The Celestine Prophecy: An Adventure Read online

  “It’s been nice meeting you,” Sarah said, offering her hand.

  Phil was looking toward the jeep. “Is that Wil James?” he asked. “Is he the guy you’re traveling with?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Why?”

  “I just wondered. I’ve seen him around. He knows the owner of this place and was one of the early group that first encouraged the research on energy fields here.”

  “Come on up and meet him,” I said.

  “No, I have to go,” he said. “I’ll see you around here later on. I know you won’t be able to stay away.”

  “No doubt,” I said.

  Sarah interjected that she too needed to go, and that I could contact her through the lodge. I delayed them for a few more minutes, expressing my thanks for the lessons.

  Sarah’s expression grew serious. “Seeing the energy—grasping this new way of perceiving the physical world—grows through a kind of contagion. We don’t understand it, but when a person hangs out with others who see this energy, usually they begin to see it, too. So, go show it to someone else.”

  I nodded and then hurried up to the jeep. Wil greeted me with a smile.

  “Are you about ready?” I asked.

  “Almost,” he said. “How did the morning go?”

  “Interesting,” I said. “I’ve got a lot to talk to you about.”

  “You’d better save it for now,” he said. “We need to get out of here. Things are looking unfriendly.”

  I walked closer to him. “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Nothing too serious,” he said. “I’ll explain later. Get your stuff.”

  I walked into the lodge and picked up the few items I had left in my room. Wil had told me earlier there would be no charge, courtesy of the owner, so I walked down to the desk and handed the clerk my key and walked back outside to the jeep.

  Wil was under the hood, checking something, and he slammed it closed as I walked up.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  We drove out of the parking lot, then down the drive toward the main road. Several cars were leaving at the same time.

  “So what’s happening?” I asked Wil.

  “A group of local officials,” he replied, “along with some scientific types, have complained about the people associated with this conference center. They’re not alleging that anything illegal is going on. Just that some of the folks hanging around here may be what they call undesirable, not legitimate scientists. These officials could cause a lot of trouble, and that could effectively put the lodge out of business.”

  I looked at him blankly and he continued: “You see, this lodge normally has several groups booked at any one time. Only a small number have anything to do with research associated with the Manuscript. The others are groups focused on their own disciplines who come down here for the beauty. If the officials get too ugly and create a negative climate, these groups will stop meeting here.”

  “But I thought you said the local officials wouldn’t tamper with the tourist money coming into Viciente?”

  “I didn’t think they would. Someone has them nervous about the Manuscript. Did anyone at the gardens understand what was occurring?”

  “No, not really,” I said. “They were just wondering why all of a sudden more angry people were around.”

  Wil remained silent. We drove out the gate and turned southeast. A mile later we took another road which headed due east toward the mountain range in the distance.

  “We’ll be going right by the gardens,” Wil said after a while.

  Ahead I saw the plots and the first metal building. As we came alongside, the door opened and I met eyes with the person coming out. It was Marjorie. She smiled and turned toward me as we passed, our gaze lingering for a long moment.

  “Who was that?” Wil asked.

  “A woman I met yesterday,” I answered.

  He nodded, then changed the subject, “Did you get a look at the Third Insight?”

  “I was given a copy.”

  Wil didn’t reply, appearing to be lost in thought, so I pulled out the translation and found where I had stopped reading. From there, the Third Insight elaborated on the nature of beauty, describing this perception as the one through which humans would eventually learn to observe energy fields. Once this occurred, it said, then our understanding of the physical universe would quickly transform.

  For instance, we would begin to eat more foods which were still alive with this energy, and we would become conscious that certain localities radiate more energy than others, the highest radiation coming from old natural environments, especially forests. I was about to read the final pages when Wil suddenly spoke.

  “Tell me what you experienced back at the gardens,” he said.

  As best as I could, I related in detail the events of the two days, including the people I had met. When I told him of the encounter with Marjorie, he looked at me and smiled.

  “How much did you talk to these people about the other insights and how these insights relate to what they’re doing in the gardens?” he asked.

  “I didn’t mention them at all,” I replied. “I didn’t trust them at first and later I just figured they knew more than me.”

  “I think you could have given them some important information had you been perfectly honest with them.”

  “What kind of information?”

  He looked at me warmly. “Only you know that.”

  I was at a loss for words, so I looked out at the landscape. The terrain was growing increasingly hilly and rocky. Large granite outcrops overhung the road.

  “What do you make of seeing Marjorie again as we passed the gardens?” Wil asked.

  I started to say “just a coincidence” but instead I said, “I don’t know. What do you think?”

  “I don’t think anything happens by coincidence. To me it means you two have unfinished business, something you needed to say to each other that you didn’t.”

  The idea intrigued me, but disturbed me as well. I had been accused all my life of remaining too distant, of asking questions but not expressing opinions or committing to a position. Why, I wondered, was this coming up again now?

  I also noticed that I was beginning to feel differently. At Viciente I had felt adventurous and competent and now I was feeling what could only be called a growing depression, mixed with anxiety.

