We turned around and took the same exit and pulled up to a huge, well-lit truck stop. A dozen trucks were lined up behind a main building that housed a restaurant, showers, and store. Only a few cars were at the gasoline pumps. The skeptic’s brown rental was one of them.
“Remember,” Wil offered, “carry the attitude of expecting Synchronicity all the way into the conversation. I like the movie analogy. Synchronistic Flow feels as though you are slowing down and increasing your feeling that you are the center, or star, of your own unfolding movie. Keep this centered clarity and you’ll know what to say.”
Wil smiled and pulled the Cruiser up to a pump directly across from the skeptic, then made one more comment.
“The Document says,” he added, “that if you commit to holding your truth, it includes all the ideas that come up intuitively to say to him, even if you’ve never thought of the ideas before.”
I nodded and got out and began putting gas in the Cruiser, feeling that numinous sensation again, as though this was going to be an immensely important conversation for everything that was going to happen later.
The skeptic was directly across from me, busy fueling his own vehicle. Finally, he spotted me and laughed out loud.
“Well, it’s the lover of coincidences,” he said. “What a Synchronicity this is!”
“Maybe,” I said. “We passed you back on the freeway, and we turned around to talk to you.”
I couldn’t quite believe that I had started off that directly, but it did seem to help me stay centered.
“And what do you think we have to talk about?” he asked.
His tone was sarcastic, yet semifriendly, and I suddenly realized he was speaking in the jousting style favored by scientists, a mode of talking that is more like a friendly debate. The key element of this style is to take great care not to inadvertently confirm some idea or theory held by the other party. In the world of Science, to affirm a colleague’s position is never something to be taken lightly. It has to be earned. So the idea is to be very skeptical at first and to check out whether the person is carrying the proper scientific attitude.
If the other party crosses the line and takes a position that is poorly thought out or too speculative, then the conversation is over immediately. On the other hand, if the other person is being logical and tentative with his pronouncements, then the debate can go on. I had always thought communicating in this manner was boring and time consuming, but I knew I could do it.
“I don’t know,” I replied, “whether we have anything to talk about or not. I guess we’ll have to see. I’m trying to make contact with the woman we saw back at the Pub. She was talking about an old Document, and I noticed you speaking with her outside, later. Did she tell you where in Arizona she was going?”
“What’s your interest in this document?” he asked guardedly.
“I’m interested in what it says about spirituality.”
He looked at me sharply. “You think it’s going to confirm your ideas about Synchronicity?”
“The part we have has already done that.”
He shook his head. “I wouldn’t give this kind of writing too much weight. The best it could do is add to our knowledge of some ancient people’s mythology and superstition.”
“Yeah, but you can compare what it says to your own experience and go from there.”
“In order to do what?”
“To identify phenomena to be investigated that may have been missed before.”
He gazed at me questioningly.
“Look,” I said, “I believe that there’s more to the Universe than a strictly skeptical attitude allows into experience. Sometimes you have to bracket your skepticism long enough to fully experience a new phenomenon. Don’t you ever wonder if there is something real and universal behind people’s spiritual experiences?”
He gave me a hint of a smile. I wasn’t convincing him, but I could tell he liked my tact.
“We need Science,” I added. “But we need it to look at everything.”
“What do you know of Science?” he asked, giving me a superior look. “Science is a very precise process where individuals explore and draw conclusions about the nature of the world around them. And its activity is very precise: one scientist suggests that something in nature works a certain way, and other scientists try to refute that hypothesis with other facts they think are true. Slowly, consensus is reached about the issue. In turn, this conclusion about reality is replaced with something that is even more true, and so on. That’s how scientific fact, and the resulting social reality that flows from it, is established. It’s a precise, orderly process.”
He looked away and added, “At least that’s the way it’s supposed to work.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, lately a lot of corruption has happened: moneyed interests such as big pharmaceutical companies and food processors have taken over the medical schools and university departments with big grants, and now they get the results they want from studies. Other industries do the same thing, but health and food are the worst. It’s pitiful.”
I thought of the writings of Dr. Russell Blaylock, who talks about why dangerous additives still remain in our food, then realized something in a flash: this skeptic I’m talking to is an idealist.
