Noetic Science

I have just finished reading Dan Brown's latest epic, 'The Lost Symbol'. The literati are always critical of the quality of his writing. To some extent they are right, but I believe that some of it is just envy. He has, obviously, found the Holy Grail, lol, of novel writing, having sold over 1million copies on the first day of release, breaking all historical sales records for fiction.

I had no idea what the book was about and had not read any reviews. So you can understand that I was a little 'spooked' when I realized that it is written around the hypothesis of an intelligent universe, where everything is linked and human consciousness has an effect on the material world around us (the effect of mind on matter). What 'spooked' me is that this was the subject of my last blog called, 'What's the point of Dinosaurs'! Just a coincidence of course?

Incidentally, one of my readers thought I had taken leave of my senses! 'Lost the plot', so to speak.

The story itself is not that brilliant, with a fairly predictable, 'Dan Brown', style plot. However it still gripped me to the last page. But for me, and millions of others, it was an introduction to the Science of Noetics. The following is an extract from the Institute of Noetic Science's press release in response to the sales success of the book:

About Noetic Science

The word "noetic" comes from the ancient Greek nous, for which there is no exact equivalent in English. It refers to "inner knowing" or “intuitive consciousness”—direct and immediate access to knowledge beyond what is available to our normal senses and power of reason. Noetic sciences apply the lens of science, its rigors and standards of evidence-based research, to the multidisciplinary study of the mysteries of consciousness.

You can read the full text on the IONS website: http://www.noetic.org/

Another interesting link is to The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) program: http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/

According to IONS, Dan Brown has researched the topic very thoroughly and the descriptions of the scientific methods used are real. All this appears to have taken the online world by storm. Personally, I find the whole thing fascinating and look forward to following developments in the months and years ahead.

I expect to blog more on this but, appropriately, my next posting will be my thoughts on the predictions surrounding the 'apocalyptic' date of 21st December 2012. For those 'End of the World' merchants- you know who you are- there is an alternate definition of Apocalypse. From Greek it is apocalupsis, which means, revelation.