Her work will unveil the true nature of all things.
For centuries the “brightest minds” on earth had ignored the ancient sciences, mocking them as ignorant superstitions, arming themselves instead with smug skepticism and dazzling new technologies—tools that led them only further from the truth.
Every generation’s breakthroughs are proven false by the next generation’s technology.
And so it had gone through the ages. The more man learned, the more he realized he did not know.
For millennia, mankind had wandered in the darkness . . . but now, as had been prophesied, there was a change coming. After hurtling blindly through history, mankind had reached a crossroads. This moment had been predicted long ago, prophesied by the ancient texts, by the primeval calendars, and even by the stars themselves. The date was specific, its
arrival imminent. It would be preceded by a brilliant explosion of knowledge . . . a flash of clarity to illuminate the darkness and give mankind a final chance to veer away from the abyss and take the path of wisdom.
I have come to obscure the light,
Mal’akh thought.
This is my role.
Fate had linked him to Peter and Katherine Solomon. The breakthroughs Katherine Solomon had made within the SMSC would risk opening floodgates of new thinking, starting a new Renaissance. Katherine’s revelations, if made public, would become a catalyst that would inspire mankind to rediscover the knowledge he had lost, empowering him beyond all imagination.
Katherine’s destiny is to light this torch.
Mine is to extinguish it.
CHAPTER
15
In total
darkness, Katherine Solomon groped for the outer door of her lab. Finding it, she heaved open the lead-lined door and hurried into the small entry room. The journey across the void had taken only ninety seconds, and yet her heart was pounding wildly.
After three years, you’d think I’d be used to that
. Katherine always felt relieved to escape the blackness of Pod 5 and step into this clean, well-lit space.
The “Cube” was a massive windowless box. Every inch of the interior walls and ceiling was covered with a stiff mesh of titanium-coated lead fiber, giving the impression of a giant cage built inside a cement enclosure. Dividers of frosted Plexiglas separated the space into different compartments—a laboratory, a control room, a mechanical room, a bathroom, and a small research library.
Katherine strode briskly into the main lab. The bright and sterile work space glistened with advanced quantitative equipment: paired electro encephalographs, a femtosecond comb, a magneto-optical trap, and quantum-indeterminate electronic noise REGs, more simply known as Random Event Generators.
Despite Noetic Science’s use of cutting-edge technologies, the discoveries themselves were far more mystical than the cold, high-tech machines that were producing them. The stuff of magic and myth was fast becoming reality as the shocking new data poured in, all of it supporting the basic ideology of Noetic Science—the untapped potential of the human mind.
The overall thesis was simple:
We have barely scratched the surface of our mental and spiritual capabilities.
Experiments at facilities like the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) in California and the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab (PEAR) had categorically proven that human thought, if properly focused, had the ability to affect and change
physical
mass. Their experiments were no “spoon-bending” parlor tricks, but rather highly controlled inquiries that all
produced the same extraordinary result: our
thoughts
actually interacted with the physical world, whether or not we knew it, effecting change all the way down to the subatomic realm.
Mind over matter.
In 2001, in the hours following the horrifying events of September 11, the field of Noetic Science made a quantum leap forward. Four scientists discovered that as the frightened world came together and focused in shared grief on this single tragedy, the outputs of thirty-seven different Random Event Generators around the world suddenly became significantly
less
random. Somehow, the oneness of this shared experience, the coalescing of millions of minds, had affected the randomizing function of these machines, organizing their outputs and bringing order from chaos.
The shocking discovery, it seemed, paralleled the ancient spiritual belief in a “cosmic consciousness”—a vast coalescing of human intention that was actually capable of interacting with physical matter. Recently, studies in mass meditation and prayer had produced similar results in Random Event Generators, fueling the claim that
human consciousness,
as Noetic author Lynne McTaggart described it, was a substance
outside
the confines of the body . . . a highly ordered energy capable of changing the physical world. Katherine had been fascinated by McTaggart’s book
The Intention Experiment,
and her global, Web-based study—theintentionexperiment.com—aimed at discovering how human intention could affect the world. A handful of other progressive texts had also piqued Katherine’s interest.
From this foundation, Katherine Solomon’s research had vaulted forward, proving that “focused thought” could affect literally
anything
—the growth rate of plants, the direction that fish swam in a bowl, the manner in which cells divided in a petri dish, the synchronization of separately automated systems, and the chemical reactions in one’s own body. Even the crystalline structure of a newly forming solid was rendered mutable by one’s mind; Katherine had created beautifully symmetrical ice crystals by sending loving thoughts to a glass of water as it froze. Incredibly, the
converse
was also true: when she sent negative, polluting thoughts to the water, the ice crystals froze in chaotic, fractured forms.
Human thought can literally transform the physical world.
As Katherine’s experiments grew bolder, her results became more astounding. Her work in this lab had proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that “mind over matter” was not just some New Age self-help mantra. The
mind had the ability to alter the state of matter itself, and, more important, the mind had the power to encourage the physical world to move in a specific direction.
We are the masters of our own universe.
At the subatomic level, Katherine had shown that particles themselves came in and out of existence based solely on her
intention
to observe them. In a sense, her desire to see a particle . . . manifested that particle. Heisenberg had hinted at this reality decades ago, and now it had be come a fundamental principle of Noetic Science. In the words of Lynne McTaggart: “Living consciousness somehow is the influence that turns the
possibility
of something into something
real
. The most essential ingredient in creating our universe is the consciousness that observes it.”
