The Twelfth Insight: The Hour of Decision

by James Redfield

  THE GOD CONNECTION

  I sat alone, staring at the dying fire. The well-dressed Arab man, Adjar, had returned and talked for a long time with Rachel as they gathered up the copies of the Document.

  Afterward, he supervised as I erected my tent, then escorted Rachel to her own tent, leaving me alone except for Hira, our guard, and three extremists who were sitting together on the far side of the camp. Occasionally, the men would burst into muted laughter as they smoked cigarettes and took turns drinking from a bottle of wine.

  My mind was spinning over the situation. My energy had crashed, and I had no idea what to do. I thought momentarily of the Document’s idea of finding Protection but found no help. Whatever was intended by that word would remain a mystery until something happened in my experience to give it meaning. Until then it was just one more abstract term.

  Looking again at Hira, I figured I could make a run for it and perhaps get away, but that move would leave Rachel here alone, and I wasn’t going to abandon her. Hira looked around suddenly and stared hard at me, and when our eyes met, her look shifted into something akin to curiosity or inquisitiveness, but only for an instant.

  Something in her look made me feel better, and I thought about trying to speak with her but decided against it. The day had been long, and in spite of the fear, an irresistible fatigue was descending on me. For a few minutes I looked out into the night and tried to conjure up an expectation of Synchronicity. Then I crawled into my tent, literally unable to stay conscious. Where was Wil? I wondered. And Coleman?

  I was awakened by the muffled sound of conversation outside my tent. At first, I thought I was dreaming, but then I heard Rachel’s voice distinctly. I glanced at my watch. It was an hour before dawn.

  “Don’t you see?” she said in a loud whisper. “We have to figure out how to bridge our differences.”

  I peaked through the tent flap and could see Rachel outside by the fire. Adjar was sitting across from her. The rest of the camp was dark and silent. Hira was no longer on the rock.

  Rachael was pressing. “Spirituality cannot be forced. People must discover it for themselves.”

  He was shaking his head. “What we believe is that culture must be shaped and kept spiritual. The spiritual rules must be maintained by those in charge. Otherwise, our people would be spoiled and lazy. Look at the indecency and degradation of your movies and music. And you hold up your corrupt politics as something to be proud of?”

  “Look,” she argued, “I don’t like parts of our culture, either. But freedom is important, for men and women. What if the Document is correct? You understand what it says. You’ve experienced the Alignment. What if people everywhere could learn to practice a spirituality that establishes the discipline you speak of, but is voluntary and engaged in because of the thrill of the experience?”

  Suddenly, Hira returned with an alarmed look and began speaking to Rachel in Hebrew. Adjar looked as though he wanted to strike her, but he turned and walked a few paces away in disgust.

  I pushed through the tent flap then and startled them all. Rachel shot me a look of grave concern and walked over to Adjar.

  “Some of the others have opened up to Hira,” Rachel whispered to Adjar. “Anish is saying he’s not going to let us go! You have to help us get away!”

  Adjar said nothing.

  “You know what the Document is saying,” Rachel pressed. “It says we can experience a Breakthrough of some kind. We have to figure out what that is. It could lead to a resolution between both sides. What if Armageddon doesn’t have to happen?”

  Adjar turned away again, as though under terrible stress.

  Finally, he said, “Okay. Get your belongings.”

  Hira ran up to Rachel, her gun hanging from her shoulder, pointed to herself, and said something, which seemed to mean she was going with us.

  Rachel turned and looked at me, smiling as though thoroughly astounded that her plea had been granted. I whirled around and began dismantling my tent as quietly as possible. Within minutes, the three of us were carefully walking to the north. Behind us, Adjar was standing motionless watching us go, the firelight glistening on his tall forehead.

  “What about Adjar?” I whispered to Rachel. We were climbing up the steep, wooded incline in the direction of Secret Mountain.

  She stopped and looked back at him.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  Rachel found a break in a steep outcropping where we could make our way to the right along a small ridge. Suddenly, we heard a loud sequence of yells and arguing behind us at the Apocalyptics’ camp, apparently at the discovery of our absence. I could see the large flashlights come on again and a group of men begin heading our way.

  We hurried our pace toward the north, ever deeper into the Secret Mountain Wilderness. This area, I knew, was at least forty square miles of rough terrain. We walked until well after sunrise, and at each rise in the terrain we stopped to rest and to check if the extremists were following us. Each time we would see them still back there but not catching up.

  As the sun rose higher in the sky, we quickened our pace until we couldn’t see them anymore and then pushed forward into the early afternoon, when we virtually collapsed from exhaustion. We set up camp on a rise of rock surrounded by thick bushes except on one side, which allowed us a view down the ridge.

  For the rest of the day, we ate camp stew and took turns keeping watch and sleeping. Finally, we all gathered on the edge of the rocks to watch the sunset. Rachel sat down beside me, and Hira sat a few paces away, watching for movement and still appearing very nervous. As the sunset unfolded, swirling cirrus clouds picked up the last of the light and began to look like little pink Angels.

  “I guess they were protecting us back there,” Rachel said.

  I nodded.

  “You’re still going to need them!” Hira suddenly shouted.