Something else came into my mind to say, and I recalled Wil stressing that such ideas had to be voiced.
“Look,” I stated, “maybe the key is heightening public awareness of the scientific process, and then applying it to every part of our world. What if this document is right about Synchronicity being a part of the natural order of things? Shouldn’t it be investigated with the same vigor as a star or bacteria?”
Something about what I said irritated him, and he took the gas nozzle out of his car and slammed it back in its place at the pump.
“W-w-what I’m saying,” he stammered, “is that something like this document can’t be trusted. Synchronicity is too subjective. The problem with Science now is that the emphasis on basic truth is being lost. Once we start allowing too much speculation or corruption, the culture can slip into fantasy thinking and even delusionary movements.”
He was looking at me hard. “Don’t you see that civilization is hanging by a thread? It only takes so many people losing a grip on the basic laws of nature to undermine logical thinking and scientifically established reality altogether. And if that happens we fall back into superstition and a new dark age.”
I nodded and said, “But what if a science of spirituality could be logical and orderly?”
He didn’t answer. Instead he shook his head and walked into the building to pay. Wil was still seated behind the wheel and smiling at me. He had heard the entire conversation through the open car window.
“Aren’t you going to get into this?” I asked.
“Nope,” he said. “I think it’s yours to finish.”
When the scientist came out of the building, I approached him again.
“Look,” I said, “you’re right. No one wants a new dark age. But let me pose the issue in another way: what would it take for scientists like you to be able to study spiritual phenomena in a way that is orderly and logical?”
For a long moment he seemed to be genuinely considering my question. “I don’t know…. We would have to discover something like the natural laws of spirituality—”
He stopped and shook his head, then waved me off.
“Listen,” he said. “I really don’t have time for any more speculation. Believe me, none of this is going to happen.”
I nodded and then introduced myself. He shook my hand and said his name was Dr. John Coleman.
“Enjoyed the conversation,” I said. “Maybe I’ll see you another time.”
He chuckled at that and then said, “The woman you were asking about… her name is Rachel Banks. She was going to a town north of Phoenix, a little place called Sedona.”
I sat up straight in the passenger seat, struggling to wake up. As we drove along, sunlight from behind us was just beginning to fill the car, and the sweet smell of Oklahoma farmland filled my nostrils. Wil nodded when he saw me stirring, then immediately looked back at the road, appearing to be deep in thought.
Which was fine with me; I was talked out. Because we both knew Sedona well, Wil and I had conversed late into the night as we traveled west. For years, the town had been a hotbed of spiritual thought, as it was situated in the famous red rock hills of Native American lore. Because the energy was so strong there, it was claimed by some that the town had more houses of worship, new age centers, and artists per square mile than any place in America.
The question that had most intrigued us last night concerned Rachel’s motivations. Why were her intuitions pointing to Sedona? Was it because one would likely find more people talking about such writings there? Or was it because one could understand esoteric information in general at a deeper level just by being in those hills—the famous “Sedona effect”?
I shook off the thoughts. All I wanted to do at this point was look out at the landscape. We had traveled from the mountains of Georgia and Tennessee to the flatlands of Oklahoma, and now the sky was big and blue in the morning light. Munching on nuts and apples that Wil had packed for breakfast, I watched the scenery go by for a while.
When I awakened fully, I noticed two neat stacks of pages on top of the dashboard in front of me. I looked over at Wil, figuring he had placed the stacks in front of me for a reason. He kept his eyes on the road but lifted one eyebrow, which made me chuckle. I reached over, grabbed the stack on the left, and began to read.
The pages described the First Integration almost exactly as Wil had relayed it earlier, and then reiterated that once Synchronicity was being sustained, one should be on high alert—for it was that mysterious flow that would reveal the other Integrations.
Reading on, the Document divided the twelve total Integrations into two groups. It called the first five Integrations the “Foundation” of spiritual consciousness, and the remainder it called the “Rise to Sacred Influence.”
Rise to Influence? I had no idea what that meant, but I remembered that Wil had said those of us pursuing the Integrations now would make it easier for others to do so later because of some kind of mysterious influence.
