The Celestine Prophecy: An Adventure Page 5

  Wil had driven east out of town and we were riding on a narrow two-lane road through a heavily irrigated area. We passed several small plank dwellings and then a large pasture with expensive fencing.

  “Did Dobson tell you about the first two insights?” Wil asked.

  “He told me about the Second Insight,” I replied. “I have a friend who told me of the first. She talked to a priest at another time, to Jose, I guess.”

  “Do you understand these two insights?”

  “I think so.”

  “Do you understand that chance encounters often have a deeper meaning?”

  “It seems,” I said, “like this whole trip has been one coincidental event after another.”

  “That begins to happen once you become alert and connected with the energy.”

  “Connected?”

  Wil smiled. “That’s something mentioned further in the Manuscript.”

  “I’d like to hear about it,” I said.

  “Let’s talk about it later,” he said, indicating with a nod that he was turning the vehicle onto a gravel driveway. A hundred feet ahead was a modest wood frame house. Wil pulled up beneath a large tree to the right of the house and stopped.

  “My friend works for the owner of a large farming estate who owns much of the land in this area,” he said, “and provides this house. The man is very powerful and secretly supportive of the Manuscript. You’ll be safe here.”

  A porch light flicked on and a short squat man, who appeared to be a native Peruvian, rushed out, smiling broadly, and saying something enthusiastically in Spanish. When he reached the jeep, he patted Wil on the back through the open window and glanced pleasantly over at me. Wil asked him to speak in English, then introduced us.

  “He needs a little help,” Wil said to the man. “He wants to return to the States but he’ll have to be very careful. I guess I’m going to leave him with you.”

  The man was looking closely at Wil. “You’re about to go after the Ninth Insight again, aren’t you?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Wil said, getting out of the jeep.

  I opened my door and walked around the vehicle. Wil and his friend were strolling toward the house, having a conversation I couldn’t hear.

  As I walked up the man said, “I will start the preparations,” then walked away. Wil turned to me.

  “What did he mean,” I asked, “when he questioned you about a Ninth Insight?”

  “There is part of the Manuscript that has never been found. There were eight insights with the original text, but one more insight, the Ninth, was mentioned there. Many people have been searching for it.”

  “Do you know where it is?”

  “No, not really.”

  “Then how are you going to find it?”

  Wil smiled. “The same way Jose found the original eight. The same way you found the first two, and then ran into me. If one can connect and build up enough energy, then coincidental events begin to happen consistently.”

  “Tell me how to do that,” I said. “Which insight is it?”

  Will looked at me as if assessing my level of understanding. “How to connect is not just one insight; it’s all of them. Remember in the Second Insight where it describes how explorers would be sent out into the world utilizing the scientific method to discover the meaning of human life on this planet? But they would not return right away?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, the remainder of the insights represent the answers finally coming back. But they aren’t just coming from institutional science. The answers I’m talking about are coming from many different areas of inquiry. The findings of physics, psychology, mysticism, and religion are all coming together into a new synthesis based on a perception of the coincidences.

  “We’re learning the details of what the coincidences mean, how they work, and as we do we’re constructing a whole new view of life, insight by insight.”

  “Then I want to hear about each insight,” I said. “Can you explain them to me before you go?”

  “I’ve found it doesn’t work that way. You must discover each one of them in a different way.”

  “How?”

  “It just happens. It wouldn’t work for me to just tell you. You might have the information about each of them but you wouldn’t have the insights. You have to discover them in the course of your own life.”

  We stared at each other in silence. Wil smiled. Talking with him made me feel incredibly alive.

  “Why are you going after the Ninth Insight now?” I asked.

  “It’s the right time. I have been a guide here and I know the terrain and I understand all eight insights. When I was at my window over the alley, thinking of Jose, I had already decided to go north one more time. The Ninth Insight is out there. I know it. And I’m not getting any younger. Besides, I’ve envisioned myself finding it and achieving what it says. I know it is the most important of the insights. It puts all the others into perspective and gives us the true purpose of life.”

  He paused suddenly, looking serious. “I would have left thirty minutes earlier but I had this nagging feeling that I had forgotten something.” He paused again. “That’s precisely when you showed up.”

  We looked at each other for a long time.

  “You think I’m supposed to go with you?” I asked.

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, unsure of myself. I felt confused. The story of my Peruvian trip was flashing before my mind: Charlene, Dobson, now Wil. I had come to Peru because of a mild curiosity and now I found myself in hiding, an unwitting fugitive who didn’t even know who his pursuers were. And the strangest thing of all was that at this moment, instead of being terrified, totally panicked, I found myself in a state of excitement. I should have been summoning all my wits and instincts to find a way home, but what I really wanted to do was to go with Wil—into what would undoubtedly be more danger.

  As I considered my options, I realized that in reality I had no choice. The Second Insight had ended any possibility of going back to my old preoccupations. If I was going to stay aware, I had to go forward.

