The Secret of Secrets (Robert Langdon, #6)

by Dan Brown

“The halo,” Langdon continued, “is the disk of light that appears over the head of an enlightened being. In Christianity, halos hover over Jesus, Mary, and the saints. Going further back, a sun disk hovered over the ancient Egyptian god Ra, and in Eastern religions a nimbus halo appeared over the Buddha and the Hindu deities.”

“Your consciousness is not created by your brain. In fact, your consciousness is not even located inside your head.”

Coincidence is God’s way of staying anonymous.

Epilepsy appeared with notable frequency in Christian artwork, which was not surprising considering so many scriptural

accounts of mystical experiences—visions, ecstasies, divine encounters, transcendent revelations—all seemed to describe, with uncanny specificity and accuracy, the experience of an epileptic seizure, including Ezekiel, St. Paul, Joan of Arc, and St. Birgitta. Raphael Sanzio’s famed The Transfiguration depicted an epileptic boy in the throes of a seizure, which he and others commonly used as a visual metaphor for Christ’s ascent to heaven.

An obdurate mind can be an immovable mountain, Langdon thought, always amazed how many people still fervently believed humans came from Adam and Eve despite the overwhelming scientific evidence for evolution.

Fear of death is the father of religion.

“There’s no such thing as muscle memory. It’s an oxymoron. Muscles don’t have memory. In reality, when you practice, you’re fine-tuning your brain…gradually rewiring it to receive information more clearly and consistently from the universal consciousness so it can command your muscles to contract in a perfect pattern to perform a task in a certain way.”

It was rare that Langdon invoked Shakespeare, but this near disaster seemed Bard-worthy. All’s well that ends well, he assured himself,

The Golěm could feel himself absorbing power from this mystical place. Slowly, he began to feel a growing presence, and the strength of the original golem flowed up through the earth and filled his soul.

“I am not as you think I am,” the monster whispered, gazing down into Housemore’s eyes as he tightened his grip. “I am The Golěm.”

A new generation of thrill seekers now donned consumer VR goggles and spent hours smoking cannabis while floating virtually through space…snorting cocaine while riding a virtual roller coaster…or “edging” on various time-dilation sex drugs while watching VR porn. To no avail, countless warnings had been issued because the experiences were intensely addictive.

“It looks like Threshold is growing something…and I’m guessing it’s not arugula.”

“Threshold has created an implant that can view the content of the mind’s eye. We can now monitor the full spectrum of images a brain conjures…seeing it unfold in real time, in full detail.”

As the cloaked body rose into view, its arms were extended horizontally, showing bare palms like some kind of ascendant Christ.

Perhaps an exorcist is not trying to coax a demon out of a body…but rather trying to retune the body’s receiver to block the unwanted station.