This volume is the second novel in The Celestine Series, beginning with The Celestine Prophecy. One of the characters of The Celestine Prophecy, Charlene, disappears while exploring a forest in the Appalachian Mountains. The book discusses ideas about other dimensions, past lives, conception and birth, the passage through death to an afterlife, hell and heaven. It also illustrates the author's vision of human destiny and the idea that fear of the future is endangering Earth's spiritual renaissance. In the story, each individual soul is part of a larger "Soul Group", which shares the mission of helping the evolution of the cosmos. At times, a soul from a given Group incarnates itself, choosing the conditions of its life according to its needs, while the other souls observe. Each soul creates a reality around itself, which later brings consequences upon it. These consequences take the form of life and afterlife, which vary according to the person's choices. On Earth, people speak of the prophecy written in the Book of Revelation as if it were coming true. Many fear that it will come partly true, in that a dictator (an Antichrist) will arise, but will not be thrown down. To counteract this idea, which is damaging to the spiritual renaissance, the protagonists hold their own, Utopian "World Vision" to the exclusion of its opposite, until it dominates the opposite at the book's climax.