A Conversation with

James Redfield

As a foremost chronicler of the spiritual renaissance that's overtaken the world, the author of runaway bestseller The Celestine Prophecy talks about the insights his books are based on - and especially about the most recent insight, the eleventh, the powerful nature of prayer.As a foremost chronicler of the spiritual renaissance that's overtaken the world, the author of runaway bestseller The Celestine Prophecy talks about the insights his books are based on - and especially about the most recent insight, the eleventh, the powerful nature of prayer.

James Redfield: What I'm trying to do is chronicle a spiritual renaissance that's already happening out there. The polls show that in the last thirty years, there's been a real, growing interest not just in the spiritual but in the experience of the spiritual. In other words, how the spiritual reality impacts our individual lives. I believe that overall, that's really a historical shift in attitude. The press is mostly missing this, but there's a huge spiritual renaissance crossing all religions, that is happening right now. What I tried to do in The Celestine Prophecy is to name nine insights that I believe we were becoming aware of, that we were stepping up into as we gained a new spiritual awareness about our lives.

And in The Tenth Insight, I of course went on with another insight, and now I'm describing what I believe is the eleventh insight. I believe it's what's already emerging into human consciousness. With The Secret of Shambala, I'm trying to illustrate it, bring it to light, describe it.

TMA: Would you say the tenth and eleventh insights build on the previous nine and enlarge the vision?

JR: I think that the insights form a hierarchy. In other words, that Insight One, Two, Three and so forth -- each insight expands the understanding and level of awareness that you had before. Insight number one, for instance, the perception of synchronicity, is an eye-opening discovery that there's some sort of mag force that's going out in our environment, pulling us toward a certain destiny, bringing us key information at just the right time. Key people are there to expand our horizons and that sort of thing.

Insight Two is the understanding that we as a culture, the human consciousness, has not really taken synchronicity seriously for at least 400 years that we've been living in the materialistic age. So that insight expands the understanding that not only is synchronicity available to us if we open our eyes, but that it really represents a historical awakening to a new level of life, a new way of life, what I call the new world view that's emerging. So on through the first nine insights: we gain an ever widening understanding that this synchronicity is taking us somewhere, bringing this information about that we no longer live in a material world, we live in a spiritual, energetic world -- that's Insight Three..

Insight Four is that you struggle to control this energy but that you can transcend that. Insight Five is that we connect with a great Source within ourselves that we would call God, that the mystics call the transformative experience. When you do that, the synchronicity expands even further so that we feel like we're on an energized life path taking us somewhere. Eight and nine, of course, are an understanding that we're all engaging in this process. We become more and more energetic personally, in that we're actually moving toward a transformation of the body in the future . . . from a very materialistic-appearing body to more of a light body. This is something that mystics across all fields have agreed on, something that's happening . . . the fact that we're becoming aware of it . . . we're reaching a critical mass. It is very significant that a greater number of human beings alive now understand that this is happening, that this is part of the reality of our existence.

Insight ten goes further, and shows that not only are we here discovering this synchronistic path for ourselves, but, in fact, we come from another dimension, a spiritual one, into this material plane to do just that: to discover synchronicity, to follow it into a mission, free to tell the world, to help to push its evolution further and faster.

Each insight, in my view, is one in which the culture in general expands its awareness of the spiritual nature of life.

TMA: It's a very exciting time to be alive.

JR: I think so, too. You know, there's great discussion going on out there. Some people are talking about different aspects of this new spiritual awareness. There's great discussion, dialog, debate in some areas, but it's all about what is the reality of being a spiritual being on this planet and coming awake. You know -- what is it we're discovering and what should we think about our own lives.

TMA: We've already scored some major victories. The ending of the Cold War was directly brought about by consciousness and global meditation.

JR: There's no doubt about it. It's everywhere you look. People who understand this can see see improvement. In spite of the fact that there are outbreaks of skirmishes and killings all over the world right now, there are fewer major conflicts than ever before. Nations are less aggressive toward each other now than ever before. It's an anomaly for a nation like the former Yugoslavia to attack its neighbors. The whole world can focus on it, it's so rare. In terms of the amount of intelligible communication between different cultures on the planet, the awareness about the environment, and people's stated beliefs about spirituality, all have to give us hope that we can continue to progress.

TMA: Your latest book seems to be saying that you really do create your life.

JR: That's exactly true. I'm not saying -- I don't think anyone would say -- that our own prayer energy, this field that we create, does it all. There are a lot of other factors . . . other people's intentions, you know, the moment that we're in in terms of family history and that kind of thing. But the fact is, we're more powerful in terms of creating the future for ourselves by intentionally setting fields, setting our own expectations.

