Keeping the Fear alive

James Redfield´s "The Tenth Insight: Holding the Vision" (1996) is the sequel to the New Age publishing phenomenon "The Celestine Prophecy" by the same author. Like the first book, it´s written in the form of a novel, but the plot and the characters are just vehicles for the author´s spiritual message. In many ways, the sequel is worse, since the New Age lectures are even longer and extremely repetitive. This is somewhat ironic, since the ideas expounded upon are actually more interesting. They include near-death experiences, heaven and hell, reincarnation and the "soul group" concept. In many ways, "The Tenth Insight" is more explicitly "supernatural" or paranormal than "The Celestine Prophecy". And yet, it feels as if Redfield soon gets lost in his expositions. 

In "The Celestine Prophecy", the first-person narrator (who is unnamed) searched for a lost ancient scripture in Peru, a manuscript containing nine "insights" of a broadly New Age nature. In the sequel, the narrator travels to the Appalachians to find an even more advanced tenth insight. Meanwhile, a group of mad scientists are trying to find paranormal portals in an Appalachian valley, presumably to suck "free" energy out of the astral world and into ours (where it will be harnessed by the military-industrial complex, or some such shadowy cabals). After a series of visionary experiences, the narrator realizes that he is part of a "soul group" who unsuccesfully tried to stop a war against the Indians at the same place 200 years earlier. Brought together by their karma, they must now make another attempt to save the world. 

As already indicated, the message of the book is typically New Age. The eclecticism is there, with American Indian vision quests co-existing with dreams of advanced technology. Gnosticism and the Franciscan "Spirituals" (a radical faction within the Franciscan Order during the Middle Ages) are appropriated for the New Age. The utopian-evolutionary perspective is there, too. So is the pop psychology. Even dark periods in human history have some kind of meaning, and so has bad earthly experiences of individual humans. Indeed, our souls freely choose the conditions under which we incarnate. More peculiar are the author´s polemics against Christian fundamentalist apocalypticism. Or perhaps not, since Redfield grew up in the Deep South. 

I have many objections to "The Tenth Insight", but the main one at a time like this (July 2022) would be the dreams of a soon-to-come universal New Age utopia. Ironically, the character Joel Lipscomb, who represents "Fear", sounds more realistic than the narrator. The hard-nosed Joel manages to almost exactly predict America´s current predicament! 

Of course, we still have to overcome Fear, but presumably it must be done in some other way than chasing after utopian insights in a scenic North American valley... 

A prophecy cancelled

James Redfield´s "The Celestine Prophecy" is a best selling novel from the 1990´s. According to Wiki, the last time somebody bothered checking it had sold 5 million copies worldwide - but I think Wiki until recently gave a much higher, two-digit, number! 

Be that as it may, "The Celestine Prophecy" has even been translated into Swedish ("Den nionde insikten"), and I actually heard about the book during its heyday. I say "actually" (with some surprise), since at the time I was almost entirely uninterested in the New Age, and certainly didn´t bother with the finer details of it (such as who´s who in the new agey publishing business). So I suppose James Redfield´s book really was extremely popular, since even I got to know about it! I did read it around 2000 or so, and recently re-read it (after the film adaptation *purely by chance* showed up in my YouTube recommendations). I admit that I wasn´t particularly moved, but then, I´m still not a New Age believer...

The plot and characters of Redfield´s novel are very weak, and the real point of the story is obviously to convey the New Age spiritual message (or at least part of it). The main character and first person narrator, who remains unnamed but has some similarities to the author, travels to Peru in South America in search of a mysterious manuscript which contains nine "insights" about the human condition. The Catholic Church and the Peruvian military want to destroy all copies of the manuscript. Through various incredible chance events, the narrator meets other seekers looking for the lost document, and these people expound at some length on various New Age themes. The semi-dramatic climax comes at the (wholly fictitious) ruins of "Celestine", an ancient Mayan (!) settlement in the Peruvian jungles, where the narrator and his new friends temporarily gain supernatural powers. 

