The Celestine Prophecy: An Adventure (8 page)

I felt a powerful physical attraction. At the exact moment I became aware of this attraction, she turned her head, stared directly into my eyes, and backed away from me a step.

“I’ve got to meet someone,” she said. “Maybe I’ll see you later.” She told Hains good-bye, smiled coyly at me, and walked past the metal building and down the path.

After a few more minutes of discussion with the professor, I wished him well and strolled back to where Sarah was standing. She was still talking intensely with one of the other researchers but she followed me with her eyes as I walked.

As I approached, the man she was with smiled, rearranged the notes on his clipboard and walked into the building.

“Find out anything?” Sarah asked.

“Yes,” I said, distractedly, “it sounds like these folks are doing some interesting things.”

I was looking at the ground when she said, “Where did Marjorie go?”

As I glanced up I could see she had an amused look on her face.

“She said she had to meet someone.”

“Did you turn her off?” she asked, smiling now.

I laughed. “I guess I did. But I didn’t say a thing.”

“You didn’t have to,” she said. “Marjorie could detect a change in your field. It was pretty obvious. I could see it all the way over here.”

“A change in my what?”

“In the energy field around your body. Most of us have learned to see them, at least in certain light. When a person has sexual thoughts the person’s energy field sort of swirls about and actually propels out toward the person who’s the object of the attraction.”

This struck me as totally fantastic, but before I could comment, we were distracted by several people coming out of the metal building.

“Time now for the energy projections,” Sarah said. “You’ll want to see this.”

We followed four young men, apparently students, to a plot of corn. As we walked closer, I realized that the plot was made up of two separate subplots, each about ten feet square. The corn in one was about two feet high. In the other, the plants were less than fifteen inches. The four men walked to the plot containing the taller corn then sat down, each on one corner of the plot facing inward. On cue they all seemed to focus their eyes on the plants. The late afternoon sun shone from behind me, bathing the plot in soft, amber light, yet the woods beyond remained dark in the distance. The plot of corn and the students were silhouetted against the almost black background.

Sarah was standing beside me. “This is perfect,” she said. “Look! Can you see that?”

“What?”

“They’re projecting their energy onto the plants.

I stared intently at the scene but could detect nothing.

“I can’t see anything,” I said.

“Squat down lower then,” Sarah said, “and focus on the space between the people and the plants.”

For a moment I thought I saw a flicker of light, but I concluded it was just an after image, or my eyes playing tricks on me. I tried several more times to see something then gave up.

“I can’t do it,” I said, standing.

Sarah patted me on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. The first time is the most difficult. It usually takes some experimenting with the way you focus your eyes.”

One of the meditators looked over at us and brought his index finger up to his lips, so we walked back toward the building.

“Are you going to be here at Viciente long?” Sarah asked.

“Probably not,” I said. “The person I’m with is looking for the last part of the Manuscript.”

She looked surprised. “I thought all of it had been located. Though I guess I wouldn’t know. I’ve been so engrossed in the part that pertains to my work that I haven’t read much of the rest.”

I instinctively reached for my pants pocket, suddenly uncertain where Sarah’s translation was. It was rolled up in my back pocket.

“You know,” Sarah said. “We’ve found two periods of the day most conducive to seeing energy fields. One is sunset. The other is sunrise. If you want, I’ll meet you at dawn tomorrow and we’ll try again.”

She reached out for the folder. “That way,” she continued, “I can make you a copy of this translation and you can take it with you.”

I pondered this suggestion for a few seconds, then decided it couldn’t hurt.

“Why not?” I said. “I’ll have to check with my friend, though, and make sure we have enough time.” I smiled at her. “What makes you think I can learn to see this stuff?”

“Call it a hunch.”

We agreed to meet on the hill at 6:00
A.M
., and I started the one mile trek to the Lodge alone. The sun had completely disappeared but its light still bathed the grey clouds along the horizon in hues of orange. The air was chilly but no wind blew.

