In God and the Evolving Universe three spiritual visionaries--authors James Redfield and Michael Murphy, and filmmaker Sylvia Timbers--join together to offer a hopeful prophecy. Their basic premise is that we have reached an exciting point in history where human evolution and planetary evolution are about to collide, creating an entirely new and spiritually enlightened world. On the human track, the authors claim we have been working toward this era of enlightenment for some time. They point to the emergence of extraordinary human capabilities, such as clairvoyants and even amazing athletic feats that incorporate an altered state of consciousness. (They site baseball slugger Mark McGwire's mind-altering visualization techniques before a game.) The authors also offer stories and events that suggest an increase in love and spiritual growth around the world. Redfield gave us The Celestine Prophecy, a bestseller that was faulted for being too simplistic. While the writing in God and the Evolving Universe is not simplistic, it sometimes falters into metaphysical black holes and psycho-spiritual labyrinths. Yet the message is inspirational: We're on the right path and good things are ahead. And God knows, the world could use more of these positive visions. --Gail HudsonIt is no accident, argue James Redfield and Michael Murphy-the leading co-creators of today's spiritual boom-that the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have witnessed an explosion in human capacities. Daily we hear and read about supernormal athletic feats, clairvoyant perception, lives transformed by meditative practices, healing through prayer-and we ourselves experience these things. Many people's lives nowadays are marked by improved communication, a will to go beyond ego, synchronistic flow, and a sense of transcendent oneness and identity.

Indeed, the authors contend that thousands of years of human progress have delivered us to this very moment, in which each act of self-development is creating a new stage in planetary evolution-and the emergence of a human species possessed of vastly expanded personal abilities.

Written with the grace and ease of The Celestine Prophecy, God and the Evolving Universe features a broad range of exercises that readers can use to participate in everything they are reading about. Redfield's first major new work since 1999, God and the Evolving Universe is the only book to unite the personal and the planetary, and explain-like the proverbial butterfly that flaps its wings in China and causes a hurricane in New York-how each act of individual improvement and consciousness-raising, even as simple as lunchtime yoga, is part of a new evolutionary scheme.

This bold work heightens readers' awareness of their place in personal/planetary evolution and sets the stage for the new level in spiritual development.