Page 88 of The Secret of Secrets (Robert Langdon #6)
Katherine Solomon had spent much of her morning hiding alone in the darkness of the Klementinum’s Baroque Library, trying to figure out who was targeting her manuscript—and why.
Now, seated comfortably in the backseat of Nagel’s SUV, Katherine found her thoughts shifting to a far more immediate question.
How can Robert possibly get us inside Threshold…without getting us killed?
They had all agreed with Langdon’s proposed goal—to get inside the actual facility and gather classified information to protect themselves—but according to Nagel, the bomb shelter entrance was a heavily barricaded driveway that descended to a checkpoint with video surveillance, armed army personnel, and biometric security.
Katherine was beginning to wonder if maybe this had all been a clever bluff by Robert to escape the ambassador’s residence. But if that’s true…now what?
“Before we go any farther,” Nagel said, slowing to a stop on the side of a quiet street in her residential neighborhood, “I need to know your plan for entering the facility.” She put the car in park and turned to face Langdon in the front seat.
“Fair enough,” Langdon said. “It should actually be quite simple.” He paused, an uneasy smile parting his lips. “Provided my logic is sound.”
Nagel was not smiling. “Go on.”
For the next sixty seconds, Langdon outlined exactly how and why he believed he could get them access to Threshold.
When he was finished, the inquisitive look on Nagel’s face had turned to one of shock, matching Katherine’s own feelings of surprise.
Langdon’s explanation was, in his own particular fashion, utterly unexpected…
perfectly logical…and surprisingly simple.
“I don’t know what I thought you were going to say,” Nagel said, “but it was not that. ” She sounded suddenly hopeful. “I must admit, the thought had never occurred to me.”
Langdon nodded. “I imagine they hope it never occurs to anyone.”
Nagel put the SUV into gear and pulled out, driving faster now, heading southward toward the river. Nobody said another word.
In the backseat, Katherine felt rising anticipation to think she might finally learn how her work could be a threat to a classified CIA project. What in the world are they doing at Threshold that relates to my manuscript?
The code name Threshold sounded generic and nondescript, revealing nothing about the nature of the CIA project.
This was apparently standard practice, Katherine concluded, running through a list of declassified CIA code names mentioned by the press from time to time: Bluebook, Artichoke, Mongoose, Phoenix, Stargate…
In that moment, Katherine felt an unexpected connection emerge. “Psychotronics,” she declared.
Nagel glanced over her shoulder. “I’m sorry?”
Langdon turned, looking equally puzzled.
“Psychotronics,” she repeated. “It’s the term the Russians used for their early research into paranormal phenomena—mind reading, ESP, thought control, altered states of consciousness. Psychotronics is considered the precursor to modern noetic science.”
“Ah yes, I’d forgotten the name,” Nagel said.
“Russia invested a billion dollars in psychotronics during the Cold War—the world’s first ‘neuro-military’ initiative—mind control, psycho-surveillance, brain-related tactics, that sort of thing.
The CIA, of course, found out about the program, panicked, jumped on board, and initiated our own series of highly classified, neuro-military research programs.”
“And one of those projects,” Katherine said, “was called Stargate.”
“It was,” Nagel replied, revving the SUV to make the light at a bustling six-way intersection.
“But as you probably know, Stargate was a fiasco—one of the agency’s most humiliating public failures.
When Stargate was discovered, the agency was mercilessly mocked for spending millions on pseudoscience, parlor tricks, and attempts to train ‘magical ghost spies.’ In the end, it turned out the CIA had been baited by Russian disinformation and tricked into chasing our tail on fringe science that was never going to work. ”
Not exactly fringe, Katherine bristled, but she held her tongue. Despite its failures and embarrassing history, Stargate’s attempts to explore paranormal brain phenomena fell under what scientists would now term metaphysics or parapsychology.
“Why did you mention Stargate?” Langdon asked. “Did you write about it in your manuscript?”
“No,” Katherine said. “But it occurs to me that Stargate was one of the very first attempts to test the possibility of nonlocal consciousness.”
“Oh?” Langdon turned, looking surprised. “So the CIA did work in nonlocal consciousness?”
“In a sense, yes,” Katherine said. “Stargate tried to develop a never-before-imagined surveillance technique called ‘remote viewing.’ It consists of a ‘viewer’ sitting in a quiet location, meditating until he falls into a trance, and then projecting his consciousness out of his body…freeing it from its local bonds…and letting it materialize effortlessly anywhere in the world so the consciousness can ‘view’ what is happening in remote locations.”
Langdon arched an eyebrow, looking extremely skeptical.
Thanks, Robert, she thought, considering remote viewing essentially defined her theory of nonlocal consciousness. A mind unrestrained by locality.
“The ultimate goal of Stargate,” Nagel added, “from a military perspective, was to train a psychic spy whose consciousness could hover inside the Kremlin, observe a meeting, private conversation, or military strategy session, and then ‘return’ home to report what had transpired.”
