Page 64 of The Secret of Secrets

Faukman was genuinely afraid now. “That’s not funny…I don’t even have a cat. Can we talk about this?”

“Sure thing.” Buzzcut gave a cocky smile. “Plenty of time to chat on the plane.”

Chapter 40

The Havelský 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.