The Celestine Prophecy: An Adventure (33 page)

“Evolve! Evolve! Listen to yourself, Father, you have always fought against the influence of evolution. What has happened to you?”

Sanchez collected himself. “Yes, I fought against the idea of evolution as a replacement for God, as a way to explain the universe without reference to God. But now I see that the truth is a synthesis of the scientific and religious world views. The truth is that evolution is the way God created, and is still creating.”

“But there is no evolution,” Sebastian protested. “God created this world and that’s it.”

Sanchez glanced at me but I had no ideas to express.

“Cardinal Sebastian,” he continued, “the Manuscript describes the progress of succeeding generations as an evolution of understanding, an evolution toward a higher spirituality and vibration. Each generation incorporates more energy and accumulates more truth and then passes that status on to the people of the next generation, who extend it further.”

“That’s nonsense,” Sebastian said. “There is only one way to become more spiritual and that’s by following the examples in the scriptures.”

“Exactly!” Sanchez said. “But again, what are the examples? Isn’t the story of the scriptures a story of people learning to receive God’s energy and will within? Isn’t that what the early prophets led the people to do in the Old Testament? And isn’t that receptivity to God’s energy within what culminated in the life of a carpenter’s son, to the extent that we say God, himself, descended to Earth?

“Isn’t the story of the New Testament,” he continued, “the story of a group of people being filled with some kind of energy that transformed them? Didn’t Jesus, himself, say that what he did, we could do also, and more? We’ve never really taken that idea seriously, not until now. 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!”

Sebastian looked away, his face red with anger. During the pause in the conversation, a high ranking officer burst into the room and told Sebastian that the intruders had been seen.

“Look!” the officer said, pointing out the window. “There they are!”

Three or four hundred yards away we could see two figures running through an open field headed toward the forest. A number of soldiers at the edge of the clearing seemed ready to open fire.

The officer turned from the window and looked at Sebastian, his radio raised.

“If they get to the wooded area,” he said, “they will be hard to find. Do I have your permission to open fire?”

As I watched the two running, I suddenly recognized who they were.

“That’s Wil and Julia!” I shouted.

Sanchez walked even closer to Sebastian. “In the name of God, you cannot commit murder over this!”

The officer persisted. “Cardinal Sebastian, if you want this Manuscript contained, I must give the order now.”

I was frozen.

“Father, trust me,” Sanchez was saying. “The Manuscript will not erode all you have built, all you have stood for. You cannot kill these people.”

Sebastian shook his head. “Trust you . . ?” Then he sat down on his desk and looked at the officer. “We will shoot no one. Tell your troops to capture them alive.”

The officer nodded and walked out of the room. Sanchez said, “Thank you, you made the right choice.”

“Not to kill, yes,” Sebastian said. “But I will not change my mind. This Manuscript is a curse. It would undermine our basic structure of spiritual authority. It would entice people to think they are in control of their spiritual destiny. It would undermine the discipline needed to bring everyone on the planet into the church, and people would be caught wanting when the rapture comes.” He looked hard at Sanchez. “At this moment, thousands of troops are arriving. It doesn’t matter what you or anyone else does. The Ninth Insight will never leave Peru. Now get out of my mission.”

As we sped away, we could hear dozens of trucks approaching in the distance.

“Why did he let us go?” I asked.

“I suppose because he thinks it makes no difference,” Sanchez replied, “that there’s nothing we can do. I really don’t know what to think.” His eyes met mine. “We didn’t convince him, you know.”

I too, was confused. What did it mean? Perhaps we hadn’t been there to convince Sebastian after all. Perhaps we were just supposed to delay him.

I glanced back at Sanchez. He was concentrating on driving and searching the roadside for any sign of Wil and Julia. We had decided that we would double back in the direction they had been running, but so far we had seen nothing. As we rode, my mind wandered to the Celestine ruins. I imagined what the site looked like: the tiered excavations, the scientist’s tents, the looming pyramidal structures in the background.

