The Voice of Reason: And the Big Secret is...

"Better reality than a dream; if something is real, then it's real and you're not to blame."

"I am convinced that even in the most commonplace text I will find a spark, if not of truth, at least of bizarre falsehood, and often the extremes meet. I will be bored only by the ordinary..."

“Beware of faking; people will believe in you….they’ve been told that God is mysterious, unfathomable, so to them incoherence is the closest thing to God. The farfetched is the closest thing to a miracle.”

"Ma gavte la nata." 

(Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum)

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Humans are gullible. Gullible, and compulsively curious. What a terrific combination.

I recently read a truly excellent book: Foucault's Pendulum, by Umberto Eco. It touches on some of the same things Dan Brown's ridiculously over-hyped and over-praised Da Vinci Code does, only with tact, and a factual basis.

Reading Foucault's Pendulum was a real eye-opener. Without giving away the story, I think I can say this much: one of the ideas brought up in the course of the complicated--and thrilling--plot is about the Big Secret. Lots of people have looked for it. Ordinary people, secret-society people, religious people, nonreligious people--everybody. Everybody is after the secret. Or a secret, at any rate. One in particular is at the heart of the story, but in a broader basis, everyone is looking for the secret at the heart of a mystery that pertains to them, whatever that mystery may be and whatever secret they think they will discover. People live and die in search of the secret.

And the only ones to discover the real secret are not the ones searching for it--and that is the reason they find it.

The discovery begins with an illuminating observation about human nature. Whenever an explanation is offered; whenever the unexplained becomes known; when a 'secret' is revealed, and is no longer secret; it becomes "commonplace". People get tired of it. They stop seeing the wonder of the fact, sometimes almost immediately, sometimes later. But eventually, when the wonderful now-known secret is mentioned, you'll get a shrugging of shoulders and a disinterested, half-hearted reply: "Oh. That."

A secret is only attractive as long as it remains a secret. The wonder is not in the knowing, but in the quest for knowing. The end result is never as good as what it takes to get to the result. What's the quote? "Do not journey to fast or you will miss all that you journey are journeying for. The journey is the thing, not the end of the journey." It's that principle at work.

Sometimes, another reaction is mixed in: disbelief. Is that really all?, we ask. Is this it?

Nothing is ever as grand as we imagine it will be, once we get it. The desire is greater, more powerful, and more desirable than the end result--or at least that is how our minds perceive it.

And so we delve for the center. We reach for answers, study clues and piece together bits of metaphorical jigsaw puzzles, looking for the answers to our mysteries, for the Answer that will satisfy us. But when we find something--we are not satisfied. We cast it aside, to go on questing. Or else we never find anything. And we go on questing.

But Foucault's Pendulum offers an answer. Why is it this way? What is, after all, the Big Secret?

The big secret is that there is no secret. There is no knowledge that can satisfy, no great Answer that, once known, will end all quests. The secret is that the quest for the secret is the answer. If that can be counted.

We quest after nothing. An emptiness; an illusion created by curious minds that want an absolute, where it’s entirely possible that the only absolute is that there are no absolutes. The big secret is that the big secret doesn’t even exist.

I do not deny that some individuals find peace in their own personal Answers, in the ‘secrets’ revealed to them in their lives that they can accept. But if you ever read Foucault’s Pendulum, you’ll know what I’m talking about. There are always a few who cannot accept a known secret, a secret that is no longer a secret, because that is never enough—it is too small, too known, it does not seem like a secret at all. And there are some movements, based on those individuals, which can never die—the thirst for the nonexistent secret cannot be slaked.

But these individuals won’t believe it. The whole point is their undying belief in the existence of a secret. If anyone tried to tell them, hey, by the way, there is no secret—they would not be believed.

The Big Secret could be anything. I don’t mean to make it sound like it’s just the secret that is, say, the “answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.” That could be it. But for each individual quest, the secret might be different. It depends on what you’re questing for.

Maybe you will find an answer that you can accept. That would be a good thing. But there will never be one big final answer to all questions that ends it all, that all humans can accept, because when it is no longer shrouded in mystery, it will turn out that its shadow was larger than life, and the anticipation outweighs the unveiling. A secret revealed is no secret it all.

Hence, the only true secret; no secret exists after all.

Foucault’s Pendulum made a deep impression on me. It is a difficult book, but a worthwhile read. More is revealed in its pages than can be garnered in one read, even more than the revelation about the Big Secret.

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