Secrets of The Lost Symbol

by Daniel Burstein

  Schlitz has worked on many of the same studies and experiments as the fictional Katherine. She has even conducted tests from an electromagnetically shielded room, which she now refers to as “the Cube.” Here, the Institute of Noetic Sciences president gives her version of what she (and Katherine) are trying to achieve.

  Out of the blue my colleagues and I have become part of the plotline in The Lost Symbol. The lead, Katherine Solomon, is a noetic scientist with whom I can relate. Indeed, short of olive-colored skin, long hair, a wealthy family, and a crazy sociopath pursuing her, there are some exceptional similarities in our mutual bios.

  I begin with a theme that pervades The Lost Symbol: the Masons. Both my father and brother were 32° Masons and members of the Scottish Rite. They both learned mysterious symbols that could not be shared with me, despite my many probing questions. My father wore the iconic Masonic ring, which was passed down to my brother after his death, just as it was in the character Katherine’s family.

  As noetic scientists, Katherine and I share a mutual fascination with the powers and potential of consciousness, and we have both pursued careers well outside the mainstream.

  As president/CEO of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, 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.

  Like Katherine, my career began at nineteen. 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 on spiritualism, theosophy, parapsychology, and comparative religion. Like Katherine, I was 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 (Defense Intelligence Agency) team doing classified work on psychic phenomena. Years later I gained security clearance through my work in the Cognitive Sciences Laboratory at SAIC (Science Applications International Corporation), a large government-sponsored research site where I conducted research on mind over matter. Throughout the past three decades, I have 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-reviewed journals.

  I conducted RNG-PK (random generator) experiments in the mid-1980s with Helmut Schmidt, the physicist who developed this research area. In our published report, we found that intention and attention appeared to have an impact on 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. 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. We were able to establish a network of random generators around the world that allowed us to extend our laboratory research into the field and track the role of collective attention on the creation of order from randomness.

  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; Henry Stapp; and IONS founder Edgar Mitchell, 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 two-thousand-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 nonlocal nature of nondual consciousness, all topics that have been considered in The Lost Symbol. I’ve published the results in my two main books, Consciousness and Healing and Living Deeply, and in many journal articles (just as Katherine has done). I’ve even presented this work at the Smithsonian Institution, including a discussion of ancient lore about biofields and subtle energies.

  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 sixty 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.

  IONS has also sponsored research and conferences on the potential survival of consciousness after bodily death. We have studied cross-cultural cosmologies of the afterlife 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.

  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.

  Bending Minds, Not Spoons

  an interview with William Arntz

  The power of thought to transform water molecules. The mind’s ability to alter the material world. The promise of an alternate spirituality that unites all mankind. Yes, it’s The Lost Symbol, but they’re also the main ideas behind the sleeper-hit documentary film What the Bleep Do We Know!? Released at about the same time as Dan Brown’s earlier bestseller, The Da Vinci Code, it almost certainly was a source of inspiration for this latest novel.

  What the Bleep Do We Know!? was conceived, funded, and codirected by William Arntz, a research physicist-turned-Buddhist-turned-software-developer-turned-filmmaker. Released in February 2004, the film has been shown in more than thirty-five countries and has grossed more than $10 million.

  What the Bleep explores the intersecting worlds of quantum physics and spirituality. It features documentary-style interviews with specialists in fields such as physics, neuroscience, molecular biology, anesthesiology, and psychiatry. It explores a range of hypotheses, including multiple universes, an alternate definition of consciousness, and the power of human thought. Here, Arntz talks about the parallels between his film and the ideas of The Lost Symbol.

  What did you make of The Lost Symbol?

  The message he is conveying is great. And I am familiar with many of the ideas he explores because they are very similar to what I was doing in What the Bleep.

  You and Dan Brown both seem to have an interest in the merging of science and religion.

  I have a degree in physics and my first job was as a laser physicist. Then I did a lot of spiritual study. Science has pushed far enough now to start verifying a lot of these ideas.

