After saying this, Sanchez drove ahead. For several miles we saw nothing, then we passed two military jeeps parked at the right side of the road. The soldiers inside looked at us intensely as we drove by.
“Well,” Father Sanchez said, “they know we are here.”
A mile further we came to the entrance to the mission. Large iron gates protected the paved drive. Although the gates were open, a jeep and four soldiers blocked our way and signaled us to stop. One of the military men talked into a short-wave radio.
Sanchez smiled as a soldier walked up. “I’m Father Sanchez, here to see Cardinal Sebastian.”
The soldier scrutinized Sanchez, then me. He turned and walked back to the soldier with the radio. They talked without taking their eyes off us. After several minutes the soldier came back and said we should follow them.
The jeep led us up the tree-lined drive for several hundred yards until we came to the mission grounds. The church was built of cut stone and was massive, capable of seating, I guessed, over a thousand people. On both sides of the church were two other buildings which looked like classrooms. Both were four stories high.
“This place is impressive,” I said.
“Yes, but where are the people?” he asked.
I noticed the paths and walkways were empty.
“Sebastian runs a famous school here,” he said. “Why are there no students?”
The soldiers led us to the entrance of the church and asked us politely but firmly to get out and follow them inside. As we walked up the cement steps, I could see several trucks parked behind an adjacent building. Thirty or forty soldiers stood at attention nearby. Once inside we were led through the sanctuary and asked to enter a small room. There we were searched thoroughly and told to wait. The soldiers left and the door was locked.
“Where is Sebastian’s office?” I asked.
“Further back toward the rear of the church,” he said.
The door suddenly opened. Flanked by several soldiers stood Sebastian. His posture was tall and erect.
“What are you doing here?” Sebastian asked Sanchez.
“I want to talk with you,” Sanchez said.
“About what?”
“The Ninth Insight of the Manuscript.”
“There’s nothing to discuss. It will never be found.”
“We know you’ve already found it.”
Sebastian’s eyes widened. “I will not allow this insight to be disseminated,” he said. “It is not the truth.”
“How do you know it’s not the truth?” Sanchez asked. “You could be wrong. Let me read it.”
Sebastian’s face softened as he looked at Sanchez. “You used to think I would make the correct decision in a matter of this kind.”
“I know,” Sanchez said. “You were my mentor. My inspiration. I patterned my mission after yours.”
“You respected me until this Manuscript was discovered,” Sebastian said. “Don’t you see how divisive it is? I tried to let you go your own way. I even let you alone after I knew you were teaching the insights. But I will not let this document destroy everything our church has built.”
Another soldier walked up behind Sebastian and asked to see him. Sebastian glanced at Sanchez, then walked back into the hall. We could still see but could no longer hear the conversation. The message obviously alarmed Sebastian. As he turned to walk away, he signaled for all the soldiers to follow him except for one, whom he apparently told to wait with us.
The soldier walked into the room and leaned against the wall, a disturbed look on his face. He was only about twenty years old.
“What is wrong?” Sanchez asked him.
The soldier only shook his head.
“Is it about the Manuscript, the Ninth Insight?”
The soldier’s face displayed surprise. “What do you know of the Ninth Insight?” he asked timidly.
“We’re here to save it,” Sanchez said.
“I too want it saved,” the soldier replied.
“Have you read it?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “But I have heard the talk. It brings our religion alive.”
Suddenly, from outside the church came the sound of gunfire.
“What’s going on?!” Sanchez asked.
The soldier stood motionless.
Sanchez gently touched his arm, “Help us.”
The young soldier walked to the door and checked the hall, then said. “Someone has broken into the church and stolen a copy of the Ninth Insight. They seem to still be here on the grounds somewhere.”
More gunfire broke out.
“We must try to help them,” Sanchez told the young man.
He looked horrified.
“We must do what’s right,” Sanchez stressed. “This is for the whole world.”
The soldier nodded and said we should move to another area of the church where there would be less activity, that perhaps he could find a way to help. He led us down the hall and up two flights of stairs to a larger corridor which spanned the full width of the church.
“Sebastian’s office is right below us, two stories down,” the young man said.
Suddenly we could hear a group of people running down an adjacent corridor, heading our way. Sanchez and the soldier were ahead of me and ducked into a room to the right. I knew I couldn’t reach that room so I ran into the one next to it and closed the door.
I was in a classroom. Desks, podium, closet. I ran to the closet, found it unlocked, and squeezed in amid boxes and several musty smelling jackets. I attempted to conceal myself as best I could, but I knew if anyone checked in the closet, I would be discovered. I tried not to move, not even to breathe. The door to the classroom squeaked open and I could hear several people enter and walk about the room. One seemed to be coming toward the closet, then stopped and headed in the other direction. They were talking loudly in Spanish. Then silence. No movement.
I waited ten minutes before I slowly cracked the closet door and looked out. The room was empty. I walked to the door. There was no indication of anyone outside. I quickly walked to the room where Sanchez and the soldier had hidden. To my surprise, I found it was not a room at all but a hallway. I listened but could hear nothing. I leaned against the wall, feeling anxiety in the pit of my stomach. I quietly called out Sanchez’s name. No response. I was alone. I could feel a slight dizziness from the anxiety.
