The Twelfth Insight - James Redfield [17]
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