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INTERVIEW
:
James
Redfield
by
Tim Miejan
The
author of New Age best-sellers like The
Celestine Prophecy and The
Tenth Insight is back with a new "insightful"
book, The Secret of Shambhala.
Here's what he says about it, and about many other things like prayer,
conscious eating and communication with angels. And of course, he
has another chapter of the series already in store...
- The Secret of Shambhala has
a different energy than your last book, The Celestine Vision. It
is a lot like The Celestine Prophecy in terms of how it relates
to personal energy, and practices we can do to maintain that state.
"It was similar to Celestine in that
it sort of wrote itself. It was a real interesting experience, the
whole creation of the book and exploring what it is that is coming
up now, what insight is emerging now.
"It really started to come together
that it’s this creative power that we have. We’ve always used it
and talked about it in terms of positive thinking, and faith and
visualization, but now I believe it’s coming together at a higher
octave. More people understand that they have this creative prayer
power, this ability to set a field and increase all the magic in
their lives.
"So it was very fascinating trying
to describe it."
- Your new book is set in Tibet.
Have you had experiences there, and what does Shambhala mean to
you?
"I got back from Tibet last month.
The country is fascinating. It’s beautiful. The whole country is
a sacred site because of the energy of the mountains. The elevation
of the whole country is so high. Lhasa is at about 13,000 feet.
And the light is different. It really does something to your consciousness
by being there.
"Tibet, to me, is the place where
there are struggles around issues of prayer and compassion. Here
we have this relationship between Tibet and the Chinese, who are
very practical-minded and frankly
not very spiritual at the governmental level, who are out to erode
and destroy this beautiful culture, because they don’t believe in
anything spiritual. The Tibetans, led by the Dalai Lama, are reacting
to that with compassion and prayer. It’s amazing to see how they
talk about the Chinese, without
even the slightest bit of hatred, even though the Chinese are doing
some terrible things. They’ve made Lhasa into a frontier town with
gambling and prostitution--and some of the younger Tibetans are
getting involved in some of that.
"It’s
an amazing place where aggression is being met with compassion,
and prayer energy. There is a lot to teach us there.
"Tibetan Buddhists have always believed
in Shambhala, this ideal community of adepts and those
of higher energy, who not only serve as a model for where humans
are going eventually, but also act through prayer and energy to
help raise the consciousness of the rest of the world. They believe
Shambhala is a very real place--as do I."
- I was curious if you believe
there are beings who are doing what you describe in the book.
"Absolutely. I think there’s a place
that is difficult to get to. It’s in the physical dimension, but
it’s of higher energy made of fine matter that an ordinary person
might walk right through it and not see anything.
"I do think that one of the things
coming up for all of us, as this eleventh insight emerges, is that
there are ideal communities that humanity is trying to establish.
In the next book I’m going to develop that a little bit more in
terms of how we can create those communities."
- Would that be the elusive
twelfth insight?
(laughing) "I think so. What I am
trying to with each of these books is to describe insights that
are already emerging. So it would be totally unclear to me for a
while what that looks like.
- Would you say the
Secret of Shambhala is a continuing dialogue about waking
up--living
outside the illusion?
"Absolutely. I call these books the
Celestine Series. This is about the eleventh insight, the
next episode in the series.
"I think all of this is occurring,
and I’m very serious about that. I tell the mainstream press that.
There is a spiritual renaissance taking place, and the press is
missing that huge story. I’ve got poll data that shows dramatic
shifts in what people think about their own spiritual lives, increases
in beliefs about the effectiveness of prayer and the possibility
of real life-changing connection with the divine within us. There
is a true renaissance happening on every level, across every religion,
in my view."
- And this waking up process
runs counter to our culture. There are so many distractions that
keep us asleep.
"It’s a pretty natural thing. Humans
are either bored silly by distracting themselves with all these
games and toys, or they’re into the greatest life that is available,
which is the spiritual exploration that is happening out there.
