Mount Kailash: The most sacred site on Earth

In a land of giant peaks at the summit of the world, Mount Kailash doesn’t even figure in a list of the 25 highest... in yet it still manages to stand out from all the other mountains in the Tibetan massif.

At approximately 22,000 ft above sea level, it is the most sacred site on Earth for four of Asia’s predominant religions, with pilgrims of the Buddhist, Hindu, Jain and Tibetan Bon faiths all drawn to the peak to take part in ritual processions around its base.

To practitioners of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism the mountain is regarded as the earthly manifestation of the mythical Mount Meru, or Sumeru, which forms the spiritual centre of the universe. To these religions Mount Meru is the source of four life-giving rivers, with Kailash fulfilling this criteria by giving birth to the Indus, Brahmaputra, Sutlej and Karnali, a major tributary of the Ganges in India.

To Tibetan Buddhists Kailash is the home of the tantric deity Demchog; while the Hindus see it as the throne of the great god Shiva. Jains revere Kailash as the site where their first prophet, Rishaba, received enlightenment; while long before Buddhism took root in the 7th century AD, Kailash was venerated by the Bonpo practitioners of the indigenous religion of Tibet.

Hindus believe that Shiva, the destroyer of ignorance and illusion, sits at its summit in a state of perpetual meditation along with his wife Parvati. It is regarded as Shiva's symbolic “lingam”… the Sanskrit name for the mountain, Kailas, meaning luminous crystal.

But what makes Mount Kailash so special to these religions and why does it stand out from its bigger brothers who also rise high up to the heavens in this ice-covered world?

Well, although surrounded by the great mountain ranges that stretch across the land at the top of the world, Kailash itself sits in splendid isolation in the far west of Tibet at the axis of the world, perfectly synchronised with the poles of the planet and many ancient monuments such as Stonehenge, located exactly 6,666 kilometres away.

When viewed from a distance the symmetry of the mountain defies belief, each of its four sides orientated to the cardinal points of the compass and the structure itself resembling a magnificent pyramid… one that reaches a height of 6,666 metres.

According to the ancient Indian literature, known as the Puranas and written primarily in Sanskrit and Tamil, each face of the holy mountain is comprised of a different jewel: gold to the north; lapis lazuli to the south; crystal in the east; and ruby to the west.

And around the mountain there are five sacred monasteries — Nyari, Drirapuk, Songchu, Gyangzha and Thailong — all shrouded in mystery... each endowed with a different legend and decorated by distinctive sculptures, statues, murals, silks and other Tibetan cultural objects.

In the Bon faith, which predates Buddhism in Tibet, Kailash is known as the “Nine-storey Swastika Mountain” and is where its founder descended from the sky, with the entire region forming the core of all spiritual power. Its name stems from the huge swastika shadow cast every day by the setting sun on the rocks of the mountain.

In the modern world the swastika is predominantly associated with the Third Reich’s rise to power under Adolph Hitler in Nazi Germany, but its origins are far older… being a symbol of divinity and spirituality in Asian religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.

The word comes from Sanskrit and means “conducive to well-being”. In Hinduism, the right-facing swastika portrays surya, the sun, and symbolises prosperity and good luck. The left-facing sauwastika is a darker icon, a sign of night and the tantric influence of Kali, the Hindu goddess of death and time, as well as Parvati, goddess of fertility, love, beauty, bravery, harmony, marriage, children and devotion... plus divine strength and power.

In Jainism the swastika is the symbol for Suparshvanatha, the seventh of 24 spiritual teachers and saviours; while in Buddhism it symbolises the auspicious influence of Buddha.

In many Indo-European religions it symbolises lightning bolts, representing the thunder god and the king of the gods, such as Indra in Vedic Hinduism, Zeus in the ancient Greek religion, Jupiter in the ancient Roman religion, and Thor in the ancient Germanic religion.

The motif is also found in native American iconography, on objects associated with Mesoamerican cultures and in excavations of sites in the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys. The symbol is widely used by a number of southwestern tribes on the continent, most notably the Navajo, and plains’ nations such as the Dakota.

These mystical aspects of the swastika saw it adopted as the symbol of the Third Reich, built on the beliefs espoused by the Thule Society founded in Munich shortly after World War I and named after a mythical northern country in Greek legend.

The society sponsored the DAP (the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or German Workers' Party), which was later reorganised by Hitler into the Nazi Party, and led to the formation of the Ahnenerbe, an organisation established by Heinrich Himmler to discover evidence to support the fuhrer’s doctrine that modern Germans were descended from an ancient Aryan race biologically superior to other racial groups.

