We cannot confirm with certainty that Kowalsky knew the future of Europe (according to the opinion of some researchers, he was taught by the Tibetan lamas), but it is certain that he foresaw Hitler’s rise to power. This is confirmed by reliable documents that can be trusted. In the first place are his letters in which he warned his Jewish friends to leave Germany before it was too late, and then there is his text On the Discontinuity of History, that he wrote in co-authorship with Ernest Miller. All copies of the print run of 300 shared the same destiny as the collection A Description of Nothing: they ended up on a bonfire; but several draft copies have been preserved from which it is possible to reconstruct the original text. That obscure, esoteric material quite often descends into the sphere of pure fantasy, the certain charm of which cannot be denied. If the abovementioned pamphlet is to be believed, Hitler’s rise to power was no special secret to Kowalsky since, as a member of the mysterious Committee for the Liquidation of Franz Ferdinand, he actively worked on that. The fact that the Committee planned the assassination of Franz Ferdinand a full fourteen years after it was carried out, so in 1928, could only confuse those who are not versed in the esoteric teachings of the Bicyclists of the Rose Cross. That sect believes that the future determines the past; there is a legend that members of the Little Brothers influence the events of this world in the following way: the dead bicyclists from the otherworld, where space-time categories are unlimited, learn about a given period (according to Grainger, one hundred years) integrally, thus as the unity of all that happened, that is happening and that will happen; they foresee the intentions of the historical subjects and, comparing them with the aims of Providence, communicate, to the currently living brothers, the responsibility of planning what will happen in the past. That is possible, Kowalsky and Miller explain, because — as a result of human impatience and blindness — history has been accelerated (according to the calculations of that time) by twenty-four years, seven months and twenty days. Therefore, we are not contemporaries of the events we are participating in; according to the natural flow of things, they should be just about to happen, and the temporal discontinuity that arises from that is experienced as a feeling of emptiness, lethargy and apathy; “we wonder about swampy fogs with our arms outstretched, like sleepwalkers, never guessing that the sun has already risen,” Kowalsky and Miller wrote. That is why the Bicyclists of the Rose Cross consider a man to be fulfilled and awakened if he “existed simultaneously with himself.”
We can choose to disagree with such speculations, contradictory to even the most dialectical mind, but we cannot deny that, in the pamphlet On the Discontinuity of History, the date is predicted of the fall of the Third Reich, a trivial forty-eight hours different than the date of the actual fall. According to the abovementioned pamphlet, the Third Reich was inevitable so that a greater evil could be stopped; Franz Ferdinand, who was supposed to inherit the Austro-Hungarian throne, was also supposed to develop into a brilliant ruler who would expand the borders of the Western Roman Empire as far as Central Asia. That is why he had to die from the gunshots of the conspirators, planned fourteen years later so that the secret police would not uncover the conspiracy. Because, the expansion of the Western Empire would also spread rationality, and with rationality would come the lack of feeling and the apathy that accompany it. The assassination also meant the end of the Western Roman Empire; after 1918, the West will be cut into ever smaller pieces until it finally disappears in that atomization. And then, the Eastern Roman Empire (latently present the whole time) will be resurrected — Byzantium, which is the ultimate this-worldly goal of the Evangelical Bicyclists of the Rose Cross.
Hitler, who was superstitious, believed the pamphlet On the Discontinuity of History to be the work of Zionist Wise Men, one of the secret weapons of the Jewish conspiracy. The practically symbolic number of copies does not indicate that the pamphlet was thought to be a significant work of propaganda, regardless of the forbidding style and contents. In spite of that, the Fuhrer’s aids for occult sciences monitored the work of the Bicyclists of the Rose Cross most seriously, building up a voluminous dossier that was incinerated during one of the last bombings of Berlin. Upon his rise to power, Hitler ordered, as a special branch of the SS, the formation of the Traumeinsatz, a unit of commandos for activities in the world of dreams.******** Their task was to infiltrate and stop the actions of the Bicyclists of the Rose Cross whose activities took place in the deep conspiracy of dreams. After intense training, which included the synchronization of dreams, movement along the azimuth in dreams and camouflage, the members of the Traumeinsatz prepared several attacks, attempting to infiltrate the ranks of the Bicyclists, but without significant success. Their greatest “victory” was the desecration of the astral Cathedral of the Holy Spirit. One early dawn, while the bicyclists were slowly waking, a unit of commandos snuck up to the cathedral and, with the aid of pagan spells, broke down the eastern wall. SS Commander Meindorf was awarded the Iron Cross, and the unit was praised. For the next twenty-four years, the Cathedral remained damaged, because time goes by in dreams without acceleration.
Such a development of events did not excite either Kowalsky or the rest of the members of the Evangelical Bicyclists. They knew that the architect, who would not only renovate the Cathedral but actually make it incomparably brighter, had already been born and they just needed to wait a certain number of years. In addition, somehow also to that time belongs the death of Witold Kowalsky which was to send his son, Joseph, on the road again, this time to Ulaan Bator, to Mongolia. Kowalsky was not upset by this death; death never upsets the members of the Evangelical Bicyclists and they consider it to be a promotion, an introduction into the higher spheres of the Order. Anyway, Witold Kowalsky knew the date of his death (and the place) and he informed his son fifteen days ahead of time so that he could come and bury him in an upright position, that is, in a vertical grave, as is the burial custom of the Bicyclists.
But let us return to linear chronology. In the autumn of 1930, Joseph Kowalsky organized the Great Bicycle Marathon Belgrade-Dharamsala. Belgrade was set as the marathon’s starting point because of its geographical position; built on a crest above the confluence of the Sava and Danube, it is the most distant settlement of Byzantium, the boundary between East and West. Arriving in the Yugoslav capital two weeks before the start of the marathon to do some organizational preparations, Kowalsky searched the ruins of an inn in Dorćol where Nicholas of Cusa, inspired by the Holy Spirit in a moment of enlightenment, formulated his theory, Coincidentia oppositorum, famous far and wide. In his free time, Kowalsky met with eminent Serbian intellectuals and authors, including, among others, Rastko Petrović, Miloš Crnjanski, Dragiša Vasić, and Slobodan Jovanović. It is believed that Rastko Petrović took part in the marathon for a while and that, because of his duties, as he returned from Constantinople to Belgrade, he visited the monasteries, the endowments of the Serbian rulers. Here, in Belgrade, “above which every evening, the east and west winds do battle while the red sun sinks into the Panonnian mud,” in a room of the “Moscow Hotel,” Kowalsky wrote the story “A Grave in Ulaan Bator.” That story is the artistic vision of his trip to Ulaan Bator. The first version of this story was published in Ideje, a journal run and edited by Miloš Crnjanski; a second version was published in the journal Hiperion (1932, 1–2), and a third (under a different pen-name and insignificantly changed) on the twenty year anniversary of his death, in Belgrade’s Politika on January 19, 1986. The publication of the final version was certainly the act of one of the members of the brotherhood and is a subtle memorial of the anniversary of his death, probably with a deeper hidden meaning because, as the Bicyclists say, the most unnoticed events have the greatest influence.