The Twelfth Insight: The Hour of Decision

by James Redfield

  He looked at me as though he expected I would pick up on his next statement.

  I nodded. “And the Document is talking about a practical way to sustain the experience.”

  “That’s right! And some of them are scientists! They think that opening to perception is built into the structure of our brains, just like the rest of the jumps in consciousness we’ve experienced. They now believe every step is archetypal and, in a sense, a higher kind of Alignment that we’re called to maintain.”

  That jolted me. A group of scientists were asserting this, based on the similarity of spiritual experience for all of us! I wondered suddenly just how widespread this perception was becoming.

  “That’s why,” Coleman continued, “groups are the best way to proceed now, because as one person in the group gets it, others see the new consciousness and feel it, and pretty soon everyone has fired up that part of his or her brain. This way, it all gets proven to oneself very quickly. It’s the process behind the idea of a positive contagion of consciousness.

  “The Document,” he continued, “says that to see more beauty is to get closer to the consciousness that exists in Heaven. There, people know how to use the power of Agape with everyone, especially those locked in ideologies. The Document says to reach those in fear and anger we have to do what they do in the Afterlife.

  “It says the Ninth Integration is an important step toward doing that. It gets us closer to a heavenly level of consciousness. This is the secret of reaching those in fear and anger. We have to be able to lift them toward this state.”

  “How do we do that?” I asked.

  He shrugged.

  I noticed then that he had a folder with him. “You have the Document?”

  “Part of it,” he said. “Want to read it?”

  As I read, the Document spoke exactly to Coleman’s point. Agape, it stated, was easy to accomplish with people who loved you back. It was more difficult with those who were more ideologically opposed. The only way to reach everyone, as Coleman had mentioned, was from an elevated position of consciousness closer to the Afterlife.

  Suddenly, we began hearing more noise and movement behind us. All the others were no longer just talking and working. They were moving heavy packs and foodstuff out the door toward the vehicles.

  Coleman and I looked at each other, and I was about to go back to reading when the thought came to me to check the phone for texts. I found a message from Adjar. A former insider with the Apocalyptics had told him the extremists knew we were in St. Katherine. They were planning to stop us from getting to the mountain.

  “I guess that’s why,” Coleman said, “the people here are hurrying so. They must have already sensed danger. I’ll go tell them what we found out.”

  Wanting to think about the situation, I nodded and watched him walk off. Neither Coleman nor I had experienced a premonition of trouble. So I tuned in to whether I could picture us going to the Mount. I easily saw the journey and felt it was the right thing to do, but when I attempted to visualize us making it all the way to the summit of the mountain, I couldn’t. I tried again with no success.

  Uh-oh, I thought, and dashed outside where everyone was gathering around the vehicles, obviously checking in with each other to see who had the best intuition going forward.

  What happened next was one of those fast-paced moments of Synchronicity and intuition where everyone spoke at exactly the right time and with perfect clarity about the hunches they were receiving. And it was virtually unanimous. Everyone saw that we were right to head to the Mount, but once there, we should be very careful.

  Suddenly, Rachel walked to the center of the group, eager to say something more.

  “We can’t let these threats,” she said forcefully, “interrupt our progress with the Integrations. If we stay in Agape, we’ll find a way to stop this danger. Remember where we are. The Ninth Integration says we have to use Agape to pull the Apocalyptics into a higher state and out of their ideology somehow.”

  There was silence, then Tommy added, “We will discover how to do that at the Mountain. The next step is to tune in to sacred nature, open our perception, and get closer to the spirit world. This ability has long been the emphasis of Native peoples. If we pay close attention, the Mountain will show us the way.”

  Most everyone agreed to go, despite the danger. But some didn’t, feeling their paths took them elsewhere. They would hold us in prayer, they said, leaving twelve of us to load into three vehicles: Joseph’s Toyota, Love of Mountain’s Subaru, and an old Volvo belonging to one of the others. Coleman, Rachel, and I rode with Joseph.

  The plan was to separate and meet at a specific location that Tommy’s mother had suggested: the head of a little-known trail that led up the southeastern side of Mount Sinai. Love of Mountain had told us this route would still be guarded by Egyptian troops, but at least it would be less traveled. Because of the layout of the town, we would have to drive west and then south to hit the trail to Sinai.

  The trip to the trailhead should have taken, at most, thirty minutes, but as we traveled, we ran into one traffic jam after another. Now we were waiting, again, in a long line of cars to make a turn.

  “This little town has really filled up,” Coleman said. “I looked up St. Katherine on the Internet before we got here. They average plenty of visitors to Mount Sinai over the course of a year, but nothing like these numbers. There must be an extra thousand people here.”

  I looked closely into the vehicles around us and at the pedestrians lining the streets. They all looked primarily Middle Eastern, but a good fourth of them were international, with lots of Europeans and North Americans among them.

  “You think they’re here because of the Document?” Rachel asked.

  We all looked at one another.

  “Maybe we should stop and ask some of them,” I said.

  “I don’t think so,” Coleman retorted. “We should get into the mountains as soon as we can.”

