SkepticReport * Book Review: James Redfield, The Celestine Prophecy

March, 2003
In the summer of 1999 I borrowed James Redfield's book The Celestine Prophecy (1993) from a friend whom I sent a private criticism which was later published in Para News (Para-nyt, the on-line magazine of the Danish skeptics Skeptica.dk ).

This article primarily addresses 'believers' who have read the book. Consequently you should be able to show it to Redfield fans - but do not expect them to be grateful. In other words it is not really meant as an introduction to the book for people who do not already know it. A skeptic, however, will probably be able to use it to get a general idea. As always in this world it is left to the readers to decide if they want to try to understand the thoughts contained in my criticism, and draw a couple of conclusions themselves.

Warning against skepticism

In the preface the author feels compelled to issue a general warning against a skeptic attitude and asks his readers to stop doubting, i.e. to believe! This is rather peculiar since Redfield's novel/manifesto contains one very negatively portrayed character whose major fault is that he demands that his converts believe him instead of forming their own (critical) concept of things. Anybody with honest and sensible intentions would demand that his readers carefully consider if the message is true or false.

In my experience only quacks and conmen dangle a carrot in front of the noses of their victims and then tell them that the bliss that they have to offer will only become a reality if they suspend their common sense and disbelief:

"All that any of us have to do is suspend our doubts and distractions just long enough ... and miraculously this reality can be our own."

In other words: You have to be firm, not in your "insight" (the Danish title is "The Ninth Insight"), but in your belief as a prerequisite for realizing the offered vision - and thus the realization of this vision can consist of nothing but this belief: The world appears to be promising and alluring as long as you choose to believe in spite of any reality and to ignore any reason for doubt. Believing becomes the whole purpose, an end in itself. And the people who have a different way of dealing with the world have brought it on themselves: They do not believe firmly enough, the wretched infidels. It follows as a logical consequence that depression may appear later because you have postponed the confrontation with reality and are now no longer able to maintain the illusion. Among religious people this is called a crisis of faith.

Considered as literature

The Celestine Prophecy is very poor. In accordance with the author's explicit appeal to his readers' credulity in the preface, not even the main character (the narrator) has an inkling of doubt that needs to be conquered. He runs from one "insight" to the next without ever doubting the seasonableness of the circumstance that every person that he encounters seems to know at least one of these rather cult-like insights.

So even considered as fiction the plot is extraordinarily bad: As a matter of course the protagonist takes a plane to Peru, and nothing prevents him from going since apparently he does not have any difficulties of a financial or any other nature that might hinder this, and everywhere in both the USA, on the plane and even in Peru people with knowledge of the "manuscript" are crawling all over him, even though the forces of evil are doing their utmost to put at stop to its distribution. Everybody else is also able to get up immediately, leave behind whatever were they are doing, and set out on wild excursions. (Does he meet a single person who is not already familiar with or has not read at least parts of the prophecy?)

Would it not be a much more persuasive book if the narrator were a human being with ordinary, everyday problems and at least had to overcome a slight tendency towards skepticism before he rushed into the nearest plane headed for Peru? Would it not have been much more convincing if the message had been made to seem just a little less obvious and if the protagonist - like most ordinary people confronted with a project of this size - had been in need of an argument or two in order to be persuaded?

Not in James Redfield's opinion, apparently!

The stupid details!

I have to admit it! I was skeptical from the very beginning! And as a teacher of literature I am also used to studying and analyzing a piece of fiction down to the tiny details. And it really bothers me that Redfield is so sloppy! If you consider a relatively harmless passage like these lines:

"Ahead was a vertical board fence, six feet high, blocking my way. When I reached it, I leaped as high as I could, catching the top of the boards with my hands ..."

