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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
The afterlife is a shared delusion…created to make our actual life bearable.
In medical school, while dissecting human brains, Gessner came to understand that 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. When a person died, the brain’s power source was severed, and all of those chemicals simply dissolved into a meaningless puddle of liquid, erasing every last trace of who that person had once been. When you die, you die. Full stop.
Einstein had famously declared: Coincidence is God’s way of staying anonymous.
He also knew that this very idea—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. The concept, Langdon knew, was echoed by modern progressive thinkers and artistic geniuses as well. 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.
it’s been decades,” Katherine continued, “since we’ve proven repeatedly that human thought, when focused, can quite literally alter one’s body chemistry. And yet…the notion of remote healing is skeptically debunked by medical experts as voodoo.”
Timor mortis est pater religionis, Langdon mused, recalling the ancient saying made famous by Upton Sinclair. Fear of death is the father of religion.
“The theory,” Katherine had said, “is called nonlocal consciousness. And it’s based on the premise that consciousness is not localized to your brain…but rather it is everywhere. That is to say, consciousness permeates the universe. Consciousness is, in fact, one of the fundamental building blocks of our world.”
“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.”
if I told you I could store millions of gigabytes of data inside a blob of human tissue about the size of…well, say…a human brain?” Faukman frowned. That was fast. Checkmate in three moves. “It’s the identical concept,” she declared. “The inconceivable storage capacity of the human brain is a physical impossibility. It’s akin to trying to cram every song in the world into your phone. It makes no sense. Unless…” “Unless,” Faukman conceded, “the brain is accessing data…from elsewhere.”
Bem’s article described an experiment in which he had shown participants a list of random words and then, after removing it, had asked them to recall as many words as possible from the list. The next day, he gave the participants a short selection of words chosen completely at random from the original list and told them to memorize those words. Incredibly, the test results from day one clearly indicated that participants were far more likely to recall words that they would see again on day two—after the test!
“retrocausality” was indeed real and had been observed in numerous experiments, including one called “the delayed-choice quantum eraser.” Chisholm described it as “a tricked-out version of the classic double-slit experiment.” The original, Langdon knew, had stunned the world by proving that light traveling through a double-slitted barrier could move either as a particle or as a wave…and, inconceivably, it seemed to “decide” which way to act each time based on whether someone chose to observe it.
The “delayed choice” modification, Chisholm explained, incorporated the use of entangled photons and mirrors to effectively “delay” the observer’s real-time choice of whether to observe…until after the light had revealed how it was going to act. In other words, the scientists forced the light to react to a decision that had not yet been made. The mind-boggling result was that the light was not fooled at all. It somehow anticipated what choice the observer would make in the future…as if the universe already knew what would happen before it had happened.
“the mere idea of retrocausality gives me cognitive dissonance.”
‘Today’s experiences are the result of tomorrow’s decisions.’ ”
GABA is an inhibitory agent.” “Meaning, it impedes brain activity?” “Exactly. It actually decreases neuronal firing and constrains the overall activity of neurons. In other words, GABA shuts off parts of the brain in an effort to filter out excessive input. In our most basic understanding of it, GABA filtering ensures the brain does not become overloaded with too much information. In the radio analogy, GABA is like the tuner that limits reception to a single frequency while blocking out dozens of others.”
the brain of a newborn baby has incredibly high levels of GABA, filtering out everything except what is directly in front of its face. Newborns are therefore virtually unaware of details across the room. The filters work like a set of training wheels, protecting the baby’s mind from too much stimulation as it develops. As we mature, our GABA levels slowly decrease, and we take in more of the world and gain wider understanding.”
Tibetan monks also exhibit exceptionally high levels of GABA during meditation. The meditative trance apparently causes a surge of the inhibitory neurotransmitter, which shuts down nearly all neuronal firing, essentially preventing most of the outside world from entering their brains during deep-state meditation.”
“The chaotic electrical storm of an epileptic seizure is the exact opposite of the focused blank mind of a monk in meditation; seizures are associated with a deficit of GABA…and meditation with an excess. I was familiar with all this previously, but her paper reminded me that epileptic seizures are often followed by a pleasurable refractory period known as postictal bliss—a peaceful, expanded state of consciousness, accompanied by bursts of connectedness, creativity, spiritual enlightenment, and out-of-body experiences.”
“Human beings have extraordinarily powerful minds, but we also have extraordinarily efficient filters to prevent an overload of input. GABA is the protective veil that prevents our brains from experiencing what we can’t handle. It limits how expansive your consciousness can be. This single chemical may be the reason why humans are not able to perceive reality as it truly is.”
Langdon had met Eisen once and recalled him sharing an inspiring account of his mother, Frieda, an Auschwitz survivor, who often said, “The Nazis took us out of Czechoslovakia in cattle cars, and my son flew back on Air Force One.” “All in a single generation,” Eisen had pointed out.
Ancient Chinese strategist Sun Tzu had devised entire military campaigns around his famous mantra: Confusion creates chaos…and chaos creates opportunity.