So you see both sides. We are having a polarization. At the same
time people are becoming more and more spiritual, there’s another
large group of people who are becoming more alienated, materialistic
and frustrated that life is so meaningless. It’s out of that group
that we have all the violence that the media focuses on. Meanwhile,
it’s not focusing on the spiritual renaissance that’s happening
at the same time."
- Like the Celestine Prophecy,
in The Secret of Shambhala you emphasize the value of eating consciously
to uplift our vibration. Will you discuss the personal responsibility
and discipline that’s required to maintain harmony with the insights
that you’re describing?
"Related to the food we eat, I believe
we’re in the dark ages of nutritional science. There is a nutritional
element to our spiritual development. You can’t eat junk and acquire
enough energy to increase your spiritual perceptions to the degree
that we’re talking about, to the degree that we
intuitively know is available to
us. But food is such a terrible addiction. We all grow up eating
the stuff we like to eat--it’s all full of salt and sugar. It takes
a lot of discipline to turn that around. But the pay-off in energy
is worth it.
"What’s happening now in developed,
civilized cultures is that we are eating worse and worse. There’s
the whole time problem of not having time to cook. That creates
the climate that may produce
some of the epidemics that Cayce envisioned. We’re getting further
and further away from eating live foods. There are more and more
processed foods. If you eat beef and pork, that’s a long way from
the original source of the sunlight, the plants that these animals
ate. The further you get away from the light, the photosynthesis
that turns light into energy, the less energy you have for yourself.
"The people who are leading that
discussion include such thinkers as Theodore A. Baroody. The idea
he proposes is that human disease and general loss of energy happens
when we accumulate too many acids in the body and fewer alkaline
foods. Another leader on the new frontier
of nutrition is Robert Young, who has a new book coming out soon.
I believe this is the leading edge of nutritional science, and people
are going to have to make a choice between eating things they think
taste good--a lot of it is virtually cardboard in terms of its nutritional
value--or getting back to foods that are alive. I believe there’s
a whole wave of people within the spiritual
movement who have experienced the increased energy that comes from
juicing live vegetables and eating a lot of green food sources.
That’s where a tremendous boost in energy comes from. It’s amazing.
"I’ve taken an octave up in my own
nutritional practices, with a lot of juicing of green vegetables
and lot of salads, with no coffee or alcohol or all the other things
that really drag us down.
"I think this information is coming
up for all of us to look at now. It’s part of the eleventh insight.
Unfortunately, I think we’re going
to see more illness that is explained away as this or that, but
it’s because our immune systems are just collapsing--more every
year, because we’re eating more processed foods than ever before.
I believe cleaning up our diet is an element within the spiritual
awakening."
- In Celestine, there were
chases from the South American government, and in Shambhala, the
Chinese government is in fast pursuit. However, the new book emphasizes
the importance of keeping negative thoughts out of our minds concerning
other people, and this is a fresh approach in terms of how we view
our adversaries.
"The whole secret of extending prayer
energy is the heart of this book. It’s not enough to know that we
can pray and that prayer works. We also can know that we can extend
this power within us. The thing that erodes it, that collapses it
entirely, is when we start to pray negatively. Every thought is
a prayer essence. Whenever we criticize some group or perceive someone
behaving badly and condemn him, it takes us out of our divine nature.
Our higher self, that is part of God and is connected with the Divine,
is not a part of that condemning energy. By harboring negative thoughts
toward others, we cut ourselves off from our greatest energy, and
the effectiveness of our thought power and prayer power just collapses.
"If there is someone acting like
an enemy toward you, and if you acknowledge that to yourself and
say, "This is a terrible person who’s acting evil and they’re after
me," that’s just praying for that outcome. So as I write in the
book, we have to become very mindful of our thoughts. It’s not a
question of seeing reality. If that person is acting negatively
and trying to do harm, you have to see that. But be sure the prayer
you send out is for that person to be uplifted to their higher self
intuition in which that kind
of behavior is not possible.
"That’s the call for mindfulness.