I do not know if this does not bother Redfield's many fans, but since the book does not mention that the narrator is supposed to be either a dwarf or otherwise physically challenged, this appears to be utter nonsense. I do not know any man who cannot reach the top of a fence that is only six feet high, even when they are standing on the ground. I think that the smallest of my students, even the girls, are able to do so, at least if they stand on tiptoe. I am 6 feet 1 and would have no problem whatsoever reaching as high as eight feet, so unless the narrator is a midget I see no reason why he had to leap as high as he could even if he were not very good at jumping. (The Danish translation even tries to help a little by replacing the "six feet" with "almost two meters".)

This mistake would be justified if it were just meant by the author to indicate that the narrator is an unreliable moron, but then he would not ask us to "suspend our doubts and distractions" in the first place. Although this point is of minor concern, it does distract this reader.

Over-interpretation of commonplaces

One of the characters says,

"we've all seen athletes make spectacular moves, twisting, turning, hanging in the air in ways that defy gravity. It's all the result of this hidden energy that we have access to."

Speaking for myself I have never seen athletes do things "that defy gravity". I have asked sports masters at the faculty lounge if they ever witnessed anything consistent with this description (I usually do not watch sports), and none of them answered in the affirmative. On the other hand we have all used the expression that something seemed to defy gravity - which is something completely different.

The stuff transmitted from the Olympics or other sports grounds never conflicts with the laws of nature. And when it sometimes transcends the limits of what is humanly possible, the reason for this may only be found in "this hidden energy that we have access to" when the proper authorities cannot prevent it: the whole array of hormones and other kinds of doping.

May the force be with you!

And when the people from Transcendental Meditation claim to be able to fly, there is one thing that I can agree with: Do not take their word for it. This is something that you should see for yourself, even though the only laws defied in this case are those of common sense!

Redfield's "insights": a parasitic attitude to the sciences ...

It is funny how the new-age people "intuitively" (whatever: "I experienced", "I perceived", "I was recalling", "I watched", "I observed", "I saw") are always able to sense the laws that the sciences have toiled to unveil by means of applied and meticulous research. How come they are never able to "experience" or "perceive" these things until long after they have been discovered by science?

It would be a hell of a lot more convincing if their vibrating contact with the primordial energies of the universe could reveal all of this before the scientists, thus sparing them the trouble. But when the newagers actually do venture into the realm of science, their endeavours are always hopelessly naive and very soon revealed as claptrap.

As it is, the narrator's visions are nothing but a vapid (and often erroneous) summary of the works recognized scientists from Darwin to Hawking - and sometimes Redfield, a professional astrologer, seems to have misunderstood even the most basic teachings of astronomy, for instance:

"I could imagine the moon having already dipped below the horizon, and the exact reflected shape it would present to those who lived further west and could still see it. (!!!) Then I imagined how it would look when it moved directly under me on the other side of the planet. To the people there (!), it would appear full because the sun over my head would shine past the Earth and strike the moon squarely."

I do not know if the readers of The Celestine Prophecy just do not know enough about astronomy to see his mistake or if they do not care: The "people there", Redfield, are you!

Redfield actually believes (or 'imagines') that the Moon "dips", not due to the rotation of Earth, but to the Moon's orbit around Earth. The Moon does circle Earth, but that is not what makes it "set". When it is on the other side of Earth, "the people there" may as well be the Californians as people in Mozambique: It takes the Moon almost one mo(o)n(th) to orbit around Earth. Consequently it spends so much time "on the other side" (or any side) that it does not look all that different to the inhabitants of all the longitudes of the world when they take turns watching it in the course of the twenty-four hours it takes Earth to rotate once on its axis.

In other words: To the people who are so much "further west" that the Moon is at its zenith when it is setting in the west from the narrator's point of view, the Moon looks approximately the way it does to him. But in as far as they are watching the Moon simultaneously, albeit from their respective places on Earth, the angles from which they watch the Moon are not so different that it would suddenly change from new-moon to half-moon: It takes the Moon about a week to do so! And it takes two weeks to move from its new-moon to its full-moon position, which means that it takes approximately the same time for Redfield and his narrator and people on the other side of Earth to see it - with a twelve-hour displacement, of course.

