"What is not known with any amount of certainty is when passing through the portal from the outside into the monastery, is the measurable distance from the outside to the inside more than the thickness of the doors' front to back, or once in the monastery is the inside and all of the surrounding countryside beyond the thickness of the monastery doors actually somewhere else?"
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Almost all written and historical accounts of Shambhala, also known as Gyanganj and Shangri-la, describe it as a spiritual and mystical place, a city, a country, kingdom or hermitage infused with the blessings of the universe, inhabited by Enlightened immortals existing somewhere beyond time in a remote and hidden section deep in uncharted areas of the Himalayas. Taking it as real or a legend, most people can pretty much grasp the concept behind the words of such a place until it comes to the part of being beyond time and actually going there.
In a much smaller circle of knowers and non-knowers and not widely known beyond that is what Langoliers are, and what if anything do they have to do or would they have to do with Shambhala? Time, they have to do with time. Their use here by example is to help introduce and clarify a wider understanding of Shambhala and time's other than Samsara association with Shambhala.
Langoliers, at least what has come down to us in the public realm, is that their sole existence or purpose is to eat away the edges of already in place used time by devouring or destroying it in order to make way for new time, or as we know it or is sometime called, the future.
As for a connection between Shambhala and Langoliers as found in the title, the connection is found like the Buddha, who from his Enlightenment forward, as part of his teaching method, presented his spiritual and philosophical concepts to those so interested through the use of comparisons, analogies, allegories, similes, and metaphors. To wit:
langoliers [lang-goh-leers]
noun
LANGOLIERS: the name given to fictional entities or creatures whose sole reason or purpose for existence is to devour, destroy or eat the edges of time when the time is used or no longer needed, and in doing so, keep time balanced by making room for the future. Langoliers have typically been depicted to be ravenous and sphere-shaped with three mandibles. They have the ability to move quickly and fly in a near anti-gravity fashion, staying motionless or propelling themselves at ultra high speeds while having no signs of appendages or wings for locomotion. Although they respond as though being able to see and hear there are no outward signs of sight or sound receptors.(see)
In the present day popular culture of U.S. lexicon most adults with a reasonable amount of educational background, if not specifically, have a general to at least a semi-vague idea of who the author Carlos Castaneda is. The same is true of Stephen King. While it is true, for me, when it comes to having much about the author Stephen King on the internet I fall short, and when I do bring him up it almost always has to do with Carl Stephenson's short story Leiningen Versus the Ants, which curiously enough shows up in the Langolier story. See:
LEININGEN VERSUS THE ANTS
Unlike what I've written about Stephen King, I do have a significant number of pages and information scattered around the net about Castaneda, most written by me, having started with not much more than maybe a line or two many years ago. That line or two continued to grow over time as more and more people started asking me more and more questions and seeking more and more clarifications. Most of what has been presented by me about Castaneda leans toward offering pros and cons of his central character he writes about that he describes as being a powerful Yaqui Indian shaman-sorcerer named Don Juan Matus and whether Don Juan was a real person or not.
Why do I care if Don Juan is real or not one way or the other and why would I entertain the possibility that the very strange man I met in the desert and have cited elsewhere in length might have even been Don Juan's own unknown, albeit, unnamed master teacher said to have been a diablero? There are any number of reasons. The most glaring for me personally is that Castaneda is one of the most high profile and best known example of a person that has claimed to fly. I have delved into Castaneda and his credibility over and over in depth from one end of the spectrum to the other, primarily to garner back-up material to justify the experience outlined in The Wanderling's Journey. Besides my experience and similar experiences by others having to have happened as found in the aforesaid link, for the skeptics, deniers, and disgruntlers that such an event could even be remotely possible in the first place, I direct you to:
THE ZEN MAN FLIES
I bring up Castaneda and cite him here as an example for one reason, to introduce into the mix a second author, albeit more of a science-fiction or horror type author than Castaneda, who has written a specific story that I want to use like I did Castaneda --- as an allegory of simile. The author is the previously mentioned Stephen King and the book or story is The Langoliers and the idea is to help clarify a wider understanding of Shambhala.
Langoliers, the name given them by King, as described in the definition above, are creatures or entities of some type whose sole reason or purpose for existence is to devour (or eat as it seems) the edges of time when the time is used or no longer needed. In the story a group of people on a cross country flight experience a time warp and end up caught beyond the edge of regular time they would typically inhabit, ending up between that edge and the portion the Langoliers inhabit. In doing so they see for themselves the destruction of that no longer needed time and possibly then, because they are in it, themselves as well.
