For the next few hours, the aircraft seat was my ambrosial dwelling.

•••

By the time we reached Dubai, I felt re-energized and focused. I had deliberately avoided booking a flight to my final destination from India in case it was trackable. Wherever Dalberg or anyone else might guess I was heading, I was determined they’d be wrong. I was going to a place I’d never been before. And in doing so, I’d be following Geshe-la’s instructions to the letter.

At Dubai Airport I bought a seat on a flight due to leave in three hours. Then I found a quiet spot in the airport gym where there was wi-fi. It was a stark, tile and glass place, with a few rowing and cross-trainer machines, an empty filtered water tank—and nobody in sight. Perched on a low wall, I found a plug where I could charge my phone. My objective: to find out as much as I could about what Alice was working on.

The truth was that having spent years diligently preparing for my own revelation, I had little idea about Alice’s project. All I knew was that she worked for an organization with the impressive sounding name of The Institute of Information Medicine based in Dublin. In my imagination, the Institute was housed in a neo-classical building, all Doric columns and marble stairs. As Research Director, I wondered if she got a corner office upstairs?

But what was ‘Information Medicine’ about exactly? Searching online, it was hard to find a single entry on the subject among the many thousands of results for information about medicine.

I was rewarded, eventually, with an entry on some kind of online scientific Q and A noticeboard. When I looked at the contributor name I had to smile. Below a tiny head and shoulders photograph was the name Alice Weisenstein.

Alice answered the question ‘What is information medicine?’ with a definition: a method of healing that uses energetic methods – instead of chemical, physical, or biological intervention – to cure disease and promote wellbeing.

She gave context. Even though it was over a century since Einstein had written his famous equation e = mc², contemporary medicine was still largely based on the old physics of matter. Mainstream doctors still treated patients, first and foremost, as biological beings, healing them with material means such as surgery and drugs.

Information Medicine approached patients as both biological and energetic beings. Matter was also energy. A particle was also a wave. She quoted British scientist Sir Arthur Eddington, “It is a primitive form of thought that things either exist or do not exist.”

What’s more, far from mind and body being seen as entirely separate, the two formed a systemic whole. Horrified thoughts, for example, caused the prefrontal cortex of our brain to shut down, our amygdala to ramp up, and we were instantly primed for fight or flight. Sexual thoughts caused an altogether different chain of hormonal and physiological reactions. Every mind moment had a physiological impact, whether we were aware of it or not. Subconscious thoughts and feelings could have the most powerful impacts of all.