/>   And you and Dan Brown are both fascinated with noetics.

  Yes. I, too, believe there are serious scientists looking at the most interesting and pressing questions of today, both from a scientific point of view and also from a metaphysical or spiritual point of view. What would happen if people really knew that the concentrated attention of our minds can move matter? What if praying for someone does help cure them? Such abilities could have immense ramifications around the world.

  And yet many people, including the character Robert Langdon, remain skeptical.

  We got a lot of grief from journalists for What the Bleep. But by far the largest group of critics was scientists. They hated it. They were outraged: “How dare you do this? You know you’re not properly credentialed!” It was like priests saying in the Middle Ages, “How can you talk about this? You’re not ordained as a priest, you can’t speak Latin, so you can’t talk about it!”

  But if you look at the history of science, this always happens. When you read about Einstein first publishing his theories, a lot of his critics didn’t attack his work scientifically, they just said, “Who would believe a patent clerk from Switzerland?” And basically that’s what they did with What the Bleep.

  What about the criticism that noetics and other related fields do not stand up to the same rigorous tests as, for want of a better phrase, “real science”?

  In the early days, I think a lot of claims were made that just seemed kind of crazy. But today it’s much better. I’ve read reports and seen studies and it’s very, very rigorous. For example, Bill Tiller, a professor emeritus at Stanford, has done experiments in which four mediators, people with very focused minds, change the pH of water by using the power of thought. That’s unheard of. He has also changed the reproduction rate of fruit fly larvae. Tiller backs this up with a whole bunch of mathematics to explain what’s going on. It’s really fascinating stuff.

  Then why does so much skepticism remain?

  One of the weird things about noetics is that the person running the experiment has an effect on the experiment. I think they call it the “garage effect.” In other words, you have a scientist working in his or her garage, and he’s able to have this amazing thing happen. But when someone else comes in to replicate the experiment, it doesn’t work. And then the original scientist comes back and runs the experiment, and it does work.

  In the materialistic scientific model, the person running the experiment is immaterial, because the assumption is that there’s nothing an observer can do that is going to affect the experiment. But as soon as you cross over to noetics, the person running the experiment can have a profound effect, even though there’s no “physical interaction.” So this causes a lot of trouble when people try to replicate these experiments, especially if the skeptics get there and the experiment doesn’t work for them.

  One of the most memorable experiments Brown mentions in The Lost Symbol is the one in which water molecules are changed by using the power of thought.

  Distilling water is like erasing the memory on a hard drive; distilled water has no form or shape. Masaru Emoto, who is featured in What the Bleep, takes distilled water samples and has people focus intention on them. Then he takes the water and freezes it in a certain way. He looks at it through a microscope, in a lab that’s something like ten degrees below zero, and watches the crystals form in different patterns based upon the mental input.

  Are there any other noetic studies not in the novel that you would have liked to have seen in The Lost Symbol?

  I probably would have mentioned that IONS (Institute of Noetic Sciences) has been running “sending and receiving” experiments. I have taken part in one of these. They locked me in a room that’s about a five- or ten-ton cube, about ten feet tall, resting on shock absorbers. It’s like a huge Faraday cage, completely isolated from everything. And then they mark someone one hundred yards away and we’re both wired up to EEGs. Then someone has a thought and the other person responds. We actually filmed this experiment and included it in an extended, five-hour version of our film, called What the Bleep!?: Down the Rabbit Hole.

  Describing some of these experiments in just a little more detail would have let people know that this isn’t just a bunch of people trying to bend spoons. It’s really serious scientists going to great lengths to make sure their procedures are impeccable.

  One area in which you push the envelope further than Dan Brown did is the concept of parallel universes.

