Page 43 of The Secret of Secrets (Robert Langdon #6)
The Havelsky Market was crammed with traffic moving at a crawl.
A few blocks from their destination, Langdon and Sasha abandoned the cab and walked through the tangle of roads and alleys that form the residential district of Old Town.
As he followed Sasha toward her apartment, Langdon was surprised to learn that her home was, in fact, owned by Brigita Gessner, who permitted Sasha to stay there rent-free.
Another uncharacteristic act of kindness, Langdon thought, curious why Gessner seemed so intent on helping this young woman.
Brigita Gessner was an enigma. While seemingly generous and compassionate toward Sasha, last night over cocktails she had been unbearable. At one point, while Langdon was absently nursing his repulsive bacon-flavored cocktail, Gessner had turned and abruptly put him on the spot.
“Professor Langford,” she said, no doubt botching his name on purpose. “Katherine and I disagree on something, and we want you to settle it for us.”
Katherine winced, obviously not looking to draw Langdon in.
“You’re an educated man,” Gessner said, “and your perspective on this will be of interest. Katherine and I diverge on an issue that lies at the core of the materialist-noetic debate. That being…life after death.”
Oh dear…
“So tell us,” Gessner pressed, “which do you believe? When you die, is that the end? Or is there something…else?”
Langdon hesitated, trying to figure out how to navigate the moment.
“As I have stated many times,” Gessner jumped in, “I view life after death as an empty fantasy—an illusion sold by religion to recruit the faint of heart and weak of mind.”
Oh boy, I’m not touching that one…
“And as I’m sure you know,” Gessner continued, “Katherine has stated publicly that she believes out-of-body experiences are strong evidence that consciousness resides outside the brain and therefore can survive death. In other words…the afterlife is real.” The neuroscientist casually sipped her cocktail. “So which is it, Professor?”
“I have no definitive idea,” he replied. “I’ve taught thanatology, but it’s not really my field—”
“The question is simple,” the woman scoffed, interrupting him. “If you were dying, and you found yourself looking down at your own body on an operating table, would you classify that as evidence of an afterlife? Or as hypoxic hallucination?”
I’ve never had a near-death experience…I have no idea what I would think.
Langdon’s only encounter with near-death experiences had been in the pages of Raymond Moody’s 1975 bestseller, Life After Life , the book credited with persuading scientists to look more seriously at the possibility that death was not the end of a journey…but rather just the beginning.
The book included hundreds of medically documented cases of clinically dead people who had reawakened to report very similar out-of-body experiences—a disembodied point of view, hovering, moving upward into a dark tunnel, approaching a bright light, and, most remarkably, feeling a sense of absolute calm and boundless knowledge.
After Moody’s book, the question was no longer if people were having out-of-body experiences…but rather what was causing them, and what did they mean?
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.
Even so, when it came to believing in life after death, Langdon had never been able to pry himself from the materialists’ camp. The notion of the afterlife, he believed, was a comforting story, a coping mechanism, and if he was to answer Gessner’s question honestly…
Near-death experiences are…hallucinations.
A scholar of art inspired by religion, Langdon was intimately familiar with masterworks depicting visions of a world beyond this one—divine revelations, spiritual visions, theophanies, religious ecstasies, visitations from angels.
The faithful considered these experiences to be actual encounters with other realms, but Langdon quietly believed they were something else—vividly persuasive visions brought on by a profound spiritual longing.
There is a reason, Langdon often reminded his students, that mirages of oases are seen only by thirsty travelers in the desert—and never by college students walking on the quad. We see what we want to see.
And with respect to wanting, Langdon imagined that most people in the throes of dying wanted the same basic thing: not to die. And the fear of death, of course, was not reserved for the dying. It was a universal fear…perhaps the universal fear.
Mortality salience, as it was known—the knowledge that we would die—was frightening not because we feared losing our physical bodies, but rather because we feared losing our memories, our dreams, our emotional connections…in essence, our soul.
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.
Sure enough, every world religion had produced copious writings suggesting an afterlife—the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Sutras, the Upanishads, the Vedas, the Holy Bible, the Quran, the Kabbalah.
Each religion had its own eschatology, its own architecture of the life beyond this one, and its own meticulously cataloged hierarchy of attending spirits.
These religious claims were widely ignored by modern thanatologists—those who studied the science of death. And yet, astonishingly, scientists today readily admitted that they had made very little progress in answering the fundamental question of their field:
What happens when we die?
The question was, without compare, the greatest mystery of life…the secret we all longed to know. Ironically, the elusive answer was revealed to each of us eventually…but with no way back to share it.
“Cat got your tongue?” Gessner asked, smirking.
“Not really,” Langdon replied testily. “I just find it curious that you accept as absolute fact a premise you’re unable to prove. In my world, we call that faith …not science.”
“Zbaběl?e,” Gessner huffed. “I know you’re a materialist, Professor, and with a little luck, tomorrow when Katherine comes to the lab, I can persuade her to join us in the rational world.”
With that, Gessner unlocked her leather briefcase, extracted a business card, and placed it in front of Katherine.
Langdon eyed the card.
Dr. Brigita Gessner
Gessner Institute
Crucifix Bastion, 1
Prague
“Give this card to your driver tomorrow morning,” Gessner said. “My lab is private, but the location is well-known. The bastion is quite famous actually.”
Langdon groaned inwardly. Famous in the 1300s perhaps…
As Gessner moved to close her briefcase, Langdon caught a glimpse of the meticulously organized contents—various documents in folders, a pen in a loop holder, a smartphone secured with a leather strap, and a collection of credit cards, IDs, and key cards all perfectly aligned in individual transparent sleeves.
Among the group, a symbol caught his eye.
“What’s that card?” he asked, pointing to a black card sticking out of a specialized, lead-lined sheath designed to safeguard cards equipped with radio frequency identification. He could see only the top half inch of the card but was intrigued by the six characters printed boldly across it.
Gessner glanced down at the card, faltering a moment. “Oh, it’s nothing.” She closed her case. “It’s for my health club.”
“Oh?” Langdon said. “I’m curious. The third character—what was it?”
She gave him an odd look. “You mean the letter A ?”
“That wasn’t an A, ” Langdon said, having seen it clearly. “It was a Vel spear.”
Both women looked puzzled.
“I’m sorry?” Gessner said.
“The crossbar is the difference,” Langdon said. “An A has a single line. That logo had three lines and a dot. Whenever you see an upward-facing blade—that is, the shape of a capital A —with three crossbars and a dot, it’s a specialized icon with a very specific meaning.”
“Does it mean health ?” Katherine ventured, sounding a bit tipsy.
Not even close, Langdon thought. “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.”
Gessner looked genuinely surprised.
“Killing your foes with insight?” Katherine said. “Strange message for a health club.”
I agree.
“Happenstance, obviously,” Gessner scoffed. “I’m sure the club has no idea and simply liked the design.”
Langdon let it go, but he felt quite certain Gessner was hiding something.
A shielded RFID card seemed an unusually high-tech passkey for a health club, and Gessner hardly seemed like someone who would tolerate exercising with the unclean masses.
Besides, a local health club would most likely use the Czech spelling, “PRAHA,” rather than English.
“It is clear,” Gessner said, sounding irked, “that symbologists and noeticists are a perfect match for one another.” She took a sip of her drink. “You both see meaning where there is none.”