The Twelfth Insight - James Redfield [16]
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