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At the same time, the Dalai Lama repeatedly shit ed the conversation to the conditions of Buddhists in Siberia and Mongolia, surprising the Bolshevik visitors with his detailed knowledge of the situation. Chapchaev sensed that somebody had i lled in His Holiness very well. Yet he never could i gure out who.
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us, the Bolshevik plan to tie Tibet to Red Russia through Mongolia completely fell through. Red pilgrims again had to leave Lhasa empty-handed. If they still had some expectations about the Dalai Lama before coming to Lhasa, now they realized that His Holiness could not be duped, played, or manipulated. h e Lhasa ruler did not feel at all that his budding nation needed Russian, or for that matter English or Chinese, presence.
In December 1927, two months before the humiliated Chapchaev and his “Mongols” departed from Tibet, a messenger brought to Lhasa unpleasant news from the governor at Nagchu on the northern border: another group of pilgrims coming from Mongolia was about to enter the country. Not again, Lhasa oi cials might have thought in desperation. Yet there was something odd about this new party, which stood out among real and false pilgrims coming from Siberia and Mongolia. h e head of the party, a sage-looking man with a trim beard, insisted that he and his European friends were Buddhists from the West.
h ey also traveled under a strange l ag covered with stars and stripes and called themselves Americans. Still, trusted people reported to His Holiness that the man in charge was a Russian. h e Dalai Lama was
also surprised to hear that this strange expedition carried another l ag, a familiar sacred scroll with an image of Buddha Maitreya. h e sage-looking man insisted that he and his people came to consummate the union between Western and Eastern Buddhists under His Holiness’s leadership.
Who was this man? Whom was he working for? Was he a genuine ambassador or, like these recent Red Mongol visitors, a wolf in sheep’s clothing? Welcome to the world of Nicholas Roerich, Shambhala warrior and one more pilgrim on a mission to unlock the Forbidden Kingdom.
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Make no little plans, they have no power to stir men’s souls.
—Daniel Burnham, American architect
Seven
The Great Plan:
Nicholas and Helena Roerich
On December 26, 1923, in eastern Tibet, one hundred heavily armed Buddhist monks, hidden in the morning fog, saddled their horses and quickly galloped northward away from Tashilumpo monastery, heading toward Mongolia. In the middle of the crowd, shielded on all sides by his bodyguards and followers, rode the sixth Panchen Lama (1883–1937), abbot of the monastery and the spiritual leader of Tibet.
He was running for his life from the wrath of the Dalai Lama. In the eyes of Lhasa, the Panchen Lama, who ruled as a powerful local lord and refused to pay taxes, was a dangerous separatist defying the ef orts of His Holiness to turn Tibet into a modern nation-state. h e oi cer sent to chase the l eeing party was quite fond of the mild and friendly abbot and did not rush to fuli ll his assignment. Pretending to be ill, he camped with his detachment for two days, and when the pursuit was renewed, it was too late: the Panchen Lama was far ahead of his pursuers, deep in Chinese Mongolia beyond the reach of the Dalai Lama. h e runaway abbot settled into a self-imposed exile near the border with Red Mongolia.
At er the Panchen Lama’s escape, a prophecy spread throughout Inner Asia that the runaway abbot would come back to Tibet as the king of Shambhala and punish evildoers. h e Panchen Lama’s own grim predictions added to the general excitement: 155
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h e time has already arrived when it is rather dii cult to escape such terrible suf erings. Dead bodies will i ll the ravines and channels and rivers of blood will l ow. Even if there will be roads, there will be no one to walk along them. Even if there will be yurts, there will be no one to live in them. Even if there will be clothes, there will be no one to wear them.
Remember that the supreme nobles will be exterminated by diseases, and also the lower poor ones will be troubled by illness. Rich and poor will be equal. Only good ones and evil ones will be distinguished. 1
h e l ight of the Panchen Lama stirred diplomatic and spy games that involved England, Japan, China, and Red Russia. Surprisingly each, for its own reasons, wanted the Panchen Lama back in Tibet. China had plans to use him as a puppet to keep the Land of Snows in its orbit and disrupt nation-building in Tibet. Britain wanted to reconcile the runaway abbot with the Dalai Lama to make Tibet into a nation that would serve as a buf er between British India and Red Russia and China. h e Bolsheviks were wary of the Panchen Lama hanging around the borders of Red Mongolia where he enjoyed skyrocketing popularity and could present an ideological challenge to the sprouts of Communism. Added to this was a slim hope that he might be used to help the Bolsheviks get a foot into the Forbidden Kingdom. Finally, Japan, a latecomer to this game, wanted to use the Panchen Lama and his Shambhala war to squeeze the Chinese out of Inner Asia.
