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The afterlife is a shared delusion…created to make our actual life bearable.
all those personal attributes that made us who we are—our hopes, fears, dreams, memories—were nothing but chemical compounds held in suspension by electrical charges in our brains.
Timing is everything,
“noetic science is the study of human consciousness. Contrary to what many believe, consciousness research is not a new science—it is, in fact, the oldest science on earth. Since the dawn of history, we have sought answers to the enduring mysteries of the human mind…the nature of consciousness and of the soul. And for centuries, we have explored these questions primarily through…the lens of religion.”
“The halo,” Langdon continued, “is the disk of light that appears over the head of an enlightened being. In
“The Statue of Liberty wears a radiant crown—an ancient halo—that universal icon we have used through history to identify special individuals who we believe possess divine enlightenment…or an advanced state of…consciousness.”
Consciousness is created by your brain—the
“The problem is…the currently accepted model is dead wrong. Your consciousness is not created by your brain. And in fact, your consciousness is not even located inside your head.”
our belief systems evolve when faced with enough inexplicable inconsistencies.”
human perception is riddled with blind spots,” Katherine concluded. “Sometimes we’re so busy looking the wrong way…that we don’t see what’s right before our eyes.”
Einstein had famously declared: Coincidence is God’s way of staying anonymous.
Precognition. The ability to sense or foresee future events before they happen.
the notion that human thoughts create reality—existed at the core of most major spiritual teachings. Buddha: With our thoughts, we create the world. Jesus: Whatever you ask for in prayer, it will be yours. Hinduism: You have the power of God.
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.
The Golěm knew the clay monster’s tale by heart because it was his own—a protective spirit…thrust into physical form…tasked with sacrificing his own comfort to carry another’s pain.
By erasing the letter aleph, א, the Hebrew word for truth—emet—was transformed into something far darker—met—the Hebrew word for dead. אמת became מת. Truth became…Death. The monster collapsed in a heap, lifeless.
general counterterrorism strategy. Widely publicized attacks, even failed attacks, only embolden terrorists. The correct response, when possible, is to defuse the threat, pretend it never happened, and deny the terrorists any publicity whatsoever.”
Knowing the future is a human obsession.
Nostradamus wrote “Copiously, Cryptically, and Commonly.” That was to say, the prophet wrote a copious collection of 942 separate poems, using cryptic and ambiguous language, and predicted commonplace events like wars, natural disasters, and power struggles. “It’s no surprise we see occasional points of congruence,”
eagerness to find personal truth in general statements was known as the Barnum effect—so named for the sideshow “personality tests” that P. T. Barnum had employed to fool so many circusgoers into believing he had psychic powers.
Materialism versus Noetics. The materialists believed that all phenomena, including consciousness, could be explained solely in terms of physical matter and its interactions. According to materialists, consciousness was a by-product of physical processes—the activity of neural networks along with other chemical processes within the brain.