Coming to the end of the first stack, I picked up the other stack of text, which began to address the Second Integration. This step up in consciousness begins, it said, when we realize that human conversation, regardless of the subject, is always an exchange of outlook, or worldview—and thus is the basic mechanism of human evolution, taking us from one historical level of knowledge to the next.
When human interaction is done while in centered, Synchronistic truth, this process of exchanging worldviews is lifted into full consciousness. It called this more aware interaction Conscious Conversation.
I looked over at Wil again and said, “Conscious Conversation. Do you know what this means exactly?”
He looked at me as though I was kidding. “It’s what you were engaging in when you talked with Coleman—only there was one part missing.”
“What was that?” I asked.
He nodded for me to read on, and in the very next passage, the Document said the level of conversation, and the consciousness of the participants, are elevated when both people are aware of the “historical context” surrounding the interchange.
I looked back at Wil. “So it’s referring to the second Insight of the old Celestine Prophecy?”
“That’s right,” he replied. “Do you remember what the Second Insight is?”
“Yeah,” I said, “I think so.”
I looked away, my mind drifting into an intense contemplation of the question. The Second Insight was essentially an understanding of the longer history of Western society, in particular the psychological shift that happened at the beginning of the Modern, secular age. In essence, it marked an awakening in consciousness—one we’ve been having trouble holding on to ever since.
The old Prophecy had predicted we would one day be able to keep this longer history fully in mind as a surrounding context for our daily activities. And when we could, this historical understanding, in itself, would completely change our individual lives. It would keep us fully awake to the spiritual side of existence.
The Modern worldview, I knew, had begun just after the fall of the dark Medieval period of history. In those times, there was no science in the West, no independent thought to speak of, and very little knowledge of natural causes. The men of the powerful Catholic Church ruled people’s minds and decreed that all the events we now call natural operated solely through the hand of God—including birth, all the challenges of life and illnesses, death, and what came after, Heaven or Hell. The churchmen declared themselves the only interpreters of God’s will. And they fought hard for centuries to disallow any challenge to this authority.
But then the Renaissance began, motivated by an increasing distrust of the churchmen and a growing awareness that our real knowledge of the world around us was woefully incomplete. Other influences quickly followed: the invention of the printing press, a greater awareness of the philosophies of the ancient Greeks, and the discoveries of the early astronomers such as Copernicus and Galileo, which contradicted the astronomy espoused by the churchmen.
When the Protestant Reformation occurred—a direct rejection of Papal authority—the structures of the Medieval world began to completely break down, and with them, the established reality of the people.
Precisely here, I knew, was where the Modern age began. For centuries, the churchmen had dictated a strictly theological purpose for existence and for natural events. And then that picture of life had systematically eroded, leaving humans in a state of deep existential uncertainty, especially concerning their spirituality. If the churchmen, who had always dictated the facts of spiritual reality, were wrong, then what was right?
The optimistic thinkers of that day had a solution. We would follow the model of the ancient Greeks, they said. We would commission Science to go out and investigate this suddenly new world we found ourselves in. And in the enthusiasm of the day, everything was on the table, including our deepest spiritual questions, such as Why are we here? What happens after death? And is there a plan and destiny for humankind?
With this new mandate, Science was sent to look at the world objectively and to report back. Over the centuries it wonderfully mapped the physical realities of nature, from the movement of galaxies and planets to the biology of our bodies, the dynamics of weather systems, and the secrets of food production. But it did not quickly return with an objective analysis of our spiritual situation.
At this crucial point, we made a critical psychological decision. In the absence of existential answers, we decided to turn our attention to something else in the meantime. While we were waiting, we would focus on settling into this new world of ours, devoting ourselves to the betterment of humankind. We abated our uncertainty by striving to make our secular world more abundant and secure.
And that’s what we did, creating in the following centuries the greatest surge in material abundance the world had ever seen. But even as we put our energies to bettering our physical circumstances, waiting as we were for the higher questions to be answered, Science itself was pushing that higher mandate further into the distance.