If you are in doubt about my reasoning - and the mistake made by Redfield's fantasy - try making a drawing of the process.

I was able to see the solar eclipse in Munich, August 1999. It was no surprise that the Moon covers the disc of the Sun completely, the total eclipse, for a little more than two minutes! We are not dealing with a heavenly body that is in a lot of hurry when it orbits Earth. The discs of the Moon and the Sun are almost identical in size when viewed from the surface of Earth, which enables the Moon to eclipse the disc of the Sun itself, but lets us see the corona. The superstitious make a big deal of this fact. However, they tend to forget that the Moon does not always do so when it crosses the path of the sun as seen from Earth. Since its orbit around Earth (as that of Earth around the Sun) is not completely circular, it is sometimes so far removed from Earth that it is too small to cover the disc of the Sun, rendering the eclipse less than total. In these cases you are not able to watch the eclipse without the protective glasses like you were in Munich 1999.

Redfield's very erroneous version of the (several hundred years old) findings of astronomy is a good example of the fact that ideas based only on sensory perception, observation and imagination differ very much from scientific explanations. Often they are just plain nonsense. If you were able to understand these things - and many others - in an immediate way, simply by means of intuition, science would be superfluous. You may dream that that is the case, but you are only right in fiction. (Redfield is not quite sure about decades either: See The Skeptic Dictionary for further reference.)

... and to the liberation movements around the world

Redfield and his fans also like to imagine that their superstition is not just their way of finding ideal consolation in a world where they feel impotent: In the book it constitutes a whole movement that scares the shit out of an imaginary conspiracy between the powers of this world: The Catholic Church, the Peruvian Government and the CIA! Come on, Redfield! Your novel is published by the well-known subversive publishing house Warner Books!!!

Pretty stupid, huh? You bet, but if you doubt it, then consider the megalomania of the rest of this crowd: Some of them are able to persuade themselves that they are so interesting that people come all the way from other planets just to put probes into their reproductive organs!

The conspiracies are ubiquitous. Any association of UFO fanatics like to imagine that their nonsense is very subversive and poses a threat to the powers that be when they over-interpret the X-Files, E.T. and other sci-fi movies or when a spokesman from the army or the government tells them why their ideas of a secret liaison between aliens and federal authorities are absurd. The people who are actually being shot with the weapons supplied to Third World leaders or rebels by the US and other rich countries, usually represent "insights" very different from Redfield's notion that you are able to become invisible by vibrating when you believe firmly enough in his tripe about various cosmic energies. Really! Which head of state lies sleepless at night because his subjects indulges in this kind of delusion?! In the world of reality, by the way, persecution is not all that exciting or entertaining.

Don't take my word for it!

I know how James Redfield's disciples feel about the things I write. Unlike Redfield, however, I won't ask them to suspend any doubts that might arise when they read my words. On the contrary, I want them to be very careful when reading them and to make sure that I do not make any mistakes along the way - and to let me know if they find any since I am open to any real insight, which includes the confrontation with and correction of errors.

One very important point in the book that I have not addressed is its over-interpretation of coincidences. You can find a critique of this idea in the book Why People Believe Weird Things (1997) . In the chapter "How Thinking Goes Wrong" the author Michael Shermer treats the idea of coincidences in superstition. You can also look up the words coincidences and synchronicity in The Skeptic Dictionary: Jung and The Skeptic Dictionary: Law of Numbers

If you understand German and want to know why so many people today feel "weak and insecure and lacking" (J. Redfield), try reading the book Jugendgewalt ('Youth Violence - The self-awareness cult and its unwanted effects') by Freerk Huisken . This book also explains why some young (and old) people react to the stress of modern life - not just like the creduloids, but also like the two youngsters in Columbine ....