This quest for ancient knowledge led to a number of expeditions throughout Europe, South America, Antarctica and Tibet, where Himmler dispatched explorer and botanist Ernst Schafer and anthropologist Bruno Beger to uncover evidence of Teutonic superiority on the slopes of Mount Kailash.

Across the globe in excess of a thousand pyramids have been identified, with many more believed to have been buried under the sands of time. Is Mount Kailash one? Well, examine the swastika closely, could it be viewed as a two-dimensional representation of a pyramid, four sides ascending to a central point?

Traditional archaeology would have one believe that the most iconic pyramids on the planet at Giza in Egypt represent burial sites of the pharaohs… strange since no bodies were ever found in these structures. But other researchers believe these and other pyramids and neolithic monuments formed part of an ancient power grid that tapped into the planet’s natural electro-magnetic properties, constructed under the guidance of those referred to by the ancient peoples as the gods.

But were these deities actually “gods” or simply extraterrestrials whose technology resulted in them being venerated by mankind? And could this explain why Mount Kailash plays such a pivotal part in the ancient beliefs of the region?

There are many strange anomalies that surround the mountain, not least the effects it has on those drawn to it, with Kailash believed to cause rapid ageing in people visiting the area… visitors also report rapid growth of hair and nails in the vicinity of the mountain.

Anomalies such as these, and evidence of radioactive ash and radioactive skeletal remains in the region, suggest the existence of high levels of radiation emanating from the mountain, with many researchers attributing this to the possibility it once served as a nuclear power generation facility for an extraterrestrial civilisation that still maintains a presence beneath the mountain.

Studies of the region by a group of Russian scientists uncovered evidence to support the concept that Kailash and its immediate surroundings were once the focal point of a huge complex that formed the centre of a global network of energy-generating monuments. But their theory is not new, with the Sanskrit epic, the Ramayana, also testifying to such a complex.

Although the claims of these Russian scholars were scoffed at in the official Chinese press, the region continues to be the centre of great mystery and, according to local reports, an alleged hot-spot for UFO activity.

Only this year images surfaced of a huge void in one side of the mountain which the photographer, a Tibetan named Zohar Uddin, identified as a possible entrance into the mountain for UFOs.

The area has a long history of strange lights and objects appearing in the sky around the mountain, with Mansarovar Lake, to the south, and the Kongka Pass, in Chang Chenmo Valley, believed by many to be entry points to a vast extraterrestrial complex located in the underground caverns created by the convergent tectonic plate boundaries that make the Earth’s crust twice as thick here than at other points on the planet.

The Kongka Pass lies along the disputed India-China border area where Indian and Chinese armies engaged in a major conflict in 1962, the Chinese held northeastern part known as Aksai Chin and the Indian southwest known as Ladakh.

The area is one of the least accessible locations in the world and by agreement the two countries do not patrol this part of the border, while maintaining a watchful eye on movements in the area. According to many tourists, Buddhist monks and the local people of Ladakh, the Indian army and Chinese military carefully control access and conceal a plethora of mysterious events associated with the area.

Sparsely inhabited, UFOs are regularly seen emerging from the ground by locals, with both the Indian and Chinese governments aware of the phenomenon.

One widely reported event focused on a group of Hindu pilgrims, making their way to Mount Kailash, who allegedly saw unidentified objects flying above them. They reported seeing the unusual glowing triangular objects, although their guide was dismissive... explaining they were a very common occurrence in the area.

But perhaps the most concrete testimony to the unusual sightings came from a 2012 incident involving members of the Indian army, who witnessed a thin ribbon-shaped object floating in the sky above Pangong Lake, in the south of Aksai Chin. While clearly visible to the naked eye, the army’s ground radar and spectrum analysis failed to detect any signals, leaving them completely unable to explain the sighting.

Due to its remoteness and tight controls on access by the Chinese government, close examination of the mountain and its mysterious electro-magnetic properties has been limited, with even climbing expeditions banned by the authorities.

Nobody has yet come forward with unequivocal evidence of extraterrestrial activity around this iconic peak on the Tibetan plateau, but the reverence with which it is held by these ancient cultures and the mysterious properties it undoubtedly exhibits makes one wonder for how much longer its secrets can remain hidden.

It’s a site crying out for extensive scientific research, so why are the authorities in China and India so reluctant to allow that to go ahead? Could it be that Mount Kailash is the key to unlock the mystery of extraterrestrial influence on mankind’s evolution? It’s about time the truth finally came out!