While Redfield apparently said explicitly that his story is "parable" (it´s a novel, after all), there is no doubt that many New Age believers take scenarios such as this one quite literally. Hidden scriptures, lost civilizations, Catholic conspiracies to suppress The Truth...we heard it all before. Typically New Age is also the complete disregard for archeological or anthropological context, not to mention the heavy anachronisms. The ancient prophecy is written in Aramaic by Mayans in Peru around 600 BC - an impossibility - and yet sounds 100% adapted to 1990´s California! (This is also a form of Anglo-American cultural arrogance, in which the colored races exist only as raw material for Anglo-American fantasies and projections.) While the parable probably works for a New Age audience, it sounds extremely weird to those of us who care about that context thing. Why would the Catholic Church (or the military) in Peru bother with some New Age fluff peddled by gringos? Why would ordinary Peruvians give a damn? 

That being said, I admit that "The Celestine Prophecy" could work as an introduction to some aspects of the New Age. It discusses synchronicity, "energy", mystical experiences, and cosmic evolution towards the Divine. There are also long expositions on pop psychology, sometimes touching on gender relations and child rearing. Jesus is said to have been the first person who could really open up to the evolutionary energies of the Divine. Beauty, especially natural beauty, is seen as central for spiritual enlightenment. The perspective is optimistic. If people learn to practice the nine insights, Earth could become an Utopia, in which a much smaller human population than today live in harmony with nature, while also having access to cities with high technology. Indeed, all production and distribution is automated, making it possible for the utopians to fully concentrate on spiritual evolution. There is constant tension in the book (as in real life New Age) between attempts to sound "scientific" (as when the occult "energy" is used to make plants grow faster under controlled conditions) and a more forthrightly supranaturalist worldview.  

I can´t say I liked "The Celestine Prophecy". It feels very American, White, and privileged middle class. In Peru, the narrator constantly meets upper class people, sometimes foreigners, who own spacious latifundias and are sympathetic to the metaphysical message. While a few of the seekers are poor and/or "Indians", most seem to be well-educated Western scientists or equally well educated Peruvian priests (who live at large missions). No ordinary Joe goes to Peru to cavort with the local smetanka, perhaps telling us something about the intended readership of the novel? And what about the (weird) advice to generously give money to spiritual people? 

But the most obvious problem with the nine insights today is, of course, the strong belief in progress and modernity. The similarity between dreams of free energy (through fusion and so on) and the "energy" from the Divine Source is perhaps not a co-incidence! The utopian vision was difficult to believe in already 30 years ago, and is completely impossible today. There may be this or that spiritual insight even in New Age, who knows, but in general, I´m afraid the Age of Aquarius have been cancelled...

The New Age has never been so boring

 

"The Celestine Prophecy" is a 2006 film, based on James Redfield´s blockbuster book of the same name from 1993. I haven´t read the novel and its sequels for decades, but I didn´t like them when I did. But then, I wasn´t particularly "spiritual" at the time, nor have I ever been attracted by the New Age. After watching the film, I have to say that the New Age has never been so boring! 

In contrast to Redfield´s novels, the film tanked at the box office. It has very little plot development or real suspense (despite the heroes being chased by the military half of the time!). Above all, it´s probably incomprehensible unless you alreday read the original novel, or is very immersed into a New Age worldview. The underlying concept (at least as presented in the film) doesn´t make any sense either: why would the Catholic Church, the Peruvian military and the US Deep State be chasing a bunch of naïve spiritual types who just want to "open up" and feel the "flow"? The New Age message doesn´t threaten the establishment, indeed it has *become* the establishment! 

Another peculiar feature of the message of the Celestine Prophecy is the way it blends trivial pop psychology about interpersonal relations with a grand perspective of spiritual evolution towards the Divine, an evolution which seems to include magic, the unification of all the world´s religions, and so on. The main insight is that the world is bad because of the inability of humans to "open up" to the "energy", which is available in super-abundance. And while the film doesn´t preach a simplistic prosperity gospel, I think it´s obvious that the New Age can (and have) been given this spin. This in turn is connected to the evolutionary perspective, with its constant progression upwards. This may have been easy to believe in 1993, less so in 2006, and absolutely not in 2022. 

Perhaps the real "insight" to be gained here, is that the Age of Aquarius have been cancelled, and that we can´t just all "open up"...