“Hard to imagine it didn’t work,” Langdon said sarcastically.
Katherine leaned forward in her seat, speaking forcefully now. “For the record, Robert, you wrote about remote viewing and nonlocal consciousness long before I did.”
“What? I’ve never written about eith—”
“You called them ‘astral projection’ and ‘untethered KA.’?”
Langdon hesitated, cocking his head. “Oh… Spiritual Architecture ? You read that book?”
“Well, you sent it to me…”
The practice of astral projection, Langdon had written, dated back to ancient Egypt, where pyramids included carefully angled shafts to enable the pharaoh’s soul, or Ka, to move in and out to the stars.
The word “Ka,” Langdon had noted in his book, was often mistranslated as “soul,” when in fact it meant “vehicle”…
a way of transporting consciousness to other locations.
The wisdom the pharaohs acquired on their soul’s journey to the stars was possible only because of their understanding of untethered Ka…
in other words, nonlocal consciousness. The notion of an “eternal, incorporeal soul,” Langdon wrote, was a universal constant across all religions.
He’s always talking about nonlocal consciousness. He just doesn’t realize it.
“Okay,” Langdon said, looking chagrined, “but I write about historical beliefs —not hard science. Just because a culture believes something is true…that doesn’t make it a scientific fact. I’m just saying I find it hard to imagine that remote viewing is scientifically possible.”
Normally Katherine appreciated Langdon’s skepticism because it challenged her, but today she felt he wasn’t opening his mind far enough to see a truth that was obvious to her.
The father of American psychology, William James, had famously said: In order to disprove the assertion that all crows are black, one white crow is sufficient.
As Katherine described in her manuscript, an entire flock of white crows had now been flushed out…
by noetic science, by quantum physics, and by the work of an impressive cadre of academics who were vocal advocates of nonlocal consciousness.
Respected minds like Harold Puthoff, Russell Targ, Edwin May, Dean Radin, Brenda Dunne, Robert Morris, Julia Mossbridge, Robert Jahn, and many others had made astounding findings in diverse fields like plasma physics, nonlinear mathematics, and consciousness anthropology, all of which supported the notion of nonlocal consciousness.
Their popular books bore titles like Limitless Mind, Remote Perceptions, The Seventh Sense, Anomalous Cognition, and Real Magic.
Katherine had not heard about any of these other titles getting pushback from the CIA.
And why would they? The notion of “mind separated from body” was not nearly as exotic as most imagined.
The millions of people who practiced meditation were in fact already flirting with the peripheries of this world, focusing their minds until their physical bodies seemed to evaporate and they perceived themselves as only mind—a consciousness no longer located inside the body.
From there, a small percentage of skilled meditators achieved “projection,” a state in which consciousness was perceived as moving away from one’s physical location. This was the same detached sensation described by many epileptics and survivors of near-death experiences.
The closest Katherine had ever come to projecting was the occasional “lucid dream”—a bizarre experience wherein she “woke up” inside her dream, realized she was dreaming, and was able to do whatever she wanted within her dream.
The ultimate virtual playground. An accessible bridge between consciousness and fantasy, lucid dreaming offered a unique window into the manipulation of one’s own subjective reality.
Not surprisingly, lucid dreaming had become a multimillion-dollar industry of “lucidity”—dream instruction manuals, sleep goggles, and even galantamine drug cocktails designed to help dreamers “Go Lucid!”
Katherine knew lucid dreaming had been recognized across various cultures for centuries, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that scientific methods, notably by psychophysiologist Stephen LaBerge, had empirically validated its existence.
LaBerge demonstrated that lucid dreamers, while sleeping, could communicate their “conscious awareness” to researchers by performing a series of pre-agreed eye movements…
all while the dreamer’s mind was having an experience far from his sleeping body.
Waking up within a dream was a learnable skill for those who were interested, but for those who were not, there was still good news. Katherine believed that everyone would have at least one out-of-body experience in their lifetime.
The moment of death.
The data overwhelmingly suggested that death was accompanied by a transition through a conscious out-of-body experience, usually perceived as your mind detached from your body, hovering over your own physical form on an operating table, accident site, deathbed…
observing those who were attempting to revive you or say their tearful goodbyes.
Thousands of revived patients had stunned surgeons by recounting precise actions and conversations taking place in the hospital while they were clinically dead and even had their eyes taped shut for surgery.
There was still no consensus on what caused these out-of-body visions.
Fortuitous hallucinations caused by hypoxia? Evidence of the soul leaving the body? A fleeting glimpse into our next existence?
The true nature of death, Katherine knew, was the secret we all yearned to understand…across every culture, every generation, and every era. Unlike most of life’s unknowable mysteries, however, this was a secret that was guaranteed to be unveiled to every one of us…yet only at the end.
Our last moments of life…become our first moments of truth.