At the lodge a line was forming in front of the serving bar in the huge dining room. Feeling hungry, I walked toward the head of the line to see what food was being served. Wil and Professor Hains were standing near the front, talking casually.

“Well,” Wil said, “how did the afternoon go?”

“Great,” I said.

“This is William Hains,” Wil added.

“Yes,” I said, “we met earlier.”

The professor nodded.

I mentioned my early morning rendezvous the next day. Wil saw no problem, as he wanted to find a couple of people he hadn’t talked to yet, and didn’t anticipate leaving before 9:00
A.M
.

The line moved forward then and the people behind us invited me to join my friends. I stepped in beside the professor.

“So what do you make of what we’re doing here?” Hains asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m trying to let it soak in a little. The whole idea of energy fields is new to me.”

“The reality of it is new to everyone,” he said, “but the interesting thing is that this energy is what science has always been looking for: some common stuff underlying all matter. Since Einstein particularly, physics has sought a unified field theory. I don’t know if this is it or not but at the very least this Manuscript has stimulated some interesting research.”

“What would it take for science to accept this idea?” I asked.

“A way to measure it,” he said. “The existence of this energy is not that foreign actually. Karate masters have talked about an underlying Chi energy responsible for their seemingly impossible stunts of breaking bricks with their hands and of being able to sit in one place unmoved with four men trying to push them over. And 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.

“Of course, it won’t really be accepted until more people can actually see it themselves.”

“Have you ever observed it?” I asked.

“I’ve observed something,” he said. “It really depends on what I’ve eaten.”

“How so?”

“Well, the people around here who readily see these energy fields eat mostly vegetables. And they usually eat only these highly potent plants they’ve grown themselves.”

He pointed ahead to the food bar. “This is some of it, though thank goodness they serve some fish and fowl for old guys like me who are addicted to meat. But if I force myself to eat differently, yes, I can see something.”

I asked him why he didn’t change his diet for longer periods of time.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Old habits die hard.”

The line moved forward and I ordered only vegetables. The three of us joined a larger table of guests and talked casually for an hour. Then Wil and I walked out to the jeep to remove our gear. “Have you seen these energy fields?” I asked.

He smiled and nodded. “My room is on the first floor,” he said. “Yours is on the third. Room 306. You can pick your key up at the desk.”

The room had no phone, but a lodge attendant I saw in the hallway assured me someone would knock on my door at 5:00
A.M
. sharp. I lay down and thought for a few minutes. The afternoon had been long and full, and I understood Wil’s silence. He wanted me to experience the Third Insight in my own way.

The next thing I knew someone was banging on the door. I looked at my watch: 5:00
A.M
. When the attendant knocked again I said, “Thank you,” in a voice loud enough for him to hear, then rose and looked out the small frame window. The only sign of morning was a pale glow of light toward the east.

I walked down the hall and showered, then dressed quickly and went downstairs. The dining room was open and a surprising number of people were moving about. I ate only fruit and hurried outside.

Strands of fog drifted across the grounds and clung to the distant meadows. Songbirds called one another from the trees. As I walked away from the lodge, the very top of the sun breached the horizon toward the east. The color was spectacular. The sky was a deep blue above the bright peach horizon.

I arrived at the knoll fifteen minutes early so I sat down and leaned against the trunk of a large tree, fascinated by the web of gnarled branches growing out above my head. In a few minutes I heard someone walking toward me along the path and I looked that way, expecting to see Sarah. Instead I saw someone I didn’t know, a man in his mid-forties. He left the path and walked my way without noticing me. When he was within ten feet he saw me with a start, which made me flinch also.

“Oh, hello,” he said in a rich Brooklyn accent. He was dressed in jeans and hiking boots and looked exceptionally fit and athletic. His hair was curly and receding.

I nodded.

“Sorry about walking up on you so suddenly,” he said.

“No problem.”

He told me his name was Phil Stone and I told him who I was and that I was waiting for a friend.

