Comparing More’s Utopia and Redfield’s The Celestine Prophecy Essay

Comparing More’s Utopia and Redfield’s The Celestine Prophecy  Ã‚   Throughout history many visionaries had glimpsed a world of new human culture, yet no way to create such a world had been achieved. Communism had become a tragedy. Sir Thomas More, author of Utopia, and James Redfield, author of The Celestine Prophecy, share many of the same ideas describing a new way of life. Written in 1516, More’s Utopia speaks about visions of a humanistic way of life. Redfield’s The Celestine Prophecy, written almost five centuries later in 1993, reinforces the ideas of the Renaissance. Can this spiritual common sense become the model of the next century? Utopia achieves great universality by evincing great understanding and sympathy with all men (Surtz, vii). It presents the hope for far better things, sustained by the view that man may shape and mold himself in any chosen form, (viii) thus creating the best earthly state possible. Redfield’s text focuses on nine insights to a spiritual transformation. When all nine insights are understood, an exciting new image of human life, and a positive vision of how we can save this planet, it’s creatures and it’s beauty will be attained (Redfield). According to Redfield, upon reaching the new millennium, human culture will shift as we move toward a completely spiritual culture on earth. In order to understand where we are today, we must take ourselves back to the year 1000 and move through the millennium as we lived through it. Imagine yourself being alive in the year 1000, the Middle Ages. The first thing you must understand is that the reality of this time is being defin ed by the powerful churchmen of the Christian church (22). Because of their position, these men hold great influence over t... ...it sound as though humans are in control. It is up to us to decide whether or not this is true. The process through which accepting teachings and winning salvation is shown throughout both texts. They show the exact process of becoming more spiritual and connected. We have always characterized this connection as something abstract- something an individual must do to avoid something bad happening. Whenever we doubt our own path, or lose sight of the process, we must remember that we are evolving toward, what the process of living is all about (Redfield 243). Reaching Heaven on Earth is why we are here. Now we know how it can be done. Works Cited More, Sir Thomas. Utopia: A New Translation, Backgrounds, Criticism. Ed. and trans. Robert M. Adams. Toronto: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1988. Redfield, James. The Celestine Prophecy. NY: Warner Books Inc., 1993.