The Tenth Insight: Holding the Vision

by James Redfield

  At the same time, information was surfacing from the human sciences—sociology, psychiatry, psychology, and anthropology—as well as from modern physics, that cast new light on the nature of human consciousness and creativity. This cumulation of thought, together with the perspective provided by the East, gradually began to crystallize into what was later called the Human Potential Movement, the emerging belief that human beings were presently actualizing only a small portion of their vast physical, psychological, and spiritual potential

  I watched as, over the course of several decades, this information and the spiritual experience it spawned grew into a critical mass of awareness, a leap in consciousness from which we began to formulate a new view of what living a human life was all about, including, ultimately, an actual remembrance of the Nine Insights.

  Yet, even as this new view was crystallizing, surging through the human world as a contagion of consciousness, many others in the new generation began to pull back, suddenly alarmed at the growing instability in culture which seemed to correspond to the arrival of the new paradigm. For hundreds of years the solid agreements of the old worldview had maintained a well-defined, even rigid, order for human life. All roles were clearly defined, and everyone knew his place: for instance, men at work, women and children at home, nuclear and genetic families intact, a ubiquitous work ethic. Citizens were expected to discover a place in the economy, to find meaning in family and children, and to know that the purpose of life was to live well and create a more materially secure world for the succeeding generation.

  Then came the sixties wave of questioning and analysis and criticism, and the unwavering rules began to crumble. No longer was behavior effectively governed by powerful agreements. Everyone now seemed empowered, liberated, free to chart his or her own course in life, to reach out for this nebulous idea of potential. In this climate what others thought ceased to be the real determinant of our action and conduct; increasingly our behavior was being determined by how we felt inside, by our own inner ethics.

  For those who had truly adopted a more lived, spiritual point of view, characterized by honesty and love toward others, ethical behavior was not a problem. But of concern were those who had lost the outer guidelines for living, without yet forming a strong inner code. They seemed to be falling into a cultural no-man’s-land, where now anything seemed to be permissible: crime and drugs and addictive impulses of all kinds, not to mention a loss of the work ethic. To make matters worse, many seemed to be using the new findings of the Human Potential Movement to imply that criminals and deviates weren’t really even responsible for their own actions, but were, instead, victims of an oppressive culture that shamelessly allowed the social conditions that shaped this behavior.

  As I continued to watch, I understood what I was seeing: a polarization of viewpoint was quickly forming around the planet, as those who were undecided now reacted against a cultural viewpoint they saw leading to runaway chaos and uncertainty, perhaps even to the total disintegration of their way of life. In the United States especially, a growing number of people were becoming convinced they were now facing what amounted to a life-and-death struggle against the permissiveness and liberalism of the past twenty-five years—a culture war, as they called it—with nothing short of the survival of Western civilization at stake. I could see that many of them even considered the cause already near lost, and thus advocated extreme action.

  In the face of this backlash, I could see the advocates of Human Potential moving into fear and defensiveness themselves, sensing that many hard-earned victories for individual rights and social compassion were now in danger of being swept away by a tide of conservatism. Many considered this reaction against liberation an attack by the embattled forces of greed and exploitation, who were pushing forth in one last attempt to dominate the weaker members of society.

  Here I could clearly see what was intensifying the polarization: each side was thinking the other to be a conspiracy of evil.

  The advocates of the old worldview were no longer considering the Human Potentialists as misguided or naive, but were, in fact, considering them to be part of a larger conspiracy of big government socialists, holdout adherents of the communist solution, who were seeking to accomplish exactly what was occurring: the erosion of cultural life to the point where an all-powerful government could come in and straighten everything out. In their view this conspiracy was using fear of increasing crime as an excuse to register guns and systematically disarm the public, giving ever-greater control to a centralized bureaucracy that would finally monitor the movement of cash and credit cards through uplinks into the Internet, rationalizing the growing control of the electronic economy as crime prevention, or as a necessity to collect taxes or prevent sabotage. Finally, perhaps under the ploy of an impending natural disaster, big brother would step forward and confiscate wealth and declare martial law.

  For the advocates of liberation and change, just the opposite scenario seemed more likely. In the face of the conservatives’ political gains, all that they had worked for seemed to be crashing before their eyes. They, too, observed the increasing violent crime and the degenerating family structures, only for them the cause was not too much government intervention, but too little, too late.

  In every nation capitalism had failed a whole class of people, and the reason was clear: for poor people there existed no opportunity to participate in the system. Effective education wasn’t there. The jobs weren’t there. And instead of helping, the government seemed ready to back away, throwing out the antipoverty programs with all the other hard-won social gains of the last twenty-five years.

  I could see clearly that, in their growing disillusionment, the reformers were beginning to believe the worst: that the rightward swing in human society could only be the result of increased manipulation and control by the moneyed, corporate interests in the world. These interests seemed to be buying governments, buying the media, and ultimately, as in Nazi Germany, they would slowly divide the world into the haves and the have-nots, with the largest, richest corporations running the small entrepreneurs out of business and controlling more and more of the wealth. Sure there would be riots, but that would just play into the hands of the elite as they strengthened their police control.

