# secret places in INDIA that you could never know
Myths @ 15 June 2010
Shangri-La
The mythical land of Shangri-La is the novelist James Hilton’s fictional account of the legendary Tibetan paradise Shambala. In Hilton’s 1933 novel, Lost Horizon, he changes the name of the paradise to Shangri-La. This lost Tibetan paradise is a valley cut off from the world. The wisdom of the human race is being conserved there against the threat of imminent catastrophe. Hilton’s novel was turned into a hit Hollywood movie and the name Shangri-La came to mean a lost paradise.
The legend of this lost valley is one of the most ancient Tibetan myths, and one of the most striking myths of a sacred landscape, a landscape that inspires stories itself. Traditionally, Shambala is located in the Himalayas, in the remotest part of Tibet, on a high plateau, surrounded by a ring of mountain peaks.
The myth of a lost Tibetan paradise came to the notice of Europeans in the 1580s, when travellers to the court of the court of the Moghul Emperor Akbar heard strange and wondrous tales of a remote Himalayan world. Although the story is told in a Buddhist text and is considered Tibetan, the tale seems to have been recorded first in India in AD 962. The tale is that there is a land behind the Himalayas full of peace and harmony where an isolated people live in accordance with Buddhist precepts preparing for the day when the world will be ready to live in peace. The kingdom is in the shadow of a white crystal mountain, approachable only through a ring of peaks. Next to the mountain are a lake and a palace. Here the wisdom of humanity is conserved, ready to save the world when needed.
Pemako
Lotus-land or Pemako is somewhere on the border of East Tibet and Assam in northeast India. Terma or hidden teachings describing the way to Pemako were revealed by Rigdzin Jetsun Nyingpo (1585-1656) and also by Rigdzin Dudu1 Dorje (1615-1672.)
For nearly 2,000 years, the notion of an earthly paradise hidden among the peaks of Asia has captivated the human imagination. In the fourth or fifth century C.E., a Chinese poet named Tao Qian wrote of a peach blossom path that a fisherman follows to a secret tunnel. On the other side of the passage lies a lavish spiritual oasis, the first hint of James Hilton’s “Shangri-La.” Fifteen centuries after Tao Qian, British explorers combed the canyons of southern Tibet for just such a beyul, a “hidden land” of bliss and nectar that, as described in ancient Buddhist texts, lay in a sacred range called Pemako.
Shambhala
Shambhala was the name chosen by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche for his institution. Under the auspices of the 16th Karmapa and the sponsorship of his devoted followers, he was the first Tibetan lama to receive a Western university education (at Oxford, England.) The Buddhist teachings that he considered to be suitable for Western students incorporate the Tibetan Karma Kagyu tradition along with other elements.
Sach Khand / Gyanganj
In India, the secret land is known as Gyanganj or as Siddhashram. References are found in Valmiki’s Ramayana and also in The Mahabharata. Guru Nanak (17th century), who established Sikkism, referred to Sach Khand.
In Autobiography of a Yogi. (mid-20th century) Paramahansa Yogananda wrote about meeting the guru of his guru’s guru (his great-grandguru) named Mahavatar Babaji. He described him as still alive in the Badrinath region of the Himalayas, and despite his great age he retained the appearance of a young man.
That guru was connected with Gyanganj, as was the guru of Gopinath Kaviraj (died 1976,) the principal of the Government College of Sanskrit in Benares, who wrote Siddhabhoomi about those mysterious places. His own teacher, the Bengali guru, Swami Vishudhananda, had told him of the time he spent in Gyanganj studying Surya Vigyan (solar science.) The practice of that knowledge enabled him to manifest various objects and to transform one thing into another by manipulating the sun’s rays.
Yogananda also knew Vishudhananda, and described a meeting with him in Calcutta, where he witnessed his ability to manifest various perfumes on demand.
Paul Brunton, in A Search for Secret India also reported that same siddhi of Vishudhananda’s, and also claims that he saw him revive a dead bird.
Gyanganj is generally described as a plateau in Tibet lying north of Kailash. Like Plato’s Atlantis, or a place out of Arthurian legend, it is described as surrounded by a moat filled with crystalline water. A bow-shaped drawbridge links it to our world, and it can only by raised by one who knows how to do Surya Vigyan.
Akash Ganj
This place is in Arunachal Pradesh (north eastern India,) 120 km. from Rohing. Also known as Akash Ganga, its focus is the small hill where the holy river is viewed as emerging from the topknot of Lord Shiva. The crystal spring spills down the rocks and collects in and around a small hill.
Here it is believed that all species of animal live in perfect harmony. The pool is one of those that the birds seem to maintain by picking out any dead leaves or other things that might sully the water.
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