  A hundred yards away, a group of seven extremists were jogging up the hill toward us. Some of them had assault weapons on their shoulders.

  “Come on,” I said. “We have to get out of here.”

  In minutes we had grabbed everything and were running up the slope toward the top of the mountain, scaling rocky outcroppings and making our way through thick clumps of trees. Hira had moved in front of us and was directing the route.

  “Let her lead,” Rachel said to me. “She used to be in the Israeli military.”

  We were making our way around one of the tight ledges when my foot suddenly slipped and I felt myself toppling off the edge toward another spire of rock twenty feet below. At the last second I leaped to a boulder about ten feet down and slid to a prone position, scraping my arm on the jagged rocks.

  “Are you all right?” Rachel was whispering from above.

  I could see there was no way back up to her.

  “Yeah,” I said, “but I’ll have to find another way up. I’ll meet you ahead somewhere.”

  She nodded, and I took off. Glancing behind me in the descending darkness, I could see the flashlights of the Apocalyptics flickering on again and bobbing up and down as they closed in on us. Suddenly, a single shot rang out, reverberating against the mountain in a series of echoes that chilled my soul.

  Despite everything I could do, my energy began to fade even more. I sought to bolster my consciousness by telling myself how important it was to make it through this, to find the remaining Integrations. I even tried to expect Synchronicity again and to somehow seek Protection, but I knew full well that there was no one out here in this wilderness to come to our aid.

  I was running through the darkness now, jumping from boulder to boulder. At one point, to my horror, I found I had no way forward without moving back down the slope in a direction closer to the bobbing lights. Worst of all, up ahead, the slope ended in a sheer rock face. I would have to climb virtually straight up the rocks to get away.

  Another gunshot rang out, which threw me completely into panic. It all seemed meaningless now. Now there was only fear, and th
e desperate desire to get away.

  When I reached the rock face, I chose the best way I could see and climbed for my life. At each ledge of rock reached, the lights flickered erratically over me, telling me the men were climbing as well. Were they already sighting in on me with their weapons? The thought sent me into ever larger waves of panic until the level was simply unbearable. At that moment, I began to feel the resignation of imminent death descending on me like a wet blanket, sapping my remaining energy. My legs began to feel like lead.

  Then suddenly, I was buoyed by a memory. This exact circumstance had happened to me before, years ago, during the search for the Prophecy in Peru. I was in the exact same situation, giving in to death as a respite from terror. Back then, I had opened up to a consciousness I hadn’t experienced before or since.

  With that thought in mind, I regained some of my balance and climbed to the top of the rock face. Then I squeezed through a narrow opening between two large outcroppings, attempting to find a way up to my right. To my shock, I found myself totally blocked off and stymied by a sheer drop-off ahead of me. Again, just as in Peru.

  Rocks sliding down the slope behind me told me the extremists were close. My rubbery legs began to fail again, and I slumped to the rocks. Again the blanket of surrender began to cover me—only this time I didn’t fully let go. A part of me, the part that remembered the experience in Peru, didn’t give in. I moved into a zone where I was the pure observer, the detached witness, there only to watch the unfolding drama that would determine my fate.

  Taking a breath, I looked out at my surroundings, waiting, and then, just as in Peru, something began to change. Without investment, I watched as my consciousness suddenly enlarged and reached out to everything around me, giving me an odd feeling of familiarity, as though I was recapturing a natural part of myself that had been lost.

  Instantly, my perception was filled with everything I hadn’t noticed before: Small moths and flying insects circled around my head. Crickets, or perhaps grasshoppers, sang their song from the trees and rocks. I became aware of a large bird, perhaps a hawk or owl, awakened by my rude intrusion, which cried out and flew away. I could hear each thump of the wings, as if it was flying off in slow motion.

  Above me, the sliver of moon that had guided my way was now hanging lower in the sky. As I looked at it, I felt another expansion of my being, one I also remembered from before. No longer was it merely an artifact in the sky, two-dimensional in its appearance, like something seen on television.

  This sliver was now perceived by the observing part of myself in a larger way, so that I knew in my perception that the phases of the moon are really a change in the way the sun’s light reflects off the moon’s round, three-dimensional shape, hanging there in space.

  The perception stretched my awareness even more to include not just the moon but the sun as well, hanging, as it was, underneath Earth’s western horizon and shining upon the moon. The effect was to extend my sense of space past the local area around the ledge I was sitting on, out to the larger cosmos in all directions—and not just over my head and to each side. I felt it under my feet on the other side of Earth as well.

  With that, everything was suddenly thrown into greater relief, a kind of super three-dimensionality that enhanced the presence and realness of everything in my perceptual field, from the small insects close to my face all the way to the galaxy of stars behind the moon. I was looking at everything from the larger perspective of the entire Universe.

  Everything around me came alive with an overwhelming beauty and majesty. The rocks and trees virtually glowed with color as every reflection of light outlined their contours and crevices with multicolored reflections. The large pine tree that bordered the ledge to my right seemed to explode with a thousand variations of red and blue highlights.