  My awareness suddenly jumped to a higher level and I finally understood the polarization of Fear completely: great numbers of people seemed to be gravitating to one perspective or the other, with both sides raising the stakes to that of war, of good vs. evil, and both visualizing the other as the perpetrators of a grand conspiracy.

  And in the background I now understood the growing influence of those people who claimed to be able to explain this emergent evil. These were the end-times analysts to whom Joel had referred earlier. In the growing turmoil of the transition, these interpreters were beginning to increase their power. In their view the Bible’s prophecies were to be understood literally, and what they saw in the uncertainty of our time was the long-awaited apocalypse preparing to descend. Soon would come the outright holy war in which humans would be divided between the forces of darkness and armies of light. They envisioned this war as a real physical conflict, fast and bloody, and for those who knew it was coming, only one decision was important: be on the correct side when the fighting began.

  Yet simultaneously, just as with the other landmark turns in human history, I could see beyond the Fear and retrenchment to the actual Birth Visions of those involved. Clearly everyone on both sides of the polarization had come into the physical dimension intending that this polarization not be so intense. We wanted a smooth transition from the old materialistic worldview to the new spiritual one, and we wanted a transformation in which the best of the older traditions would be recognized and integrated into the new world that was emerging.

  I could clearly see that this growing belligerence was an aberration, coming not from intention, but from the Fear. Our original vision was that the ethics of human society would be maintained at the same time that
each person could be fully liberated and the environment protected; and that economic creativity would be at once conserved and transformed by introducing an overriding spiritual purpose. And further, that this spiritual purpose could descend fully into the world and initiate a utopia in a way that symbolically fulfilled the end-times Scriptures.

  My awareness amplified even further, and just as when I had watched Maya’s Birth Vision, I could almost glimpse this higher spiritual understanding, the full picture of where human history was intended to go from here, how we could achieve this reconciliation of views and go on to fulfill our human destiny. Then, as before, my head began to spin, and I lost concentration; I couldn’t reach the level of energy needed to grasp it.

  The vision began to disappear, and I strained to hold on, seeing the current situation one last time. Clearly, without the mediating influence of the World Vision, the polarization of Fear would continue to accelerate. I could see the two sides hardening, their feelings intensifying, as both began to think the other to be not just wrong, but hideous, venal… in league with the devil himself.

  After a moment of dizziness and a sense of rapid movement, I looked around and saw Wil beside me. He glanced my way, then gazed out at the dark gray environment, a concerned expression on his face. We had traveled to a new location.

  “Were you able to see my vision of history?” I asked.

  He looked at me again and nodded. “What we just saw was a new spiritual interpretation of history, somewhat specific to your cultural view, but amazingly revealing. I’ve never seen anything like that before. This has to be part of the Tenth—a clear view of the human quest as seen in the Afterlife. We’re understanding that everyone is born with a positive intention, trying to bring more of the knowledge contained in the Afterlife into the physical. All of us! History has been a long process of awakening. When we are born into the physical, of course, we run into this problem of going unconscious and having to be socialized and trained in the cultural reality of the day. After that, all we can remember are these gut feelings, these intuitions, to do certain things. But we constantly have to fight the Fear. Often the Fear is so great we fail to follow through with what we intended, or we distort it somehow. But everyone, and I mean everyone, comes in with the best of intentions.”

  “So you think a serial killer, for instance, really came here to do something good?”

  “Yes, originally. All killing is a rage and lashing out that is a way of overcoming an inner sense of Fear and helplessness.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Aren’t some people just inherently bad?”

  “No, they just go crazy in the Fear and make horrible mistakes. And, ultimately, they must bear the full responsibility of these mistakes. But what has to be understood is that horrible acts are caused, in part, by our very tendency to assume that some people are naturally evil. That’s the mistaken view that fuels the polarization. Both sides can’t believe humans can act the way they do without being intrinsically no good, and so they increasingly dehumanize and alienate each other, which increases the Fear and brings out the worst in everyone.” He seemed distracted again, looking away.

  “Each side thinks the other is involved in a conspiracy of the greatest sort,” he added, “the embodiment of all that’s negative.”

  I noticed he was looking out toward the distance again, and when I followed his eyes, and also focused on the environment, I began to pick up an ominous sense of darkness and foreboding.

  “I think,” he continued, “that we can’t bring in the World Vision, or resolve the polarization, until we understand the real nature of evil and the actual reality of Hell.”

  “Why do you say that?” I asked.

  He glanced at me one more time, then gazed out again into the dull gray. “Because Hell is exactly where we are.”

  AN NNER HELL

  Achill surged through my body as I looked out on the gray environment. The ominous feeling I perceived earlier was turning into a clear sense of alienation and despair.

  “Have you been here before?” I asked Wil.

