The Lost Symbol, found
Dan Brown's (author of The DaVinci Code) new book, The Lost Symbol, was published yesterday. It immediately leapt to the top of the bestselling charts and will undoubtedly stay there a while.
Unbeknownst to us, or to practically anyone else because of the tight embargo on the plot, the heroine Katherine Solomon in the book is a "noetic scientist," and the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) is cited along with a fair bit of that character's view of noetic science. The fictional Katherine appears to be a composite of several real-life noetic scientists.
I am Senior Scientist at the actual Institute of Noetic Sciences. We've added a few pages to the IONS web site to provide more information about what noetic science actually is, along with our current research portfolio, some of our journal publications, and audio and video interviews. You can find that information by going to our homepage and clicking on the "In the spotlight" image.
Comments
On the other hand, I fear that excessively popular treatments of obscure subjects runs the risk of teaching people incorrect ideas that have to be undone with laborious effort, later.
#1) Great changes will happen by 31 January 2010:
We need you my darling to be strong as the next 5 months will reveal so much, by the end of January 2010, we in Spirit will have achieved all that we have set out to achieve. we reveal more and more to you and bring people to your attention who strive for Truth to be revealed and people to again have control over their own destiny. Do not allow yourselves to be herded like cattle to the abattoir for this is where you are being blindly lead. Look beyond what you are being told on TV and in newspapers, it is but propaganda to control you.
http://www.montaguekeen.com/articles/montague/aug16-2009.htm
#2) The Vatican, Occult Geometry, bloodlines, and obscure territory deals such as the City of London are involved in Conspiracies.
The time for Manifestation approaches, the 9 Gods and the Great Creator prepare to rescue Man from the Evil that now surrounds you and wants to take control of you by very devious means. Again I ask you to look at the true facts of the Council of Nicea which in simple terms was just A HORSE TRADE for Power and Control. The Vatican is not as it is portrayed. Occult Knowledge and Sacred Geometry rules. Look at the City of London, that Square Mile is not part of the UK... ask WHY. Why are blood lines so protected? Man will reclaim his birthright.
http://www.montaguekeen.com/articles/montague/aug23-2009.htm
I am tracking these and other predictions made by Keen because his 31 January 2010 deadline makes a nice, convenient cutoff point for judging the accuracy of his predictions.
I plan to continue updating a page on this, but Google will probably migrate it to Google Sites soon, and at any rate there should be at least two or three months' worth of interesting predictions to log before it's all ready for examination.
Malcolm
As to the connection to the IONS, I think Marilyn's blog expo on her parallels with the book character was a nice piece of PR. I do that for a living, so I appreciate a good flak turn.
As to the Masonic angle, I know an executive in a Masonic organization and when people ask about world conspiracies, etc, she says "Have any of the conspiracy authors WORKED with the Masons?"
That's right. A "she" executive.
Obviously there is more here than meets the eye, as the boys say in "Help":
Ringo: There's more here than meets the eye!
Sub-text reads' "Everyone laughs at Ringo's sudden apprehension."
George: Ho ho!
John: Ho.
George: Ho ho.
John: Ho.
[Continues on]
I've been combing the IONS website all morning, I've been watching every youtube video I could find with you in it (I'm listening to a lecture you did for google even now) and I have just found your website which brought me here. I need more information, I need to know if it's still in the research stage or if there are hard results ... were they recorded? If so can I watch the recordings of the experiments and their results? Can I talk to someone involved in these studies?
Or, look through the materials on the IONS website here:
http://www.noetic.org/about/godeeper.cfm,
especially our recent journal articles and recommended books.
If you want to read some of the full articles, send email to me at dean@noetic.org.
Unless you count disquisitions on breathing liquid, of course. I don't.
Given his breadth of reference, and the wonderful absurd-seeming conjunction of Noetic Science and Masonry, I think Brown missed a great opportunity here.
Did Euripides apply Noetic Science to literature when he introduced the deus ex machina into tragedy? If so, he is still ahead of Dan Brown, whose helicopters and glass fragments obey a gravity that is tediously Newtonian, and a denouement that is predictably Cartesian in its coordinates.
For fun: what would a true noetic science fiction be like? Any suggestions? Authors? Tim Powers has been entered in the lists.
Our scientifically sophisticated world tends to stiff-arm such topics as being unworthy of serious consideration, except perhaps for fictional "symbologists." And certainly some of that lore is little more than superstition. But not all. Noetic science pays as much attention to hardcore science as it does to the scholarly literature on mysticism, esoterica, and similar topics, because those topics suggest that there is more to human consciousness than one finds in our college textbooks. This is what noetic science is rediscovering as well.
One example of a story where noetic science is plot-central is the Star Wars saga.
A book I recommend about the occult origins of the modern would is the newly published Occult America. See http://www.mitchhorowitz.com/
His fiction inhabits a world where the insights of noetic science are central, if shrouded, themes.
They're not about the science, but they pulsate with the mystery of internal life, frequently fore-fronting intuition and psychic journeying.
http://insidedateline.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/10/07/2092154.aspx