... Have you ever been presented with a set of circumstances, which you have dismissed as a coincidence but that left you with a bit of nagging doubt…
If you have then you may be interested in “The Celestine Prophecy”, a book which claims to show that what we dismiss as coincidence ... Read review
You have never read a book like this before..."The Celestine Prophecy" contains secrets ... more
that are currently changing our world. Drawing on the ancient wisdom found in a Peruvian manuscript it tells you how to make connections between the events happeni...
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The Making of the Movie. Features more than 150 full-colour photographs taken on the set ... more
during shooting on location in Costa Rica, stills from the movie, and commentary on the day-to-day aspects of capturing the magic of the Nine Insights on film for a whole new audience.
Advantages: you'll either get it... Disadvantages: ...or you wont
...pops into your head and the next thing they are on the phone to you or you bump into them in the street. Have you ever been presented with a set of circumstances, which you have dismissed as a coincidence but that left you with a bit of nagging doubt…
If you have then you may be interested in “The Celestine Prophecy”, a book which claims to show that what we dismiss as coincidence is actually the very deliberate ... ...elucidate.
THE BOOK
“The Celestine Prophecy” is essentially a spiritual self-help book, uniquely delivered in the form of a first –person novel. The hero of the novel is unnamed but is clearly meant to be you, the reader. The experiences, revelations, insights and questions of the narrator are actually ours, all of this is designed to engage the participation of you, the reader, to take you from empathy ... more
Have you ever had an experience where some-ones name pops into your head and the next thing they are on the phone to you or you bump into them in the street. Have you ever been presented with a set of circumstances, which you have dismissed as a coincidence but that left you with a bit of nagging doubt…
If you have then you may be interested in “The Celestine Prophecy”, a book which claims to show that what we dismiss as coincidence is actually the very deliberate catalyst of a process that will allow us to take control of, and develop, our lives, as long as we allow ourselves to become receptive to this process.
Eh?
Ok let me elucidate.
THE BOOK
“The Celestine Prophecy” is essentially a spiritual self-help book, uniquely delivered in the form of a first –person novel. The hero of the novel is unnamed but is clearly meant to be you, the reader. The experiences, revelations, insights and questions of the narrator are actually ours, all of this is designed to engage the participation of you, the reader, to take you from empathy to sympathy.
The story begins with the first of many “chance” encounters when our narrator hears from a long-lost friend. As they meet for dinner for the first time in 6 years, the friend tells us of news coming from Peru about the discovery of an ancient manuscript which contains 9 Insights, each Insight containing information which once understood and embraced will further the process of Human evolution ultimately leading to the creation of a purely spiritual culture here on Earth.
Our friend reveals that the process will begin once we accept the First Insight, the recognition that there is no such thing as coincidence, everything happens for a reason, every chance meeting has a purpose. Once we grasp this concept then we can begin to attempt to recognise the reason for these “coincidences”.
Intrigued, our hero founds himself strangely compelled to travel to Peru, where he finds himself wrapped up in a major conspiracy as he races against time to uncover the remaining Insights.
THE NOVEL
Clearly the purpose of the book is to deliver James Redfield’s spiritual self-help message, and you have to applaud the decision to make the whole experience more interesting by wrapping it up in a novel. However Mr Redfield is no great author, he is unable to breathe life into any of his characters, they all seem to be hewn from the same bland stone so as a result you get no sense of who these people are as individuals. He would have been as well doing away with names and just calling them character “A”, character “B” as so on. Of course though the only purpose of the other characters in the book is to enhance our understanding of the Insights and reveal further Insights, and they serve this purpose very well. In a straightforward self-help book, if you don’t understand the concept behind a particular idea you can’t question the author. However here we can. Usually once an Insight has been discussed by a character, the narrator (that’s you who is reading the book) usually fails to grasp the concept and so asks questions until the Insight has been extensively discussed and analysed until even a 5 year old could understand.
He is also incapable of creating any sense of drama or danger in our predicament. We do find ourselves in some dangerous situations but the writing maintains it’s one-note monotone, as if reading from the telephone directory, and so utterly fails to create dynamic tension. The story also relies far too heavily on the use of coincidences. Although some use of this device is necessary to illustrate the effect of the revelations contained within the First Insight, it happens time and time again until I got to the point of thinking that the only purpose of the First Insight was to justify Mr Redfield’s use of coincidence to drive his plot! Coincidence is a very lazy dramatic device in film and literature, as you don’t have to bother constructing a credible scenario to get your hero through your story if you can just have him turn the next corner and bump into the very person who can help him.
