Dan Brown, author of The Lost Symbol talks about Noetic Science

The Lost Symbol interview with Dan Brown on freemasons, masonic philosophy, conspiracies, symbolism and noetic science

Lynne McTaggart: The Key to the Lost Symbol: the Power of Intention and noetic sciences

Noetic sciences writer Lynne McTaggart has written an interesting post on the Lost Symbol by Dan Brown: "Every so often my life takes such a fantastical turn that I am overwhelmed by the feeling that I am actually in the midst of a lucid dream, and that at any moment awakening will hand me back my ordinary world.

I had that feeling yesterday when I got an email from my editor informing me that me, my book The Intention Experiment, my website: www.theintentionexperiment.com and a good deal of my research were named, explained and used as a background source of a major plotline in Dan Brown’s new book.

I spent last night skimming the entire text of The Lost Symbol. For those of you who haven’t read it yet, the book centers around the recovery of kidnapped head of the Smithsonian Peter Solomon by Brown’s long-standing protagonist, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, and Solomon’s sister, Katherine.

Solomon is a ‘noetic scientist’, a 50-year-old black-haired woman who has written two popular books about the new science of consciousness and the bridge between science and spirituality, which ‘established her as a leader in this obscure field’.

Presently she does mind-over-matter research and is particularly interested in the power of group minds to change the physical world.

At certain points, the story began to sound strangely familiar. . . In the Cube, a secret laboratory in the basement of the Smithsonian Institute, filled with all sorts of state-of-the-art gadgetry, Katherine carries out her cutting-edge research — virtually all of which represent a composite of the personalities or science that have been the subject of my books or actual experiments.

Her sidekick is a ‘meta-analyst’ or computer number cruncher called Trish Dunne, which will tickle Brenda Dunne of the PEAR research (also mentioned in the book). Brown also pays homage to the Institute of Noetic Sciences, which will put a smile on the face of Marilyn Schlitz, its president and a real-live noetic scientist.

Much of The Lost Symbol concerns the link between modern physics and ancient wisdom. The ‘big idea’ in Dan Brown’s book is that science is only now providing evidence that ancient traditions have always espoused: that thought has a tangible power, enabling human beings to be creators of their own world.

In The Lost Symbol, Brown very graciously quoted me, mentioned my book by name and even gave out my website address:

“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.”

Brown makes it clear at the outside in a page entitled ‘FACT’, that “All rituals, science, artwork and monuments in this novel are real.”
Nevertheless, a few of the more traditional scientists or science writers are already taking a swing at Brown for his impossible inventions and so-called junk science.

Although I cannot speak for many of the other elements in the book — Freemasonry, ancient symbols, alchemy or hidden keys — virtually all of his comments about physics, consciousness research, mind-over-matter experiments and intention are based on fact – and indeed are enumerated in detail in either The Field or The Intention Experiment."

Visit McTaggart's website on The Intention Experiment.

Watch some videos by McTaggart:

Noetic Scientist Marilyn Schlitz on Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol character Katherine Solomon

Read Dr.Schlitz's article on Katherine Solomon resemblances to her here and my blog entry about it here.

Noetic Scientists Katherine Solomon and Marilyn Schlitz. From reality to a best selling novel

In her article, On Becoming a Fictional Character: Insights from a Comparison of Noetic Scientists Katherine Solomon and Marilyn Schlitz, real-life noetic scientist Marilyn Schlitz writes about her impressions on Dan Brown's fictional character Katherine Solomon (a noetic scientist) in his lastest book The Lost Symbol.

Schlitz writes: "As Noetic Scientists, Katherine and I share a mutual fascination with the powers and potentials of consciousness. We have both pursued careers well outside the mainstream and both live our work, as friends and family can attest.

As President/CEO of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, both Katherine and I know the value and the urgency of our studies, as well as the complexity of explaining our work to the world. For both of us, Noetic Science is a multidisciplinary approach that seeks to understand the role that consciousness plays in the physical world, and how understanding consciousness can lead to creative new solutions to age old problems. We have been inspired by breakthroughs that were sourced through intuition and inner knowing and expressed through reason and logic. We believe that consciousness matters, now and in the future!

Like Katherine, my career began at the ripe age of 19. And early on, my mentor was a neurophysiologist who introduced me to ancient Egyptian texts and modern scientific views of consciousness. As an undergraduate at Montieth College, Wayne State University, I read Newton, Ptolemy, Pythagoras, and Copernicus, as well as spiritualism, theosophy, parapsychology, and comparative religion, like Katherine, looking for ways to broker a paradigm shift for our modern age.

I began as an experimental parapsychologist, studying the interface of mind and matter. I published my first paper on remote viewing in 1979; this attracted members of the CIA/DIA team doing classified work on psychic phenomena. Years later I gained security clearance through my work in the Cognitive Sciences Laboratory at SAIC, a large government sponsored research site where I conducted research on mind over matter. While my work was never classified directly, I can easily stretch my imagination to that of Katherine's fictional story--her research hidden deep in a web of classified intelligence.

Throughout the past three decades, I conducted laboratory-based and clinical studies involving distant intention, prayer, altered states of consciousness, contemplative practice, subtle energies, and healing. Like the Noetic Sciences program in the Lost Symbol, my experimental research has included studies of distant intention on living systems, including microorganisms, mice, and human physiology. My research on distant mental influences on living systems (DMILS) has been replicated in laboratories around the world, moving it beyond fiction and into peer review journals.

I conducted RNG-PK experiments in the mid 1980's with Helmut Schmidt, the physicist who developed this research area. In our published report, we found that time that intention and attention appeared to impact the outcome of random event generators, or what can be thought of as electronic coin flippers. In particular, we found that meditation practitioners did better than the average population on shifting randomness. And the more practice, the better the results. I'm pleased to note that Katherine confirmed our findings.