  “Now you’ve made me depressed,” I said.

  He laughed loudly, then replied, “It wasn’t me. It was the effect of leaving the Viciente estate. The energy of that place makes you high as a kite. Why do you think all these scientists began hanging around here years ago? They don’t have a clue as to why they like it so much.” He turned to look directly at me. “But we do, don’t we?”

  He checked the road, then looked at me again, his face full of regard. “You have to crank up your own energy when you leave a place like that.”

  I just looked at him, puzzled, and he gave me a reassuring smile. Afterward we were both silent for perhaps a mile when he said: “Tell me more of what happened at the gardens.”

  I continued the story. When I described actually seeing energy fields, he looked at me with amazement, but said nothing.

  “Can you see these fields?” I asked.

  He shot me a glance. “Yes,” he said. “Go on.”

  I related the story without interruption until I came to Sarah’s argument with the Peruvian scientist and the dynamics of their energy fields during the confrontation.

  “What did Sarah and Phil say about that?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” I said. “They didn’t seem to have a frame of reference for it.”

  “I didn’t think so,” Wil said. “They’re so fascinated with the Third Insight they haven’t yet gone forward. How humans compete for energy is the Fourth Insight.”

  “Compete for energy?” I asked.

  He merely smiled, nodding toward the translation I was holding.

  I picked up where I had left off. The tex
t pointed clearly to the Fourth Insight. It said that eventually humans would see the universe as comprised of one dynamic energy, an energy that can sustain us and respond to our expectations. Yet we would also see that we have been disconnected from the larger source of this energy, that we have cut ourselves off and so have felt weak and insecure and lacking.

  In the face of this deficit, we humans have always sought to increase our personal energy in the only manner we have known: by seeking to psychologically steal it from others—an unconscious competition that underlies all human conflict in the world.

  THE

  STRUGGLE

  FOR POWER

  A pothole in the gravel road jolted the jeep and woke me up. I looked at my watch—3:00 P.M. As I stretched and attempted to fully awaken, I felt a sharp pain in the small of my back.

  The drive had been grueling. After leaving Viciente we had traveled the entire day, riding in several different directions as though Wil were looking for something he couldn’t find. We had spent the night at a small inn where the beds were hard and lumpy and I had slept little. Now, after traveling hard for the second day in a row, I was ready to complain.

  I looked over at Wil. He was focused on the road, and so intent and alert, that I decided not to interrupt him. He seemed to be in the same serious mood he had displayed several hours ago, when he had stopped the jeep and told me we needed to talk.

  “Do you remember that I told you the insights had to be discovered one at a time?” he had asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you believe that each will indeed present itself?”

  “Well, they have so far,” I said, half humorously.

  Wil looked at me with a serious expression. “Finding the Third Insight was easy. All we had to do was visit Viciente. But from now on, running across the other insights may be much more difficult.”

  He paused for a moment then said, “I think that we should go south to a small village near Quilabamba, a place called Cula. There is another virgin forest up there that I think you should see. But it is vitally important that you stay alert. Coincidences will occur regularly, but you have to notice them. Do you understand?”

  I told him I thought I did and that I would keep what he said in mind. After that, the conversation had lapsed and I had fallen into a deep sleep—a sleep I now regretted because of what it had done to my back. I stretched again and Wil looked over at me.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “In the Andes again,” he said.

  The hills had turned into high ridges and distant valleys. The vegetation was coarser now, the trees smaller and windblown. Inhaling deeply, I noticed the air was thinner, and cool.

  “Better put on this jacket,” Wil said, pulling a brown cotton windbreaker from a bag. “It’ll be cold up here this afternoon.”

  Ahead, as the road rounded a bend, we could see a narrow crossroads. On one side, near a white frame store and gas station, a vehicle was parked with the hood open. Tools lay on a cloth covering the fender. As we drove past, a blond man walked out of the store and glanced at us briefly. He was round faced and wore dark-rimmed glasses.

  I looked at the man closely, my mind racing back five years.

  “I know it wasn’t him,” I said to Wil. “But that guy looks just like a friend of mine I used to work with. I haven’t thought of him in years.”

  I noticed Wil was scrutinizing me.

  “I told you to watch events closely,” he said. “Let’s go back and see if that fellow needs some help. He didn’t look like a local.”

  We found a place where the shoulders of the road were wide enough and turned around. When we returned to the store, the man was working on the engine. Wil pulled up to the pump and leaned out the window.

  “Looks like you have trouble,” Wil said.

  The man pushed his glasses back up on his nose, a habit my friend also shared.

  “Yes,” he replied, “I have lost my water pump.” The man appeared to be in his early forties and was of a slight build. His English was formal with a French accent.

  Wil was quickly out of the vehicle introducing us. The man offered me his hand with a smile that also looked familiar. His name was Chris Reneau.

  “You sound French,” I said.

  “I am,” he replied. “But I teach psychology in Brazil. I am here in Peru seeking information about an archaeological artifact that has been found, a manuscript.”