  “I plan to spend the night,” Wil said. “So you will have until tomorrow morning to decide.”

  “I’ve already decided,” I told him. “I want to go.”

  A

  MATTER

  OF ENERGY

  We rose at dawn and drove east all morning in virtual silence. Early on, Wil had mentioned that we would drive straight across the Andes into what he called the High Selva, an area consisting of forest-covered foothills and plateaus, but he had said little else.

  I had asked him several questions about his background and about our destination, but he had politely put me off, indicating he wanted to concentrate on driving. Finally I had stopped talking altogether, and had focused instead on the scenery. The views from the mountain peaks were staggering.

  About noon, when we had reached the last of the towering ridges, we stopped at an overlook to eat a lunch of sandwiches in the jeep, and to gaze out at the wide, barren valley ahead. On the other side of the valley were smaller foothills, green with plant life. As we ate, Wil said we would spend the night at the Viciente Lodge, an old nineteenth century estate which formerly belonged to the Spanish Catholic Church. Viciente was now owned by a friend of his, he explained, and was operated as a resort specializing in business and scientific conferences.

  With only that brief explanation, we departed and rode silently again. An hour later we arrived at Viciente, entering the property through a large iron and stone gate and proceeding northeast up a narrow gravel drive. Once more, I asked a few probing questions concerning Viciente and why we were here, but as he had done earlier, Wil brushed aside my inquiries, only this time he suggested outright that I focus on the landscape.

  Immediately the beauty of Viciente touched me. We were surrounded by colorful pastures and orchards, and the grass seemed unusually green and healthy. It grew thickly even under the giant oak
s that rose up every hundred feet or so throughout the pastures. Something about these huge trees seemed incredibly attractive, but I couldn’t quite grasp what.

  After about a mile the road bent east and up a slight rise. At the top of the knoll was the lodge, a large Spanish-style building constructed of hewn timbers and grey stone. The structure appeared to contain at least fifty rooms, and a large screened porch covered the entire south wall. The yard around the lodge was marked by more gigantic oaks and contained beds of exotic plants and walkways trimmed with dazzling flowers and ferns. Groups of people talked idly on the porch and among the trees.

  As we got out of the vehicle, Wil lingered a moment and gazed out at the view. Beyond the lodge to the east, the land sloped gradually downward then flattened out into meadows and forests. Another range of foothills appeared bluish purple in the distance.

  “I think I’ll go in and make sure they have room for us,” Wil said. “Why don’t you spend some time looking around? You’re going to like this place.”

  “No kidding!” I said.

  As he walked away, he turned and looked at me. “Be sure to check out the research gardens. I’ll see you at dinner time.”

  Wil was obviously leaving me alone for some reason, but I didn’t care why. I felt great and not the least bit apprehensive. Wil had already told me that because of the substantial tourist dollar Viciente brought into the country, the government had always taken a hands-off approach to the place, even though the Manuscript was often discussed here.

  Several large trees and a winding path toward the south attracted me, so I walked that way. Once I reached the trees, I could see that the walkway proceeded through a small iron gate and down several tiers of stone steps to a meadow filled with wild flowers. In the distance was an orchard of some kind and a small creek and more forest land. At the gate I stopped and took several deep breaths, admiring the beauty below.

  “It’s certainly lovely, isn’t it?” a voice from behind asked.

  I turned quickly. A woman in her late thirties carrying a hiking pack stood behind me.

  “It certainly is,” I said. “I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”

  For a moment we looked out at the open fields and at the cascading tropical plants in the terraced beds on each side of us, then I asked: “Do you happen to know where the research gardens are?”

  “Sure,” she said. “I’m heading that way now. I’ll show you.”

  After introducing ourselves, we walked down the steps and onto the well-worn path heading south. Her name was Sarah Lorner and she was sandy-haired and blue-eyed and could have been described as girlish except for her serious demeanor. We walked for several minutes in silence.

  “Is this your first visit here?” she asked.

  “Yes, it is,” I replied.” I don’t know much about the place.”

  “Well, I’ve been here on and off for almost a year now so I can fill you in a bit. About twenty years ago this estate became popular as a sort of international scientific hangout. Various scientific organizations had their meetings here, biologists and physicists mainly. Then a few years ago…”

  She hesitated for an instant and looked at me. “Have you heard of the Manuscript that was discovered here in Peru?”

  “Yes, I have,” I said. “I’ve heard about the first two insights.” I wanted to tell her how fascinated I was with the document but I held back, wondering whether to trust her completely.

  “I thought maybe that was the case,” she said. “It looked as if you were picking up on the energy here.”

  We were crossing a wooden bridge which traversed the creek. “What energy?” I asked.

  She stopped and leaned back against the railing of the bridge. “Do you know anything about the Third Insight?”

  “Nothing.”

  “It describes a new understanding of the physical world. It says we humans will learn to perceive what was formerly an invisible type of energy. The lodge has become a gathering place for those scientists interested in studying and talking about this phenomenon.”

