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

We entered the realm of quantum ideas by way of something seemingly mundane to the modern world, which was a fascination with why objects glowed different colors when heated. But, back when philosophy and spirituality were still tied directly to science, the study of color and light was considered a way of tapping into the Almighty’s mind.

By 700 B.C.E., the ancient Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and Assyrians had all contributed significant treatises on the topic. Later, the Romans and Greeks added their ideas, and the math to back them up, to what would eventually split off as a whole branch of physics called optics. In the Middle Ages, the Islamic philosopher and polymath, Al-Kindi, and later, the Christian experimenter Roger Bacon began to apply empirical method to the study. But, each text from these early scientists was also slanted to reconcile their findings with their spiritual beliefs.

By the 1700s, observation based on experimentation had begun to replace many mythical undertones, but the controversy over the origins and meanings of light and color was brought to its spiritual zenith in a public clash of titans between Newton and Goethe. As much as either of them were desperately trying to lift the heavy hand of the Church from the throats of science explorers, they were both products of their beliefs – Newton as an alchemist, and Goethe as a philosopher. Both wrote more on theology than on science.

And, this was the foundation from which Einstein and his peers emerged to conjure the revolutionary theories that started the early 20^th century with such radical ideas that they could hardly be believed. In fact, that’s why Einstein didn’t receive a Nobel Prize for E=mc2. The scientific community was so stunned by the implications of it, and how it brought a touch of anarchy to their belief systems, that they chose to wait and see if it panned out before jumping on the bandwagon of its truth.

However, Einstein’s other revelations were well received, especially his ideas on the age-old question of why objects glowed different colors when heated. About thirty years prior to Einstein’s publications, Heinrich Hertz was the first to observe the threshold frequencies different objects exhibited when struck by a powerful beam of light. In essence, he found what made them glow different colors when heated. But, he couldn’t explain why low frequencies of light didn’t have the same effect. In other words, no one knew why something could feel hot and not look hot.

Enter Einstein. Building on Max Planck’s theory of blackbody radiation, he developed the mathematical underpinnings to answer the last part in this ancient question. For this, what had been known as the Hertz Effect, was renamed the Photoelectric Effect, and Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize for it several years after other folks conducted the experiments which proved it to be true.

These equations are still used daily by the astronomical communities to peer into the heavens and make sense of the data gathered. They are also what determines all the beautiful color to the rendered, and amazing pictures taken by the Hubble Telescope.

More importantly, these equations firmly established the idea of light as a particle, namely a photon. That is something Newton and others had tried to do, but could not produce the experimental evidence necessary to bump the wave theory of light from its supreme reign.

What Einstein did was bring us full circle. In the last fifty or sixty years, we have become more at ease with the wholistic notion that light is both a particle and wave. We’ve also come to embrace that light will show itself as either, depending on how we set up the experiment. In other words, we are participants in how things manifest.

The word quantum originally referred to discreet packets of energy, and was applied as a description of how light, as a photon, actually traveled and interacted with matter. Today, it has taken on an entirely different meaning as an all-interconnected realm of possibility.

So, no matter what mathematical or experimental advancements we have made, we have never left the mystical undertones that follow the investigation of light and what it really is, what it represents, and how it interacts with everything.

For further reading, see theses articles from The Sage Age – Blending Science with Intuitive Wisdom

Einstein and His Famous Equation
Quantum – What Does it Mean?
Coming to Terms with Light
Dancing to the Same Score – The Particle/Wave Duality of Light

While these statements may seem controversial, Hawking and Mlodinow are not the first theoretical mathematicians to attempt to remove God or theology from the halls of science. Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton all did the same thing with varying degrees of success.

It’s important to realize that none of these men stated that God did not exist. What they said was that everything about the workings of the universe could be explained by mathematics. In fact, Newton did such a splendid and thorough job of explaining the clockwork of the heavens, and other topics of physics, that many scientists of the day declared that the last volume had been written on those matters and there was nothing new to learn.

If the history of scientific discovery teaches us anything, it’s that there is
always something new to learn and it either overturns previous certainties,
or shows them to be true only under a limited range of circumstances.

