49 pages • 1 hour read
James RedfieldThe Celestine Prophecy
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1993A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary: “The Message of the Mystics”
Waking early, the narrator finds Wil getting ready to depart from Cula. They see truck lights coming into the town and decide to walk over to investigate. The narrator sees Marjorie, and Wil invites her to join them. Suddenly, they see that Jensen’s men are armed with automatic rifles; gunfire rings out. Wil grabs Marjorie and they run toward the Jeep, but Wil already left with them.
The narrator and Marjorie climb the hills outside Cula, but eventually she is arrested. As the narrator continues his climb, he comes across one of Jensen’s men being pursued by the military. The man is shot dead immediately behind the narrator on the path, and the narrator continues climbing desperately until he reaches the top of the mountain. He sits on the highest peak, catches his breath, and tries to calm down.
As he sits cross-legged in a meditation posture, the narrator has an out-of-body experience in which he sees a sweeping vision of cosmic evolution and has an overwhelming sense of becoming one with nature. The history of evolution passes before his eyes, but it comes to an end at the point of human evolution. Coming out of this mystical moment, he knows he needs to keep going. Instead of heading back toward town, he takes a different road and meets a priest, Father Sanchez.
The priest takes him to a mission, where he is able to eat and sleep, and they discuss the narrator’s experience on the mountain. The narrator receives a copy of the Fifth Insight and learns more about cosmic evolution; people must draw energy from the true source, the universe itself, and not from others. The narrator begins putting this into practice as he experiences a deep love for a tree and learns about drawing energy from plants and feeling love for them.
Father Sanchez goes to a meeting, where he learns that Cardinal Sebastian orchestrated the attack on Cula. Father Sanchez tells the narrator that they must leave for Machu Picchu, as there are military men in the village. As they travel, the conversation turns again to the insights and conscious evolution. The concept of “control dramas” is also briefly introduced. The narrator learns that everyone plays one of four “control dramas”: Intimidator, Interrogator, Aloof, or “Poor Me.” These dramas describe different ways of trying to control people and situations. The narrator recognizes his own tendency to play these roles, in particular that of being “aloof.”
Chapter 5 Analysis
Chapter 5 is the third consecutive chapter that begins with an “awakening,” this time early in the morning. This chapter, “The Message of the Mystics,” is notable for its slight modification to the novel’s narrative pattern. Until now—and in keeping with the conventions of the hero’s journey—mentors and helpers were the primary vehicle for guiding the narrator toward truth. In this chapter, however, the narrator’s own experience is foregrounded much more significantly as he undergoes a mystical experience on a mountaintop.
Another significant feature of the chapter is that conflict and danger become more pronounced. In fact, this is the first time in the novel that danger is not just hinted at but also experienced. When Wil and the narrator investigate the early-morning lights in the village, they find Jensen’s men armed with automatic weapons. A fast-paced series of events unfolds: The narrator helps Marjorie break free from Jensen, and they escape on foot, climbing up the ridge of a mountain before becoming separated. Soldiers become part of the action, seizing and arresting Marjorie. The narrator finds himself running from the soldiers, along with one of Jensen’s men. Running slightly behind him, the man is shot dead by the soldiers: “The man’s chest exploded as bullets tore through from the rear, splattering me with blood” (95). As the narrator struggles toward the top of the mountain and safety, the natural world is portrayed as both an obstacle and a refuge. He must struggle over rocks and through branches, but he ultimately finds safety. This duality reflects the progressive nature of the spiritual quest, which involves both great obstacles and great rewards.
Positioning himself on the highest peak of the mountain, the narrator catches his breath and allows himself to recover from his trauma. Something strange begins to happen to him, however, as he sits there for several hours and loses all sense of the passage of time. His cross-legged posture and his isolation imply that he enters a deep meditative state on the mountain in which he achieves oneness with all things: “I perceived everything to be somehow part of me” (98). In this psychic state of union, the narrator relives the entire evolutionary history of the cosmos; this history is cast in terms of energy “vibrating” in increasingly higher frequencies over the eons. His vision of the universe’s evolution comes to an end, however, with humankind. The message of the Manuscript addresses the next stage of human evolution.
This mystical experience is a turning point for the narrator, providing an awakening to deeper truths. The second half of the chapter reverts to the familiar pattern of mentors and helpers as the narrator comes across Father Sanchez and is taken to his mission, where finds refuge at the mission but is also debriefed about what happened on the mountain. His powerful experience functions as an exemplum of the Fifth Insight, which emphasizes the abundance of energy in the universe, to which people connect not through competition but through love. The experience of beauty is one of the primary channels for love, and the narrator is subsequently mentored in this concept in the mission gardens. The ending of the chapter prepares for the next by introducing the Sixth Insight, which involves “fac[ing] up to our particular way of controlling others” (121). The concept of “control dramas” is, thus, introduced.
