REDFIELD, James
The Celestine
Prophecy
Warner Publishers, 1994
From probably the beginning of recorded history
man has attempted to create God in man's own image and likeness. This has given
rise to countless mythologies that purport to unveil the invisible sources of
the visible world. These creations can be fascinating in their imagery, and
seem to be inciteful in what they uncover for our understanding, but at their
root they are mere anthropromorphisms; they are projecting human
characteristics or wishful thinking onto a supposed higher order.
Into this group are gathered not only the
primitive myths describing gods and nature spirits, but also the higher
intellectual Greek mythology. The same tendency, on an even more sophisticated
level, gave forth the semi-philosophical movement of gnosticism at the time of
the dawn of Christianity. Gnosticism was a movement that held that the secret
of happiness is offered to a group of elect, who are gifted by a special
intuition and knowledge of the deepest mysteries of the universe. Other
religions and movements may have some part of the truth from which these elect
can benefit, but which ultimately can not represent the complete truth. The
real source of being and purpose comes from an omni-present
"Parent-Spirit" that runs through all reality, religions and
movements, and into which these elect can tap. This movement offered one of the
early occasions of intellectual battle and introspection for the Church, and
during the first four centuries many Fathers of the Church showed its
Pantheistic character and its incompatibility with Christianity. Although it
greatly declined it never fully disappeared. Recently it has resurfaced with a
modern face as the "New Age" movement. The Holy Father in Crossing
the Threshold of Hope, writes:
"A separate issue is the return of
ancient gnostic ideas under the guise of the so-called New Age. We cannot
delude ourselves that this will lead toward a renewal of religion. It is only a
new way of practicing gnosticism--that attitude of the spirit that, in the name
of a profound knowledge of God, results in distorting His Word and replacing it
with purely human words. Gnosticism never completely abandoned the realm of
Christianity. Instead, it has always existed side by side with Christianity,
sometimes taking the shape of a philosophical movement, but more often assuming
the characteristics of a religion or para-religion in distinct, if not
declared, conflict with all that is essentially Christian" (p.90, Knopf,
New York, 1994).
The view of reality advanced in The Celestine
Prophecy (hereafter referred to as CP) falls into this group. The book is a
transparent "road test" of the New Age ideas; it leads the
protagonist through an adventure to discover a manuscript in Peru and, in the
process, he comes to learn and test its contents for himself ... with, of
course, marvelous results. Nine insights contained in the manuscript chart the
way individuals and humanity will be happy and brought to a new higher order. Along
the way in searching for this document of ultimate wisdom the group of
adventurers are being opposed by the government and the Catholic hierarchy, who
fear this new source of truth and are determined to destroy it. Therefore the
book also attempts to answer the objections Catholic teaching might raise.
The ideas expressed in this book clearly are in
opposition to a Christian understanding of man and the universe, and, one would
think, also conflict with the common experience of a clear thinking adult. It
careens into a romantic redrawing of reality, unconstrained by any but the most
obvious borders of credibility. Without attempting an exhaustive book review,
one could nevertheless point out some of the more obvious objections:
1) The most basic objection is, as referred to
above, the resurgence of the old error of Gnosticism throughout this New Age
parable. History is seen as the passage of humanity led by some undefined
higher spirit, drawing the individual generations along toward some higher
evolving state. Ultimately, according to the book, this higher spiritual world
will draw to itself all the enlightened and will constitute a spiritual heaven
of bliss. This clearly runs counter to the message of Revelation. A Christian
is one who believes that God has spoken, revealing the truth about Himself and
about man and woman, ultimately in the Son of God made man, Incarnate Truth
Himself. According to this Revelation, the drama of humanity is centered around
freedom of the individual to enter into union with God through Jesus Christ, or
not. Created by God out of love, man is loved by God for himself, and is
invited to share in the divine nature. After the wound of the rejection of God
by the first man and woman, God became man to reconcile us to Himself. The
principle history of mankind is the history of individual choices and loves,
embracing or rejecting this destiny of fellowship with God. Choosing to reject God
and be autonomous from Him is the source of evil and sadness, offending the God
who is Love and desirous of our love. If not reversed it results in eternal
frustration. There is a larger direction of humanity, whose outline we barely
discern, and somehow leads to definitively establishing a lordship of Christ in
the world, when He "will be all in all" (1 Cor. 15,28). While one can
perhaps speak of some evolving state of man, it must be within the truths
outlined above.
