The Secret of Secrets

Religions had learned long ago that a human mind facing the terrifying prospect of eternal nothingness would believe almost anything. Timor mortis est pater religionis, Langdon mused, recalling the ancient saying made famous by Upton Sinclair. Fear of death is the father of religion.

Fear makes us selfish,” Katherine said. “The more we fear death, the more we cling to ourselves, our belongings, our safe spaces … to that which is familiar. We exhibit increased nationalism, racism, and religious intolerance. We flout authority, ignore social mores, steal from others to provide for ourselves, and become more materialistic. We even abandon our feelings of environmental responsibility because we sense the planet is a lost cause and we’re all doomed anyway.” “That’s alarming,” Nagel said. “Those are precisely the behaviors that fuel global unrest, terrorism, cultural division, and war.” “Yes, and that make the CIA’s job so difficult. Unfortunately, it becomes a hall of mirrors. The worse things get, the worse we behave. And the worse we behave, the worse things get.” “And it’s your theory that this troubling

The most important point in the research, however, shows that those who do not fear death, for whatever reason, tend to exhibit behavior that is more benevolent, accepting of others, cooperative, and caring about the environment. Essentially, this means that if we could all free our minds of the burden, of the terror we feel about death…” “Then we would find ourselves in a dramatically improved world.” “Precisely,” Katherine said. “To quote the great Czech psychiatrist Stanislav Grof, ‘The elimination of the fear of death transforms the individual’s way of being in the world.’ Grof believes that a radical inner transformation of consciousness might be our only hope of surviving the global crisis brought on by the Western mechanistic paradigm.

The Starbucks mermaid,” Langdon had railed, “has two tails! That means she’s not a mermaid at all, but rather a siren—an evil seductress who lures sailors to follow her blindly toward shipwreck and ultimately toward death!

Social media, Dana thought. The biggest intelligence boon since the Catholic Church invented confession.

To say someone has an ‘enlightened mind’ is simply another way of saying they have a ‘better receiver.

The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries. —Nikola Tesla

When we lose ourselves in the virtual world,” Katherine said, “we are giving ourselves a kind of nonlocal experience that, in many ways, parallels an out-of-body experience—we are detached, weightless, and yet connected to all things. Our filters are dropped…We can interact with the entire world through one screen and experience almost anything.

when you see someone glued to a phone, you see a person ignoring this world—rather than a person engrossed in another world…a world that, like this one, is made up of communities, friends, beauty, horror, love, conflict, right and wrong. It’s all there. The online world is not so different from our world…except for one stark difference.” Katherine smiled. “It’s nonlocal.

The right book at the right time can save your life.’

The city of Prague had always felt enchanted to him. It was a moment frozen in time. Having suffered far less damage than other European cities in World War II, the historical capital of Bohemia enjoyed a dazzling skyline that still sparkled with all its original architecture—a uniquely varied and pristine sampling of Romanesque, Gothic, Baroque, Art Nouveau, and Neoclassical designs. The city’s nickname—Stověžatá—literally meant “with a hundred spires,” although the actual number of spires and steeples in Prague was closer to seven hundred. In the summer, the city occasionally illuminated them with a sea of green floodlights; the awe-inspiring effect was said to have inspired Hollywood’s depiction in The Wizard of Oz of the Emerald City—a mystical destination that, like Prague, was believed to be a place of magical possibilities.

Far too many fear death and regard it as the worst disaster that can befall them: they know nothing of what they speak. Death comes as a dissolution from an exhausted body … Just as the body leaves the mother’s womb when it is mature in it, so also does the soul leave the body when it has come to perfection.

Sometimes a change in perspective is all it takes to reveal the Truth.

human being is a part of the whole called by us “universe”… He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us.

If you view a murmuration of starlings not as many individual birds—but rather as one complete organism—then the synchronization is to be expected. The starlings are moving as one because they are one…an interconnected system. No separation.

Each morning, Langdon had jogged the three kilometers to Strahov Swimming Center for his morning laps. “It’s dark out,” she pressed. “Can’t you just swim here?” “In the hotel pool?” “Why not? It’s water.” “It’s tiny. Two strokes and I’m finished.” “There’s a joke there, Robert, but I’ll be kind.

Business guru Robin Sharma declared: Everything is created twice; first in the mind, and then in reality. Pablo Picasso’s most enduring quote proclaimed: Everything you can imagine is real.

Just think about that. The one universal fear that drives so much of humankind’s destructive behavior…would evaporate. If we can hold on long enough to arrive at that paradigm shift without blowing ourselves up or destroying our planet

I’ve never had a near-death experience…I have no idea what I would think.

We proclaim the Truth that serves our needs. - Robert Langdon

In the nonlocal model,” she continued, “your brain does not create consciousness, but rather your brain experiences what already exists around it.” She glanced from Faukman to Langdon and back. “In simple English, our brains interact with an existing matrix of awareness.” “That was simple English?

In the thirteenth century, life expectancy was approximately thirty years—and it would have taken at least half of those years to master the artistic skill exhibited in this calligraphy and illustration.

The online world,” Katherine said, “is untethered from your location. You inhabit it as a bodiless mind…free from all physical restraints. You move effortlessly anywhere, see what you want, learn what you want, interact with other bodiless minds.

Every day, we’re exposed to graphic media coverage reminding us of our collapsing environment, increased threat of nuclear war, coming pandemics, genocide, the world’s endless atrocities. All of this triggers the brain’s terror management strategy to run in the background, at a low level—not yet in fight-or-flight mode, but…anticipating the worst. In essence, the more terrifying our world becomes, the more time we spend preparing subconsciously for death.” Nagel looked uncertain where all this was going. “Prepare for death…how?” “I think the answer to that will surprise you,” Katherine said. “It certainly did me. While researching mortality salience and the brain, I found that an increased fear of death produced a consistent array of behavioral responses—all of them selfish.” “I’m sorry?” “Fear makes us selfish,” Katherine said. “The more we fear death, the more we cling to ourselves, our belongings, our safe spaces…to that which is familiar. We exhibit increased nationalism, racism, and religious intolerance. We flout authority, ignore social mores, steal from others to provide for ourselves, and become more materialistic. We even abandon our feelings of environmental responsibility because we sense the planet is a lost cause and we’re all doomed anyway.” “That’s alarming,” Nagel said. “Those are precisely the behaviors that fuel global unrest, terrorism, cultural division, and war.” “Yes, and that make the CIA’s job so difficult. Unfortunately, it becomes a hall of mirrors. The worse things get, the worse we behave. And the worse we behave, the worse things get.