The Celestine Prophecy

The theme of progress presented in The Celestine Prophecy is quite different from the view of it that has defined the Western world since the 18th-century Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was a transformative period in human history in which reason and science became prized over intuition and spirituality. The achievements of Isaac Newton and of the scientific revolution have defined progress for the past 300 years. However, The Celestine Prophecy counters this view by asserting that true progress will involve the elevation of intuition and spirituality to the forefront of human experience.

In the second chapter, Dobson presents a wide-ranging interpretation of Western history that is critical of Enlightenment perspectives; he critiques what he views as a materialistic view of progress that replaced spirituality with science. Dobson presents scientists as “explorers” who go into the world looking for answers but come up empty. The novel suggests that spiritual seekers are the new explorers of the 21st century, leading the way to genuine progress.

This notion of progress is captured by the esoteric concept of “vibrations” in the novel. Human evolution has been and will continue to be marked by increasingly higher vibrations until people progress ultimately into a heavenly—or “celestine”—state. Likewise, human interactions will progress from conflict to cooperation, and technology, which will also progress, will become humans’ “servant” instead of their “master.” The Manuscript posits that the advances of technology are illusory; knowledge and gadgets have progressed, but human connectedness to the universe has declined. True progress, then, involves tapping into the universe’s energy, which is described as love, not merely into the earth’s petroleum reserves.

One further aspect of progress undergirds this theme. The heroic journey itself is a progressive one that takes the individual into deeper levels of knowledge and understanding. Individual growth is, by definition, a form of progress. Both individually and collectively, this growth lies at the center of the universe’s evolutionary arc. In this way, the individual’s journey toward truth mirrors the broader pattern by which society progresses toward its ultimate perfection. In this final stage of conscious evolution, humankind, nature, the universe’s energy, and human technology will be in perfect balance. Automation is presented as a key example of the shift in how progress will be viewed:

To the people who are doing the automating, the technicians, this will feel like a need to make the economy run more efficiently. But as their intuitions become clearer, they will see that what automation is actually doing is freeing up everyone’s time, so that we can pursue other endeavors (225).

Both views of progress are contained in this sentence: the old view in which technology makes the economy run more efficiently and the new view in which it frees up space and time to allow people to pursue new endeavors. In this way, genuine progress is defined by how it serves the interests of the whole person in the quest toward self-actualization.

One of the most notable features of the novel’s plot is its reliance on coincidence. While running from gunfire in Lima, the narrator happens to encounter Wil, who rescues and guides him. Once again, when he is escaping the soldiers in Chapter 8, another mentor, Karla Deez, appears. It quickly becomes apparent that these are not random occurrences or “coincidences”; they are events orchestrated by some higher logic.

Whereas Aristotle famously argued in Poetics (4th century BC) that plots must be tightly structured around logical causation, The Celestine Prophecy is structured around coincidental occurrences. In classical terms, this would be viewed as a violation of the norms of narrative structure, as Redfield relies on what Aristotle called a deus ex machina to drive plot development. In ancient Greek drama, a mechanical, crane-like device deposited a “god” onto the stage, somewhat like including a fairy godmother, to bring the plot to a tidy conclusion. Aristotle argued that this violated the sense of logic that governs everyday lives, in which the choices people make lead to certain consequences.

In this novel, the theme of coincidence functions as the means by which personal destiny manifests itself. Throughout the narrator’s quest, each successive mentor advises him to pay attention to coincidences as a way of cultivating his intuitive sense that there is a purposeful plan unfolding before him. From the outset of the story—before the quest has even launched—Charlene introduces the narrator to this concept: “We are experiencing these mysterious coincidences, and even though we don’t understand them yet, we know they are real” (7). At times, there is an almost fairy-tale quality to the way that objects seemingly materialize at just the right moment in this story. Jeeps and trucks, for example, become available when they are needed. People reappear in the plot in unexplained ways simply because they serve the central idea prophesied in the Manuscript: When people evolve toward a higher consciousness, tapping into their intuitive awareness of the cosmic energy around them, then coincidences will shape their destiny and lead them to ultimate spiritual truth. Although the coincidences in this work may appear mechanical or contrived if they are viewed simply as plot devices, they are nonetheless thematically integral to the story as illustrations of the quest for spiritual evolution.