The analogy being made between the Langolers and Shambhala, and although an analogy, the content within the two separate analogies is diametrically the opposite. Where the Langoliers eat and destroy time at the edge of time, although there are no opposite or anti-Langoliers in play, in the realm of Shambhala beyond Earthly time as we experience it, the edge of time of Shambhala seems expand as it is needed where it is needed. If it is true expansion or Mobius Stirp like or otherwise is something to be pondered and of which is done so to some extent at the Mobius Strip link.
In the The Code Maker, The Zen Maker I tell of two monks and myself having embarked on what turned out to be a three day journey well into the hinterlands beyond the monastery. Around noon of the third day we came upon a small farm and a lone woman working in the surrounding fields, a farm that it was quite apparent carried a certain high level significance than other small farms of similar ilk we had passed during our journey. When the woman saw us she came forward and as she did the two monks turned to leave using hand gestures indicating I should remain. When I turned back the woman had already entered the one-room farm house leaving the door open. As I stepped in she was sitting in one of two straight backed wooden chairs at a matching thickly hewn heavily planked wooden table in the center of the room, a room otherwise devoid of furniture. After a certain amount of time and small talk she suggested we go outside for a walk. In Code Make, The Zen Maker I write:
"Crossing the field from the sunshine side of the house we soon came across a small lake whose far border edged up against the lower foothills that led to higher hills that eventually gave way over a far distance, mountains, the peaks of which were shrouded with either snow, clouds, or both."
Again, as an analogy, for those of you who may have been to Disneyland and while there visited or seen Cars Land, you may recall for example, that the desert community of Radiator Springs, i.e., the plot line location of Cars Land supposedly somewhere in the vast reaches of Arizona desert along Route 66, is basically self contained in the park. After entering the little burg, clear across the far end of town beyond the end of the main street as shown in the graphic below, is a sawtooth-like desert mountain range. Since the visitor can't see over or beyond the mountains the implication is that on the other side of the peaks the desert continues on and on. Of course, it doesn't. On the other side of the faux mountain peaks is not an endless desert of cactus, Joshua trees, and jack rabbits, but Katella Avenue and the city of Anaheim endowed with more than their fair share of cheap motels, hundreds of homeless living in their own urine, makeshift tents, and cardboard boxes rent free under freeway overpasses. Or not.
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When the aforementioned woman and I left the farm house and came across the lake whose far border edged up against the lower foothills that led to higher hills that eventually gave way over an even greater distance of mountains, the peaks of which were shrouded with either snow, clouds, or both, I suppose in an analogy-like comparison with the beyond the lake backdrop of far distance mountains and peaks could be drawn with the distant mountains bordering up beyond Radiator Springs. Other than the mental construct of of doing so, on both sides of the mountains, it ends there.
"From start to finish the events surrounding my return was like walking through a series of hooked together passenger cars on a high speed train being pulled by a locomotive driven by the hands of others that you couldn't get to. All the while it was racing out of control down a track that somebody else built with unknown others having selected the destination. From one car to the next each had its own set of passengers in their own passenger car environment, separate from the car behind or the one ahead. In the meantime as I went car to car the outside edges of the train sped by regardless of the time of day or night or where you were or which car you were in on the train or even where the train itself was."
The third and final analogy, which when added all together should spring forth a time answer, comes from one of my favorite observations or description of time as found in a Twilight Zone episode titled "A Matter of Minutes" based on the 1941 story by Theodore Sturgeon published in the so-called fantasy fiction pulp magazine titled Unknown. In the Twilight Zone version, A Matter Minutes, the story's protagonist describes the flow of time as each minute being initially like an empty boxcar hooked in a row to a whole series or line of boxcars with each one of those empty boxcar minutes needing to be filled with everything that the minute comes to be has to be filled with. The protagonist attired in a sort of yellow cast outfit has a whole work like crew of men or people-like beings that are completely blue in color from top-to-bottom as seen in the graphic below who accomplish the task putting together each of the up coming minutes.
The truly interesting part is how time and electro-magnetic radiant energy, i.e., light, are so inextricably intertwined. According to quantum theory light is both particle and wave, the particles of light being called photons --- or in our case here, boxcars, while the whole train itself with no start of finish all hooked together going down the track as though a continuum, the wave.
