What's up with the Celestine Prophecy book?

Dear monicacharlene,

Just an aside about The Da Vinci Code: that book is about as far from historical as anything I have ever read. From the first page, including that page of “Historical Facts” or whatever its title is, it is full of lies, or (at best) errors any researcher would have no difficulty establishing. One example: In the time of Constantine, there were literal battles, with hundreds of deaths, thousands of wounds, and all, fought over the question of whether Jesus Christ was “of the same substance,” “of like substance” or merely “like” the Father. Now, if they were that attached to this abstract, obscure (for us) philosophical question, what is the likelyhood that Constantine, an outsider, could simply come in, change their entire view of Christ from a human teacher to a divine savior, and they accept it? No, and what’s more, we know from the first days of the Church, books like the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch or the Martyrdom of Polycarp, written early in the 100s, and consistent witnesses afterwards, that the Church believed Jesus was divine. The question was what this meant, how do we talk about it. No, The Da Vinci Code is very bad history, from the first page to the last.

Unfortunately, it is easy, as you say, to forget it is fiction, and it also confirms many prejudices against the Catholic Church, so many are willing to believe its lies.

The Celestine Prophecy, like The Da Vinci Code, threw my mind for a loop. Several times I had to remind myself the books were fiction. I enjoyed the Celestine Prophecy as entertainment.

I read the Celestine Prophecy, and I found the earlier principles more or less true, but there was a progression: each principle was less true, fit my experience less well as I went along. About the fifth or sixth principle, I was beginning to ask how this could possibly work, and by the end I realized this really is a work of fiction, not a great, universal myth on which to build a lifestyle. As amblessed says, stick with a proven work: the Bible, and with the Church that keeps it, as it has kept it, for two millennia and is still following its guide.

There are a number of people that find the celestine prophecy fascinating - I’m one of them :) However, I don’t think that the books are ‘true’ any more or less than another religious text. The work is a book of fiction, while it does strike a familiar chord in people that read the book who then start searching for a deeper meaning, it’s still a work of fiction, aka, make believe.

Thanks for the advice. I did notice in the movie they made of it that it has some principles that seem to go along with many religions but some that are rather hard to grasp. I know the eastern medicine does deal with energies and auras, which comes in picture with the energy based thought in the book. But sharing and using the energy can it be done? Can eneregy be used in a way they talk about?