The Secret of Secrets — a perspective
I just finished reading Dan Brown’s latest offering, The Secret of Secrets.
This book makes you think. It’s not one of those light, chick-flick-rom-coms with a side of margarita that you can enjoy on a lovely Sunday by the beach with the breeze in your face and chips on the table being side-eyed by the seagulls.
This book was heavy.
First it makes you think about your brain and its possibilities. Then it makes you think about the lure of drugs. And then it makes you think about physical and mental conditions. And then you revisit the brain’s capabilities that only few humans have mastered. And the discipline to achieve something. You then delve into the evolution of military intelligence. This guy is a master writer.
The Secret of Secrets blew my mind from the very start with the concepts the author covered. And Brown’s work usually weaves both fact and fiction together, tying a fictional story with real places, events and history. I even Googled some of the concepts, places or references he covered — the Institute of Noetic Sciences, artificial neurons, GABA levels, Prague’s Dripstone Wall, and more.
The story itself, while interesting, was a run-of-the-mill thriller, which included the many ways the heroes escaped multiple dangerous situations using creative solutions (sparking a fire in the museum, surviving an icy river while fully clothed, escaping a helium blast in an enclosed space…), or with unlikely help always at the right time.
What kicked my brain into high gear was the concept of non-local consciousness. This was an entirely new possibility, something I’d never heard of before, where our consciousness sits outside the brain or the physical body. While I have always believed that the soul is a separate entity, I never thought further.
One of the things Brown describes is that our brain is akin to a radio which could be tuned to play different stations by locating the right waves. Hence, our brain could be a receiver of different channels of consciousness, depending on the frequency we are tuned in to.
Scientifically, it was described in the book as our brains having certain GABA levels which decide how much information to let in at any one time, which prevents us from getting overwhelmed by all the information coming at us all the time.
(From Google: GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid) levels represent the amount of the primary inhibitory neurotransmitter in your central nervous system, responsible for promoting calmness and reducing neuronal excitability. Optimal GABA levels prevent anxiety, stress, and insomnia, while low levels are linked to depression, mood disorders, and epilepsy; high levels of GABA, while rare may cause extreme sedation or a comatose state.)
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So if the concept of non-local consciousness was a possibility, then would it just be a matter of chemically adjusting GABA levels in the brain to tune in to different “channels”? Is this what happens when we take mood-altering or -enhancing drugs — do these reduce GABA levels to allow a higher reception for the brain?
On another note, does this explain why some people always get the goods during lucky draws? Are their brains tuned in to the “lucky draw channel”? Child prodigies for instance — why is it so much easier for some children to become musicians, artists, and mathematicians? Could their brains be tuned into the Beethoven channel?
But if this is indeed a possibility, what does it mean for us? Can we train our brain to tune into certain channels based on what we want? This idea goes back to the ancient wisdom from the beginning of time. “What you think, you become” attributed to Buddha, emphasizes how your thoughts shape reality. Your deepest beliefs about yourself and the world around you manifest into your life, which I find exactly similar to tuning our brains to what we want to attract. “All things are created twice, first in the mind, then in reality” — if you can think it, it is possible.
One of my key takeaways from the entire book was this ‘tuning our minds’ part. Basically, whatever we want, we can have. Whatever we conceive can be true. To be so focused on one channel that our minds receive that channel and create our reality.
The other thing that the book touches on is what we collectively refer to as mental health issues, more specifically the multiple personality disorder (DID). As a generally accepted normal person, I cannot begin to imagine the complexities faced by someone living with serious mental health conditions like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, severe anxiety or depression, borderline personality disorder, etc. What are they even going through internally? Hallucinations and delusions which feel real, trying to form a thought when the brain feels like mud, moving through different personalities not understanding the connection to the same body… Can you imagine going from a high that makes you believe you can fly if you jump out a window, to a low where you have no reason to get out of bed? I cannot.
Many families give up on children with these conditions because it gets too hard and disruptive to care for them. And when they get into institutions, we are looking at the possibility of mistreatment or abuse.
As I said, this book makes you think…
Secret of Secrets does get a bit draggy towards the end, and by the time I hit the final 10% of the book, I was reading it more to finish it then to continue immersing myself in the story. Brown does tie up the story well, and there is an interesting point he covers towards the end of the book — that the behavioral response to fear is usually selfishness.
This should not come as a surprise honestly, history books and local everyday news proves this over and over. One sentence in the book caught me though — “the more we fear death, the more we cling to ourselves, our belongings, our safe spaces… we even abandon our feelings of environmental responsibility because we sense the planet is a lost cause and we are all doomed anyway”.
Hence, if the concept of non-local consciousness holds true, and we understand that death is not the end and stop fearing it, does this mean that humankind collectively will behave in a kinder, more considerate manner to each other and towards the planet?
Brown really does make you think…
By the way, if you’re a non-native English speaker, I would suggest a dictionary beside you. I am a native speaker, and I still needed to google some words. There is one page especially, with words like bulbous outcroppings, amorphous hollows, organic undulations, phantasmagorical quality, and cognitive pareidolia. Have fun!