To see the complete episode with the "boxcar theory" of time shown and explained click graphic below:
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If the above link disappears, which it has twice, as a last resort try HERE.
"Mid-evening on the night of the-unknown-to-anybody at the time up-coming crash I had gone to bed in the bunk in my compartment and as far as I knew had fallen fast asleep. Sometime during that period, between the time I fell asleep and the crash occurred, I found myself neither asleep nor in my bunk but outside of the train standing barefoot on the desert floor in the middle of the night in my PJs some distance off from a set of railroad tracks, my hand being held by an elderly Native American man."
THE WRECK OF THE NUMBER 19 SANTA FE CHIEF JULY 3, 1944.
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FOR THE COMPLETE LANGOLIER MOVIE PLEASE CLICK IMAGE
FOR COMPLETE BOOK CLICK IMAGE
PHYLLIS DAVIS
THE SAIGON TEA GIRL
THE LEGEND OF MIAO SHAN
DR. MARGARET CHUNG M.D.
FLYING TIGER RECRUITER, ADVOCATE, PHYSICIAN
KUAN YIN: COMASSIONATE SAVIOURESS
CHIYONO: JAPAN'S FIRST FEMALE ZEN MASTER
KUAN YIN, SHAMBHALA, AND OM MANI PADME HUM
PULYAN'S TEACHER: FEMALE RAMANA WITHOUT A MOUNTAIN
OM MANI PADME HUM
THE BEST OF
CARLOS CASTANEDA
<<< PREV ---- LIST ---- NEXT >>>
RIDING THE CAB FORWARDS
ROBOT WOMAN
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CLICK
HERE FOR
ENLIGHTENMENT
ON THE RAZOR'S
EDGE
THE WANDERLING
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As to the subject of donations, for those of you who may be interested in doing so as it applies to the gratefulness of my works, I invariably suggest any funds be directed toward THE WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT and/or THE AMERICAN RED CROSS.
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While I was still in grade school I read an adult-level book about the Flying Tigers called The Lady and the Tigers written by a woman by the name of Olga Greenlaw who had been with the Tigers from day one. In the book she wrote something about one of the pilots that I as a not yet 10 year old boy never forgot:
"The Chinese scouts found a body in the same location or thereabouts where Black Mac bailed out when Jack Newkirk got killed --- in March.
"The body was unrecognizable, as there was nothing left, the ants had eaten all the flesh, but the uniform the bones were covered with was an A.V.G. flying suit with the insignia still on it."
You might imagine what I, as a young boy thought of when I first read about the jungle ants gnawing the flesh completely clean right off the pilot's skeleton leaving nothing but bare bones laying inside the flight suit, all the internal organs gone. Some image.
So said, a few years later when I was in high school, except possibly for a little extra effort on my part in both art and journalism, I probably wasn't the best student Redondo Union High School ever had. However, I still remember in one of my English classes, although I don't remember which grade, we were assigned to read Carl Stephenson's short story "Leiningen Versus the Ants." The story revolves around an owner of a plantation in the middle of the Brazilian jungle who had to do battle with a mile wide hoard of army ants devouring everything in their path, with the hoard headed straight toward his plantation. After reading the story we were to write then give an oral report. I combined what I read in Leiningen with Greenlaw's description of the downed A.V.G. pilot and for the first time ever --- and most likely my last for a high school English assignment --- I got an A.
NAVY VETERAN MISS HELEN SINSABAUGH (1908 - 2000)
GREATEST HIGH SCHOOL JOURNALISM TEACHER EVER
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When it comes to Leiningen Versus the Ants and my high school report and verbal presentation thereof, after I got my one and only A, it didn't end there. In August 1990, Stephen King put together and released a collection of short stories published in a single volume titled "Four Past Midnight." One of the stories is The Langoliers. In the text of the story King brings up Leiningen Versus the Ants in a round about way by mentioning a movie based on the Leiningen story. As King lays it out in The Langoliers, Brian Engle, who was the pilot of the American Pride L1011 and of which both pilot and plane were major players as the plot unfolded, brings up for some reason a movie he had seen on late night TV a long time ago that starred Charlton Heston. In the text, speaking of the movie, Engle says:
"In it, Charlton Heston had owned a big plantation in South America. The plantation had been attacked by a vast moving carpet of soldier ants, ants which ate everything in their path --- trees, grass, buildings, cows, men. What had that movie been called? Brian couldn't remember. He only remembered that Charlton had kept trying increasingly desperate tricks to stop the ants, or at least delay them. Had he beaten them in the end? Brian couldn't remember."
