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Einstein had famously declared: Coincidence is God’s way of staying anonymous.
Morgan Robertson—an American author who published the 1898 novel Futility, which he based on a vivid nightmare he had about an unsinkable ocean liner—The Titan—striking an iceberg and sinking on one of its first voyages across the Atlantic Ocean. Incredibly, the book was published fourteen years before the Titanic disaster. It so specifically described the ship’s construction, navigational course, and sinking that the coincidences had never been explained.
Buddha: With our thoughts, we create the world.
Pablo Picasso’s most enduring quote proclaimed: Everything you can imagine is real.
אמת—emet. Truth.
golem—meaning “raw material” in Hebrew—a
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.
“Nechte toho!”
3 1 4 S 1 5 9
You have a condition known as TLE—temporal lobe epilepsy—which
“Markus Raetz,”
Langdon was certainly aware that life after death was the cornerstone of literally every enduring spirituality: the Christians had heaven; the Jews had gilgul; the Muslims had Jannah; the Hindus and Buddhists had devaloka; the New Age philosophers had past lives; Plato had metempsychosis. A constant in all spiritual philosophies was that the soul was…eternal.
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 Vel spear is a Hindu symbol of power. The point of the spear represents enlightenment, a sharply tuned mind, the superior insight used to cut through the darkness of ignorance and conquer your enemies. The Hindu god of war, Murugan, carried the spear with him everywhere.”
“And modern neuroscience,” Katherine continued, “has now identified the actual biological mechanism by which the brain filters out incoming data.” A faint smile crossed her lips. “It’s called GABA. Gamma-aminobutyric acid.”
“I read that 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.”
Another Boston-based superstar in the field, Rick Doblin, had founded MAPS—the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies—which had raised over $130 million for psychedelic research with astonishing success treating depression and PTSD.
“Digital clones are much safer than physical cards because the interaction is encrypted, and the user can program multifactor biometric authentication—facial recognition, fingerprint, retinal scan, whatever you like, along with a passcode. It’s actually far more protection than a biometric card. And better yet, nobody sees you taking your card in and out of your briefcase every time you reach a doorway.”
The caduceus? Langdon was surprised to find a medical symbol in a CIA facility, but there it was, prominently displayed. Iconographically, he knew this symbol was frequently misused, as it was here. The caduceus was actually the ancient symbol of Hermes, the Greek god of travel and commerce. The more accurate symbol would have been the Rod of Asclepius—the staff of the Greek god of healing—a similar icon with no wings and only a single snake, rather than the caduceus double snake. Embarrassingly, in 1902, the U.S. Army Medical Corps had mistakenly emblazoned the caduceus on their uniforms, and
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SMES, he thought. Superconducting magnetic energy storage.
energy fed into the toroidal magnetic field would race in loops indefinitely with no degradation and could be siphoned off as needed. The only prerequisite was to keep the superconducting coils cold. Extremely cold.
“Benzimidazobenzophenanthroline.
אמת
“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!
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
“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.”