  I hesitated for a moment, unsure how much I should trust him.

  “We’re here for the same reason,” I finally said.

  He looked at me with deep interest. “What can you tell me about it?” he asked. “Have you seen copies?”

  Before I could reply, Wil walked out of the building, the screen door slamming behind him. “Great luck,” he said to me. “The owner has a place where we can camp, and there’s some hot food. We might as well stay for the night.” He turned and looked expectantly at Reneau. “If you don’t mind sharing your reservations.”

  “No, no,” he said. “I welcome the company. A new pump cannot be delivered here until tomorrow morning.”

  While he and Wil began a conversation about the mechanics and reliability of Reneau’s land cruiser, I leaned back against the jeep, feeling the warmth of the sun, and drifting into a pleasant reverie about the old friend Reneau had brought to mind. My friend had been wide-eyed and curious, very much like Reneau seemed, and a constant reader of books. I could almost recall the theories he liked, but time had obscured my recollection.

  “Let’s get our stuff down to the campsite,” Wil was saying, patting me on the back.

  “Okay,” I said absently.

  He opened the rear door and pulled out the tent and sleeping bags and loaded my arms, then grabbed a duffle bag full of extra clothing. Reneau was locking up his vehicle. We all walked past the store and down a course of steps. The ridge fell away steeply behind the building and we angled to the left along a narrow pathway. After twenty or thirty yards, we could hear water running, and further on we saw a stream cascading down the rocks. The air was cooler and I could smell the strong fragrance of mint.

  Directly in front of us, the ground leveled out and the stream formed a pool about twenty-five feet in diameter. Someone had cleared a campsite and built a rock containment for a fire. Wood was stacked against a nearby tree.

  “This is fine,” Wil said, and began unpacking his large four man tent. Reneau spread his smaller tent to the right of Wil.

  “Are you and Wil researchers?” Reneau asked me at one point. Wil had finished with the tent and had walked up to check on dinner.

  “Wilson’s a guide,” I said. “I’m not doing much of anything right now.”

  Reneau gave me a puzzled look.

  I smiled and asked, “Have you been able to see any parts of the Manuscript?”

  “I have seen the First and Second Insights,” he said, stepping closer. “And I’ll tell you something. I think it is all happening just as the Manuscript says. We are changing our world view. I can see it in psychology.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He took a breath. “My field is conflict, looking at why humans treat each other so violently. We’ve always known that this violence comes from the urge humans feel to control and dominate one another, but only recently have we studied this phenomenon from the inside, from the point of view of the individual’s consciousness. We have asked what happens inside a human being that makes him want to control someone else. We have found that when an individual walks up to another person and engages in a conversation, which happens billions of times each day in the world, one of two things can happen. That individual can come away feeling strong or feeling weak, depending on what occurs in the interaction.”

  I gave him a puzzled look and he appeared slightly embarrassed at having rushed into a long lecture on the subject. I asked him to go on.

  “For this reason,” he added, “we humans always seem to take a manipulative posture. No matter what th
e particulars of the situation, or the subject matter, we prepare ourselves to say whatever we must in order to prevail in the conversation. Each of us seeks to find some way to control and thus to remain on top in the encounter. If we are successful, if our viewpoint prevails, then rather than feel weak, we receive a psychological boost.

  “In other words we humans seek to outwit and control each other not just because of some tangible goal in the outside world that we’re trying to achieve, but because of a lift we get psychologically. This is the reason we see so many irrational conflicts in the world both at the individual level and at the level of nations.”

  “The consensus in my field is that this whole matter is now emerging into public consciousness. We humans are realizing how much we manipulate each other and consequently we’re reevaluating our motivations. We’re looking for another way to interact. I think this reevaluation will be part of the new world view that the Manuscript speaks of.”

  Our conversation was interrupted as Wil walked up. “They’re ready to serve us,” he said.

  We hurried up the path and into the basement level of the building, the family’s living quarters. We walked through the living room and into the dining area. On the table was a hot meal of stew, vegetables, and salad.

  “Sit down. Sit down,” the proprietor was saying in English, pulling out chairs and rushing about. Behind him stood an older woman, apparently his wife, and a teenage girl of about fifteen.

  While taking his seat, Wil accidently brushed his fork with an arm. It fell noisily to the floor. The man glared at the woman, who in turn spoke harshly to the young girl who had not yet moved to bring a new one. She hurried into the other room and returned holding a fork, then handed it tentatively to Wil. Her back was stooped and her hand shook slightly. My eyes met Reneau’s from across the table.

  “Enjoy the food,” the man said, handing me one of the dishes. For most of the meal Reneau and Wil talked casually about academic life, the challenges of teaching and publishing. The proprietor had left the room but the woman stood just inside the door.

  As the woman and her daughter began serving individual dishes of pie the young girl’s elbow hit my water glass, spilling the water on the table in front of me. The older woman rushed over in a rage, shouting at the girl in Spanish and pushing her out of the way.