The Celestine Prophecy: An Adventure Read Online Free PDF Page A

knowledge of the longer context within which our lives take place. History is not just the evolution of technology; it is the evolution of thought. By understanding the reality of the people who came before us, we can see why we look at the world the way we do, and what our contribution is toward further progress. We can pinpoint where we come in, so to speak, in the longer development of Civilization, and that gives us a sense of where we are going.”
    He paused, then added, “The effect of the Second Insight is to provide exactly this kind of historical perspective, at least from the point of view of western thought. It places the Manuscript’s predictions in a longer context that makes them seem not only plausible, but inevitable.”
    I asked Dobson how many insights he had seen and he told me only the first two. He had found them, he said, after a rumor about the Manuscript prompted a short trip to Peru three weeks ago.
    “Once I arrived in Peru,” he continued, “I met a couple of people who confirmed the Manuscript’s existence yet seemed scared to death to talk much about it. They said the government had gone a little loco and was making physical threats against anyone who had copies or dispersed information.”
    His face turned serious. “That made me nervous. But later a waiter at my hotel told me about a priest he knew who often spoke of the Manuscript. The waiter said the priest was trying to fight the government’s effort to suppress the artifact. I couldn’t resist going to a private dwelling where this priest supposedly spent most of his time.”
    I must have looked surprised, because Dobson asked, “What’s wrong?”
    “My friend,” I replied, “the one who told me about the Manuscript, learned what she knew from a priest. He wouldn’t give his name, but she talked with him once about the First Insight. She was scheduled to meet with him again but he never showed up.”
    “It may have been the same man,” Dobson said. “Because I couldn’t find him either. The house was locked up and looked deserted.”
    “You never saw him?”
    “No, but I decided to look around. There was an old storage building in the back that was open and for some reason I decided to explore inside. Behind some trash, under a loose board in the wall, I found translations of the First and Second Insights.”
    He looked at me knowingly.
    “You just happened to find them?” I asked.
    “Yes.”
    “Did you bring the Insights with you on this trip?
    He shook his head. “No. I decided to study them thoroughly and then leave them with some of my colleagues.”
    “Could you give me a summary of the Second Insight?” I asked.
    There was a long pause, then Dobson smiled and nodded. “I guess that’s why we’re here.”
    “The Second Insight,” he said, “puts our current awareness into a longer historical perspective. After all, when the decade of the nineties is over, we’ll be finishing up not only the twentieth century but a thousand year period of history as well. We’ll be completing the entire second millennium. Before we in the west can understand where we are, and what is going to occur next, we must understand what has really been happening during this current thousand year period.”
    “What does the Manuscript say exactly?” I asked.
    “It says that at the close of the second millennium—that’s now—we will be able to see that entire period of history as a whole, and we will identify a particular preoccupation that developed during the later half of this millennium, in what has been called the Modern Age. Our awareness of the coincidences today represents a kind of awakening from this preoccupation.”
    “What’s the preoccupation?” I asked.
    He gave me a mischievous half smile. “Are you ready to relive the millennium?”
    “Sure, tell me about it.”
    “It’s not enough for me to tell you about it. Remember what I said before: to understand history, you must grasp how your everyday view