The Celestine Prophecy's Twelfth Insight

James Redfield Speaks About the Final Chapter in his Series

Jun 15, 2009

As he prepares to bring the bestselling Celestine Prophecy series to an end, James Redfield is dealing with a different world than the one that embraced his first book.

When it was first published in 1995, The Celestine Prophecy encouraged its readers to see coincidences as meaningful synchronicities rather than just random events.

The book spent more than three years on The New York Times bestsellers list, sold more than 20 million copies worldwide and has been translated into 34 languages.

Now James Redfield is completing the fourth and final book in the series, which could also be the last piece of fiction Redfield ever writes.

Everyday Spirituality for Everyone

In The Celestine Prophecy, the hero travels to Peru to find a series of nine insights, or spiritual steps. For those who were keen to go further, Redfield wrote a sequel, The Tenth Insight: Holding The Vision and then The Secret Of Shambhala: In Search Of The Eleventh Insight.

In The Twelfth Insight Redfield explores what he describes as “The integration of what we know about spirituality into something that can work at the everyday level."

Redfield's books are aimed at developing people's guiding intuition - something he says everyone has but only some know how to listen to.

"Certain thoughts come to us, to call a client we haven't talked to in a while, to call a friend, go to the bookstore or just to go to a party that you weren't going to go to, but you suddenly feel the urge to go. If you start to look for those kinds of thoughts you'll find them and become more aware.

"Then when you act on them, when you call that old friend or go to that party, what usually happens is that there's a synchronistic event. You'll meet somebody with the information you were just wondering about. Or you get the solution to a problem you have."

The Power of Guiding Intuition

Redfield credits his own guiding intuition for the creation and success of The Celestine Prophecy. When publishers wanted to delay publication of the book for a couple of years, Redfield's intuition told him time was of the essence. He set up his own small book publishing company and distributed copies to bookstores.

"No one would think it would do what it did, which was essentially once we gave away 1500 copies it was just quadrupling every week in sales from that day on, all around the world. It was truly a pass-along book."

Redfield says he often thinks back to the times he almost folded it up and put it in a bottom drawer to be something for his children to read.

“I'm certainly glad I kept working at it and got it out there because it was my job to help give structure to the spiritual search that so many people are on."

Authentic Spiritual Experiences

Speaking from his home in Alabama, he says a lot has changed since the book's publication.

"I think more and more people are now pursuing what I would call an authentic spiritual experience. They have the vocabulary to talk about that and think about it. Certainly the world is full of more conflict but if you look at the conflict that is out there the wars are about spiritual extremists. So there's a big challenge for us to be able to continue to move forward a conversation about spirituality."

Redfield says there's no doubt the world is more open to metaphysical ideas now.

"It's less a fad and more a general interest that moves through all of human culture. People want a deeper experience. People are consulting scientists; there's research on the subject."

From Metaphysical to Political Insights

Redfield has also enjoyed adapting the book for the silver screen. The Celestine Prophecy movie was released in 2006.

When The Twelfth Insight is complete, Redfield plans to turn his attention to writing non-fiction and write social commentary.

"I really want to look at politics, education, what's happening in science, discoveries in cosmology. There’s a lot of interesting things happening as human’s evolve out there. I would like to explore those current events from a deeper spiritual experience that people can relate to."

James Redfield is currently writing the Fourth Insight. The previous books in the series are:

The Tenth Insight: Holding the Vision (Grand Central Press 1996) ISBN 0-446-51908-1

The copyright of the article The Celestine Prophecy's Twelfth Insight in Spirituality Books is owned by Amanda Woods. Permission to republish The Celestine Prophecy's Twelfth Insight in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.