“They don’t seem to be in these woods,” Sanchez said. “They must have had a vehicle. We must decide what to do.”

“I think we should go to the ruins,” I said.

He looked at me. “We might as well. There’s no where else to go.”

Sanchez made a turn to the west.

“What do you know of these ruins?” I asked.

“They were built by two different cultures, as Julia said. The first, the Mayans, had a thriving civilization there, though most of their temples were further north in the Yucatan. Mysteriously, all signs of their civilization suddenly vanished about 600 B.C. without apparent cause. The Incas developed another civilization afterward at the same location.”

“What do you think happened to the Mayans?”

Sanchez glanced at me. “I don’t know.”

We rode for several minutes in silence, then I suddenly remembered that Father Sanchez had told Sebastian he had read more of the Ninth Insight.

“How did you see more of the Ninth Insight?” I asked.

“The young soldier who helped us knew where another part was being hidden. After you and I were separated, he took me to another room and showed it to me. It added only a few more concepts to what Phil and Dobson told us, but it gave me the points I used with Sebastian.”

“What did it say specifically?”

“That the Manuscript would clarify many religions. And would help them fulfill their promise. All religion, it says, is about humankind finding relationship to one higher source. And all religions speak of a perception of God within, a perception that fills us, makes us more than we were. Religions become corrupted when leaders are assigned to explain God’s will to the people instead of showing them how to find this direction within themselves.

“The Manuscript says that sometime in history one individual would grasp the exact way of connecting with God’s source of energy and direction and would thus become a lasting example that this connection is possible.” Sanchez looked at me. “Isn’t that what Jesus really did? Didn’t he increase his energy and vibration until he was light enough to …?” Sanchez ended his sentence without finishing it and seemed to be deep in thought.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

Sanchez looked perplexed. “I don’t know. The soldier’s copy ended right there. It said that this individual would blaze a path that the whole human race was destined to follow. But it didn’t say where this path led.”

For fifteen minutes we rode in silence. I attempted to receive some indication of what would happen next, but I could think of nothing. I seemed to be trying too hard.

“There are the ruins,” Sanchez said.

Ahead, through the forest to the left of the road, I could make out three large pyramidal shaped structures. After we parked and walked closer, I could tell the pyramids were constructed of cut stone and were spaced an equal distance apart, about a hundred feet. Between them was an area paved with a smoother stone. Several excavation sites were dug into the base of the pyramids.

“Look, there!” Sanchez said, pointing toward the more distant pyramid.

A lone figure was sitting in front of the structure. As we walked that way, I noticed an increase in my energy level. By the time we reached the center of the paved area I felt incredibly energized. I looked at Sanchez and he raised an eyebrow. When we got closer I recognized the person by the pyramid to be Julia. She sat cross-legged and held several papers in her lap.

“Julia,” Sanchez called.

Julia turned and stood up. Her face seemed iridescent.

“Where is Wil?” I asked.

Julia pointed to her right. There, perhaps a hundred yards away was Wil. He seemed to be glowing in the fading twilight.

“What is he doing?” I asked.

“The Ninth,” Julia replied, holding the papers toward us. Sanchez told Julia that we had seen some of the insight, the part which foretold of a human world transformed by conscious evolution.

“But where does this evolution take us?” Sanchez asked.

Julia didn’t answer. She just held up the papers in her hand, as though she expected us to read her mind.

“What?” I asked.

Sanchez reached over and touched my forearm. His look reminded me to stay alert and to wait.

“The Ninth reveals our ultimate destiny,” Julia said. “It makes it all crystal clear. It reiterates that as humans, we are the culmination of the whole of evolution. It talks about matter beginning in a weak form and increasing in complexity, element by element, then species by species, always evolving into a higher state of vibration.

“When primitive humans came along, we continued this evolution unconsciously by conquering others and gaining energy and moving forward a little bit, and then being conquered ourselves by someone else and losing our energy. This physical conflict continued until we invented democracy, a system that didn’t end the conflict but shifted it from a physical to a mental level.