Hawking also presented the idea that ours was not the only universe. In fact, he stated that there are a “great many universes” and all of them were created out of nothingness. He went on to state that “these multiple universes arise naturally from physical law. They are a prediction of science.” Hawking isn’t the first to suggest that idea. It began to gain acceptance as the notion of inflationary cosmology took hold, which describes how the universe took shape from its earliest moments to what we see now. It’s also been criticized as a theory invented solely as a way for cosmologists to remove God from the equations. (Note: the multiverse theory is a fairly recent development and completely different from the Many Worlds theory, which was proposed by Hugh Everett in 1957.)

Something from Nothing

During the panel discussion that followed the one-on-one interview with Hawking, both Father Robert J. Spitzer, (Jesuit priest and author of New Proofs for the Existence of God: Contributions of Contemporary Physics and Philosophy) and Deepak Chopra (spiritual teacher and best-selling author) took issue with the idea of something from nothing. They are not alone. Several physicists, including those who study quantum theory, M theory (of which string theory is a part), and the multiverse theory, are trying to write the equations that will explain the existence of both time and matter prior to the Big Bang. (A side note. One of my favorite physicists on this topic is Lisa Randall, Professor of Physics at Harvard, who authored Warpped Passages.)

In response, Mlodinow briefly touched on the subject by suggesting that quantum theory upholds the old axiom that nature abhors a vacuum by stating that, “You can have nothingness in quantum theory. But from that, things will arise.” Basically, things pop into and out of existence so rapidly that we don’t even notice. He somewhat deflected the question about nothingness being the beginning of existence and cited the time-before-time problem as the reason there is no satisfactory answer to that question yet.

Consciousness

From out of left field, King asked Mlodinow what happens to us when we die. After recovering from being stunned at the question, he deflected it a bit, but it led to a very interesting response about consciousness and the limits of science to quantify it. He said, “there’s no physics explanation for consciousness. And as far as I can tell, I’ve never seen consciousness defined in a way that a scientist can really deal with.”

One of the TV shows I enjoy is Closer to Truth, which deals with many of the same questions presented in this King interview, including cosmology, consciousness, and God. In each episode, the host, Dr. Robert Lawrence Kuhn, asks a question from one of these topics and then presents interviews with 4-7 leading thinkers in those areas giving their perspective. One of the elements I most enjoy about the show is the diversity of those Kuhn interviews and the balance of ideas it brings forth. Kuhn never draws a conclusion for his audience, although he does tastefully interject his own opinion and commentary between interviews.

The reason I bring up this show is that I’ve been watching it for a couple of seasons and I’m impressed with the wide range of ideas held about what consciousness is. During the time I was researching The Sage Age, I came to the conclusion that each individual branch of study has its own working definition of consciousness, but there is no over-arching definition, and certainly nothing concrete enough for science to quantify outside of measuring the shadows of consciousness, which is brain activity.

The Limits of Science

Given that is the case, Mlodinow was wise to respond that, “physics is not an axiomatic system. Meaning that you state a few mathematical principles and derive everything using mathematics from those principles. That’s not what science is. Science is based on ideas that come from observation and consequences.” And, he was also wise to re-emphasize that the book he and Hawking wrote was fundamentally about answering two questions, which were where the universe came from and why the laws of nature were as they appeared today.

By stating that “God was not necessary to create the universe or to make the laws what they are,” neither author is attempting to do away with the existence of God or to explain every mystery. As Kuhn says in the episode, What Things are Conscious?, when all the great answers of physics have been found, we will not have begun to unravel the mysteries of consciousness.

I am satisfied that consciousness, or Mind, can exist without theology or the need for a personified god being. I also acknowledge that we often marvel at the abilities of our intelligence to recognize patterns in something as vast and complex as the cosmos almost as much as we marvel at the cosmos itself.

We are More than Physics

The comment Father Spitzer made toward the end of the discussion sticks in my mind, which was, “[Humans] want to know who they really are at their deepest level, whether that be empirically obvious or not. Perhaps there is something more to human beings than merely physics or M Theory.” He goes on to say, “We’re constantly inquiring because we want the most out of our lives. And so basically we don’t quash the mystery. We enter into the mystery. Most of the time, we enter into the mystery by asking questions.”

The book that Hawking and Mlodinow present is what they, and many other scientists, believe to be the answers to their questions about one aspect of the mystery. It doesn’t answer everything and it doesn’t completely close the doors to other possibilities. In fact, when King asked Hawking if he could travel through time, which way would he go, Stephen replied, “I would go forward and find if M theory is indeed a theory of everything.”

A few forms of non-dualistic meditation require resting the mind on something, perhaps an object. Clarity is achieved when the mind takes on the shape of that on which it is resting without any distortion. One can then say, “I am that.”