  “Only to the edge,” he replied. “Never out here in the middle. Do you feel how cold it is?”

  I nodded as a movement caught my eye. “What is that?”

  Wil shook his head. “I’m not sure.”

  A swirling mass of energy seemed to be moving in our direction.

  “It must be another soul group,” I said.

  As they came closer, I tried to focus on their thoughts, feeling an even greater sense of alienation, even anger. I tried to shrug it off, open up more.

  “Wait,” I vaguely heard Wil say. “You’re not strong enough.” But it was too late. I was suddenly pulled into an intense blackness and then beyond it into a large town of some kind. In terror I looked around, struggling to keep my wits, and realized that the architecture indicated the nineteenth century. I was standing on a street corner full of people walking by, and in the distance was the raised dome of a capitol building. At first I thought I was actually in the nineteenth century, but several aspects of the reality were wrong: the horizon faded out to a strange gray color, and the sky was olive green, similar to the sky above the office construction that Williams had created when he was avoiding the realization that he had died.

  Then I became aware of four men watching me from the opposite street corner. An icy-cold feeling swept my body. All were well dressed and one cocked his head and took a puff from a large cigar. Another checked a watch and returned it to his vest pocket. Their look was sophisticated but menacing.

  “Anyone who has raised their ire is a friend of mine,” a low voice spoke from behind me.

  I turned to see a large, barrel-shaped man, also well dressed and wearing a wide-brimmed felt hat, walking toward me. His face seemed familiar; I had seen him before. But where?

  “Don’t mind them,” he added. “They’re not so hard to outsmart.”

  I stared at his tall, stooped posture and shifting eyes, then remembered who he was. He had been the commander of the federal troops I had seen in the visions of the nineteenth-century war, the one who had refused to see Maya and had ordered the battle against the Native people to begin. This town was a construction, I thought. He must have re-created his later life situation in order to avoid realizing he was dead.

  “This is not real,” I blurted. “You’re… uh… deceased.”

  He seemed to ignore my statement. “So what have you done to piss off that bunch of jackals?”

  “I haven’t done anything.”

  “Oh yes, you’ve done something. I know that look they’re giving you. They think they run this town, you know. In fact, they think they can run the whole world.” He shook his head. “These people never trust fate. They think they’re responsible for seeing that the future turns out exactly as they plan. Everything. Economic development, governments, the flow of money, even the relative value of world currencies. All of which is not a bad idea, really. God knows the world is full of peons and idiots, who will ruin everything if left to their own devices. The people have to be herded and controlled as much as possible, and if one can make a little money along the way, why not?

  “But these nuts tried to run me. Of course, I’m too smart for them. I’ve always been too smart for them. So what did you do?”

  “Listen,” I said. “Try to understand. None of this is real.”

  “Hey,” he replied, “I would suggest that you take me into your confidence. If they’re against you, I’m the only friend you have.”

  I looked away, but I could tell he was still eyeing me suspiciously.

  “They’re treacherous people,” he went on. “They’ll never forgive you. Take my situation, for example. All they wanted was to use my military experience to quash the Indians and open up their lands. But I was onto them. I knew they couldn’t be trusted, that I would have to look out for myself.” He gave me a wry look. “It’s harder for them to use you and throw you away if you’re a war hero, right? After the
war I sold myself to the public. That way, these characters had to play ball with me. But let me tell you: never underestimate these people. They are capable of anything!”

  He backed away from me a moment, as if pondering my appearance.

  “In fact,” he added, “they may have sent you as a spy.”

  At a loss as to what to do, I started to walk away.

  “You bastard!” he yelled. “I was right.”

  I saw him reach into a pocket and pull a short knife. Petrified, I forced my body to move, running down the street and into an alleyway, his footsteps heavy behind me. On the right was a door, partially open. I ran through it and slid the bolt into the locked position. My next breath drew in the heavy odor of opium. Around me were dozens of people, their faces staring absently up at me. Were they real, I wondered, or part of the constructed illusion? Most quickly turned back to their muted conversation and hookah pipes, so I started to walk through the dirty mattresses and sofas to another door.

  “I know you,” a woman slurred. She was leaning against the wall by the door, her head hanging forward as if too heavy for her neck. “I went to your school.”

  I looked at her in confusion for a moment, then remembered the young girl in my high school who had suffered from repeated episodes of depression and drug use. Resisting all intervention, she had finally overdosed and died.

  “Sharon, is that you?”

  She managed a smile, and I glanced back at the door, concerned that the knife-bearing commander might have found a way inside.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “You can stay here with us. You’ll be safe in this room. Nothing can hurt you.”

  I walked a step closer and as gently as possible said, “I don’t want to stay. All this is an illusion.”

  As I said that, three or four people turned and looked at me angrily.

  “Please, Sharon,” I whispered. “Just come with me.”

  Two of the closest stood up and walked over beside Sharon. “Get out of here,” one told me. “Leave her alone.”