The Secret of Shambhala: In Search of the Eleventh Insight (13 page)

“His energy opened you up to explore something new,” Yin continued, “instead of being stuck in dread or despair or whatever
else you people were feeling.”

Yin stopped talking briefly, looking closely at me.

“Of course,” he went on, “it could have gone the other way. If the man hadn’t been strong enough in his energy as he walked
into the pool area, he might have been overwhelmed by the low energy state of the rest of you and been brought down to your
level. That’s what happened to you when you met the young Hollander. He was terrified and his fear affected you. You let his
mood prevail.

“You see, the energy fields of all of us mix together out there, and the strongest ones prevail. That’s the unconscious dynamic
that characterizes the human world. The state of our energy, our prevailing expectations, no matter what they are, go out
and influence everyone else’s mood and attitude. The level of awareness between humans, and all the expectations that go with
it, are contagious.

“This fact explains the great mysteries of crowd behavior, why decent people, influenced by a few who are in great fear or
anger, can get caught up in lynchings, riots, or other despicable deeds. It also explains why hypnosis works and why movies
and television have such great influence on the weak-minded. The prayer-field of each person on Earth intermingles with all
the others, creating all the norms and group affiliations and national mindsets and ethnic hostilities that we see out there.”

Yin smiled. “Culture is contagious. Just travel to a foreign land and see how the people not only think differently but feel
differently, as a matter of mood and outlook.

“This is a reality that we must understand and master. We must remember to consciously use the Third Extension. When we are
relating to people and find we are taking on their mood, being overcome with their expectations, we have to go back and fill
up again and overflow very consciously until the mood elevates. If only you could have done this with the young Dutchman,
you might have found out about Wil.”

I was impressed. Yin seemed to have a full mastery of this information.

“Yin,” I said, “you’re a scholar.”

His smile faded.

“There’s a difference between knowing how all this works,” he replied, “and being able to do it.”

I
must have slept for hours because when I awoke, the sun was out and the Jeep was pulled off onto a flat area above the road.
I stretched, then collapsed back into the seat. For a few minutes I stared out past several mounds of rocks at the gravel
highway below us. A nomad leading a horse and small wagon trod by, but otherwise the road was empty. The sky was crystal-clear,
and from somewhere behind us I could hear a bird’s call. I took a breath. Some of the tenseness from the day before had eased.

Yin slowly began to move and then sat up, glancing over at me with a smile. He stepped out of the Jeep and stretched, then
pulled a camp stove from the back and put on a pan of water for oatmeal and tea. I joined him and again tried to follow him
through a set of difficult tai chi exercises.

From behind us, we heard a vehicle racing down the road. We waited behind a rock as the Land Cruiser sped by, both of us recognizing
it at the same time.

“That’s the young Hollander,” Yin said, running to the Jeep. I grabbed the camp stove and threw it into the back and hopped
into the vehicle as Yin was turning around.

“We’ll be fortunate to catch him at that speed,” Yin commented as we gave chase.

We drove over a small hill and down into a narrow valley, finally catching a glimpse of the vehicle cruising down the road
several hundred yards ahead of us.

“We have to reach out to him with our prayer-energy,” Yin said.

I took a deep breath, visualizing my energy outflowing up the road and into the Land Cruiser and having an effect on the young
man. I imaged him slowing down and stopping.

As I sent the image, the vehicle actually sped up, pulling away from us. I was confused.

“What are you doing?” Yin yelled, looking over at me.

“I’m using my field to make him stop.”

“Don’t use your energy that way,” Yin said quickly. “It has the opposite effect.”

I looked at him blankly.

“What do you do,” Yin asked, “when someone tries to manipulate you into doing something?”

“I resist it,” I said.

“That’s right,” Yin went on. “At the unconscious level the Hollander can feel you trying to tell him what to do. He feels
manipulated, and that gives him the sense that whoever is behind him is up to no good, which produces more fear and adds to
his determination to flee.