“Now,” Julia went on, “we’re bringing this whole process into consciousness. We can see that all of human history has prepared us to achieve conscious evolution. Now, we can increase our energy and experience the coincidences consciously. This carries evolution onward at a faster pace, lifting our vibrations even higher.”

She hesitated for a moment, looking at each of us, then repeated what she had said, “Our destiny is to continue to increase our energy level. And as our energy level increases, the level of vibration in the atoms of our bodies increases.”

She hesitated again.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It means,” Julia said, “that we are getting lighter, more purely spiritual.”

I looked at Sanchez. He was focused intensely on Julia.

“The Ninth Insight,” Julia continued, “says that as we humans continue to increase our vibration, an amazing thing will begin to happen. Whole groups of people, once they reach a certain level, will suddenly become invisible to those who are still vibrating at a lower level. It will appear to the people on this lower level that the others just disappeared, but the group themselves will feel as though they are still right here—only they will feel lighter.”

As Julia talked I noticed her face and body changing somewhat. Her body was taking on the characteristics of her energy field. Her features were still clear and distinct but it was no longer muscles and skin at which I was looking. She looked as though she were made of pure light, glowing from within.

I looked at Sanchez. He appeared the same way. To my amazement, everything appeared this way: the pyramids, the stone under our feet, the surrounding forest, my hands. The beauty I was able to perceive had increased beyond anything I had experienced before, even when on the ridge top.

“When humans begin to raise their vibrations to a level where others cannot see them,” Julia continued, “it will signal that we are crossing the barrier between this life and the other world from which we came and to which we go after death. This conscious crossing over is the path shown by the Christ. He opened up to the energy until he was so light he could walk on water. He transcended death right here on Earth, and was the first to cross over, to expand the physical world into the spiritual. His life demonstrated how to do this, and if we connect with the same source we can head the same way, step by step. At some point everyone will vibrate highly enough so that we can walk into heaven, in our same form.”

I noticed Wil was walking slowly toward us. His movements seemed unusually graceful, as though he was gliding.

“The Insight says,” Julia went on, “that most individuals will reach this level of vibration during the third millennium, and in groups consisting of the people with whom they are most connected. But some cultures in history have already achieved the vibration. According to the Ninth Insight, the Mayans crossed over together.”

Julia abruptly stopped talking. From behind us, we heard muffled voices in Spanish. Dozens of soldiers were entering the ruins, coming right for us. To my surprise I was unafraid. The soldiers continued to walk in our general direction but strangely not directly toward us.

“They can’t see us!” Sanchez said. “We’re vibrating too highly!”

I looked again at the soldiers. He was right. They were walking twenty or thirty feet to our left, completely ignoring us.

Suddenly we heard loud shouts in Spanish by the pyramid to our left. The soldiers closest to us stopped and ran in that direction.

I strained to see what was happening. Another group of soldiers were emerging from the forest holding the arms of two other men. Dobson and Phil. The sight of their capture jolted me, and I could feel my energy level plummet. I looked at Sanchez and Julia. Both were staring intently toward the soldiers and appearing equally disturbed.

“Wait!” Wil seemed to shout from the opposite direction. “Don’t lose your energy!” I felt the words as well as heard them. They were slightly garbled.

We turned to see Wil walking quickly toward us. As we watched he seemed to say something else, but this time the words were completely unintelligible. I realized I was having trouble focusing. His image was becoming hazy, distorted. Gradually, as I stared in disbelief, he disappeared altogether.

Julia turned to face Sanchez and me. Her energy level seemed lower but she was completely undaunted, as though whatever just happened clarified something.

“We weren’t able to maintain the vibration,” she said. “Fear lowers one’s vibration tremendously.” She looked toward the spot where Wil had faded from view. “The Ninth Insight says that while some individuals may cross over sporadically, a general rapture will not occur until we have abolished fear, until we can maintain a sufficient vibration in all situations.”