In the same fall of 1923, a peculiar sage-looking European appeared in Darjeeling in the northernmost part of India near the Tibetan border. A plump man with a round face and a small Mongol-styled beard, he moved and talked like a high dignitary. He announced that he was a painter, and, indeed, from time to time people could see him here and there with a sketchbook, drawing local landscapes. Yet, even for an eccentric painter, he acted strangely. To begin with, he argued that he was an American, although he spoke English with a heavy Slavic accent. He also demonstrated a deep interest in Tibetan Buddhism, particularly in the Maitreya and Shambhala legends, which was not unusual—except 156
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that the painter had a ceremonial Dalai Lama robe made for himself and donned it occasionally, hinting he was the reincarnated i t h Dalai Lama, the famous reformer in early modern times. His behavior raised the eyebrows of local authorities, who passed this information along to the British intelligence service.
As strange as it might sound, the “sage” did strike a chord with some local Tibetan Buddhists, for several visiting lamas did recognized him as the reincarnated Dalai Lama by the moles on his cheeks. At that time, no one except several close relatives and disciples of the painter knew that he had a grand plan, which included dislodging the Dalai Lama, bringing the Panchen Lama back to Tibet, reforming Tibetan Buddhism, and establishing in the vast spaces of Inner Asia a new theocracy, which he planned to call the Sacred Union of the East. He saw the l ight of the Panchen Lama as an occult signal of the coming Shambhala war that would bring to the world the new golden age of Maitreya. h e name of this ambitious dreamer was Nicholas Roerich.
Education of a Practical Idealist
Roerich, who liked to call himself a practical idealist, came from a family with Baltic German roots on the paternal side; his father was a notary and his mother, a Russian, came from the ranks of city burghers.
Nicholas had three siblings: an elder sister and two younger brothers.
Since early childhood, his great passion was archaeology. As a nine-year-old, Roerich already took part in archaeological digs. h is love for the past, legends, and fairy tales would remain with him for the rest of his life, and from the beginning he took legends and prophecies seriously, considering them rel ections of actual events.
Another of Roerich’s passions was art, for which he had a great talent. By 1917, he was already a famous and accomplished painter, working in the Art Nouveau style and portraying spiritual scenes, gradually shit ing from Slavic primitivism to Oriental mysticism. Favorite subjects were various Buddhist and Hindu mythological characters depicted 157
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against mountain landscapes of blue, purple, yellow, and orange. 2 Many contemporaries noted one characteristic that united his canvases—they were cold and solemn. Devoid of emotion, Roerich's images were reminiscent of spiritual messages. A fellow painter and colleague described his art thus: “h e world of Roerich represents a fairy tale clad in stone.
He spreads colors on his paintings i rmly like a mosaic. h e forms of his art do not breathe and have no emotions at all. h ey are eternal like the rocks of clif s and caves.” 3 Roerich himself explained that his goal was to capture and depict the ideal forms of life and therefore he liked to paint from his head rather than from his heart.
In 1901 Roerich met and married his soul mate, Helena Shaposhnik-ova, the daughter of a famous St. Petersburg architect. It was a happy marriage: Helena and Nicholas were not only a couple but also fellow dreamers, which contributed to Roerich’s conversion to the life of a spiritual seeker. h ey would share all their spiritual and geopolitical adventures. h eir two sons, George and Svetoslav, who were made part of their Great Plan, later became scholars, explorers, and painters. h e only
troubles were the horrible headaches and i ts that haunted Helena, the results of two serious head traumas. One was received during her childhood and another in adulthood when she fell on her head from an upper bunk in a train compartment. At er the second trauma Helena began to have visions of i re and l ames that consumed her entire body. Another serious damage to her health might have been caused by prenatal trauma suf ered when her mother had unsuccessfully tried to abort her. 4
Everything changed when Helena reinterpreted those i ts as an invitation to converse with otherworldly forces. Such an approach was unusual during that time when Freudian psychiatry was becoming a cultural fad and such things were treated as illness. Helena later claimed that a message came from her otherworldly teacher informing her that the i ts were the result of the discovery of new energy centers in her body and that the work of these centers was what produced the excruci-ating pains. 5 h e i re and l ames she saw inside herself accompanied by visions and voices became the manifestation of Agni Yoga (Fire Yoga), 158
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a spiritual system the couple later worked into a new creed at er they moved to the United States in 1921.
As soon as she converted her sickness into spiritual experiences, Helena’s life became a bit easier. Now the headaches, horrii c images, and visions that continued to haunt her became messages from otherworldly spiritual teachers. Moreover, Helena soon learned to put herself inten-tionally into a trancelike mood in order to receive information from the