  As if pulled on by my growing sense of beauty, I then felt myself expand at the emotional level into a profound feeling of love and Connection with everything around me. Something in the area of my heart burst outward, and I knew without a doubt that I was now home and cared for, and absolutely—I couldn’t believe it—Protected.

  For a while I merely soaked up the emotion, but then my image of myself as a person began to shift. Somehow, in this moment of euphoria, the witness part of myself could now see all the events of my life as one long movie. I could see all the Synchronicities, all the thoughts and ideas that had come to me at just the right moment in my past to guide my life forward—revealing now a hidden purpose behind it all. I could see that all I had done came from a truth I had come into the world to tell. But I could also see that my truth was part of a larger, hidden truth, a Plan for all of creation.

  This recognition lifted me into still another, even larger emotional opening. The love, the euphoric sense of being at home, of being involved in a Universe of higher purpose, were all still there. But along with it was rising a profound sense of appreciation for this Connection and support. It was like suddenly realizing that some Divine force had been behind me all along, without my fully knowing it—and now was suddenly jumping from behind the curtain, yelling “Surprise!”

  Only it was more deeply heartfelt than that. To understand, at this level of illumination, that I was part of something larger and older and longer was almost overwhelming in its impact.

  And here, in this moment of appreciation, something else also seemed to be occurring. I was sensing some personal point of Connection from which this love and belonging emanated. What was this? When I tried to analyze it, it simply disappeared altogether. Yet when I concentrated on feeling the love and well-being and appreciation, there it was again. It was as if appreciation completed a circuit of Connection somehow and brought the point of contact closer.

  For a very long time, I just sat there, somehow feeling everything at once, the heightened perception, the love and well-being, the sense that there’s a Plan toward which we are all being guided, and finally, this elusive point of Connection I couldn’t understand. I didn’t want to move.

  The night sky had vanished in the first light of dawn, and everything around me was standing out even more in vivid color and distinctiveness. Suddenly, I felt my attention being pulled down the slope. Gradually, I realized I was hearing human voices. I leaped to my feet so effortlessly it amazed me. My body was moving differently, not just with more energy, though that was true, but also with more coordination and precision. Squeezing through the boulders again, I quietly moved back down through the rocks, realizing the voices were coming from a point a hundred feet or so to my right, behind some trees. When I came close I could hear the accents and knew it was the Apocalyptics.

  Without fear, I moved slowly to my right so that I could look down on them. Anish and the tall bearded man were talking loudly. Behind them were Rachel and Hira, and a larger man sitting on the other side. When he turned, I realized it was Coleman, and he looked terrified. Anish and the bearded man were arguing over what should be done with the three prisoners.

  “They know what we’re going to do,” the bearded man said. “To release them would threaten our project.”

  “What do they know?” Anish said, glancing at Rachel. “Nothing that can hurt us. The end is approaching and no one can stop it.”

  The bearded man looked angered. “We can’t keep taking chances like this. What are we doing here on this mountain, anyway? This idiot Document means nothing. Why are we looking for more of it? We have to get to Egypt.”

  Anish turned his back.

  “I have to insist,” the bearded man said forcefully, “or we must go our own way.” Several armed men stepped forward from behind him.

  “No, no,” Anish said. “Our coalition is too important for that.” He looked over at Rachel with a hint of pity.

  “You don’t want to do this,” Rachel said. “The Document will explain the end times, what all the Prophecies really mean. I know it. We can all find the truth together. It could bring peace.”

  At this moment, I understood in a fl
ash that all of us—Rachel, Adjar, Hira, Coleman, myself, and Wil, wherever he was—were here for a reason. We were part of the Plan. We were in the right place to intercede with these extremists somehow. We could learn to reach them, as the Fourth Integration said. But how?

  The idea suddenly came to me to move farther to the right and try to create a rock slide that wouldn’t hit anyone but might create enough of a disturbance to allow our group to escape. I was about to do just that when I caught sight of someone else in the exact area I had in mind. Suddenly, a huge rock cascaded down toward the pines, jarring other rocks loose, including one the size of a bathtub. As the roar started, the Apocalyptics began running in the opposite direction.

  I knew I somehow had to get Rachel and the others to run toward me, and I felt myself spontaneously go into a state of intention, akin to prayer, only it wasn’t just me. I could somehow feel a Connection to many others who were helping. Who were they?

  Almost on cue, Rachel grabbed Hira and ran through some rocks in my direction. As our eyes met, Rachel slowed for a moment and seemed to stagger. Hira saw me, too, and grabbed Rachel’s arm to keep from stumbling. Last to see me was Coleman, who held on to to a rock for balance. I could tell they were being lifted into the same consciousness I was in.

  Rushing through the blinding dust and confusion, I grabbed Rachel and Hira and led them back the way I’d come. Coleman was right behind us. Rocks were continuing to crash down the slope, and as we ran I looked up toward the source of the landslide and noticed movement again. I pulled all of them behind another outcropping near a large tree, where we couldn’t be seen. They were smiling up at me, feeling no concern about the dangers.

  Abruptly, someone peeked around the tree and looked at us—Wil. The sight of him lifted my awareness even higher, and when he looked at me, I knew he was also in the same consciousness as the rest of us.