I took a deep breath and tried to talk to myself; I had to keep my wits about me and increase my energy. For several minutes, I struggled until the colors and shapes in the hallway had more presence. I tried to project love. Finally I felt better, and thought of Sebastian again. If he was in his office, Sanchez would go there.
Ahead, the hallway ended at another stairway, so I walked two flights down to the first level. Through the window of the stairway door, I looked down the corridor. No one was in view. I opened the door and walked ahead, not sure where I wanted to go.
Then I heard Sanchez’s voice coming from a room in front of me. The door was cracked. Sebastian’s voice boomed back at him. As I approached the door, a soldier inside opened it suddenly and pointed a rifle at my heart, forcing me inside and against the wall. Sanchez acknowledged me with a glance and put his hand on his solar plexus. Sebastian shook his head in disgust. The young soldier who had helped us was nowhere to be seen.
I knew that Sanchez’s gesture to his stomach meant something. All I could think of was that he needed energy. As he spoke, I focused on his face, trying to see his higher self. His energy field widened.
“You can’t stop the truth,” Sanchez said. “People have a right to know.”
Sebastian looked condescendingly at Sanchez. “These insights violate the scriptures. They could not be true.”
“But do they really violate the scriptures, or do they just show us what the scriptures mean?”
“We know what they mean,” Sebastian said. “We’ve known for centuries. Have you forgotten your training, your years of study?”
“
No, I haven’t,” Sanchez said. “But I also know that the insights expand our spirituality. They …”
“According to whom?” Sebastian shouted. “Who wrote this Manuscript anyway? Some pagan Mayan who learned somewhere how to speak Aramaic? What did these people know? They believed in magic places and mysterious energy. They were primitives. The ruins where the Ninth was found is called the Celestine Temples, the Heavenly Temples. What could this culture possibly know about heaven?
“Did their culture endure?” he continued. “No. No one knows what happened to the Mayans. They just disappeared without a trace. And you want us to believe this Manuscript? This document makes it sound as though humans are in control, as though we are in charge of change in the world. We are not. God is. The only issue humans face is whether to accept the scriptural teachings and thereby win our own salvation.”
“But think about that,” Sanchez replied, “What does accepting the teachings and winning salvation really mean? What is the process through which this happens? Doesn’t the Manuscript show us the exact process of becoming more spiritual, connected, saved—the way it actually feels? And doesn’t the Eighth and Ninth show us what would happen if everyone were acting this way?”
Sebastian shook his head and walked away, then turned and looked at Sanchez piercingly. “You haven’t even seen the Ninth Insight.”
“Yes I have. Part of it.”
“How?”
“Part of it was described to me before we arrived here. I read another section a few minutes ago.”
“What?! How?”
Sanchez walked closer to the older priest. “Cardinal Sebastian, people everywhere want this last insight revealed. It places the other insights into perspective. It shows us our destiny. What spiritual consciousness really is!
“We know what spirituality is, Father Sanchez.”
“Do we? I think not. We’ve spent centuries talking about it, visualizing it, professing our belief in it. But we’ve always characterized this connection as something abstract, something we believe in intellectually. And we’ve always cast this connection as something an individual must do to avoid something bad happening, rather than to acquire something good and tremendous. The Manuscript describes the inspiration that comes when we are truly loving others and evolving our lives forward.”
“Evolve! Evolve! Listen to yourself, Father, you have always fought against the influence of evolution. What has happened to you?”
Sanchez collected himself. “Yes, I fought against the idea of evolution as a replacement for God, as a way to explain the universe without reference to God. But now I see that the truth is a synthesis of the scientific and religious world views. The truth is that evolution is the way God created, and is still creating.”
“But there is no evolution,” Sebastian protested. “God created this world and that’s it.”
Sanchez glanced at me but I had no ideas to express.
“Cardinal Sebastian,” he continued, “the Manuscript describes the progress of succeeding generations as an evolution of understanding, an evolution toward a higher spirituality and vibration. Each generation incorporates more energy and accumulates more truth and then passes that status on to the people of the next generation, who extend it further.”
“That’s nonsense,” Sebastian said. “There is only one way to become more spiritual and that’s by following the examples in the scriptures.”
“Exactly!” Sanchez said. “But again, what are the examples? Isn’t the story of the scriptures a story of people learning to receive God’s energy and will within? Isn’t that what the early prophets led the people to do in the Old Testament? And isn’t that receptivity to God’s energy within what culminated in the life of a carpenter’s son, to the extent that we say God, himself, descended to Earth?
“Isn’t the story of the New Testament,” he continued, “the story of a group of people being filled with some kind of energy that transformed them? Didn’t Jesus, himself, say that what he did, we could do also, and more? We’ve never really taken that idea seriously, not until now. We’re only now grasping what Jesus was talking about, where he was leading us. The Manuscript clarifies what he meant! How to do it!”
