James Redfield was 43 when he published The
Celestine Prophecy. He has been keenly interested
in human spirituality all of his life. Born
on March 19, 1950, he grew up in a rural Alabama.
From an early age, he was motivated by a need
for clarity about spiritual matters. Brought
up in a Methodist Church that was loving and
community-oriented, he was nevertheless frustrated
by a lack of answers to his questions about
the true nature of spiritual experience. As
a young man, he studied Eastern philosophies,
including Taoism and Zen, while majoring in
sociology at Auburn University. He later received
a Master's degree in counseling and spent
more than 15 years as a therapist to abused
adolescents. During this time, he was drawn
into the human potential movement and turned
to it for theories about intuitions and psychic
phenomena that would help his troubled clients.
All
along, Redfield was forming ideas that would
eventually find their way into The Celestine
Prophecy Using an adventure parable approach
that has been called "part Indiana Jones,
part Scott Peck,”. In 1989, he quit
his job as a therapist to write full-time,
synthesizing his interest in interactive psychology,
Eastern and Western philosophies, science,
futurism, ecology, and history. The Celestine
Prophecy remained as #1 on the New York Times
bestsellers list for more than three years,
then joined by The Tenth Insight, which built
upon the Nine Insights revealed in the first
novel. The two books spent a combined 74 weeks
on the New York Times list, making James Redfield
the best-selling hard cover author in the
world in 1996, as cited in BP Report. The
Celestine series of adventure parables continued
in 1999 with the publication of The Secret
of Shambhala: In Search of the Eleventh Insight
In 2002, James joined author Michael Murphy
and filmmaker Sylvia Timbers in a collaborative
work entitled God and the Evolving Universe.
James
has been granted many prestigious awards;
both international and nationally. He recently
completed writing his latest book, The Twelfth
Insight: The Hour of Decision, which is currently
available everywhere. James lives with his
wife, Salle, and dog Toby in Florida and Alabama.
