Page 201 of The Secret of Secrets

Remarkably, over the past year, everything Langdon had learned from Katherine about consciousness had altered his perspective on dying…markedly easing his trepidation about aging and mortality. If Katherine’s nonlocal model of consciousness turned out to be correct, then the logical conclusion was that some part of Langdon, his being, his soul, his mind…would transcend the death of his body and live on.

I’m in no hurry to find out, he thought, savoring the warmth of Katherine’s head on his shoulder.

Yesterday, while touring the Vyšehrad, they had stumbled across an unusually morbid reliquary displaying a human shoulder blade—allegedly that of St. Valentine—and Katherine had startled him with a deceptively simple question: How do you define death?

Having never considered death in literal terms, Langdon drew a blank, finally offering a feebly circular definition that he never would have accepted from his students: Death is the absence of life.

To his surprise, Katherine told him his reply was quite close to the official, 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.”

True, Langdon realized.

“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!”

Langdon had never heard the point made quite that way.

“Robert,” she finished, “we can no longer deny the growing tide of evidence that consciousness can exist outside the body…beyond the confines of the brain. The day has come for us to entirely redefine consciousness…and therefore entirely redefine death!”

Langdon hoped she was right, and that dying was not as “terminal” an event as most imagined. From the recesses of his memory, the ancient teachings of Asclepius bubbled up:

Far too many fear death and regard it as the worst disaster that can befall them: they know nothing of what they speak. Death comes as a dissolution from an exhausted body…Just as the body leaves the mother’s womb when it is mature in it, so also does the soul leave the body when it has come to perfection.

As a young student of comparative religion, Langdon had been amazed by the universality of the promise of reincarnation and life after death—the lone, unswerving assurance offered by every single religious tradition that had survived the test of time. He had always viewed this consistent trait as an example of Darwinian “survival of the fittest.” The only religions that survived were those offering a solution to humankind’s greatest fear.

The more spiritual side of Langdon often wondered if perhaps the age-old promise of eternal life might actually predate religion…finding its roots in the lost wisdom of the ancients…a time when the human mind was sufficiently uncluttered to perceive the deepest truths that permeated the universe.

A thought for another day, he decided as their car slowed in front of the Four Seasons.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” he whispered to Katherine beside him. “We’re here.”

Faukman lunged for the phone. “Hello?!”

“Jonas, it’s Robert,” announced the unmistakable baritone voice. “I’m just back at the hotel. The manager said you’ve been calling nonstop.”

“I have been!” Faukman exclaimed. “The explosion in Prague? I was worri—”

“Sorry, we’re both okay.”

Faukman sighed in relief. “You know, Robert, most authors make me nervous by submitting their manuscripts late, but you have an irritating habit—”

“Thanks for your concern,” Langdon replied with a laugh, “but I was nowhere near the blast.”

“Glad to hear it, even if I don’t believe it,” Faukman said. “I’ve witnessed your proclivity for proximity to peril.”

“And I your predilection for paranoid presumptions.”

Faukman chuckled. “That response was a bit too quick…even for you, Robert. How do I know this isn’t some AI chatbot?”

“Because AI would never know you declined one of the bestselling novels of the past twenty years because you thought the author used too many ellipses.”

“Hey! I told you that in confidence!”

“Yes, and I’ll take it to my grave,” Langdon assured him. “Just not today.”

“Any word on Katherine’s manuscript?” Faukman asked hopefully.

“Sorry,” Langdon replied, his voice weary. “I wish I could give you better news…”