Neuro-science maps the shape of the mind holding a clear thought another way; by using functional MRI (fMRI). It literally constructs a topology showing the active areas of the brain while it is engaged in various tasks.

Many ancient belief systems contain narratives of beings who can manifest anything just by thinking about it. What’s not so popularly known is that some of these narratives also state that such beings are a little envious of the human capacity to play with a multiplicity of ideas before settling on one, and delaying the enactment of it. In other words, we can play within the confines of our imagination. Or can we?

The idea that our thoughts create our reality is a very, very, very old one. It has been resurrected into pop culture by clever marketers capitalizing on the New Age Thought movement and the mind-bending notions of quantum physics. Even if folks don’t fully understand these ideas, most everyone is attracted to being in the mystery they present.

Once folks realize they can think their way into a better reality, the target then becomes to master thought control. One tool used to achieve this is known as setting an intent. The result is that once the thought is perfectly clear, it will manifest.

While contemplative meditation focuses primarily on the being side of existence, most of us spend our time thinking about the how, where, when, why of doing. That includes what we are doing now and what we want to be doing.

Over the years, it has become increasingly important to me to develop clarity of vision in all ways as a tool to learning and growing. About a decade ago, I began to notice that whatever I had become clear about manifested within a short period of time, usually in a matter of days.

What I’m experiencing now is that the clarity in long-range vision is much more difficult to achieve. When it does manifest, it’s usually before I’m ready. These days, if I’m standing anywhere near the pool when clarity comes, a universal wind gust throws me into the deep end. In other words, when clarity comes, I don’t have to motivate myself to take action. It’s an automatic coping response to manifesting.

I’ve begun to consider why those beings who can instantly manifest their thoughts might envy us. Some days that instant-manifestation thing seems a little like a Midas touch problem.

I’ve also wondered if the change is with me and if I’ve moved into a place of power that carries with it another level of responsibility. Once my ego finished playing with that idea, I noticed that those same sorts of upheavals or deep-end diving changes are happening with most everyone I know. It’s almost like the universe saying, “Here’s the new life you asked for. Deal with it.” All of this is a side-effect of living during the Shift. It’s not about lack of clarity as much as an under-estimation of how fast things are changing.

There’s no omniscience with my clarity these days. I used to be able to easily recognize the manifestation. Now I often only know it in hindsight; after I’ve unwrapped the box, taken it out, and played with it in the sandbox for a while.

So, maybe there is no real downside to clarity of vision, but I am having to learn to adapt and adjust more quickly as the manifesting changes come, including those that are personal as well as global. And, having to adapt to recognizing the package wrapping that the manifestation comes in now is not always so pretty. I think about Hawaii. That lush place is so beautiful, but the volcanic land didn’t look that way when it was first manifested.

How are you doing with the changes and how has it affected your clarity of vision?

I decided to do an informal poll to see if folks could pick fact from fiction. There were eight statements total in the poll, with instructions to choose all the ones that were false. One of the statements was an option for all of the other statements to be true.

Following are the results. Just over 40 people took the poll. The statements are ordered such that the ones that got the most marks (as being false) are at the top, followed by those that got less marks, meaning that folks thought those statements were true.

Sound is a lower frequency of light. 20%
Sound can be heard in space. 20%
Sound from celestial bodies can be recorded directly from orbit. 13.33%
Sound and light travel equally far, just at different speeds. 13.33%
All statements are true. 13.33%
Sound and light waves are the same type. 6.67%
Sound and light waves are measured along the same continuum. 6.67%
All statements are false. 6.67%

The correct answer is: “All statements are false.”

To give a little more room for error, I used a few statements that could have been interpreted as meaning the same thing. Basically, I was trying to discover how many folks thought sound and light were the same thing and measured along the same continuum since both are referenced by words like frequency, waves, and wavelength.

The way I interpret the percentages in the poll is that most folks know that sound is not a lower frequency of light. But most folks don’t know that sound and light waves are actually two different types of waves and are not measured along the same continuum.

The other set of responses I found intriguing were the two about sound in space. Most folks recognized that sound could not be heard in space, but not as many recognized that sound could not be recorded from orbit. Being in orbit is being in space, so both statements are false.