In fact, as the centuries proceeded, Science began to ponder such questions less and less. In a sense, these inquiries had become a victim of Science’s success in the physical realm. The more it succeeded in explaining the outer world—and created new technologies that increased the population’s level of security—the less important spiritual questions became. Let the religions fight it out over the larger issues, scientists began to think. We’ll stick to the physical world.
By the time the theories of Isaac Newton were filtering through Science, the dismissal was almost complete. Newton established the mathematics that defined the universe as operating strictly on its own, following basic mechanical laws, in a completely predictable manner—like a giant machine. Now, the Universe could be regarded from a completely secular perspective. God didn’t move the stars in the sky. Gravity did.
The Modern, secular, materialistic worldview had been born and, pushed by Science, was exported around the planet. The idea of God, or of a deeper spiritual experience for that matter, now seemed not only unnecessary but unlikely as well. And as for the inner evidence for a spiritual reality—higher states of consciousness, Synchronicity, premonitions and intuitive guidance, Afterlife experiences—these could all be written off as pathological hallucination or religious delusion and removed from the debate completely. Even many religious institutions, suffering from diminished attendance, became ever more oriented toward secular, social activities rather than toward any discussion of real spiritual experience.
And as science and other institutions went, so did the individual. The world seemed so normal and manageable and certain that such higher questioning no longer seemed valid and it began to be pushed out of everyday consciousness as well.
Just work hard, we told ourselves, and focus on bettering your life. Enjoy all the frills and goodies of modern existence. Forget about whether knowing the purpose of life might give you higher guidance along the way, or bring more enlightened relationships with others. Just stay focused on the everyday stuff and you’ll feel fine, right up to the end. If ever the prospect of death raises its ugly head, or questions squeeze into your mind about what happens after, just get busy with the secular action again until the thoughts are lost in the din.
Precisely here, I knew, we could see the real psychological truth of our longer history. We had launched Science to go out and discover the truth of our spiritual existence, and when it didn’t return, we dedicated ourselves to improving our earthly conditions. And then, gradually, everyone forgot what we were waiting for. Slowly, our preoccupation with the secular world became a full-fledged, psychological obsession.
And like any obsessive behavior designed to repress something—in our case, the missing answers about the true purpose of life—it takes ever more frenzied activity to keep from remembering what haunts us.
By the time the Modern worldview peaked, sometime in the later twentieth century, such obsessive behavior had made the careers of dozens of existential psychologists, who mapped out the vast variety of ways we kept ourselves from waking up: compulsive working, shopping, decorating, arranging, eating, gambling, drugging, sexing, smoking, running, exercising, gossiping, celebrity and sports watching, and the endless search for personal recognition from others—our fifteen minutes of fame.
These obsessions could be found everywhere. And they included, especially in recent years, the most ironic compulsion of all: religious fanaticism, where people kept themselves asleep to real spiritual experience by concentrating only on the doctrines and trappings of a particular religion—even to the point of violently attempting to force these assumptions on everyone else.
Then, thankfully, as the years progressed, we slowly began to wake up. Over the past few decades, something, indeed, had popped in the collective human psyche. Why? Perhaps it was the inherent inability of repression to endure, or maybe it was the steady influence of the human potential theorists of the seventies and eighties. Another reason could have been the sheer weight of numbers of the baby boom generation, coming to peak influence in the nineties—and questioning, as they did, all aspects of human culture. Certainly, the old Prophecy found in Peru had some level of influence as well.
In any case, our preoccupation with the material life began to collapse. Like drowning men reaching the surface, we began to gasp for the air of higher meaning. Since then, in fits and starts, more people have glimpsed a new world of wonder around them. As a larger culture, we began, finally, to discover the experience of Synchronicity.
This reawakening, I knew, was the real historical context surrounding our current lives. We are waking up from our secular obsession and taking up where we left off. We want to know our true spiritual situation on this planet. And while those still obsessed with the secular might declare such a quest impossible, intuition says otherwise.
Suddenly, I realized Wil was staring at me. He had been driving along, waiting patiently for my reverie to be over. When I met his eyes, he humorously looked at his watch, making me laugh out loud.
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s the way my mind works.”
He nodded. “So I presume you remembered the Second Insight?”
“Yeah.”
“What did it say about a more truthful historical context surrounding our interaction?”