  I can see why he wouldn’t touch that one, because it’s a theory that is still quite experimental. There’s also a multiuniverse theory, where for every decision that’s made, both sides of the decision happen and the universe splits in half. Then there’s past-life regression. Some of the past-life regression studies are amazing. For example, a four-year-old will start speaking in a dialect from a place in Asia, where it hasn’t been used since the nineteenth century. He or she describes life in the village, and all this kind of stuff. But there are forces out there that really don’t want you to talk about past lives.

  In What the Bleep we included interviews with Ramtha, who claims to be someone from thirty-five thousand years ago who is channeled through this woman J. Z. Knight. By including him in the film we are saying, “Look, there is more to reality than just the physical.” If you have a being that can communicate through someone else’s body, that means we’re not our bodies. And as soon as you say that we’re not our bodies, that completely blows open the whole perspective about scientific materialism that says reality is only what we perceive with our senses.

  It reminds me of the passages in The Lost Symbol where you think that Langdon has died, where I suppose you could argue he has an out-of-body experience. If you take that in tandem with the idea of Katherine discovering the weight of a human soul, then you get a similar kind of message, albeit in a different way.

  Have you met people who have had an out-of-body experience?

  Yes, and let me tell you, they’re not normal for a while. Their minds have literally been blown, especially if they are skeptics, because their whole worldview has just crumbled. I would have guessed that Langdon, after having all of that happen, would have been a little more melted down, like a newborn baby.

  Both What the Bleep and The Da Vinci Code were popular around the same time. Did you notice any parallels between your movie and Dan Brown’s novel?

  Definitely. Dan Brown was drawing on information that was already out there. And so were we. It is similar to what Dan talks about in The Lost Symbol—this whole idea that what was hidden is now coming to light.

  My favorite parallel is the one based on old Celtic culture. The bard was considered a sacred position because he would take wisdom from the priests and communicate it in an artful form to the population. When the bard came to town, all work stopped. Everyone got around the fire and didn’t leave until the bard put the harp down. Dan is like a classic bard. He’s taking the more esoteric knowledge that’s hidden in plain view for everyone and communicating it in such a way that people understand it.

  —Interviewed by Paul Berger

  “Ye Are Gods”

  by the Editors

  Robert Langdon, in conversation with Reverend Colin Galloway, dean of the Washington National Cathedral, remembers an ancient Hermetic precept this way: “Know ye not that ye are gods?” (chapter 82). Langdon refers to this as “one of the pillars of the Ancient Mysteries” and a “persistent message of man’s own divinity” in many ancient texts, including the Bible. The insinuation is that man is God or at least can become God—and that this is what the ancient philosophers, the editors of the Old Testament, and the Freemasons all believe.

  This theme is also echoed by Warren Bellamy, Architect of the Capitol and a Mason, when he tells Langdon: “[T]he Ancient Mysteries and Masonic philosophy celebrate the potentiality of God within each of us. Symbolically speaking, one c
ould claim that anything within reach of an enlightened man . . . is within reach of God” (chapter 49). The universality of the assertion of man’s inherent divinity is reinforced further in chapter 131, when Peter Solomon gives Langdon a quick rundown of instances in Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Buddhism where similar assertions have been made.

  Langdon, who elsewhere says he is not much of a Bible scholar (a bit strange for a Harvard professor with an eidetic memory who is so steeped in symbols and their meanings), remembers the phrase from Psalm 82, A Psalm of Asaph:

  1 God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the gods.

  2 How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked? Selah.

  3 Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy.

  4 Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked.

  5 They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course.

  6 I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.

  7 But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.

  8 Arise, O God, judge the earth: for thou shalt inherit all nations.

  There are several arguments against commingling the Hermetic injunction, “Know ye not that ye are gods,” with the reference “Ye are gods,” in Psalm 82.

  First, most biblical scholars tend to believe that the Psalm’s reference is really critiquing those mortal men who have come to see themselves as gods—noting that they will die, just like men. (See Deirdre Good’s essay in chapter 5.) Rather than man’s inherent divinity, this reference seems to most readers to point to man’s hubristic assumption of a godlike role.