Sound is the result of a disturbance in a medium, such as air; hence, it has a finite limit of travel due to the resistance of the medium, which will eventually absorb and diffuse it. Light, on the other hand, is a self-propagating wave and can travel for infinity, given the opportunity, such as it does in space. That’s not to say that light cannot be absorbed, it’s just to point out why light and sound cannot travel equally as far, and so that statement is false.

Feel free to leave comments here on the blog about how you read the statements and why you chose as you did.

So, I’ve created a fun little poll where you can see what myths you believe about sound and light.

Check each statement that you think is false.
Or, mark them all true or all false at the bottom.
Have fun!!

After you finish you’ll be shown what others chose.

I’ll do a follow-up post tomorrow with the correct answers.

It may not, on the surface, seem that oil pumping and healthcare have a single common denominator, but they do. It is the consumer. Both industries are completely consumer driven.

While researching many of the topics in The Sage Age, I had to follow their trail back in time to gain historical context. In doing so, I came across several stories that forever altered my perspective on such things as the healthcare industry. One such instance came while researching the study of light. It involved the invention of the X-ray as a diagnostic tool.

Consumers were so enamored with the novelty of being able to see inside their body that they insisted they be given an X-ray even if they only had a cold. If the doctor refused, then the patient would simply seek a doctor who would comply with their wishes. In other words, money walked out the door and was spent elsewhere if the doctor didn’t follow the patient’s orders. This trend remained undaunted until reports began surfacing of the possibility of X-ray radiation poisoning from over-exposure.

Today, that trend of consumers dictating the standards of healthcare is still with us. Everyday there are countless TV commercials showing a person in their late 20s or early 30s advocating a pain reliever that lets them run another 10 miles. Translation – give me whatever I want so I don’t have to disrupt my life or be inconvenienced with the underlying cause I want to put on ignore.

It’s easy to argue that the pharmaceutical industry is creating the above scenario. The fact is, the consumer is creating it. No industry can sell a product for which there is no demand.

The industry follows the consumer. Case in point. When over a billion dollars a year began flowing out of consumer pockets into the alternative medicine arena, hospitals began offering Complimentary Alternative Therapies (CAM) and insurance companies began covering some of those services. Healing the underlying causes of illness takes time. That fact is the one that consumers are just beginning to wake up to.

Everyone in the U.S. is currently up in arms about the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and demanding that off-shore drilling be stopped. While public pressure may indeed bring about that very result, the fact is that the consumption of oil will not simultaneously decrease. In other words, the oil will simply be drilled somewhere else and likely cost more.

Want a real solution? Stop using all petroleum-based products. How easily pacified we are to buy a battery driven car not realizing that most everything from the dashboard to the exterior paint is made from oil.

The total amount of oil spilled in one month from the BP disaster is equal to what U.S. consumers use in one hour and gasoline is only a fraction of that total.

It’s so easy to blame the government, the pharmaceutical companies, and the oil industry. What’s not so easy is to make the real sacrifice necessary in consumption and to face the consequences of that change. When we stop using all of those products, all of the factories that make them shut down. All of the industries that make machines and supplies for those factories shut down. And, we begin to over-consume other natural resources to take the place of everything made of plastic. The same consequences are true in the healthcare industry.

Will real change come by continuing to raise our irritated voices in blaming big government and big industry? Probably not. Are we willing to look at the bigger picture and make the sacrifices needed for real change? We’ll see.

Earlier this week, she emailed to say that the book is now available and she is sending me a copy. The title is Beyond the Matrix: Daring Conversations with the Brilliant Minds of Our Times. She lists me as an “intuitive physicist,” which I found to be a very interesting description of the content of our conversation about topics from The Sage Age. You can click the link above or image to the left to view the full description of the book on Amazon.

I remember most of our conversation, but I’ll be interested to see how it was edited for the book. If you read it, please feel free to leave a comment here on the blog. I’m sure Ms. Cori will be interested in knowing what you think of the book too.

Because this interview was sequestered for the book, there is no archive link for that show on The Sage Age site’s OnTour page, but there are links to several other radio interviews, as well as links to other text interviews. Plus you’ll find links to the blog tour, which includes more interviews plus reviews.

Recently I listened to the Dalai Lama teach on three ways that we come to know things. The first is perceptual knowledge that comes to us through our senses. The second is experiential knowledge. Even though we may be able to convey the knowledge we gained, the experience of obtaining it may remain mostly ineffable.