  All of us agreed, and we headed south, finally moving out of town and into a flat, rocky desert that was alive with small round plants and scrubby bushes that seemed to be glistening in the fading light.

  Just like Sedona, I thought.

  In twenty minutes, we were approaching the trailhead, and the reality of our situation was sinking in: we were about to scale a mountain in a foreign country without permission, facing a group of extremists who had already tried to kill us.

  I shook my head, holding on to my energy level and reminding myself again that there was no choice. To have any chance of reaching the extremists, we had to get up this Mount and finish the Integrations.

  “I have a brother who is a high-ranking officer in this region,” Joseph said abruptly. “I wanted all of you to know, because he could possibly help us. He has been very extreme at times, but I’ve been trying to convince him of the Document’s importance.”

  We all looked at one another, and for some reason I felt his brother would be instrumental in whatever happened on Sinai.

  “I also know your friend Hira,” he continued, “from when I lived in Jerusalem during my youth. My mother was Jewish, and she knew Hira’s mother. We all studied end-times Prophecy in the Bible and the Torah. I think the most fascinating aspect of the prophetic literature, however, is that the prophecies of all three major religions seem to have the same structure. Each has an idea of a final conflict, or Armageddon. And each has the notion that a Divine Messiah figure is coming to establish an ideal, spiritual world.”

  I remembered what Tommy had told me. The next step of Creation of the Mayan Calendar also seemed to have a similar structure. What was Synchronicity trying to show us here?

  “It’s fascinating,” Joseph went on. “And some of the traditions also agree that the same literal events must take place before Armageddon begins. The first event is that the Jews must return to the Holy Land, which has occurred. Then the rebuilding of David’s temple in Jerusalem on the site of its old foundation must take place.”


  “Trouble is,” Rachel interjected, “the Dome of the Rock, an especially important mosque, already occupies that site.”

  “Any reason that both the mosque and the temple couldn’t fit up there?” I asked.

  They all looked at me in silence.

  “The problem,” Rachel finally said, “is that the two religions both claim title to the entire rock.”

  “That’s right,” Joseph added. “And many believe an attempt to rebuild the temple would signal the onset of Armageddon and the whole end-times drama would be played out, including the coming of the Messiah figures. For our tradition, it would be the Twelfth Imam who would return.”

  He glanced at Rachel. “You might argue that it would be the return of the Christ.”

  “Wait a minute,” Coleman remarked. “So you’re saying that these events—Jews returning to the Holy Land and the rebuilding of David’s temple in Jerusalem—are the primary events in prophecy that would signal the beginning of Armageddon?”

  “I would add one more from the Arab side,” Joseph said. “One of our prophets said the end times are near when there is chaos and incivility building in society, and a general dishonoring of all people. It is a time when the truth is disregarded for more convenient lies.”

  “You mean runaway ideology?” Coleman remarked.

  Joseph nodded. “Yes.”

  I perked up. The energy of this conversation had begun to feel numinous, and I knew it was happening for a reason.

  “There is also another event,” Rachel interjected, “that many believe will occur as the end times approach. In Christianity it is called the Rapture, but other traditions have a similar idea as well. It’s the notion that as the Messiah figure begins to come to Earth and Armageddon begins, the true believers’ bodies will be lifted into spirit and they will meet the coming God figure in Heaven, where they will be protected.”

  She looked at Joseph.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Joseph said. “In our religion, it is thought that as the Twelfth Imam approaches, our true believers will be taken to the side in spirit and also protected.”

  Coleman looked around at each of us. “This is amazing. I’ve never put this together before. All the major religions do have almost the same structure for the end times, just with different names.”

  Our discussion was interrupted as Adjar turned off the main road onto a bumpy gravel track that left a plume of dust swirling up behind us in the fading light. Within minutes, we were stopping at a place where the road widened into a turnaround and proceeded no farther.

  “This is where Love of Mountain said to meet,” Joseph said.

  We waited another ten minutes before we saw the muted headlights of a vehicle approaching.

  “That’s Love of Mountain’s Subaru,” Rachel commented.

  Seconds behind them came the Volvo. When everyone was out and ready, Tommy prepared us for the route ahead, telling us the first mile would be relatively flat desert, but the second would be very mountainous and would take us up the southeastern side of Mount Sinai. His mother suggested we hike in for a short distance under the cover of darkness, and then sleep before attempting to move up the mountain.

  “What about the Egyptian guards you mentioned?” I asked.

  “We will come to a guard station,” she replied. “Before we can go past it we must open our perception and learn from those in spirit.”

  Without saying anything else, Tommy and his mother set a rapid pace through the desert. Eventually, we came to an area where the terrain inclined upward and we began to see enormous boulders dotting the landscape. After another hundred yards, we came to a group of the big rocks circled together. Tommy led us through the maze until we came to an open, sandy area completely surrounded by the rocks.

  “We can camp here,” he said.

  Rachel and I pitched our tents beside each other, and I could see Tommy was intentionally laying out the tent he shared with his mother beside Rachel’s as well.

