La novena revelación / The Celestine Prophecy

I purchased this book at a local flea market five years ago, but only got around to reading it this year. It turned out to be different from what I had anticipated. I had imagined either a dramatized version of the author's real-life visionary experiences (similar to Philip K. Dick's "VALIS") or a non-fiction book presenting the author's spiritual development and articulating his own system (like Alejandro Jodorowsky's "The Spiritual Journey" and "Psychomagic").

Instead, "The Celestine Prophecy" is a potboiler spy thriller about the Peruvian government and the more reactionary factions in the Vatican trying to cover up a newly discovered Incan manuscript containing a prophecy predicting a near-future consciousness shift among humanity. Along the way, the protagonist encounters various New Age researchers (including an Esalen-style facility studying auras) and more progressive-minded Catholic priests also searching for the manuscript. This fictional manuscript, I gather, is a literary device to dramatize author James Redfield's own ideas about philosophy, religion, and such, as well as lending authority to it by attaching it to an ancient Native American culture. The end result feels a bit like Carlos Castañeda by way of Robert Ludlum.

The philosophy that Redfield promotes in "The Celestine Prophecy" consists almost entirely of ideas I have already encountered through people like G. I. Gurdjieff, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Alan Watts, Colin Wilson, and their ilk. It includes the realization that the materialistic scientific worldview followed by most modern Westerners is as much a product of culturally specific assumptions about reality as any traditional religion, the universe consisting of vibrating energy fields that we only perceive as solid matter due to the limitations of our sensory apparatus, individual selves being artificial constructs assembled from bundles of memory and sense data, and humans being stuck in reflexive mechanical patterns of thought and behavior imprinted upon them by the power structures of the societies they grew up in (Redfield uses the term "control drama"). This is very much an "alternative spirituality for dummies" book camouflaged as a spy novel, and it is satisfying for the most part when taken as such. I suspect I would have liked it much more had I read it earlier in my life when these ideas were new to me.

That said, there are some of the "insights" that Redfield promotes in this book that I have no use for precisely because I have found them counterproductive in the past. The most egregious is the focus on staying positive and eradicating negative thoughts, which might have worked for Redfield but not for me. What has worked for me, on the other hand, is learning to objectively measure negative thoughts, trace where they come from, and find their logical consequences. It could be that these two methods are ultimately different ways of formulating the same process, but the difference is that I have found one articulation useful and the other not. There is also some antiquated and risible stuff about "masculine and feminine energies" that I find incompatible with the non-dualistic worldview he ostensibly promotes and that has the potential to enshrine and reify very culturally specific ideas about gender roles (again, something Redfield ostensibly opposes).

Unfortunately, my experience has been that there is very little New Age literature, or for that matter more "highbrow" modern occultism in general, whose ideas are completely useful all the way through and do not contain elements that are at best nonsense or at worst potentially harmful. Redfield is not unique in this regard. In fact, I think he has a better signal-to-noise ratio than most. So, I would encourage readers curious about alternative spirituality to read this with both an open mind and their critical faculties switched on at all times when it comes to sussing out the useful insights from the dead weight. For readers as in-depth familiar with the topic as I am, it's a good way to pass the time but will not contain many insights you do not already know.

Books like this are like an unfinished prophecy of what we COULD become, if we set our minds to it.

At the time this novel was released, I was beavering madly away in a radically downsized office. The sense of hopelessness within me was so palpable that I could almost cut it with a knife.

So, this book was truly serendipitous. It gave me a monumental lift.

Our office was relocating - yikes, get this - to another Canadian province. I know, it was only across the nearby river that separated us, but it was a royal logistical pain for us all.

The Celestine Prophecy was therefore a shot in the arm for me.

I wolfed most of it down, sitting at my king-sized manager's desk (all our new offices were to be brutally homogenized into a "universal footprint" - one tiny space for each of us) after work that day.

As I read, Redfield's prophetic vision reminded me that, as Jesus said, we are all seeds of what we are to become - whether for better or for worse - and "il faut cultiver son jardin," as Voltaire put it.

My seed that day was Celestial in origin. And its care had to be my unflagging effort.

In recent years, I had fallen upon evil times: the mists of youth had dissipated under the iron glaze of mid-age. Mid-Life Crisis is a bitter pill to swallow for any of us!

The one thing that was lacking in my unpleasant career was positivity, and this book delivered. You see, a positive attitude is like the halcyon weather that is food for our souls.

So in time, my faith in mankind would be restored, and with it, my happiness. But change didn't happen overnight, as it seems to do here.

No. It is a long, slow, and painful process.

But with faith and hard work:

We'll make it. And then...

Oh, The Places We'll Go!

Probably the stupidest book I have ever read. It was a complete waste of my time and energy. The plot was convoluted and made no sense at all. The characters were one-dimensional and lacked any depth or development. The writing style was dull and uninteresting, making it a chore to get through each page. I found myself constantly skimming through the text, hoping to find something redeeming, but there was nothing. I cannot recommend this book to anyone. It is truly a disappointment and I would not read it again even if someone paid me. Save your money and your time and choose a better book to read.