“It says we’re waking up from a five-hundred-year-long preoccupation with the material and secular world, wanting to know what life is really about.”
Wil beamed. “That’s right. And the Document says anyone who sustains Synchronicity, and remembers the context of awakening, will be guided into a flow of Conscious Conversation. And hence will become part of a worldwide consensus-building process to discover the truth of our spiritual nature.”
I looked at Wil. “Won’t that take forever?”
Instead of responding, he nodded toward the rest of the Document in my hand. When I began reading, I realized I had only one page left, which was torn off at the bottom and contained only one paragraph. It said that each person who holds the truth of his Synchronistic journey, while listening for the truth in another’s journey, helps to build a new, more truthful worldview. And because of this honoring of evolving truth, that person exudes a special influence on the world. All we had to do was keep our energy up.
I perked up, thinking again of the Document’s reference to the last group of Integrations we would discover as a Rise to Influence.
I looked back over at Wil. “It’s the centering of ourselves in truth that creates the Influence, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “We’ll find out once we discover the rest of this Integration.”
Indeed. I had no doubt. We were only on the Second Integration, yet everything was occurring just as the Document had said it would. The First Integration showed us that expecting Synchronicity and telling the absolute truth to others kept these mysterious coincidences coming. And now the Second Integration seemed to be saying that if everyone was doing that, and thus staying awake, we would discover what we needed to know. The only things mentioned that weren’t fully clarified yet were the idea of influence and the cryptic remark about “keeping our energy up.”
Suddenly, Wil was pulling the Cruiser over to the side of the road.
“It’s your turn to drive,” he said.
All morning, I drove west. The big sky had stayed blue, and the sunshine vivid, over hundreds of miles of wheat fields and pastureland. For hours I just gazed out on the flat horizon until, at one point, I felt myself get slightly bored and hungry.
Just before noon, I stopped at a roadside gas station and filled up the Cruiser with gas. Unable to resist, I bought a packaged apple pie from the counter and ate it slowly as I drove. It tasted really good, maybe too good. Within twenty minutes my head began to hurt and I felt a sudden drop in energy. The funk lasted for several hours. When Wil finally woke up, I told him what I’d done.
“Let me get this straight,” he said. “You, the disciple of Blaylock, ate a mass-processed pie right off the shelf. You know better than that.”
I knew he was talking about the problem with glutamates that Blaylock railed against. Glutamates, MSG-type substances resulting from the processing of various proteins and oils, are often added to processed foods, mainly because they, like MSG itself, are taste enhancers. They don’t have a taste themselves, but the first bite sends immediate signals to the brain that you are eating the tastiest thing in the world, despite what are probably very bad ingredients.
The food industry says they’re not harmful, but according to some experts, glutamates have been proved to inflame the brain and disrupt other organs, contributing to a myriad of modern diseases such as diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and especially obesity.
“Let me guess the symptoms,” Wil said. “Maybe a little nagging headache, tired eyes, low energy, absolutely no inspiration to do anything. All for a small initial hit of taste euphoria.”
He shook his head. “Eating is one of the most obsessive things we do in the Modern world. If your particular feel-good distraction is food, it by definition has to taste really good, because otherwise it won’t give you that pacified and satisfied feeling that comes when glutamate receptors in the brain are activated. The food makers find a way to artificially do that for you with glutamates.
“The big problem,” he went on, “is not just the health impact. It’s how it affects your consciousness. You can’t keep your energy up and stay alert spiritually if you are drugged.”
He stopped and looked at me.
“What?” I asked.
“The Document states that keeping our energy up is important to developing influence.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
He glanced over and caught my eye. “Food is the first level of energy we allow into our consciousness, so it’s basic to integrating a higher mastery over life. And the ironic thing is that real food, the kind that’s organic and pure, and freshly picked, stimulates those same receptors in the brain, and gives us just as much natural euphoria—without bringing us down later. Did you know that most people have never tasted a fresh-picked organic vegetable? Most of what we buy in regular stores is weeks old and stone dead.”
At just this moment, Wil abruptly stopped talking and was staring at the top of an exit ramp we were passing. He shook his head.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“There was an SUV parked at that last exit. It happened last night as well.”