We're known this in the New Thought movement for a long time. We've known about positive thinking and neurolinguistic programming and that kind of thing. What's different now, I believe, and what this really represents, a kind of eleventh insight, is that we are understanding it and are willing to talk about it and explore it on an individual level, more than ever before. Out of that is a genuine eleventh insight.

What's exciting about it for me is that we're taking seriously the idea of becoming more powerful. It's not that we create our reality with our thoughts -- and we certainly do that and that's exciting -- but we can also extend the power that we have. We can amplify our power in certain ways by key visualizations, and those I try to talk about in the book.

TMA: Working together with others.

JR: That's right. It's interesting . . . just a couple of examples -- one of the things we're learning, I believe, is that every thought has a prayer impact. That's amplifying or extending the old idea of prayer that you ask for something and sometimes you get it, sometimes you don't. What we're understanding now, though, is that faith and expectation play a part. If we just come to a sacred place and visualize an outcome that we want, whether we get it is not just a matter of what our idea is of what God thinks about it, or some force outside of us thinks about it. We also have to look at, can we really visualize with an extended faith that that can happen. We have to extend and amplify our prayer.

I think the interesting part of this is that we're learning that very often we don't have all the information to pray for a specific outcome. For a particular presidential candidate to win, for instance. We really don't know, at the high spiritual level, which person will win the presidency. But what we can pray for is that those people running for the presidency be lifted into their highest intuitive faculties, into their higher selves, and operate not out of personal interest but for the interest of all humanity. If we pray for that, then I believe our prayers are amplified beyond belief.

TMA: I like how you end The Secret of Shambala with the vision of Tibet someday becoming free. I believe that that'll happen, too.

JR: I think that the destiny of all cultures on this planet is to be able to, you know, relate to other cultures, but to be free to express their beliefs, and that that has to be done within some governmental form of democracy. It'll be a real stretch for the Chinese to have to evolve in that direction, you know? It's going to be a great challenge for the world to help China evolve in that direction.

TMA: Well, the Berlin wall fell down, and South Africa achieved freedom without bloodshed. If that can happen, and it happened because critical mass of consciousness was reached, then Tibet can be free.

JR: Yes, I think so, too. I think that again, the whole story of Shambala as a community that knows how to send prayer energy out with great intensity, great power, to uplift situations, uplift the people that are hung up in situations . . . if we can learn to extend our own energy to the degree that we amplify our own prayer field, we stay on solid ground. That means not asking for things that are just selfish, but instead really trying to align with the divine will behind the world and the intended evolution of the world. Then, I think, we can become very, very powerful.

I think that's what we learn . . . that we can extend our power -- but we have to have a certain inner vision of what the intended evolution of the world is to be, and hold for that. As long as we're holding for that, then everybody's life is improved. The degree of synchronicity that happens in our own lives is improved. Our power to uplift other people into their higher selves where their synchronicity is very active, and where their intuition is very active, increases.

Again, it's learning , I believe, how to amplify our own prayer power, where to use this prayer power, what to use it for. That's the eleventh insight. I think that truth is coming in, is coming together.

TMA: Is there anything you want to get in that we haven't talked about?

JR: I would like to say just a few words about negative prayer. If every thought is a prayer, then the sort of aimless criticisms that we have of other people, of ourselves, take on much more significance. I heard a Fundamentalist preacher one time say, Look, God is not going to turn up the power in you until He knows that you aren't going to get mad one day and blow out tires with it, and that you'll not rage if somebody pulls out in front of you. The only way we're going to be able to really reach a higher degree of faith in prayer power, a higher degree of creativity, is if we use it in a positive fashion.

I think the one thing that's important right now is to get our critical thoughts under control. What that means is watching and being mindful, and to realize that we think things about each other that we would never mention. We would never say to somebody, "I think you're sloppily dressed" or "You have an irritating way of talking," but we think it. That thought actually goes out and creates more of what annoys us in the individual. If we are critical of something in the individual and we think about that, it's just like praying for it to continue. While we may notice it, we have to immediately shift into uplifting that individual with a prayer energy that lifts them into their higher self and their higher intuition and their higher mode. We have to shift into that if we want to help that person.

TMA: Send a blessing attitude.

JR: Absolutely. It's a real power. I think that's the difference. We're learning that those thoughts and that attitude is a real power that goes out from us and affects the world.

James and Salle Merrill Redfield will be at Transitions Learning Center November 9 at 7pm. For information, call Transitions, 312/951-READ (7323) or stop by Transitions Bookplace, 1000 W. North Avenue, Chicago.