powers and attributes assigned to them. Although they may have made themselves more discreet, perhaps simply because our growing physical "density" has robbed us of most of our extra-sensorial means of perception. As said earlier, the materialistic, skeptical or agnostic mindset that Western societies have exported all over the planet in the last two or three centuries has played a major role in deporting all traditional lore to the "no man's land" of primitive legends or ethnic fiction.
However since the origins, Indian texts record that human beings mixed and mingled with the various gods, genii and "demons" (in the greek, ambiguous or "good" sense of the term) and often inter-married with them, giving birth to hybrid beings. Some highly meritorious and gifted men and women became gods and rose into the higher heavens while others were semi-demonic and moved freely between various worlds. Certain super-natural creatures are said to descend from apparently human ancestors, like the rakshasas who were begotten by the great Vedic Rishi Pulastya. The latter is identified as one of the stars in the Big Dipper constellation (Pheida in modern astronomy) and hence his own nature is both earthly and celestial, as are the other six demiurgic rishis of Indian cosmology. The Dipper or Great Bear points to the North Pole or cosmic axis where Vedic cosmology locates the holy Meru mountain, the home of the gods. There lies the origin of the famed "Indo-Aryan" arctic symbolism adopted in certain esoteric circles of 19th and early 20th century Europe.
The sciences of yoga and tantra are known to give their advanced practitioners the ability to explore other dimensions and to dwell at least temporarily in them, depending upon the level of mastery achieved in the techniques. Thus, those parallel universes may be closed to most ordinary humans but are not so mysterious to those who know the teachings of the seers. Among the beings who live in them, some of the closest to humans are the,
* pitris
* pisacha
* bhutas
* yakshas
* nagas
* gandharvas
* kinnaras
* ganas
* rakshasas
* asuras
* garudas
* suparnas
* vidyadharas
* devas,
...in no particular order. Though not all of them are described precisely, there are enough references to them in the Vedic and Puranic texts as well as in the Ramayana, Mahabharata and in later texts to form a fairly complete image of what they represent.
Many scholars have concluded that those apparently super-natural creatures are in fact totemic characterizations of various tribal populations and foreign nations but, aside from that naturalistic interpretation, we should also look at the possibility that they are or were in fact really in existence, as many current observations might well confirm. The pitris are among the closest to living humans. Like the greek "Manes" they are the souls of the dead ancestors and they inhabit the astral dimension. Pisachas and Bhutas are akin to the ghosts or spirits of western lore and sometimes have the characteristics of goblins. Yakshas are usually protective village spirits and often act as guardian deities of underground treasures, groves or springs. Their monarch Kubera, who also rules over the gandharvas is the god of wealth and metal and he is the "emperor" of the Northern or polar quarter.
The yaksha kingdom, said to lie around Mount Kailasa in the Western Himalayas, is called Alaka and is rich in gold. In that same region are the Garudas, mythical eagle-men or flying humanoids, said to have white faces, golden bodies and large red wings, who hail from Hiranmaya and who are rather similar to the Suparnas, also human faced and winged.
The Nagas, often situated in the same broad region - and whose subterranean abode (the Patala) is said in Tibet to be reachable through a secret opening located under the homonymous temple-palace of Lhasa (the Potala) - are described as serpents or dragons but can assume human forms and like several of those fabulous beings are in fact "shape-shifters", if we choose to borrow a term of contemporary science-fiction. The Gandharvas, at once warriors and musicians serve the devas and are divided into twenty seven tribes, many of which reside in the enchanted gardens of Chitraratha, north of Kailash. They are also aerial beings whose ancestor or ruler is said to be the great musician rishi Narada.
If the Apsaras evoke both the Naiads, Nereids and Valkyries to the western imagination by their appearance and connection with water and heaven, the kimpurusas are lion-faced anthropomorphic creatures and the kinnaras are horse-headed like Hayagriva, the Hindu and Buddhist "demonic" icon who is often called their leader. They have a clear etymological link with the greek Centaurs (kentauri). Their consorts, the kinnaris, however are half-bird, half -woman. The ganas are dwarfish, often misshapen beings who are associated with underground minerals and secrets, like their Western equivalents (leprechauns or goblins) and their name relates them to the Arab Jinns, said to be "made of pure fire without smoke" (astral light, possibly).
On a higher plane are the higher "gods", the Rudras, Maruts, Adityas and Vasus who dwell in subtler realms. Significantly one of the Adityas (children of Aditi: infinite space) is Tvastr, the architect and builder of the universe and the carpenter of the flying vehicles that carry the gods across heaven. Among the Asuras, the powerful rivals of the "shining ones", is Maya ("the maker"), another cosmic demiurge who crafted the Pushpaka Vimana, described in the Ramayana as the flying chariot of Kubera "resembling a bright cloud in the sky", taken from him by his envious and ambitious brother Ravana, king of the Rakshasas of Lanka. The rakshasas are also super-human beings who have all sorts of magical and prodigious powers. Their name comes from the root raksh: to protect, indicating that, although they are regarded as generally cruel and destructive forces in classical Hinduism, (though capable of "redemption") originally they were ambivalent as are most other kinds of divine or supra-human beings.
Even more enigmatic are the vidyadharas (holders of wisdom), semi-divine beings, often located in remote Himalayan regions and described as possessors of many fantastic abilities like flying, changing shape and becoming invisible. They are sometimes cited as attendants of Rudra Shiva, the Cosmic Mountain Lord who is "The Destroyer of worlds". Their monarch is Kandarpabali, according to the Hitopadesha and they are the guardians of tantric wisdom and "supernatural" science.