The Naked Jungle was released March 3, 1954 with all acknowledgments and credit given to Leiningen Versus the Ants. If you would like to watch the Naked Jungle movie, free and complete with no sign-ups or advertisements and see for yourself a mile wide swath of ants devouring everything in their path, and all before CGI, please click the image below:
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THE WANDERLING AND HIS HIGH SCHOOL CHUMS
THE REDONDO BEACH HISTORICAL MUSEUM
The Redondo Beach Historical Museum mission statement says it is to bring together those persons interested in history, especially the history of the City of Redondo Beach, to promote, preserve and protect the historical and cultural resources of the City.
Fifie Malouf, flyovers by giant unknown objects, Japanese midget submarines washing up on shore next to the pier. Every now and then I get an email from someone who tells me, after having visited the Redondo Beach Historical Museum and carrying on a casual conversation with museum staff mentioning something they recalled from material of mine regarding some aspect of Redondo Beach they came across, it is not always received with full 100% substantiating results --- in other words, it gets pooh-poohed. See:
TIKE KARAVAS
THE FLYING TIGERS
THE BOY IN THE MAN REMEMBERS THE LEGEND
OLGA GREENLAW, AGE 31, HIAPHONG HARBOR
The photo below showing several men dressed in khaki military-like garb sitting in a jeep in front of a Flying Tiger adorned P-40 is from an article published in Life Magazine dated March 30, 1942, Vol. 12, No. 13. I cite the same article in my page on Flying Tigers and use the photo as the opening graphic at the top of the page for THE BOY AND HIS JEEP: Adventures In The Desert. It just so happens the man sitting on the shotgun side is Jack Newkirk. Jack Newkirk is one of the Flying Tiger pilots killed in relation to he ants so mentioned by Greenlaw in the quote a few paragraphs back.
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JACK NEWKIRK OF THE FLYING TIGERS
A MATTER OF MINUTES (YESTEDAY WAS MONDAY)
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ILLUSTRATED VERSIONS OF
H.G. WELLS: THE TIME MACHINE
CLICK EITHER OF THE VERSIONS SHOWN BELOW
THE BOOTSTRAP PARADOX------------------------BUCK ROGERS: HIS ORIGIN
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NEVADA DESERT'S RED-HAIRED GIANTS--------------------THE SECRET OF THE AZTECS-----
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WHAT IS NOT KNOWN WITH ANY AMOUNT OF CERTAINTY IS WHEN PASSING THROUGH THE PORTAL FROM THE OUTSIDE INTO
THE MONASTERY, IS THE MEASURABLE DISTANCE FROM THE OUTSIDE TO THE INSIDE MORE THAN THE THICKNESS OF THE
DOORS' FRONT TO THE BACK, OR ONCE IN THE MONASTERY IS THE INSIDE AND ALL OF THE SURROUNDING COUNTRYSIDE
BEYOND THE THICKNESS OF THE MONASTERY DOORS ACTUALLY SOMEWHERE ELSE?
One morning before sunrise, after having learned a number of the ins-and-outs of the monastery, I went on a solo trip down the somewhat perilous darkened mountain path to a nearby village for reasons I don't recall. Returning to the monastery, after the long trek back found me only just crouched down in the fields some distance outside the walls doing my business before entering and in the process of doing so I felt the shadows of three men fall across my face. Apparently they had been snooping around the village for a day or two when, after they got up or were woke up, they heard the white monk was in town. They hastened along the trail in my wake in an effort to catch me before I entered the monastery and be beyond their reach.
Over the shoulders of two, with one in the hands of the other, were automatic weapons made of cold steel-gray machined metal with big long curved clips filled with bullets, all three men being the total antithesis to all I had been engaged in for so many months. Then, in what could be called nothing less than being kidnapped against my will at gunpoint by the three heavily armed military irregulars --- taken I guess fulfilling their somewhat iffy duty as hunters of the white monk --- and except for a bag I had with me was I allowed to have or get anything, I was lashed hands and feet to a two man over-the-shoulder pole and carried dangling lengthwise between my tied wrists and ankles toward the escarpment, then, once down, transported back to known civilization.
RETURN TO THE MONASTERY
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