Terrorism and war
One unfortunate constant in the novel is the looming threat of warfare, violence, and terrorism, especially in London with Quasar's story. He is motivated by a vengeful desire for wrath. He complicates the world by adding suffering in a random way that makes the community paranoid and distrustful.
Spirituality
There are also stories of spirits, like in the Grandma chapter in the Holy Mountain. These obvious spiritual elements encourage the reader to consider spirituality throughout the entire novel. In a word, the concrete instances of spirituality give a sublime tone to the novel. Spiritual influence is a question mark over the novel.
Death and mystery
The threat of death and actual deaths form a constant imagery in the novel. The strangeness of death is one of the themes of the novel, and when death occurs in the novel, it is described with attention to the philosophical strangeness of the deaths. Death is part of the realism of the plot.
Doom
In addition to the sublime strangeness of the novel, there are clear concrete descriptions of doom spread throughout the story. There is the doomsday death cult, and the random stories of AI taking over the world in the future, the looming threat of mass extinction by random comet—basically, there is always the threat of absolute apocalypse.
