The Celestine Prophecy: An Adventure. - book reviews

National Review, Dec 19, 1994 by Matthew Scully

By James Redfield (Warner, 246 pp., $17.95)

ON THE best-seller lists since March, this may be the most celebrated New Age attempt to "complete" the Christian message--indeed to fuse all religions into one beautiful, all-embracing vision. The result is a tenth-rate melodrama joining gnostic hubris with flower-child theology. In an allegorical journey told in the first person, we follow author James Redfield in search of the Manuscript, an ancient text hidden away somewhere in the mountains of Peru and containing the Nine Insights. Obstructing his quest are the usual dark forces, including Catholic authorities. Uncannily, the text prophesies a spiritual "restlessness" to appear in "the sixth decade of the twentieth century," suggesting a special mission in the world for Mr. Redfield's very own generation. Those appointed will spread the good news of the Insights, ushering in a millennium of love and harmony "that has been the goal of history all along." Attaining this "higher synthesis," we will understand "all things"--for instance, that everything is energy, and "each time we fill up with energy ... we institute this level of energy in ourselves, and so we can exist at a higher vibration." This is really what Jesus was getting at all along. The true spiritual line runs neither from Jerusalem through Rome nor from Jerusalem through Wittenberg, but from Jerusalem through Woodstock.