  “Then scientists think this energy is real?” I asked.

  She was turning to walk across the bridge. “Only a few,” she said, “and we take some heat for it.”

  “You’re a scientist, then?”

  “I teach physics at a small college in Maine.”

  “So why are some scientists disagreeing with you?”

  She was silent for a moment, as if in thought. “You have to understand the history of science,” she said, glancing at me as if to ask whether I wanted to get deeper into the subject. I nodded for her to proceed.

  “Think about the Second Insight for a moment. After the fall of the medieval world view, we in the west suddenly became aware that we lived in a totally unknown universe. In attempting to understand the nature of this universe we knew we had to somehow separate fact from superstition. In this regard we scientists assumed a particular attitude known as scientific skepticism, which in effect demands solid evidence for any new assertion about how the world works. Before we would believe anything, we wanted evidence that could be seen and grabbed with the hands. Any idea that couldn’t be proved in some physical way was systematically rejected.”

  “God knows,” she continued, “this attitude served us well with the more obvious phenomena in nature, with objects such as rocks and bodies and trees, objects everyone can perceive no matter how skeptical they are. We quickly went out and named every part of the physical world, attempting to discover why the universe operated as it did. We finally concluded that everything that occurs in nature does so according to some natural law, that each event has a direct physical and understandable cause.” She smiled at me knowingly. “You see, in many ways scientists have not been that different from others in our time period. We decided along with everyone else to master this place in which we found ourselves. The idea was to create an understanding of the universe that made the world seem safe and manageable, and the skeptical attitude kept us focused on concrete problems that would make our existence seem more secure.”

  We had followed the meandering path from the bridge through a small meadow and into an area more densely covered with trees.

  “With this attitude,” she went on, “science systematically removed the uncertain and the esoteric from the world. We concluded, following the thinking of Isaac Newton, that the universe always operated in a predictable manner, like an enormous machine, because for a long time that’s all it could be proved to be. Events which happened simultaneously to other events yet had no causal relationship were said to occur only by chance.

  “Then, two investigations occurred which opened our eyes again to the mystery in the universe. Much has been written over the past several decades about the revolution in physics, but the changes really stem from two major findings, those of quantum mechanics and those of Albert Einstein.

  “The whole of Einstein’s life’s work was to show that what we perceive as hard matter is mostly empty space with a pattern of energy running through it. This includes ourselves. And what quantum physics has shown is that when we look at these patterns of energy at smaller and smaller levels, startling results can be seen. Experiments have revealed that when you break apart small aspects of this energy, what we call elementary particles, and try to observe how they operate, the act of observation itself alters the results—as if these elementary particles are influenced by what the experimenter expects. This is true even if the particles must appear in places they couldn’t possibly go, given the laws of the universe as we know them: two places at the same moment, forward or backward in time, that sort of thing.”

  She stopped to face me again. “In other words, the basic stuff of the universe, at its core, is looking like a kind of pure energy that is malleable to human intention and expectation in a way that defies our old mechanistic model of the universe—as though our expectation itself causes our energy to flow out into the world and affect other energy systems. Which, of course
, is exactly what the Third Insight would lead us to believe.”

  She shook her head. “Unfortunately, most scientists don’t take this idea seriously. They would rather remain skeptical, and wait to see if we can prove it.”

  “Hey Sarah, here we are over here,” a voice called faintly from a distance. To the right about fifty yards through the trees, we could see someone waving.

  Sarah looked at me. “I need to go talk with those guys for a few minutes. I have a translation of the Third Insight with me, if you would like to pick out a spot and read some of it while I’m gone.”

  “I sure would,” I said.

  She pulled a folder from her pack, handed it to me, and walked away.

  I took the folder and looked around for a place to sit down. Here the forest floor was dense with small bushes and was slightly soggy, but to the east the land rose toward what looked like another knoll. I decided to walk in that direction in search of dry ground.

  At the top of the rise I was awestruck. It was another spot of incredible beauty. The gnarled oaks were spaced about fifty feet apart and their wide limbs grew completely together at the top, creating a canopy overhead. On the forest floor grew broad-leafed tropical plants which stood four or five feet high and had leaves up to ten inches in width. These plants were interspersed with large ferns and bushes lush with white flowers. I picked out a dry place and sat down. I could smell the musty odor of the leaves and the fragrance of the blossoms.

  I opened the folder and turned to the beginning of the translation. A brief introduction explained that the Third Insight brings a transformed understanding of the physical universe. Its words clearly echoed Sarah’s summary. Sometime near the end of the second millennium, it predicted, humans would discover a new energy which formed the basis of and radiated outward from all things, including ourselves.

  I pondered that idea for a moment, then read something that fascinated me: the Manuscript said the human perception of this energy first begins with a heightened sensitivity to beauty. As I thought about this, the sound of someone walking along the path below drew my attention. I saw Sarah at the exact moment she looked toward the knoll and spotted me.