2) Similarly, the morality suggested to
adherents of this new cosmology is infinitesimal. According to CP, the
nine-step path to happiness is:
1.
to recognize a personal restlessness;
2.
to see the evolution of human history toward a higher state, on the point of
emerging;
3.
to recognize an all-penetrating "energy" that is the vivifying force
of all being;
4.
to see all human conflict as a competition for this energy;
5.
to discover that the solution for these conflicts is to draw one's energy from
nature;
6.
to recognize and purify one's psychological control patterns;
7.
to abandon one's decision processes to a type of intuition;
8.
to hasten mutual evolving by aggressively seeing others in the best light
possible.
9.
Lastly, the final destiny will be a state of high "vibration" that
will transform one's body into a spiritual, semi-glorious state.
To limit demands on human acts to the above is
to trivialize the needs evident in the social crises of our time, of poverty
and violence, of dissolution of the family, of the advance of bigotry and
hatred, as well as our personal experience of the battle within ourselves
described by St. Paul, when we find ourselves not doing what we wish. Throughout
the drama of history there is woven the corrosive fabric of sin and vice, and
while the above solutions to human conflict can seem to have some positive
contributions they offer meager redemptive powers compared with the grace
Christ has won for humanity by His Cross and Resurrection, and the way of the
Beatitudes which his followers can live.
This scheme of evolution described in CP is
also used to explain some basic Christian beliefs; e.g. Christ's Incarnation
was just a more advanced receptivity to God's energy; so too in explaining the
early Christian community. The above listed ladder of steps for personal growth
is actually advanced as what Christ really wanted to say; Fr. Sanchez, in
defending the Manuscript before Cardinal Sebastian, says: "We're only now
grasping what Jesus was talking about, where he was leading us. The Manuscript
clarifies what he meant! How to do it!" (CP, p. 236). It hardly need be
said that such a statement is seen by anyone familiar with the teachings of
Christ as wildly gratuitous. A life of faith, hope and love, of obedience,
humility and service, of poverty and purity of heart, of works of mercy and
fidelity to the deposit of Revelation as well as the living Body of Christ, the
Church; these transcend the insights in question, that at best offer some
psychological understanding and at worst reduce the dignity of man down to a
pagan enjoyment of the most superficial type of beauty.
3) One must also, of course, take issue with
its charges against the Church. Organized religion, i.e. Christianity, is described
as a stage along the evolutionary way, valid perhaps for its time, but now
essentially obsolete as a direction-forger and should relinquish the leadership
to, basically, the New Age hierarchy of wise men. The description given of the
Church is the basic superficial Caricature of an organized power group bent on
maintaining its agenda and control through political means of domination. It
grew obsolete, supposedly, after the Middle Ages once the flow of ideas
eventually moved away from its narrow, rather backward world view. The
narrative continues to depict the hierarchy, in the hunt for the manuscript, as
continuing its role of oppression of ideas by political —including military—
influence. Such a description is out of touch both with Church teaching about
herself and the reality of things. Times of any "witch hunts" for
ideas contrary to Catholic teaching are centuries past, for as much as they
ever existed. On the contrary, Church teaching defends the right of all to
search for the truth, scientific or religious, and she has nothing to fear from
those wishing to pursue New Age or any other theory. She has the duty, however,
to serve all by teaching and elucidating the truth She has received from Truth
Incarnate, out of a desire to serve and to lead all to the truth and salvation.
4) Finally, to look to nature as a source of
the strength which we need to win the battles that will right all wrongs is a
return to pagan Pantheism. It is to substitute the salutary effect nature can
have in leading us to know and love God, with a type of deification of its
beauty, ascribing to it expectations that it can not fulfill. Nature, in all
truth, also exhibits the scar of disorder and death brought by sin; it must be
approached with respect but also with the balance of a higher law. Jungles and
rain forests harbor lush foliage and flowers, but also snakes.
In summary, the Celestine Prophecy resurrects
old myths of an evolving consciousness of humanity, faceless and unerring, that
will bring about a new heightened awareness and sensitivity, harnessing a
hidden energy now latent in nature. In advancing such a world view, it placates
a certain modern decadence which looks for a painless redemption; permissive in
personal morality, it sooths by encouraging feelings and sentiment to supersede
study and logic. As an evolution, it is anti-tradition; the past is out-dated
by definition, and what counts is the moment and the future. One can help
others but need not do so; the person can evolve alone, if need be. Such ideas,
to be sure, are a backward prophecy.
M.J.M.
(1995)
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