  When the tents were up, I built a small fire from the dead limbs of some scrub bushes that grew around the edges of the boulders, realizing as I did so that the circle of huge rocks was reflecting back at us in the light of the moon, creating what felt like a curtain of security.

  Rachel seemed to be looking out at them as well and glanced at me as she took out a small cooker and began making freeze-dried stew near the fire. I sat down beside her.

  “You know,” she said, “Native Americans never camp somewhere unless it has high energy. I talked to Tommy’s mother, and of all the mountains she has visited, the Sinai group are her favorites.”

  Rachel shot me a smile. “She said they are the easiest to light up.”

  The next day, I was first to awaken. As I climbed out of the tent, only a partial light was appearing in the east. Gathering up some more wood, I stoked the fire and sat down. Traces of red sunlight began to highlight the swirls of clouds overhead.

  Tommy’s mother came out of her tent, walking around as though she was looking for something. She left the circle of rocks and was gone a long time before returning. Several other people were now out of their tents as well.

  She finally walked over to me and asked, “Have you seen Tommy? He left sometime during the night.”

  “What?” I said, jumping up.

  She waved her hand as if to calm me down.

  “Don’t worry. He’s done this before. We’ve been here many times and he knows the area well, so unless you sense something different, I think it is best to just wait for him to return.”

  I tried to tune in, but I couldn’t really concentrate. I didn’t know how she could be so calm. We had just been warned that the Apocalyptics were still looking for us, and anything could happen out there. She left to tell the others as Rachel walked up and sat beside me.

  “What’s going on?” Rachel asked.

  I told her that Tommy had left.

  “By himself? Shouldn’t we go looking for him?”

  “His mother doesn’t seem that worried. She wants to wait and see if he will return.”

  Rachel nodded and sat down, and our gazes met. There was no reluctance on my part, and we held the stare until we both smiled. Suddenly, I saw an image of Tommy in my mind’s eye. He was higher up in the mountains… and I was with him!

  The vision was clearly an intuition, and I looked back at Rachel, who was now deep in thought herself, appearing slightly sad.

  “I think I should go look for Tommy,” I said. “What about you?”

  She shook her head, still looking away. “I have to stay here.”

  I gathered my pack, and Rachel walked over to her tent and returned with a feather.

  “This is a feather guide that Wolf gave me,” she said. “He joked that it was useful to bring two spirits back together, and that I would know what to do with it when the time came.”

  She handed the feather to me, and I took it and smiled, then turned to go.

  “Before you leave, I want to tell you something,” she said. “Don’t forget where we are in the Integrations. We have to open our perception as quickly as we can.” There was still a hint of sadness.

  “I saw you tuning in just now,” I said. “Did you see something?”

  A tear was rolling down her cheek, but she shook it off and put on a happy expression.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll see you when you get back. The feather will see to that.”

  She gave me a hug and teasingly pushed me on. “You better hurry. We all have a destiny to complete.”

  As I was walking away, Tommy’s mother walked up and seemed to know what I was doing. She described the general route toward the area of the guard station, and wished me well. She added that she was sure everything was all right, and that Tommy would be somewhere in that general location. There seemed to be a good reason in her mind that she was not going herself.

  When I passed the last of the giant boulders and was starting up the incline, someone else suddenly called from behind me. I turned to s
ee Coleman running up with his pack on.

  “I’m supposed to go with you,” he said.

  I reached out to grab his arm, once again tremendously glad for his company. He gave me a determined look, and we locked in the Agape.

  “Has anyone been talking about the Ninth in camp?” I asked.

  “Not much, but they’re all studying it. Tommy seems to already understand it the most.”

  I nodded, and we both walked on without talking, heading east toward the rising spires of rock. After about a half mile, we made our way up a steep ridge that jutted out toward the east, so that we could look out on the ascending waves of ridges and crevices rising up before us. At the top was a crown-shaped summit.

  “That’s Mount Sinai,” I said.

  “And there’s the guard station right there,” Coleman replied, pointing directly below us to a cement-block building located in a small, flat area in the ridges. Several large antennas rose from its tile roof, and we could hear the faint hum of a gasoline generator. Two soldiers talked and smoked cigarettes outside. We both sat down on some rocks and looked the place over. The building was large enough to house perhaps twenty soldiers.

  Just then we heard someone call out from above us. The voice was barely audible. We surveyed the area until we saw someone waving about two hundred feet up the slope. It was Tommy.

  We hurried up the hill and soon were looking at his smiling face. He offered us some water from a metal cup, and we took it. The water was wonderfully cool.

  “Where did this water come from?” I asked.

  “Right over there,” he said. “You can fill up your canteens.”

  The crystal-clear water came out of the rocks and then rippled down about twenty feet before disappearing into a crevice.

  “I thought there was no water in this desert,” Coleman said.

  “They call it the spring of Moses,” Tommy replied.

  Coleman and I just looked at each other.

  I caught the youth’s eye. “You’re up here for some reason, Tommy. What are you doing?”