I discovered this book when I was just 14 years old, and it instantly filled me with excitement. Finally, I thought, here was a book that promised to offer me a challenging,全新的世界观 and a deeper understanding of the universe.

However, I was young and naive. As I delved into the pages, I started to notice significant gaps in the logic of the so-called "key insights to life itself". At first glance, each one seemed plausible, but it soon became evident that they were almost entirely random subjective interpretations. The only reason they appeared to have any persuasive power was because they happened to correlate with the events in the novel. "See! That girl just got angry for no reason! That validates the insight about people randomly getting angry all the time. You notice this too, right? Huh? It happens, doesn't it? I bet it's happened to you too."

Yes, it has. It's called LIFE plus COMPLEX HUMAN EMOTIONS. People are free to believe whatever they want about spiritual energy and cosmic harmony, but I wish they wouldn't do it so ostentatiously. I'm not as concerned about James Redfield as I am about the people who read this book and accept it without question. Newsflash: You can have beliefs and still maintain a sense of rationality. Question your beliefs, for the sake of your integrity and your love for them.

I don't mean to be overly critical of this book. Not everyone who reads and enjoys it is a simpleton, and that's to their credit. If they can read this book, learn some life lessons from it, without attempting to indoctrinate others (The back of the book urges you to pass it on to as many people as possible, and looking at the Celestine Prophecy forums, this is precisely what they do a hundredfold), then they are doing better than most. The insights themselves aren't potentially harmful.

At the end of the day, it's just a novel. All authors bring their beliefs to the writing table. None have done it as blatantly as James Redfield, but at least here there's no hidden catch. I gave it two stars, one for the people it has helped, and one for Redfield's capitalist breakthrough. Face it, this book is a bestseller: He must have done something right.

Some relevant and feel-good ideas that are deeply rooted mostly in the more mystical and esoteric branches of various world religions unfortunately get choked. They are smothered by a sugary new-age coating and a completely irrelevant "mystery novel" story line. In fact, there is hardly any real story here. The characters simply walk along, happen to find a page, and then read it. It's quite a pity that the relevant and potentially profound contents of this book could have been effectively handed out in a simple one-page pamphlet.

This kind of situation makes one wonder why such a convoluted and unnecessary approach was taken. Instead of presenting the valuable ideas in a clear and straightforward manner, it seems that they were buried beneath a layer of fluff and an unconnected narrative. It would have been much better if the authors had focused on presenting the essence of these ideas without all the extraneous and distracting elements.

Perhaps in the future, books that deal with such important and meaningful topics will do a better job of presenting them in a way that is both engaging and accessible, without sacrificing the integrity and depth of the original concepts.

The concept presented in this book is indeed quite cool.

However, it is truly a pity that the writing quality is far worse than that of Dan Brown when he has a head injury. This is one of the rare books in my life that I simply could not bring myself to finish because it was that bad.

I gave it a fair shot, reading more than three-fourths of it, but unfortunately, it never improved. Seriously, it felt as if the author was relying on suggestions from his fourth-grade creative writing class on "How to write a Suspense Thriller".

It's really too bad because the concept itself is definitely worth reading about and writing about. So, I wonder if anyone out there can do a better job with this concept?

I truly hope so, as it has the potential to be a great story if only it were written with more skill and finesse.

If you have never had the opportunity to encounter the rich and diverse world of primary Eastern literature, and you are content with settling for the simplistic and sales-pitchy New Age divinity, then by all means, go ahead and subject yourself to this generic adventure with all its poorly written glory.

It might seem like an easy choice at first, but it's important to realize that there is so much more out there.

Then again, I suppose books like this can serve as a wake-up call to some people. They might make you realize that there is a whole other realm of literature waiting to be explored.

But seriously, after waking up from this mediocre experience, it's time to move on to something more artful and inspired.

There are countless masterpieces in the world of literature that can truly touch your heart and expand your mind.

So don't limit yourself to the ordinary. Open your eyes and embrace the beauty and wonder of great literature.

This book is a magical journey along with a spiritual story. It begins with the discovery of a linear version that contains no insights and continues throughout the story with the discovery of insights one by one. It talks about energies and their different states in various conditions...

Note: It is the author's creativity to hide his content in the form of a story so that the reader gets less tired and also that his intended concepts are better and more understandable when expressed in the form of conversations of the characters in the story.

Writing about this book is a difficult task!

The human mind is challenged. You think whether what he said is right or wrong; and if it is right, to what extent it is acceptable...

Some parts of it are things that many of us have experienced until now, but not with the perspective and explanation that the book presents. For example, the experience of going to nature when you go to a beautiful place, how much energy you get and you feel that your state has become excellent, or meeting a particular person, how much it can make your state good and you even use the term that I became full of energy! (or I got charged). Or even the opposite of this, how much a prayer or argument can make our state bad and make a person hopeless and without energy...

Certainly, we have all experienced all these issues, but less likely have we imagined them in the model that is talked about in this book.

I still can't give my definite opinion about this book, but reading it was a good experience for me.