“All we can do is visualize our energy reaching out and increasing his level of vibration overall. This allows him to more
fully overcome the fear and get in touch with his higher-self intuitions, which hopefully will lead him to be less afraid
of us and to maybe risk a conversation. That’s all we can do with our prayer-energy. To do anything else is to presume that
we know his best life course, but only he knows that. Perhaps it will be that his higher intuition—once we send him enough
energy—is to dump us and get out of the country. We have to be open to that. All that we can do is help him make the decision
from the highest possible level of energy.”

We rounded a curve in the road, and the blue Land Cruiser was nowhere to be seen. Yin slowed down. To our right was a smaller
road that seemed to stand out in appearance.

“That way!” I said, pointing.

A hundred yards ahead, at the bottom of a small hill, was a wide but shallow tributary. In the middle was the Dutchman’s vehicle,
racing its engine, spinning its wheels, and spattering mud, but going nowhere. It was stuck.

The young man glanced back at us and opened the door, preparing to run. But when he recognized me, he shut the engine off
and got out in the knee-deep water.

As we pulled our Jeep alongside, Yin looked at me closely, and I could tell from his expression that he was reminding me to
use my energy. I nodded to him.

“We can help you,” I said to the young man.

He eyed us suspiciously for a moment, but gradually warmed as Yin and I got out and pushed the fender of the Land Cruiser
as he gunned the engine. Its wheels spun for a moment, spewing mud against my pants leg, then it leaped out of the hole and
crossed to the other side of the river. We followed in our Jeep. The young man looked at us for a moment, as though deciding
whether to drive away, but got out and walked back toward us. As he approached, we introduced ourselves. He told us his name
was Jacob.

As we spoke, I began to look for the wisest expression I could find on his face.

Jacob was shaking his head, still terrified, and spent several minutes finding out who we were and querying us further about
his missing friends.

“I don’t know why I came to Tibet,” he said finally. “I always thought it was too dangerous. But my friends wanted me to come
with them. I have no idea why I agreed. My God, there were Chinese soldiers everywhere. How did they know we were going to
be there?”

“Did you ask for directions from anyone you didn’t know?” Yin asked.

He looked hard at us. “I did. Do you think they told the soldiers?”

Yin nodded, and Jacob seemed to go deeper into panic, looking around in all directions nervously.

“Jacob,” I asked, “I have to know, did you meet Wilson James?”

Jacob still seemed unable to focus. “How do we know the Chinese aren’t right behind us?”

I tried to catch his eye, finally managing to get him to look at me. “This is important, Jacob. Do you remember seeing Wil?
He looks Peruvian, but he speaks with an American accent.”

Jacob still looked confused. “Why is this important? We must find a way out of here.”

As we listened, Jacob made several suggestions about where we might camp until the Chinese left the area, or better yet, how
we might make a mad dash across the Himalayas into India.

I continued to visualize my energy going into him and to focus on his face, looking for an expression of calmness and wisdom
in his features, especially in his eyes. Finally he began to look at me.

“Why do you want to find this man?” he asked.

“We believe that he needs our help. He is the man who asked me to come to Tibet.”

He looked at me for a moment, apparently trying to focus.

“Yes,” he said finally. “I did meet your friend. He was in the lobby of a hotel in Lhasa. We were sitting across from each
other and started talking about the Chinese occupation. I’ve been incensed about the Chinese for a long time, and I guess
the reason I came here was that I wanted to do something, anything. Wil told me he had seen me three times that day at various
locations in the hotel, and that it meant something. I didn’t know what he was talking about.”

“Did he mention a place called Shambhala?” I asked.

He looked interested. “Not exactly. He mentioned something in passing, something about Tibet not being freed until Shambhala
was understood. Something like that.”

“Did he mention a gateway?”

“I don’t think so. I can’t remember much of the conversation. It was really very brief.”

“What about his destination?” Yin asked. “Did he mention where he was going?”

Jacob looked away, thinking, then said, “I think he mentioned a place called—Dormar, I think it was—and something else about
the ruins of an old monastery there.”