The brain is an incredibly delicate mechanism, and trying to alter it with hallucinogens is like trying to adjust a priceless Rolex wristwatch with a sledgehammer! Drugs induce altered states by creating a jarring chain reaction of neurological disruptions that can have permanent effects. As enlightening as you may find that brief experience, you risk undermining long-term synaptic integrity and neurotransmitter equilibrium. For most hallucinogens, the primary mechanism through which they exert their effects is the dysregulation of serotonin—a very bad idea—as it can easily lead to cognitive
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during sexual climax, the mind experiences a blissful moment of oblivion in which the entire corporeal world evaporates. Climax is considered in every culture to be the most intensely pleasurable experience a person could have, a blank-slate detachment from oneself, a momentary abandonment of all concern, pain, and fear. Do you know what the French call it?” “Oui,” he said. “La petite mort.” “Yes—the little death. That’s because the self-detachment felt at orgasm is precisely the same feeling described by people who have had near-death experiences.”
In recent years, their enemies had needed only the most rudimentary social media tools to influence the minds and decisions of millions upon millions of people. His agency had tracked measurable foreign influences over elections, consumer habits, economic decisions, and political trends. But those attacks paled in comparison to the storm that was coming.
it actually had been a Czech writer—Karel čapek—who had coined the term “robot” for the very first time in a play he wrote in 1920.
Human-to-machine interface is the future.
Courtesy of Moore’s law.” True, she thought, the future comes at us faster every day.
“The future will be controlled by those who develop the first true human-to-machine interface,” Finch began. “Effortless communication between people and technology. No typing, dictating, viewing…just thinking. The financial ramifications alone are enough to create a new world superpower, but the practical applications, particularly in the field of intelligence work…are unimaginable.”
At some point…skepticism itself becomes irrational.
Psychic Warrior: The True Story of America’s Foremost Psychic Spy and the Cover-Up of the CIA’s Top-Secret Stargate Program PSI Spies: The True Story of America’s Psychic Warfare Program A Sorcerer’s Apprentice: A Skeptic’s Journey into the CIA’s Project Stargate Project Stargate and Remote Viewing Technology: The CIA’s Files on Psychic Spying
One particularly alarming film was called Third Eye Spies, and although the agency gave it the standard brush-off response, Judd recalled being surprised how many of the film’s conspiratorial claims were accurate…including the suspicion that Stargate’s public failure had been a carefully stage-managed illusion.
The most brilliant solutions are always the simplest, Katherine thought, and this strategy was exactly that—elegant in its simplicity.
Neurons that fire together…wire together.
It was technology that was extremely stable and safe. That was, unless someone decided to weaponize it, which held true for most technologies.
The age-old argument, Nagel thought. Someone is going to do it, so it had better be us.
psychological phenomenon known as pareidolia. The brain had a natural inclination to conjure meaningful shapes out of nebulous contours, and humans saw faces in everything—from clouds to fabric patterns to bowls of soup to shadows on a lake. All it took was two dots and a line, and most human brains made the same connection. From her work at the CIA, Nagel was convinced that conspiracy theorists suffered a kind of cognitive pareidolia, seeing suspicious patterns where no patterns existed…hallucinating order out of chaos.
medical definition: The irreversible cessation of all cell function. Then she informed him that the official medical definition was 100 percent incorrect. “Death,” she explained, “has nothing to do with the physical body. We define death in terms of consciousness. Consider a brain-dead, nonresponsive patient on life support—his body is technically very much alive, and yet we routinely pull the plug on that body. Without consciousness, we view a human body as essentially dead…even when its physical functions are perfectly intact.”
“And the opposite is equally true,” she continued. “A quadriplegic in a wheelchair, who has lost physical function in his entire body and yet remains conscious, is very much alive. Stephen Hawking was essentially a mind without a body. Imagine if someone suggested pulling the plug on him!”
“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! I can’t trust a corporation that neglected to conduct any iconographic research before adorning Frappuccinos with a deadly sea monster…” Leave it to a symbologist to ruin a good cup of coffee,
Incredibly, her experiments had revealed that a dreaming brain was similar to a dying brain. In both instances, GABA levels plummeted, thus lowering the brain’s filters, opening the door to wider bandwidths of information. The influx of unfiltered data was the reason dreams manifested as such illogical jumbles of images and ideas. Furthermore, it explained why, within seconds after waking, even the most vivid dreams began to fade despite our desperate attempts to remember them. The brain reset, GABA levels increased, and filters reengaged…purging the information and once again regulating our
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“The current race to harness the power of the human mind is no different,” Nagel continued. “The Russians can already read brain waves with ultrasound; the Chinese are placing massive orders for Neuralink’s brain implants; bot-fueled social media campaigns influence our elections, and we’ve just discovered what appear to be brain-control technologies embedded in social media apps from overseas. Make no mistake about it, we’re in a covert race that has already reached fever pitch, and frankly, it’s a race that you and I had better hope we win.”
National security is a world where results are valued over methodology.
“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.”
Unfortunately, it becomes a hall of mirrors. The worse things get, the worse we behave. And the worse we behave, the worse things get.”
“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.”
“Robert, 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.”
“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.”
as my prep school English teacher Mr. Lelchuk used to tell us: ‘The right book at the right time can save your life.’ ”