Several years ago I convened the first international meeting of the global consciousness project at the Institute of Noetic Sciences. Working with Roger Nelson who worked at the PEAR lab at Princeton, IONS has been the organizational sponsor of this work and its remarkable unfolding over the years. The network of random generators around the world has allowed us to extend our laboratory research into the field and to track the role of collective attention on the creation of order from randomness. The results are highly encouraging, though we have not yet exceeded fictional expectations.

As we have sought to gain a theoretical understanding of our Noetic Science data, my colleagues and I consulted experts in the area of quantum theory. I learned from the best, including Brian Josephson, Richard Feynman, Hans Peter Duerr, Roger Penrose, and Henry Stapp, among others. In addition to research on entanglement and nonlocality, I continue to track complexity, emergence, and string theory, research areas that have also been central to Katherine's studies.

Our laboratory at the Institute of Noetic Sciences includes a 2000 pound electromagnetically shielded room, which we now affectionately refer to as the "Cube." Two wealthy patrons donated funds to build our lab, believing we are on the verge of a breakthrough. In it, my colleague Dean Radin and I have conducted studies of intuition, gut reactions to distant emotional stimuli, order in randomness, the role of intention on water crystals, and the potential non-local nature of dual consciousness, all topics that have been considered in The Lost Symbol. I've published the results in my two main books and in many journal articles (just as Katherine has done). I've even presented this work at the Smithsonian Institute, including discussion of ancient lore about biofields and subtle energies. My team and I look forward to discussing our findings with Katherine and Robert when the dust settles.

Like Katherine, my work is dedicated to bridging science and ancient wisdom. It is at the interface of these two ways of knowing reality where we believe great breakthroughs lie. In our detailed study of consciousness transformation, we studied practitioners from 60 different transformative traditions, some ancient and some modern. Bringing the lens of science to these diverse practices, we identified the factors that stimulate, support, and sustain positive changes--while avoiding the pitfalls that seem to plague Mal'akh and his rigid fundamentalism.

IONS has sponsored research and conferences on the potential survival of consciousness after bodily death. We have studied crosscultural cosmologies of the after life, supported field research on the rainbow body, and collaborated with Ian Stevenson and others on reincarnation and mediumship. As I have written in several publications, the fact of our mortality and what happens when we die are critical issues as we seek a path to peace within ourselves and across cultures.

Both Katherine and I share a deep commitment to the positive unfolding of life on our planet. Like the final message in The Lost Symbol, I believe that human beings are poised on the threshold of a new age; Noetic Science may help lead the way. And, as Katherine mentions, we are grateful for the media relation's bump that the new book offers as we share the findings of the Noetic Sciences with the world."

Watch some videos on Schlitz's research:

The Noetic Universe by Dean Radin. Essential reading for the noetic sciences fans

The book "The Noetic Universe" by real-life noetic scientist Dean Radin, is a reprint of highly acclaimed book The Conscious Universe, to be published in the UK soon.

For this reprint, Dr.Radin wrote a new Preface, which is aimed to ride the wave of interest in noetic science as a result of Dan Brown's lastest best-selling book The Lost Symbol, which includes a fictional characther name Katherine Solomon who's a noetic scientist.

Radin is one of the world top noetic scientists, whose books are a must read for noetic sciences fans, general public and specialized scholars like philosophers and professional scientists.

If you want to watch some of Dean Radin's videos and audios, please visit this link in my blog.

For more information on Radin, visit his website and his blog.

For more information on noetic sciences, visit the Institute of Noetic Sciences.

A lecture on the lastest findings of noetic sciences by Dean Radin may be watched here:

Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), Katherine Solomon and The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

In his lastest book "The Lost Symbol", Dan Brown writes about Katherine Solomon, a fictional character who's a scientist in the Institute of Noetic Sciences in California.

Robert Langdon, the well-known star of Brown's books, when was explained about the concept of noetic sciences, asserted "Sounds more like magic than science" (a typical reply by a conventional scholar when confronted with a new field like that of noetic science)

According to Dan Brown: "Katherine’s two books on Noetics had established her as a leader in this obscure field, but her most recent discoveries, when published, promised to make Noetic Science a topic of mainstream conversation around the world."

It reminds me of real-life noetic scientist Dean Radin, whose books "The Conscious Universe" and "Entangled Minds" have brought of field of noetic science to almost mainstream discussion (remember that Radin's first book was reviewed in leading scientific journal Nature. For a criticism of that biased review, see Nobel Prize-winner physicist Brain Josephson's commentary in this link)

As an example of real-life noetic science research, see this brief talk by Dean Radin on mind-matter interface (a key topic in noetic sciences):



Let's to return to to Brown's book. On Solomon character (and showing that Brown is informed about some the lastest findings of actual neotic sciences), he writes: "Deep within this building, in the darkness of the most remote recesses, was a small scientific laboratory unlike any other in the world. The recent breakthroughs Katherine had made here in the field of Noetic Science had ramifications across every discipline—from physics, to history, to philosophy, to religion. Soon everything will change, she thought"

"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."

For more information on real-life mind-matter interaction research, see this talk by the Society of Scientific Exploration:





Brown continues " 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."

For a commentary the Global Consciousness Project and the events of the 9/11, see Dean Radin's real noetic sciences book "Entangled Minds"(pp. 195-202), and these brief videos:





For a information on The Intention Experiment, watch this interview with Lynne McTaggart:



It's interesting to note that, even though Brown's book is "fictional", the character of scientist Katherine Solomon is based in actual, real-life noetic scientists like Dean Radin and others.

So, if you have interest in noetic sciences or are a fan of Brown's books, you'll enjoy his lastest one "The Lost Symbol":