Thank you, Dan Brown
My thanks to Dan Brown for The Secret of Secrets, illuminating the paradigm shift that is underway beneath the surface of life today, amid the disruption and chaos that makes all Americans feel “tempest tost”—as the Lady in the harbor with her radiant halo and sacred tablet proclaims; not just for yearning immigrants.
It’s a riveting read, a breathless race through a complex maze of man-made evil and violence erupting out of materialist greed and the lust for power at any cost. The city of Prague is a star here—if you’ve been there, familiar landmarks will resonate; if you haven’t yet, you will be tempted to go.
Most fascinating to me, however, is the clarity with which Brown’s heroine, neuroscientist Katherine Solomon, addresses the unanswerable questions that haunt us all: survival after death, the nature of consciousness, the brain vs the mind, telepathy and precognition, the nonlocality of knowledge and how genius is able to tap into it—all convincingly buttressed by rigorous research, especially in neuroscience, quantum physics, and biochemistry (Google GABA).
This column is something of a departure for me, primarily a wine journalist, though I was delighted to find Robert Langdon enough of a wine connoisseur to appreciate one of the world’s top reds: Antinori’s 2016 Solaia, a Super Tuscan made from a blend of cabernet sauvignon and cabernet franc, with a splash of sangiovese. Langdon, the Harvard symbologist whose colorful adventures began with The DaVinci Code, sips the wine with Katherine and his publisher at New York’s Trattoria dell’ Arte. I’m envious; but, at around $500 a bottle, it’s out of reach for me. Back to that in a minute.
Katherine has written a book that will up end the scientific view that the brain creates consciousness, but the secret manuscript—and Katherine herself—have disappeared, after her well-received talk at a science conference in Prague. Triggered by anomalous events, Langford sets out to save her, revealing along the way some astonishing information that blows his rationalist mind.
Dan Brown, in a recent online interview with IONS research scientist Dean Radin, expressed a long curiosity about psychical phenomena but was spurred to explore more closely when he came across the cognitive research at the Institute of Noetic Sciences in California. IONS was founded by Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell after his epiphanic experiment in remote viewing from deep space during Apollo 14. Remote viewing (RV), one of today’s hottest topics, is the mind’s capacity to “see” hidden objects, distant places or activities without the use of normal senses.
RV gained notoriety after the CIA’s secret Project Stargate with physicists Russell Targ and Hal Putoff ended in the early 1990s. But, as Secret implies, the work is ongoing with government and private enterprise involved. Asked if this were true, Brown hesitated, then “There are certain things I can’t talk about, or won’t.”
“I spent eight years researching this book,” Brown said. “These phenomena are so powerful and so potentially useful that it’s going to change things rapidly as technology advances. I have the sense there’s going to be a sea change in the way we look at reality. The paradigm shift is real and happening. Within a decade we will have an entirely different view of reality.”
Katherine’s research has convinced her that the brain doesn’t create consciousness but receives it, from the unseen but all-enveloping sea of knowledge the exists beyond the brain—like the invisible air waves that we tune into on radio, TV, and the internet. Brown’s book cites several figures in the field of anomalous research, including Targ and Putoff but also Dean Radin, Darryl Bem, Edward Kelley, Ed May, Joe McMoneagle, and Robert Jahn--some whom I know or have met and am well-acquainted with their work. It’s exciting to see it treated with the seriousness it deserves. And in such an entertaining way. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio….” Hamlet, Acte I, Scene V.
On a more vinous note: happily, I have a couple of older Solaias resting quietly in my cellar. I’ll open one with friends early in the new year, and am looking forward to it. Incidentally, the 2019 Solaia ($385) would make a handsome gift for the winelover on your gift list.
Sites to check:
https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/olj/sa/sa_jan02srm01.html
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/22857-gamma-aminobutyric-acid-gaba