The third way of knowing is information we accept on faith as completely true. The analogy the Dalai Lama used to demonstrate this point is how you know your birthday. You were told. You have no perceptive, and likely, no intuitive way to conjure the date on your own with absolute accuracy. However, you may have a way of discerning how you feel about what you were told.

The further point He made about this third way of knowing was that until you reach the stage of enlightenment yourself, you will need to accept on faith what other enlightened humans tell you about it and how to attain it. Now, He didn’t say that faith needed to be blind. In fact, He encouraged using discernment to consider the teacher’s character and to see if they had any reason to lie to you.

It has never occurred to me to question my mother, or any member of my family, about the date of my birth. And, the whole analogy He used may seem trivial and useful only because it’s common to all. But, I found it quite profound.

Think about it. Your date of birth is one of the most important identification markers in your life. If you believe in astrology charts, your birthday has everything to do with how you relate to your world for the entire time you are here. Recall how many legal documents you’ve filled out that required both your name and your birthday. In fact, your birthday is a more stable I.D. than your name, which could be legally changed. Or, you could prefer to be addressed by a nickname or alias.

Considering that the date of our birth is so intimate and so important to our identity, it’s amazing that we accept this information about ourselves on pure faith and have no way to independently verify it within ourselves as absolutely true. Every fact we encounter about it depends entirely on someone telling someone.

The key to Buddhism is that the Buddha was a human being who attained enlightenment. We have no way to independently verify this statement. If those who are inclined to this teaching cannot accept it on faith, then they cannot practice Buddhism. Otherwise, it would be striving for a fairy tale.

Until I attain enlightenment, the best I can do is place myself among teachers that I believe to be telling me the truth in so far as they can speak the ineffable, and in so far as they know the truth of ultimate reality. It is up to me to discern what I can about what I am told and about what I experience. The rest I take on faith until I have a way to know directly.

Most every adult in the U.S. remembers when the term politically correct turned into the verb being PC. We began to wholeheartedly embrace the fact that being mindful of our language changes attitudes.

While most of that thought reformation has been targeted toward social justice in recent decades, it’s worthwhile to note the changes it has brought to our rational understanding of reality as well.

It took many years for folks to come to terms with the principles set forth in Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and his work Opticks, which is about the nature of light. After that, scientists were ready to close up shop, stating that everything that needed to be known in physics had been revealed.

Thankfully, human curiosity cannot be so easily satiated. About 100 years later, Einstein showed that Newton’s laws were merely a subset of a larger truth. Einstein’s bold statements began the quantum revolution that ensured we would never stop investigating because the new theories clearly demonstrated the profoundness of our ignorance.

Most of us weren’t alive in 1905 when Einstein released his first papers that changed everything. We have no way to remember what it was like to live through an intellectual revolution of Copernican magnitude. Most believe that E=mc2 was as popular then as it is now. Unfortunately, Einstein suffered the same shunning and disbelief as Newton until others could check the math and see the truth for themselves.

We are sentimental creatures who are hard-pressed to relinquish what brings us pleasure or security in our world. For instance, even though we know full well that we live in a solar-centric system, we are still enamored with the words sunset and sunrise. When folks in the U.S. and in Australia both point up, they are actually pointing in different directions out. And, think about our casual use of the word universal when, thanks to Einstein and every astrophysicist since, we clearly have evidence to show that what we experience on this planet is anything but universal.

Language is a living thing. Currently, there are two key words in cultural flux that are shifting us into another revolution. They are heart and brain. Material realists would have us believe that without a brain, or another physical processing center, there would be no thought. The other philosophy vying for dominance right now is that consciousness is the basis of everything and both matter and energy are an epiphenomenon of it.

The tenuous compromise being struck is that perhaps the organ in the head is not the only intelligence processing center. The term emotional I.Q. came into vogue a few decades ago and now the term heart intelligence is gaining in popularity.

With recent advancements in technology, science has been able to start measuring the subtle energy fields emanating from the hands of healers and Qigong masters. Even molecular biologists are jumping on the bandwagon by showing how our thoughts affect us at the cellular level.

The fact is, the physical body is a sophisticated, multi-faceted antenna system that transmits and receives all manner of informed energies. That’s what the first four chapters of The Sage Age are all about.

We may very well be adopting the language that will lead into another Copernican-level revolution. And our great, great grandchildren will think that all these theories and ideas must have been as popular with us as it is to them. And, they will be able to clearly see that what their great, great grandparents knew was merely a subset of a larger truth.