The Sage Age Blog

Archive for the ‘Lost Symbol’ Category

This week, Dan Brown’s latest novel, The Lost Symbol, is being released in paperback. Besides the thrill of the story itself, Brown has such a wonderful way of mixing fact and fiction that it invites the reader to figure out which one is which.

In this novel, one of the real entities he uses is The Institute of Noetic Sciences IONS). And, one of the main characters, Katherine Solomon,  is the head researcher. Her real-life counterpart is Dr. Marilyn Schlitz.

If you haven’t read the book yet, you’ll find it to be a entertaining introduction to the very serious research being conducted all over the world on topics that were once taboo in scientific circles.

If you have read the book and you’re ready to go deeper, I invite you to visit the IONS website at www.Noetic.org. There you will find a wealth of information on their three main areas of research including consciousness and healing, worldview transformation, and extended human capacities. This is not the woo-woo stuff. It’s real science conducted by respected researchers and has real-world applications that are making real changes in people’s lives, as well as in ecology, economics, and community systems.

And, if you want to get a real handle on the blending of science with intuitive wisdom in one book, pick up a copy of The Sage Age. I have just a few on-hand from my last lecture tour, if you would like one personally autographed for yourself or someone you would like to gift.

Here’s a brief description of what you’ll get in the book.

• Harmonizing the full range of frontier science with current intuitive wisdom and practice.
• Demystifying science jargon and metaphysical buzzwords with easy to understand examples and illustrations.
• A seekers guide bringing new models for new thought.

In these changing times, it’s important to have clarity of where we are headed. I’m delighted that The Lost Symbol has highlighted such a vital organization like IONS where you can find a host of articles, blog posts, audio and video downloads, research papers, and other publications to help you make sense of it all. And, did I mention membership is free? Be sure to take note of their past and future Wednesday teleseminar series info too.  I’m usually on those calls. Maybe we’ll get to chat there too.

Here are a few other blog posts you may find interesting:

The Research Behind The Lost Symbol
The Noetic Scientist in The Lost Symbol

In the first installment of this series we delved into one of the real Noetic Science experiments mentioned in The Lost Symbol involving mind-over-matter research using Random Event Generators and how that research evolved into the Global Consciousness Project.

In this installment, we’re going to have a look at the mysterious “Cube” Dan Brown created as the heart of Katherine’s lab.

A real “Cube” does exist. In fact, there are several around the world. They are specially shielded rooms that contain a device called a S.Q.U.I.D., which stands for Super-conducting Quantum Interface Device and is used for such diverse investigations from helping localize pathology in the brain to the measurement of energy being emitted from the hands of healers and Qigong masters.

A S.Q.U.I.D. is so sensitive that the room in which it is used must be heavily shielded from any stray electromagnetic (EM) energy. Basically, this means that no light can enter the room from the outside world. That is precisely why Brown’s character, Katherine, had to traverse a completely dark expanse between her lab and the door that lead to the outside world.

EM radiation comes in many forms including sunlight, lamp light, and any type of broadcast signal such as TV, radio, and cell phones. EM radiation is also present around electrical wires generating AC, which is why Katherine’s lab was powered by hydrogen fuel cells that delivered DC, or Direct Current.

Devices as sensitive as a S.Q.U.I.D. can measure very subtle energies that are giving researchers a way to quantify their existence and their ability to affect matter by conducting experiments that apply the rigors of scientific investigation. However, the data gathered from these experiments has also encouraged many pseudo-science practitioners to claim that we are finally able to measure consciousness, thought, and even finally prove the existence of the subtle energy bodies that surround and permeate the physical body.

Such an arranged marriage of physics and metaphysics is not new. When the EKG was developed to measure the electrical activity surrounding the heart and then refined into an EEG to measure the electrical activity around the brain, similar claims of measuring thought also occurred. In fact, some people, including a few scientists, claimed that these signals proved the existence of telepathy. History is simply repeating itself with the S.Q.U.I.D. And, history clearly shows that every advancement in technology also carries an advancement of the attempt to blend science with mysticism, esoteric knowledge, or intuitive wisdom. (Read more on the evolution of thought on light from both science and intuitives in the article Coming to Terms with Light.)

David Bohm, one of the founding fathers of quantum physics, clearly described why we will never be able to measure the subtle energies that reside in the invisible realm he called “the implicate order” that lies outside the manifested, or visible realm he called “the explicate order.” He also clearly described how these subtle energies guide matter and become the resulting data of the experiments we conduct in our search to measure consciousness. (For a little more background on Bohm’s ideas, read the article Dancing to the Same Score – The Particle/Wave Duality of Light.)

The fact that there is a threshold between the invisible and the visible realms has never deterred scientists and engineers from imagining ways to measure what was previously unknown. For instance, radio waves, which are a frequency of light, were always present in our atmosphere. At some point, several folks became convinced of this fact and began a life-long journey of building devices to not only measure them, but to also develop uses for them from a broadcast signal of communication to a way of studying the stars.

At some point, when we get beyond the novelty factor of it, a S.Q.U.I.D. may become as much a standard diagnostic tool as an EKG is today. However, I’m not so sure that any of us will get used to taking that long walk in the dark to get to it.

The Sage Age – Blending Science with Intuitive Wisdom, was featured in Publishers Weekly shortly after its debut. Visit www.SageAge.net for more information and to read articles on many of the topics covered in the book.

In The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown alludes to the research behind Noetic Sciences as having the ability to measure the effect of mind-over-matter. He mentions Random Event Generators and experiments being conducted in a specially shielded lab he calls “The Cube.”

Dan Brown is known as a master of so seamlessly blending fact into fiction that it becomes an invitation to the reader to sort one from the other. Following are a few of the facts of the real research that has been conducted over the last three decades showing irrefutable data that it is indeed possible for the mind, through focused intention, to cause a measurable affect on matter.

Privately-funded research has been carried out by several major universities in the U.S. including the PEAR project, which was an acronym for the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research program. Many of the experiments conducted by PEAR involved the measurable influence that a test subject could have upon a random event generator (REG). PEAR’s in-house lab tests were conducted over a 12-year period. During that time, they developed a variety of mind-to-machine interfaces which resulted in a mountain of statistical evidence showing that human intent did in fact affect the outcome of the machine’s performance. The deviations from truly random outcomes were small, but statistically significant.

By the 1990s, a field REG was developed by Roger Nelson that could be operated from a laptop PC. It was taken on field trips to measure the effects of group meetings, particularly those conducting rituals on sacred sites. These experiments registered a deviation six times higher than normal on the REG compared to trials in the lab at PEAR. The readings were also two times higher than field measurements taken at other gatherings.

The project officially began recording data in 1998 with 10 field REG units strategically placed around the globe. Interest and funding in the project grew and by 2004 over 60 units were in place globally.

Nelson described the deployment as resembling the configuration of electrodes as they were placed on the human head during an ElectroEncephaloGram, or EEG. Since these REG nodes were monitoring global events, Nelson dubbed it an ElectroGaiaGram, or EGG Project.

The Global Consciousness Project maintains a website where significant spikes in the data stream can be viewed. Of note are the spikes that occurred four hours prior to the 9/11/2004 attack in the U.S. and just before the Asian Tsunami came ashore on 12/26/2004. (Take note that these spikes happened prior to the events.)

In the second installment of this series, Dan Brown’s Cube will be discussed along with a special quantum measuring device called a S.Q.U.I.D. that requires a shielded room in which to operate.

The Sage Age – Blending Science with Intuitive Wisdom, was featured in Publishers Weekly shortly after its debut. Visit www.SageAge.net for more information and to read articles on many of the topics covered in the book.