If we’re going to extend this prayer power, we’ve got to become
very mindful of our thoughts. A random, critical thought that we
hang onto, whether it’s about ourselves
or anything, is a negative prayer that just collapses everything."
- Your use of the word prayer
is something new for most of us.
"Instead of prayer as just asking
for something and hoping we get it, it’s prayer in an active way.
We know that the strength with which we expect it and visualize
it adds to the probability that this
outcome will occur."
- Over the years I’ve come
to believe that humans are creative masters walking around with
much more power than we believe we have. We limit ourselves to a
great extent.
"Yes, I hinted at this in the book.
I was listening to Kenneth Copeland, a television evangelist who
is pretty much fundamentalist and judgmental in some respects, and
he said something that was very interesting. He said, 'Listen. You’ve
got to get yourselves under control. God is not going to turn up
the power in you if you use that power to blow out tires and cause
wrecks when someone pulls out
in front of you.'
"And he’s right about that. Until
we get this power managed and are able to use it in the right way,
we’re not going to get the power turned up in us."
- He’s acknowledging that our
negative thoughts are causing these negative things to happen.
"That’s right. And what’s interesting
is that there is a core within fundamentalist Christianity that
is much closer to this new spirituality that I’m describing than
somebody who works on Wall Street and never gives spirituality a
second thought. There’s a closeness between these two extremes of
spirituality. Everyone’s really moving toward this direction of
a lived spirituality, toward the acknowledgment that we’re very
strong spiritually, that we have an influence on the world and that
we’re a part of this divine universe. It’s part of this new renaissance
that I know is happening."
- It’s just being expressed
in different ways.
"Absolutely. It’s just a dialogue.
There is a lot of traditional judgment that has to be overcome.
It’s actually that judgmentalness that is the negative prayer that
keeps people from being all they can be."
- The word "expectation" comes
up a lot in The Secret of Shambhala. What does that word mean to
you in this context?
"What I’m getting at is the power
of our faith. Every time we have an assumption, it has a power that
goes out and creates whatever we assume is true. Our challenge,
if we’re going to extend our prayer fields and visualize them going
out from us and having an effect on the world, is to do that with
a firm and solid expectation that it will work. We have to watch
our assumptions and our fears, which erode this solid faith. We
have to expect it to work, and it’s out of that expectation and
visualization that prayer grows in strength and can do some amazing
things in our lives."
- Interestingly, in discussing
the Eleventh Insight, you suggest that we have the ability to
empower our angels and guides
with energy. Discuss that a little.
"If you look at the literature, a
lot of it talks about how angels are here to help us, but they have
to wait to be invited. They’re in the service of humankind. They’re
here to help amplify us and give us power. I think more and more
people truly understand that these beings are really out there,
that they’re really a part of our world.
"I think what we’re understanding
is that they will serve us and help us if our intent is true. If
we are connected to the divine to the point that we know we’re trying
to uplift others who are in a bad situation and believe that our
prayer energy can lift them out of whatever’s going on, then we
can empower the angels to also help in this encounter. And they
can now move, because they are in our service. And we have to consciously
direct it.
"Sure, that might be the hardest
part of this book for people to believe, but a lot of people had
problems with the ascension ending of Celestine, as well. I think
it’s something that is real and
people will come to see that."
- In the Secret of Shambhala,
you have set the energy for a new way of being within one’s self,
as well as in relationship with others. To what degree do you feel
this book, as well as the two preceding ones, are holding the energy
for these insights to be noticed, understood and practiced?
"My mission is to chronicle and illustrate.
I am describing insights that are already happening. I put them
into words, create a vision of them and help clarify what they are
so people can recognize the truth about them. They can see these
insights in practice and see people exploring them in a story. This
illustration helps to crystallize this spiritual journey--this awakening
that I believe we all share.
- By letting people know that
it’s here, you allow them to become engaged in it.
"That is my intention and my hope."
Copyright
© 1999 Tim Miejan
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