Every so often, a book comes along that takes ideas already familiar within spiritual circles and opens them up to an entirely new audience, encouraging them to consider the possibility that we are part of something far greater.
Dan Brown, the world's most celebrated thriller writer has produced his most stunning novel yet,
The Secret of Secrets - a thought-provoking masterpiece that extends his lifelong pursuit of spiritual truth.
Set in the ancient city of Prague, Professor Robert Langdon (of Da Vinci Code fame) teams up with his new romantic interest, noetic scientist Katherine Solomon. Her long-awaited book on breakthroughs in consciousness research is about to be released to her editor for review and publication.
Suddenly, all copies of her book's script disappear, stolen by bad-guy spies who see that she was about to say too much about their secret work into what they view as an arms race into developing the power of the mind. Hey, it's a thriller, bad guys required!
With the covert enemies in pursuit, Robert and Katherine are launched into a race for their very survival. Endless clever twists, turns and surprises emerge in the story as Robert solves cryptic puzzles and Katherine leads him deeper in the realms of consciousness research.
Also revealed at the end of the book is that the secret of secrets, at least for the purpose of this book, will be when mainstream science can prove the existence of life after death. Bear in mind that, while students of spiritual metaphysics like ourselves consider near-death experiences, astral projection, and psychic remote viewing as basic facts of life, old-fashioned science is still trying to remain, well, old-fashioned. For decades, pioneers have been pushing the boundaries of science beyond materialistic physics and into the realms of consciousness.
Reading this book, it's good to discover how much real progress has been made in recent years.
The premise of the book is that, by understanding the reality of life after death and the immortality of the soul, the most primal fear of living on earth will be dissolved.
Personally, I find it curious that near-death experiences are treated as being so special when we all have the same experience every night when falling asleep!
In many cultures, the dream body is held sacred for its ability to pass back and forth between the realms of life and death. Near-Death Experiences are functionally the same as lucid dreaming. In vivid dreams, with a consciousness free of the physical form, we often perceive ourselves as weightless, massless beings with the ability to move through obstacles, fly through the air, and shift locations.
As the book points out, people who return from a near-death experience find their memory of the experience fading rapidly, just like dreams do when we awaken in the morning.
A clever addition to the cast of characters in the book is a golem, a magical creature brought to life by its will to protect the innocent victims of abusive medical experiments in a secret laboratory dedicated to probing beyond the veil of death. Only in the final pages is the mystery solved as to how the golem managed to walk the streets of Prague as a physical being and yet disappear back into his spirit form before springing into action on occasions to stop yet another bad guy.
This is very much page-turning, cliffhanger material!
With 688 exciting pages, the paperback version (which is released on Amazon today) might be a better choice than the e-book version.