The Celestine Prophecy

The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield, the best-selling metaphysical book of the 1990s, became the premiere statement of the post-New Age spirituality. Redfield, a former psychological counselor, had quit his job to search for a new world-view that would unite all the material he had been absorbing from his reading in New Age and human potentials books. The original text was self-published in 1992 and sold several hundred thousand copies before it was picked up by Warner Books, who published a hardback edition in 1994. It soon became the number-one best-selling nonfiction book in America. It remained on the New York Times best-seller list for three years.

The Celestine Prophecy is a novel (Redfield calls it a parable) in which the narrator travels to Peru in search of a manuscript containing nine insights. The fictional setting becomes a simple tool for presenting these nine insights and discussing them. The insights begin with an awareness of a spiritual awakening that is occurring. It appears that a critical mass of people are coming to understand their life as a spiritual journey. The journey is marked by the recognition of the mysterious coincidence happening in our lives. The insights lead to an experiencing of the universal energy that is available to humans and which may be accessed through an inner connection.

Following the insights leads to the merging of one's individual journey into a common vision of where humankind is going in the twenty-first century. Eventually, whole groups of individuals will evolve into higher vibratory states and begin to experience what the post-New Agers call ascension. The concentration on this conscious evolution has been made possible by the technological advances that allow us to drop our almost total focus on mere material survival.

In a sequel to The Celestine Prophecy, Redfield explored The Tenth Insight, which set the current spiritual awakening into a larger historical context. Some humans through history have sought to implement the spiritual pathway outlined in the nine insights. As individuals today remember their own past and re-cover their understanding of a personal destiny, a further insight of a common world vision emerges and presents the option of working together with others of like mind to implement a new spiritual culture.

The response to The Celestine Prophecy and its sequels has led to the formation of numerous study groups, and an international association of people working to implement the tenth insight, the New Civilization Network. Redfield, in collaboration with Carol Adrienne, has produced study guides for the more serious students of the books. Redfield's books have been joined by a number of books, many of them the result of channeling, that propose very similar themes of individual and social evolution around the idea of ascension.

Sources:

Redfield, James. The Celestine Prophecy. New York: Warner Books, 1994.

——. The Celestine Vision: Living the New Spiritual Awareness. New York: Warner Books, 1997.

——. The Secret of Shambhala: Search for the Eleventh Insight. New York: Warner Books, 1999.

——. The Tenth Insight. New York: Warner Books, 1996.