However all of this, whilst not lending itself to a very enjoyable read, does make for a very easy read and I found that I stormed through the 280-odd pages in a couple of days
But of course you are not reading this book for the quality of it’s writing, you are after…
THE SPIRITUAL SELF-HELP BOOK
I must confess right out that I can tend to be a bit of a sceptic on all matters spiritual but I approached the concepts contained within the Nine Insights with as open a mind as I could muster and found myself initially agreeing within them as they make perfect sense to anybody with a sound mind. Broadly speaking the Insights ask us to become aware of ourselves, what is happening to us and around us. Once we do this we will see that Humankind has gone from centuries ago having a mainly purely spiritual society to one that is almost purely secular. Once we recognise this and accept it, the time for transformation will come. This will occur by recognising that everything, every place is a source of energy. How we go about acquiring and using that energy is they key to the final phase.
This energy is the preoccupation of most of the Insights and although it is wrapped up in a veneer of New Age speak the messages are all perfectly valid and common sense. We are asked to take this energy in initially in the form of specially grown fruit and vegetables, clearly a call for the extensive use of organic farming materials. And although the book doesn’t specifically call for us all to become vegetarian it does say that this energy cannot be gained by consuming flesh. Once tapped in we also gain this energy from certain power sites, which will tend to be ancient wooded areas and places of outstanding natural beauty, basically a call to preserve the environment. The next stage of the energy is how we steal it from others. We should learn to recognise how we do this and reverse the process by giving energy to others. Be nice to one another.
These Insights, presented in any way you like, are something we can all relate too whether you have faith or spirituality or not. They are about how we relate to the physical world and those around us. The remaining Insights however deal with purely Spiritual matters although there was a clumsy attempt to created a concept of a form of Spiritual Capitalism, which left a bit of a nasty taste. I’m not sure how literally I was supposed to take them but certainly at this point me and Mr Redfield parted company.
CONCLUSION
Overall I was disappointed. I had been expecting an exciting adventure novel with some intriguing ideas. Well as I said, as a novel it fails to convince. As a spiritual self-help guide, well I guess that’ll depend on who reads it and how they responded to these matters. I could totally relate to the theme of the central Insights, not in the spiritual tones that Mr Redfield employs but purely on the common-sense level that is their heart. As for the accepting of coincidence and the more spiritual concepts I can’t say I’m that convinced.
Except…
A funny thing happened. I’ve had the book for ages having borrowed it from my mother after reading a review of it here on dooyoo. Not only did the op intrigue me but also I recalled my mother having asked some time ago if I had heard of the book after a friend had recommended it to her. Anyways I was clearing up my home PC workstation in anticipation of a visit from an engineer to have a look at my defunct PC and came across two things:
1 – A brochure from a Holiday Bond company, which went in the bucket but caused me to think about a “free” holiday I had been promised over a year ago after attending a timeshare presentation
2 - This book, which I immediately began to read (anything to get out of housework).
The next morning I got up about 10am and after pottering around for a while I decided to read more of the book. I had just put my hand on it when at the exact same time the post came through the door and guess what was in it. Yup, a letter inviting me to phone to chose my free holiday.
Coincidence or what?
That same week, on the Wednesday I was down at my mothers checking my e-mails when I suddenly felt prompted to go through to the living room and ask her if she had heard anything about a travel insurance claim she had submitted. You see my mother, who has a long history of tragic events occurring around the time she travels, was in a plane just off the Eastern Canadian coast when the events of September 11th occurred. She found herself stuck in Montreal for three days before she could get a flight out, in which time she had spent over £200 on hotel fees. Anyways at that point she had heard nothing but the very next day through the post…Yup you’ve guessed.
Coincidence or what?
The cynic in me says yes it was all coincidence and that reading the book had heightened my alertness to coincidence, which I would normally barely acknowledge.
Advantages: Easy to read lessons of life written as an adventure story Disadvantages: Many will think the subject matter is a complete load of codswallop!
...are there higher aspects of the mind at work?