“You must be doing some research here,” I added.

“Not really,” he replied. “I work for the University of Southern California. We’re doing studies in another province on the rain forest depletion, but whenever I get the chance I drive over here and take a break. I like hanging out where the forests are so different.”

He looked around. “Do you realize some of the trees here are close to five hundred years old? This is truly a virgin forest, a rare thing. Everything is in perfect balance: the larger trees filtering the sunlight, allowing a multitude of tropical plant life to thrive underneath. The plant life in a rain forest is old too, but it grows differently. It’s basically jungle. This is more like what an old forest looks like in a temperate zone, such as in the United States.

“I’ve never seen anything like this there,” I said.

“I know,” he said. “Only a few remain. Most of the ones I know of were sold by the government to lumber interests, as though all they could see in a forest like this is board feet of lumber. Damn shame that anyone would mess with a place like this. Look at the energy.”

“You can see the energy here?” I asked.

He looked at me closely, as though deciding whether to elaborate.

“Yes, I can,” he said finally.

“Well, I haven’t been able to,” I said. “I tried yesterday when they were meditating with plants at the garden.”

“Oh, I couldn’t see fields that large at first either,” he said. “I had to start by looking at my fingers.”

“How do you mean?”

“Let’s move over there,” he said, pointing to an area where the trees parted slightly and blue sky showed through overhead. “I’ll show you.”

When we arrived, he said, “Lean back and touch the tips of your index fingers together. Keep the blue sky in the background. Now separate the tips about an inch and look at the area directly between them. What do you see?”

“Dust on the lens of my eye.”

“Ignore that,” he said. “Take your eyes out of focus a little and move the tips closer, then further apart.”

As he talked I moved my fingers around, unsure what he meant by taking my eyes out of focus. I finally placed my gaze vaguely on the area between my fingers. Both finger-tips went slightly blurry, and as this happened I saw something like strands of smoke stretching between the tips.

“Good grief,” I said, and explained what I saw.

“That’s it! That’s it!” he said. “Now just play with that a while.”

I touched all four fingers together, then my palms and forearms. In each case I continued to see streaks of energy between the body parts. I dropped my arms and looked at Phil.

“Oh, you want to see mine?” he asked. He stood up and stepped back a few feet, positioning his head and torso so the sky would be directly behind him. I tried for a few minutes but a noise behind us broke my concentration. I turned and saw Sarah.

Phil stepped forward and grinned broadly. “Is this the person you’ve been waiting for?”

As Sarah approached, she too was smiling. “Hey, I know you,” she said, pointing at Phil.

They embraced warmly, then Sarah looked at me and said, “Sorry I’m late. My mental alarm didn’t go off for some reason. But now I guess I know why. It gave you two a chance to talk. What have you been doing?”

“He just learned how to see the fields between his fingers,” Phil said.

Sarah looked at me. “Last year Phil and I were up here at this very spot learning to do the same thing.” She glanced at Phil. “Let’s put our backs together. Maybe he can see the energy between us.”

They stood back to back in front of me. I suggested they move closer and they stepped toward me until the space between us was about four feet. They were silhouetted against the sky, which was still a dark blue in that direction. To my surprise, the space between them looked lighter. It was yellow, or a yellowish pink.

“He sees it,” Phil said, reading my expression.

Sarah turned and grabbed Phil by the arm and they slowly stepped away from me so that their bodies were perhaps ten feet away. Surrounding their upper torsos was a whitish-pink field of energy.

“Okay,” Sarah said seriously. She had walked over and crouched down beside me. “Now look at the scene here, the beauty.”

I was immediately awed by the shapes and forms around me. I seemed to be able to focus on each of the massive oaks in a total way, not merely on one part, but on the whole form at once. I was immediately struck by the unique shape and configuration of limbs each displayed. I looked from one to the other, turning all around. Doing this somehow increased the feeling of presence each oak exuded to me, as though I was seeing them for the first time, or at least fully appreciating them for the first time.