The most astonishing aspect of Katherine’s work, however, had been the realization that the mind’s ability to affect the physical world could be
augmented
through practice. Intention was a
learned
skill. Like meditation, harnessing the true power of “thought” required practice. More important . . . some people were born more skilled at it than others. And throughout history, there had been those few who had become true masters.
This is the missing link between modern science and ancient mysticism.
Katherine had learned this from her brother, Peter, and now, as her thoughts turned back to him, she felt a deepening concern. She walked to the lab’s research library and peered in. Empty.
The library was a small reading room—two Morris chairs, a wooden table, two floor lamps, and a wall of mahogany bookshelves that held some five hundred books. Katherine and Peter had pooled their favorite texts here, writings on everything from particle physics to ancient mysticism. Their collection had grown into an eclectic fusion of new and old . . . of cutting-edge and historical. Most of Katherine’s books bore titles like
Quantum Consciousness, The New Physics,
and
Principles of Neural Science.
Her brother’s bore older, more esoteric titles like the
Kybalion,
the
Zohar, The Dancing Wu Li Masters,
and a translation of the Sumerian tablets from the British Museum.
“The key to our scientific future,” her brother often said, “is hidden in our past.” A lifelong scholar of history, science, and mysticism, Peter had been the first to encourage Katherine to boost her university science education with an understanding of early Hermetic philosophy. She had been only nineteen years old when Peter sparked her interest in the link between modern science and ancient mysticism.
“So tell me, Kate,” her brother had asked while she was home on vacation during her sophomore year at Yale. “What are Elis reading these days in theoretical physics?”
Katherine had stood in her family’s book-filled library and recited her demanding reading list.
“Impressive,” her brother replied. “Einstein, Bohr, and Hawking are modern geniuses. But are you reading anything older?”
Katherine scratched her head. “You mean like . . . Newton?”
He smiled. “Keep going.” At twenty-seven, Peter had already made a name for himself in the academic world, and he and Katherine had grown to savor this kind of playful intellectual sparring.
Older than Newton?
Katherine’s head now filled with distant names like Ptolemy, Pythagoras, and Hermes Trismegistus.
Nobody reads that stuff anymore.
Her brother ran a finger down the long shelf of cracked leather bindings and old dusty tomes. “The scientific wisdom of the ancients was staggering . . . modern physics is only
now
beginning to comprehend it all.”
“Peter,” she said, “you already told me that the Egyptians understood levers and pulleys long before Newton, and that the early alchemists did work on a par with modern chemistry, but so what?
Today’s
physics deals with concepts that would have been unimaginable to the ancients.”
“Like what?”
“Well . . . like
entanglement theory,
for one!” Subatomic research had now proven categorically that all matter was interconnected . . . entangled in a single unified mesh . . . a kind of universal oneness. “You’re telling me the ancients sat around discussing
entanglement
theory?”
“Absolutely!” Peter said, pushing his long, dark bangs out of his eyes. “Entanglement was at the core of primeval beliefs. Its names are as old as history itself . . . Dharmakaya, Tao, Brahman. In fact, man’s oldest spiritual quest was to perceive his own entanglement, to sense his own interconnection with all things. He has always wanted to become ‘one’ with the universe . . . to achieve the state of ‘at-one-ment.’ ” Her brother raised his eyebrows. “To this day, Jews and Christians still strive for ‘atonement’ . . . although most of us have forgotten it is actually ‘at-one-ment’ we’re seeking.”
Katherine sighed, having forgotten how hard it was to argue with a man so well versed in history. “Okay, but you’re talking in generalities. I’m talking
specific
physics.”
“Then
be
specific.” His keen eyes challenged her now.
“Okay, how about something as simple as
polarity
—the positive/negative balance of the subatomic realm. Obviously, the ancients didn’t underst—”
“Hold on!” Her brother pulled down a large dusty text, which he dropped loudly on the library table. “Modern polarity is nothing but the ‘dual world’ described by Krishna here in the Bhagavad Gita over two thousand years ago. A dozen other books in here, including the
Kybalion,
talk about binary systems and the opposing forces in nature.”
Katherine was skeptical. “Okay, but if we talk about modern discoveries in
subatomics
—the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, for example—”
“Then we must look
here,
” Peter said, striding down his long bookshelf and pulling out another text. “The sacred Hindu Vendantic scriptures known as the Upanishads.” He dropped the tome heavily on the first. “Heisenberg and Schrödinger
studied
this text and credited it with helping them formulate some of their theories.”
The showdown continued for several minutes, and the stack of dusty books on the desk grew taller and taller. Finally Katherine threw up her hands in frustration. “Okay! You made your point, but I want to study cutting-edge
theoretical
physics. The future of science! I really doubt Krishna or Vyasa had much to say about superstring theory and multidimensional cosmological models.”
“You’re right. They didn’t.” Her brother paused, a smile crossing his lips. “If you’re talking superstring theory . . .” He wandered over to the bookshelf yet again. “Then you’re talking
this
book here.” He heaved out a colossal leather-bound book and dropped it with a crash onto the desk. “Thirteenth-century translation of the original medieval Aramaic.”
“Superstring theory in the thirteenth century?!” Katherine wasn’t buying it. “Come on!”
Superstring theory was a brand-new cosmological model. Based on the most recent scientific observations, it suggested the multidimensional universe was made up not of
three
. . . but rather of
ten
dimensions, which all interacted like vibrating strings, similar to resonating violin strings.
Katherine waited as her brother heaved open the book, ran through the ornately printed table of contents, and then flipped to a spot near the beginning of the book. “Read this.” He pointed to a faded page of text and diagrams.