Many of those beings are indeed associated with the great mountain ranges which border India on the North and surround the polar Meru according traditional geography. While many scholars interpret this nomenclature as describing, in a mythological garb, to tribal populations and kingdoms located in the upper Himalayas and on the Tibetan high plateaux, others tend to see them as imaginary creatures with which poetic fantasy populated the inaccessible snowy fastnesses that lay on the horizon. However one can also consider the possibility that there may have been groups of beings "descended from above" or from their boreal abode on those highlands, as the original and pre-Buddhist shamanistic tradition of the Bon religion of Tibet records. The Bon books trace their origins to Dropa SHENRAB MIWOCHE who, more than 18,000 years ago came from the "hidden realm of Shambhala" flying on the Tagzig Olmo Lug Rig (space) and taught the original form of the Vedic religion handed down to him by his own teacher Shelha or Shiwa Okar (perhaps the Indian Shiva).
The Bon myth about the initial source of all wisdom seems to have inspired the Buddhist doctrine of the hidden Kings (or Kulikas) of Shambhala who have their seat in the wondrous city of Kalapa where they preside over the secret rite of the Wheel of Time (Kalachakra). In all there will be thirty-two lords of Shambhala, each one ruling for one century, from the first, Suchandra (Dawa Sangpo in Tibetan) to the final one, Raudra Chakrin or Trakpo Cholkhorchen who will come in the twenty-fourth century of the common era, with the contemporary one being Aniruddha or Nagakpo, the 21st in the line.
In the Tarim basin of Chinese Turkestan and outlying areas as well as in Mongolia, there are many related legends about Shambhala and Agartha and some intriguing archeological remains have been found (dropa stones and mummies at Baian Kara Ula), leading Chinese archeologists to speculate about "out of this world" origins. It is in that broad region that Taoist cosmology situates the Hsi Tien, the Western Paradise of the Lady of the golden plums of immortality Hsi Wang Mu. It is said to be the Central Asian Holy Land of Belovodye described by the Orthodox Old Believers, Raskolniki.
The French esoteric philosopher SAINT YVES D'ALVEYDRE in his various books, particularly in his "Mission de l'Inde en Europe", written in 1886 under the inspiration of certain Hindu spiritual teachers, claimed to have visited Agartha in his astral body ten years earlier and to have been initiated to his sacred language, called Vatan. He describes it as the nerve-centre and main sanctuary of Paradesa:
"the highest land" in Samskrt, (the name from which paradise is derived, according to him). He hints that this realm is partly subterranean, beneath the Himalayas and at least partly hidden in another dimension, which makes it invisible and inaccessible to most people who are not invited into it. Saint Yves gives several other details on this mysterious empire whose population he evaluates at about twenty million. He adds that it is surrounded by various tributary kingdoms, ruled by their respective Rajas and that this confederacy numbers forty million people in all. The ruling hierarchy consists, in ascending order of yogis, pandits, bhagwandases (who are 360) and above them, of twelve world gurus, headed by the supreme triumvirate of the Brihatma (depository of the spiritual authority), the Mahatma (entrusted with juridical power) and the Mahanga who is the executive enforcer.
Saint Yves who was socially prominent and enjoyed great respect in esoteric circles, was so confident of the knowledge he had gained about Agartha that he wrote letters to the Pope, Queen-Empress Victoria and Tzar Alexander III of Russia to offer his introduction to the governors of that hidden kingdom in order to allow the Mahatma and his court to come out in the open and make available the stupendous treasury of knowledge accumulated in the great underground libraries kept by the scholars of Agartha all over the planet. He wrote that all the records of times past since the dawn of the ages and scientific knowledge immeasurably more advanced than that of his contemporaries, was available in those archives, compiled in the last fifty five thousand years since the days of Manu. He cited the 18th century Swedish mystical theologian and polymath EMMANUEL SWEDENBORG, who had described seeing through his extrasensorial faculties the annals of forgotten human history from the origins, buried deep beneath the steppes of Central Asia.
The tradition recorded by Saint Yves influenced a number of later esoteric researchers, such as RENE GUENON and FERDINAND OSSENDOWSKI as well as NICHOLAS ROERICH. All wrote about or sought the abode of the "king of the world" somewhere between the Himalayas and Mongolia. D'Alveydre indicates that the denizens and rulers of Paradesa are human, though they exist at a very advanced stage of evolution which lends them the attributes of divinity; but he notes that in the course of their investigations of the universe, both beneath the earth surface and into "the highest heavens", the Agarthans have discovered various intelligent species, some of which are similar to humans while others seem to be hybrids of men and various types of animals. He further says that they use "dirigibles" (zeppelins) to explore the sky and the regions above but that could be an allusion to spacecraft of a type unknown to him who, in his age, could only understand the principle of aerostats since the principle of "heavier than air" aircraft was regarded as unrealistic by most.
Also linked to the lore of Agartha are the legends of the underground sacred cities of Shonshe and Shangwa in Eastern Turkestan, refuges of the ancient celestial Uyghur race which is believed to have left the visible world after a great cataclysm many thousands of years ago. In the Mahabharata the abode of the Devas is given as Uttara Kurus, North of Tibet and of the kingdom of the gandharvas (generally equated with modern Afghanistan and Central Asia). It may be the Samskrt version of Homer's "Hyperborea".
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