I looked at Yin

“I know that place,” he said. “It’s in the far northwest, four or five days travel. It will be rough… and cold.”

The thought of having to travel that far into the wilderness of Tibet sent my energy crashing.

“Do you want to come with us?” Yin asked Jacob.

“Oh no,” he said. “I have to get out of here.”

“Are you sure?” Yin pressed. “The Chinese seem to be very active right now.”

“I can’t,” Jacob said, looking away. “I’m the only one left to contact my government and look for my friends, if I can find
a way to get help.”

Yin scribbled out something on a piece of paper and handed it to Jacob.

“Find a phone and call this number,” Yin said. “Mention my name and give them a return number. Once they check you out, they
will call and tell you what to do.” Yin went on to tell Jacob the best way back to Saga, and we walked with him as he made
his way back to his Land Cruiser.

Once he had climbed inside, he said, “Good luck… I hope you find your friend.”

I nodded.

“If you do,” he added, “then maybe it will turn out that this is why I came to Tibet, huh? So that I could help.”

He turned and started the Cruiser, looked at us one more time, and drove away. Yin and I hurried back to our vehicle, and
as we pulled back onto the main road, I noticed he was smiling.

“Do you think you understand the Third Extension now?” he asked. “Think about all that it entails.”

I looked at him for a moment, pondering his question. The key to this extension, it seemed, was the idea that our fields can
boost others, lifting people into a higher awareness where they can tap into their own guiding intuitions. What expanded this
idea for me, beyond anything I had heard in Peru, was the concept that our prayer-field flows out in front of us, and that
we can set it to uplift everyone around us—even though we aren’t talking to them directly or even seeing their faces. We can
do this by visualizing fully that it is happening—by expecting it.

Of course, one has to be totally noncontrolling with this energy; otherwise it backfires, as I had seen when I tried to make
Jacob stop his vehicle. I mentioned all this to Yin.

“What you are understanding is the contagious aspect of the human mind,” Yin explained. “In a sense, we all share minds. Certainly
we have control over ourselves and can pull back, cut ourselves off, think independently. But as I said earlier, the prevailing
human worldview is always a giant field of belief and expectation. The key to human progress is to have enough people who
can beam a higher expectation of love into this human field. This effort allows us to build an ever higher level of energy,
and to inspire each other toward our greatest potential.”

Yin seemed to relax for a moment and smiled over at me.

“The culture of Shambhala,” he said, “is built around setting such a field.”

I couldn’t help smiling back. This journey was beginning to make sense in a way I couldn’t yet articulate.

T
he next two days went smoothly, with no sign of the Chinese military. Still on the southern route heading northwest, we crossed
another river near the top of Mayun-La, a high mountain pass. The scenery was spectacular with icy mountain peaks on each
side of the road. We spent the first night at Hor Qu in an unmarked roadhouse that Yin knew about and proceeded the next morning
toward Lake Manasarovar.

As we approached the lake, Yin said, “Here we will have to be very careful again. The lake, and Mount Kailash farther on,
are key destinations for people from all over the region: India, Nepal, China, as well as Tibet. It is a holy place like no
other. There will be many pilgrims as well as Chinese checkpoints.”

Several miles ahead Yin pulled off on an old track and we made our way around one of the checkpoints, then caught sight of
the lake. I looked at Yin, who smiled. The sight was unbelievably beautiful: a huge turquoise pearl set against the rocky,
brown-olive terrain, all framed against the snow-covered mountains in the background. One of the mountains, Yin pointed out,
was Kailash.

As we drove past the lake, we could see numerous groups of pilgrims standing around large poles strung with flags.

“What are those?” I asked.

“Prayer flags,” Yin replied. “Placing flags symbolizing our prayers has been a tradition in Tibet for centuries. The prayer
flags are left to flap in the wind, and this sends the prayers they contain continually out to God. Prayer flags are also
given to people.”

“What kind of prayers do the flags contain?”

“Prayers for love to prevail in all of humanity.”