“You think they’re still following us?”
“Not following us, just observing. They must be tracking us with a satellite or something.”
“What? That would mean these people are highly connected with the government.”
“That’s right. But at least they don’t seem to want to detain us. They could have done that anytime after daylight. They just want to know where we are going for some reason.”
I looked Wil in the eyes. “You think it’s the Document they’re interested in?”
He nodded. “Looks that way.”
For the rest of the day, we didn’t talk much. I periodically felt anxious about our safety, but each time I managed to shrug it off and recover my waiting-for-Synchronicity attitude. At this point, I felt there was no alternative to pursuing this Document, at least for a while longer. The only effect I saw on Wil was that he became hypervigilant about finding clean food.
“You getting poisoned,” he said to me, “was a reminder.”
Every time we stopped for gas, he’d ask for the location of organic food stores and farmer’s markets, and we were able to shop at several. At each mealtime, we’d exit at a truck stop and fire up the lightweight propane cooker Wil carried in his pack. In fifteen minutes we’d have enough steamed vegetables for a great, nutritious meal. After twenty-four hours of this, I felt incredibly energized and clear thinking. I could even see with greater acuity.
By nightfall we were in Albuquerque, where we eased into an enclosed garage owned by a friend of Wil’s and had the vehicle and all our belongings scanned for surveillance devices. Everything was clean. Afterward, we spent the night at a small hotel nearby, which we paid for in cash, and rose early the next morning to drive to Arizona.
At midday, we began to notice the vehicles again, and by midafternoon, we took the exit to Sedona, driving right by one of the SUVs sitting in plain sight.
“They want us to see them,” Wil commented.
“Who are these people?” I asked.
“I don’t know. But you can bet that sooner or later they’re going to tell us.”
I just shook my head and tried to focus on the red rock hills we were driving through. Entering the Sedona area was always a reminder that some places are pure power spots. If you’re clear enough to sense it, driving through the little town of Oak Creek, and then up into Sedona proper, is a journey into a higher world.
It feels like pure aliveness and clarity, and as you gaze out at the spectacular hills and formations surrounding the small town, you immediately feel a change in your perception. Everything around you stands out more, and the Synchronicity literally explodes in frequency, just by virtue of being in this place.
We drove slowly along the main street leading uptown, looking around at the people on the sidewalks. There seemed to be a lot of tourists and locals, and judging from their dress and demeanor, people from out of town who weren’t tourists. They looked like serious trekkers who, like us, were looking for something. For a while we cruised around uptown seeing what might happen, and for a moment, I felt as though I was about to run into someone of importance. Yet nothing occurred.
Since our food had run out, I suggested we drive west toward the sinking sun and stop at the New Frontier Grocery for a salad. When we arrived, instead of parking, Wil just let me out, telling me he wanted to go look for some Hopi friends of his who lived in the area. I went in and ordered my salad and one for Wil to go, then sat down at a table in the corner to eat.
I had almost finished when someone caught my eye at the door—it was Coleman. He hadn’t indicated he was coming to Sedona when we talked at the truck stop. But here he was, walking straight over to me, like a man on a mission.
“I saw you come in,” he said, pulling some loose papers out of his briefcase. “Have you seen this? It’s part of the Document you’ve been talking about.”
I quickly looked it over, and indeed it was the same passages about the Second Integration I’d read earlier, but it included ten more pages I hadn’t seen before.
“Where did you get this?”
He shook his head and smiled in amazement. “I hadn’t been here ten minutes last night when I ran into your lady, Rachel.”
“She’s not my lady,” I protested.
“It was just a manner of speaking. Anyway, we’re staying at the same hotel. Then later, I came down to the lobby to get a cup of coffee and overheard two people talking. When I got closer, I realized they were talking about this Document.
“I walked up and introduced myself, and it turns out they are scientists. Do you believe that? And they were discussing the very question you posed earlier: how real scientists could study the topic of spirituality. And that’s not all. They had the first and second parts of the Document with them and were relating it to an old Prophecy that became known years ago.”
