The Secret of Shambhala: In Search of the Eleventh Insight

November 1, 1999
The third book in the Celestine series, this slight fable begins with an appealing spiritual quest, but is soon burdened with Redfield's millennial concerns. Still, readers who made bestsellers of The Celestine Prophecy and The Tenth Insight are not likely to be deterred, especially those who are interested in Eastern wisdom. Instructed by a neighborhood girl to seek a place of total enlightenment, the narrator makes an imaginary journey to Tibet in search of Shambhala (also known as Shangri-La). Under constant threat by Chinese soldiers, he makes a harrowing passage with the help of human and spirit guides, ultimately reaching the kingdom where the secrets of "the eleventh insight" are revealed in stages. Based on the notion that we attract the events in our lives, the 11th insight reveals that prayer in the form of affirmations and positive energy can empower not only individuals, but whole societies. Readers will find value in Redfield's simply stated comments about building energy through nutrition, posture and thought, and refusing to erode one's energy through negative thinking, including hatred, anger and evil. Redfield believes that baby boomers, with their interest in the human potential movement, have the power to fulfill their generational mission (as their parents did with WWII) by using the 11th insight to counter negative social forces, such as lack of community, youth alienation, environmental destruction, terrorism, the power of centralized technology and genetic engineering of all stripes.

November 1, 1999
At one juncture in Redfield's third Celestine yarn, the nameless hero observes a Himalayan mountain: "From here, Kailash looks like a pyramid." His companion replies, "What does that tell you? It has power." Batten down your auras, folks, we're in for another bumpy New Age vision quest! A friend phones the hero to tell him the friend's 14-year-old daughter has an urgent message for him: get thee to Tibet. Then Celestine fellow traveler Wil James shows up and says get thee to Kathmandu first, and I'll meet you there. But once there, Wil isn't. Instead, a young man named Yin is to guide him to Shambhala, aka Shangri-La, the legendary perfect city of Tibetan Buddhism. With the Chinese army hot on their trail, Yin and the hero make it to Shambhala, but only slightly before the city disappears in a "transition" to some other locale, stranding them in a snowstorm. The hero has already learned, however, that the Shambhalans have figured out how to make goods and goodness pretty much by wishing, though they explain it as a matter of strengthening and combining individual community members' "prayer fields" or their mental states of expectation, which are capable of bringing either good or ill fortune, depending on what feelings (love, anger, fear, etc.) they are full of. Mind over matter, is it? That's right, for the Manichean heresy lives. All ends happily and hopefully in this transparent takeoff of "Lost Horizon" (1933) that goes James Hilton's escapist perennial one better by claiming to know how all humanity will soon make it to Shambhala/Shangri-La, too. The legions of "Celestine Prophecy" (1993) and "Tenth Insight" (1996) fans are surely stoked for the trip. ((Reviewed November 1, 1999))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1999, American Library Association.)