Suppose you open a dictionary and hit exactly the right page for the word you are looking for or, perhaps, one morning you are unable to get your normal newspaper but in another one, you bought instead, is the answer to the very question you've been pondering over the last few days. Would these simply be coincidences or is something else guiding you? I ask these questions because your answers will probably ... ...of rubbish. If, on the other hand, you feel that there could well be something more to life and that things like hunches, energy patterns and secret manuscripts of the ancient Mayans sounds pretty interesting, then give this a read - and hold on to your hat for a story full of amazing coincidences.
This book is an adventure, you can decide for yourself whether it is fiction or not. It could be either. The author is James Redfield and it may be his ...
Sexy-Kay 05.10.2002
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of The Celestine Prophecy - James Redfield, Carol Adrienne
Advantages: Advice on spiritual awakening Disadvantages: Requires a very open mind
The Celestine Prophecy is a book who's sales seem to come more from personal introductions than from the 'Let's buy it and try it' spiritual crowd. On the good side this means that almost every reader of this book will have picked up someone else's copy first and read a bit or who has been encoraged to read it by word of mouth. On the bad side, despite everything the cover tells you about the contents, some will pick up the book, read the first and ... ...not, is pure adventure.
The book starts with the story-teller, a school teacher, at a loose end. Term time is over and he is looking forward to a break in the wilderness when a long lost friend rings him up out of the blue and tells him she has information that will interest him. At a lunch meeting she tells him of ancient documents of which she has a copy of the first part. The document, discovered in Peru, tells of how mankind will become more ...
steven938 13.06.2004
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of The Celestine Prophecy - James Redfield, Carol Adrienne
Advantages: It seems to help some people - goodness knows how Disadvantages: Its very badly written and slightly deceptive
The Celestine Prophecy may be a best seller and incredibly popular but I really think it is one of the worse books of its kind that I have ever read – and believe me I have read quite a lot. The Celestine Prophecy is fiction – and very poor fiction at that. Had it been written by the hand of a reasonably accomplished writer who had bothered to do the slightest bit of research the book might have been worth reading. Unfortunately, however, ... ...skill at all apart from the ability to fleece the gullible American public.
The Celestine Prophecy is fiction but it is apparently widely treated as non-fiction, this is where it appears in Ciao – rather strangely under lifestyle/health and beauty. If it had been classed as fiction I might have been reluctant to divulge the whole story but, as it is not and the plot is so weak anyway, it will do no harm to do so.
After an almost promising ...
Freespirit 10.02.2001
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of The Celestine Prophecy - James Redfield, Carol Adrienne
...level of awareness. The Insights were like instructions to become aware of yourself, others around you, and the universe. What powers us, drives us, and why do we do what we do. What is the reason are we all here for? Why do we come in contact with people, who are similar to ourselves? This book wont answer these questions for you... but it will make you think. The 9 insights are as follows. 1..A Critical Mass. An spiritual awakening that happens ... ...share our same interests, have the same childhood, or have been though similar life experiences. Coincidences start to happen. You know, you are thinking about someone, and a few hours later you bump into them or they ring you. Or letter might arrive from them , telling you that something has happened. Coincidence? Critical Mass is about these coincidences, and if you listen to your intuition, how they guide you through life. Many thousands of years ...
chrissiepops 01.03.2001
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of The Celestine Prophecy - James Redfield, Carol Adrienne
Advantages: well, this book can change your life... Disadvantages: ...but only if you're ready...
...an idol of mine at the time advocated it, but once I'd read chapter one I was hooked. Not only hooked, but stunned at how the information coming through the story was SO relevant to my life...
Probably of most value to those who have cast a thought or two towards spiritual matters anyway, and are just awakening to their spirituality, this book can be a revelation - IF you're open, IF you're ready, and IF you're willing to suspend disbelief.
I'll ... ...when I did. The Celestine Prophecy is a spiritual adventure story, but rooted in real beliefs held by the New Age community, as I've since found. It's a bit like a parable in that it's fiction, but lots of fact-based theories in the background that it illustrates. It centres around an unnamed character who begins on his journey by discovering that all of human history has been geared towards a spiritual evolution when humanity reaches a 'critical ...
Lancashire_Angel 11.08.2003 (15.08.2003)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of The Celestine Prophecy - James Redfield, Carol Adrienne
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