He laughed out loud. “You think my mind was blown or what? The more I talked to these guys, the more we found we had in common. We all took to one another immediately and wound up talking half the night. And guess what? Early this morning, we hiked out into the desert, and I got it! I understand that Synchronicity is real, and how to sustain it, and that we’re waking up to systematically explore our spiritual nature again. They gave me a copy of the Second Integration. I wasn’t surprised when I saw you again.”
He was full of energy, talking ninety miles an hour about having all this Synchronicity. I chuckled. This was the typical Sedona effect that everyone talks about.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Read it.”
I started where I had left off with Wil’s copy, finding that it continued on the same point, emphasizing the importance of Conscious Conversation for bringing in a new consensus about spiritual experience.
“Do you see what this is saying?” he interrupted. “It’s not using the precise words, but my new scientist friends and I agree. It calls for applying the scientific method to our individual search for spiritual truth. Everything it says to do is what good scientists do already.
“This process has yielded all the basic laws of physical reality, from Thales to Newton to Einstein, and I see now how it can be applied to the inner experience of spirituality. For instance, consider the phenomenon of Synchronicity. Because it feels the same for everyone, we can discuss it and compare notes and reach consensus about how it works.”
I was just listening, not believing I was talking to the same person. Even the basic expressions on his face were different. Instead of continuing to frown and debunk spirituality, he had experienced something he couldn’t explain from his old point of view, and had snapped awake, just that quickly.
“Listen,” he said. “I owe my interest in all this to you. If I hadn’t said something to you at the Pub, or if you hadn’t asked how Science might investigate Synchronicity and spirituality, I might never have seen the truth of it. I wasn’t even intending to come to Sedona until I talked to you at the gas station.”
He smiled at me, then continued. “You know, I haven’t been very successful as a scientist. I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. I was fired from MIT because of my opposition to commercial interests buying particular outcomes of studies. But the idea of engaging in a method of inquiry that’s honest and dedicated to truth, that’s what I’ve always been about. You’ve really had an influence on me.”
Influence, I thought, that word again.
He nodded toward the pages I was still holding. “And this last part, it fits exactly with something I’ve been fascinated with for a long time, as though that part of my life was preparing me for all this.”
I gave him a puzzled look.
“The Document speaks,” he said, “of something Immanuel Kant advocated centuries ago with his idea of a categorical imperative.”
I nodded. I knew a little bit about Kant. He was the father of a philosophy called phenomenology, which essentially called for thinkers to suspend their ordinary way of looking at a given phenomenon in nature in order to see it in a fresh way. In fact, I’d used his term bracketing assumptions with Coleman earlier. I’d even heard of the imperative idea—living and conducting yourself as if other people would be compelled to live and believe the exact same way as you—because, said Kant, that is the exact influence we actually have on them.
“Does the Document talk about all this?” I asked.
“No, not in Kant’s terms,” he replied. “But it’s saying the same thing. Everyone has to not only be honest but tentative in their beliefs before making great proclamations, otherwise we can be pulling others in the wrong direction, just by this mysterious influence we have on them. The Document says that we have to come to grips with the fact that our personal reality is contagious.”
He paused and looked at me. “It says each of us must first and foremost ‘prove to ourselves’ that our conclusions about spirituality actually work before we pass them along as truth. And because we are adding spiritual knowledge to our secular reality, we should use ‘logic first’ as we proceed.”
He leaned closer to me and hushed his voice. “You know there are a lot of screwball ideas floating around here in Sedona.”
I laughed. He was right, of course, and some of these crazy ideas were being pushed by outright charlatans, out just to make money. But, as Coleman was learning, the effect of the place itself, the hills and streams and overall beauty, was as genuine as the light of day.
“It also says,” Coleman continued, “that when we feel convinced inside that our spiritual experiences are real, then we must live them fully and openly and tell everyone about them, because if there really is an influence—and I believe there is—then it helps everyone get to a higher level of experience faster.”
He was suddenly on his feet. “Keep this translation,” he said. “I made copies.”
“Hold on,” I said. “How do you think this conscious way of consensus making is going to unfold?”
“It will come together like any other scientific consensus. First, there will be ever-larger areas of agreement, as common experiences are discussed and found to be the same for everyone. Then these will coalesce into still larger principles, as with Newton’s and Einstein’s theories about the secular world. Eventually, we’ll arrive at certain laws governing the whole thing: the basic, natural laws of spirituality.”