Sebastian looked away, his face red with anger. During the pause in the conversation, a high ranking officer burst into the room and told Sebastian that the intruders had been seen.
“Look!” the officer said, pointing out the window. “There they are!”
Three or four hundred yards away we could see two figures running through an open field headed toward the forest. A number of soldiers at the edge of the clearing seemed ready to open fire.
The officer turned from the window and looked at Sebastian, his radio raised.
“If they get to the wooded area,” he said, “they will be hard to find. Do I have your permission to open fire?”
As I watched the two running, I suddenly recognized who they were.
“That’s Wil and Julia!” I shouted.
Sanchez walked even closer to Sebastian. “In the name of God, you cannot commit murder over this!”
The officer persisted. “Cardinal Sebastian, if you want this Manuscript contained, I must give the order now.”
I was frozen.
“Father, trust me,” Sanchez was saying. “The Manuscript will not erode all you have built, all you have stood for. You cannot kill these people.”
Sebastian shook his head. “Trust you . . ?” Then he sat down on his desk and looked at the officer. “We will shoot no one. Tell your troops to capture them alive.”
The officer nodded and walked out of the room. Sanchez said, “Thank you, you made the right choice.”
“Not to kill, yes,” Sebastian said. “But I will not change my mind. This Manuscript is a curse. It would undermine our basic structure of spiritual authority. It would entice people to think they are in control of their spiritual destiny. It would undermine the discipline needed to bring everyone on the planet into the church, and people would be caught wanting when the rapture comes.” He looked hard at Sanchez. “At this moment, thousands of troops are arriving. It doesn’t matter what you or anyone else does. The Ninth Insight will never leave Peru. Now get out of my mission.”
As we sped away, we could hear dozens of trucks approaching in the distance.
“Why did he let us go?” I asked.
“I suppose because he thinks it makes no difference,” Sanchez replied, “that there’s nothing we can do. I really don’t know what to think.” His eyes met mine. “We didn’t convince him, you know.”
I too, was confused. What did it mean? Perhaps we hadn’t been there to convince Sebastian after all. Perhaps we were just supposed to delay him.
I glanced back at Sanchez. He was concentrating on driving and searching the roadside for any sign of Wil and Julia. We had decided that we would double back in the direction they had been running, but so far we had seen nothing. As we rode, my mind wandered to the Celestine ruins. I imagined what the site looked like: the tiered excavations, the scientist’s tents, the looming pyramidal structures in the background.
“They don’t seem to be in these woods,” Sanchez said. “They must have had a vehicle. We must decide what to do.”
“I think we should go to the ruins,” I said.
He looked at me. “We might as well. There’s no where else to go.”
Sanchez made a turn to the west.
“What do you know of these ruins?” I asked.
“They were built by two different cultures, as Julia said. The first, the Mayans, had a thriving civilization there, though most of their temples were further north in the Yucatan. Mysteriously, all signs of their civilization suddenly vanished about 600 B.C. without apparent cause. The Incas developed another civilization afterward at the same location.”
“What do you think happened to the Mayans?”
Sanchez glanced at me. “I don’t know.”
We rode for several minutes in silence, then I su
ddenly remembered that Father Sanchez had told Sebastian he had read more of the Ninth Insight.
“How did you see more of the Ninth Insight?” I asked.
“The young soldier who helped us knew where another part was being hidden. After you and I were separated, he took me to another room and showed it to me. It added only a few more concepts to what Phil and Dobson told us, but it gave me the points I used with Sebastian.”
“What did it say specifically?”
“That the Manuscript would clarify many religions. And would help them fulfill their promise. All religion, it says, is about humankind finding relationship to one higher source. And all religions speak of a perception of God within, a perception that fills us, makes us more than we were. Religions become corrupted when leaders are assigned to explain God’s will to the people instead of showing them how to find this direction within themselves.
“The Manuscript says that sometime in history one individual would grasp the exact way of connecting with God’s source of energy and direction and would thus become a lasting example that this connection is possible.” Sanchez looked at me. “Isn’t that what Jesus really did? Didn’t he increase his energy and vibration until he was light enough to …?” Sanchez ended his sentence without finishing it and seemed to be deep in thought.
“What are you thinking?” I asked.
Sanchez looked perplexed. “I don’t know. The soldier’s copy ended right there. It said that this individual would blaze a path that the whole human race was destined to follow. But it didn’t say where this path led.”
For fifteen minutes we rode in silence. I attempted to receive some indication of what would happen next, but I could think of nothing. I seemed to be trying too hard.
“There are the ruins,” Sanchez said.
Ahead, through the forest to the left of the road, I could make out three large pyramidal shaped structures. After we parked and walked closer, I could tell the pyramids were constructed of cut stone and were spaced an equal distance apart, about a hundred feet. Between them was an area paved with a smoother stone. Several excavation sites were dug into the base of the pyramids.
“Look, there!” Sanchez said, pointing toward the more distant pyramid.
The Celestine Prophecy Page 26
