Excerpt from The Secret of Shambhala by James Redfield, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Shhhhh, it's Wil."

I recognized the voice and nodded. When I reached for the light on the wall, he stopped me, then walked across the room and looked out through the window. As he moved, I realized that something about him was different from the last time I had seen him. He was somehow less graceful, and his features seemed completely ordinary, not slightly luminous as before.

"What are you looking for?" I asked. "What's going on? You scared me half to death."

He walked back toward me. "I had to see you. Everything has changed. I'm back where I was."

"What do you mean?"

He smiled at me. "I think all this is supposed to be happening, but I can no longer enter the other dimensions mentally, the way I could. I can still raise my energy to some degree, but I'm now firmly here in this world." He looked away for an instant. "It's almost as though what we did in understanding the Tenth Insight was just a taste, a preview, a glimpse of the future like in a near-death experience, and now it's over. Whatever we're to do now, we have to do right here on this Earth."

"I never could do it again anyway," I said.

Wil looked me in the eye. "You know, we've received a lot of information about human evolution, about paying attention, about being guided forward by intuition and the coincidences. We've been given a mandate to hold a new vision, all of us. Only we aren't making it happen at the level we can. Something in our knowledge is still missing."

He paused for a minute and then said, "I'm not sure why yet, but we have to go to Asia . . . somewhere near Tibet. Something is happening there. Something we have to know."

I was startled. Young Natalie had said the same thing.

Wil walked back to the window again, peering out.

"Why do you keep looking out the window?" I asked. "And why did you slip into the house? Why didn't you just knock? What's going on?"

"Probably nothing," he replied. "I just thought I was being followed earlier today. I couldn't be sure."

He walked back toward me. "I can't explain everything now. I'm not even sure myself of what is happening. But there is a place in Asia we must find. Can you meet me at the Hotel Himalaya in Kathmandu on the sixteenth?"

"Wait a minute! Wil, I have things to do here. I'm committed to . . ."

Wil looked at me with an expression I've never seen on anyone's face but his, a pure mixture of adventure and total intent. "It's okay," he said. "If you're not there on the sixteenth, you're not there. Just be sure if you come that you stay perfectly alert. Something will occur."

He was serious about giving me the choice, but he was smiling broadly.

I looked away, unamused. I didn't want to do this.

The next morning I decided I would tell no one where I was going except Charlene. The only problem was that she was on an assignment out of the country and it was impossible to reach her directly. All I could do was leave her an E-mail.

I walked over to my computer and sent it, wondering, as I always did, about the security of the Internet. Hackers can get into the most secure corporate and government computers. How hard would it be to intercept E-mail messages . . . especially when one remembers that the Internet was originally set up by the Defense Department as a link to their research confidants at major universities? Is the whole Internet monitored? I shook off the concern, concluding that I was being silly. Mine was one message among tens of millions. Who would care?

While I was on the computer, I made travel arrangements to arrive in Kathmandu, Nepal, on the sixteenth and stay at the Himalaya. I would have to leave in two days, I thought, barely enough time to make preparations.

I shook my head. Part of me was fascinated with the idea of going to Tibet. I knew that its geography was one of the most beautiful and mysterious in the world. But it was also a country under the repressive control of the Chinese government, and I knew it could be a dangerous place. My plan was to go only as far with this adventure as felt safe. No more getting in over my head and letting myself be pulled into something I couldn't control.

© 1999 by James Redfield. All rights reserved. Published with permission of the publisher, Warner Books.