Without saying anything else, he scribbled his cell phone number on the top page of the Document, gave me a wink, and bounded out the door.
When Wil picked me up, I was stretched out on a bench near a grove of fragrant junipers, enjoying the first pink streaks of sunset. As I climbed into the Cruiser, the sun sank below some thin clouds near the horizon line, turning into a red blaze that now colored the clouds with streaks of orange and dark amber.
The beauty of the moment was striking. Everything around us—the sculptured peaks of the surrounding hills, the small businesses across the street, and every cloud in the sky—was cast in a pleasant golden aura. People were stopping on the sidewalks and pulling their cars to the side of the road just to watch.
Another magical Sedona sunset, I thought as I looked over at Wil in the driver’s seat. He grinned back at me, and I suggested we drive over to the Airport Vortex to watch the dramatic finale there. Wil nodded in agreement and in ten minutes we were climbing a rock formation near the vortex that was shaped like a circular pyramid. At the top, it flattened out into one crowning area of rock about forty feet in diameter.
For a long time we just watched and soaked up the energy of the light. I couldn’t help thinking more about the mythology of Sedona. All around the area, many believe, are special locations that have a particular uplifting effect on people. Some are large vortexes like the one here. Half a dozen or so of these have been marked and identified.
But legend has it that not only do these major vortexes dot the Sedona landscape, but other, smaller places of power are hidden about in the surrounding ravines and mesas as well, waiting for the casual hiker who chances to sit down nearby. As the mythology goes, there is a personal vortex waiting for everyone who journeys to Sedona, a spot of our own where each of us can be lifted up into consciousness and into a greater destiny. All you have to do is hike around until you find it.
I wondered, given the life clarity Coleman was suddenly displaying, if he had already stumbled upon his.
I smiled and looked out at the horizon again. Here at the Airport Vortex the feeling is about letting go of all one’s concerns and soaking up what can only be described as a supportive, healing energy, a sense of being totally content and safe. I leaned back on the rocks, feeling myself letting go to it—wanting to be nowhere else besides here, in this moment, basking in the glow.
We watched the sun sink beneath the horizon and disappear, sending out a more yellowish light, and then a pale gray. I looked over at Wil. He nodded and got up, and we started down the hill. As we walked, I told Will about seeing Coleman and reading the rest of the Second Integration.
“I met with my Hopi friends,” he replied. “They showed me the rest of the Second as well.”
“What do you think about this idea of building a new consensus about spirituality? Coleman said it was what he was meant to do.”
Wil stopped and pulled me to the edge of the trail as a group of people heading up the slope walked past us. Several of them looked us over, as if wondering whether seeing us here was a Synchronicity. We smiled back and nodded, and they walked on.
“I think that many people know,” he said, “that somehow Synchronicity is calling us together to do something historical. The world is a mess, but we can fix it if we stay alert and keep our historical context in mind. We have to stay awake and help each other stay awake.”
Wil was looking at me with determination, and in that moment, I felt a full elevation into the clarity of the Second Integration. How many people out there, I wondered, have noticed the same quickening? Were we already influencing one another to wake up to Conscious Conversation and to Kant’s mysterious influence? And if so, where would our consciousness go next?
“What about the Third Integration?” I asked. “Had your Hopi friends heard anything about it?”
He nodded, a big smile erupting on his face. “Yes, they knew it well, although they didn’t have any copies with them. It says that when people in any culture begin to wake up and hold Conscious Conversation, they quickly find the key spiritual ‘principles’ built into the fabric of the Universe.”
“Really?” I commented. “Coleman guessed that. He said we would discover the laws of our spiritual nature. Did your friends tell you about it?”
Wil began walking down the hill again. “Yeah. The Third says these laws have already been discovered. And in order to go forward, we only have to prove them out in our own lives and then come into ‘Alignment’ with them. It also says in this time period, we will have extra motivation to do just that.”
“What kind of motivation?”
“We have to come into Alignment,” he repeated, “because it’s the only way to avoid something else: a quickening Karma.”