"The Lost Symbol" Dan Brown

[Warning: Here be spoilers]

Uni holidays has allowed me to wear down the reading list I had accumulated. One I've just managed to tick off was Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol.

I quite enjoyed the read. I was scoffed at by someone for liking trashing literature, but this was the same guy who wanted to and did read Twilight, so it's not like I will take his literary opinion to heart.

I must admit, though, that Brown does not express himself in the most elegant manner. However, it wasn't his style of writing which appealed to me, but rather, the ideas he was putting forth. I felt that they resonated with a set of beliefs that I myself held, albeit unknowingly.

Brown takes Robert Langdon on a quest to discover the teachings of the Masons. Rather than being under the mercy of a higher being, humans are the ones who possessed divine powers. The human mind hold immense capabilities, even to the extent of performing what we call miracles. If one could learn to concentrate and pit one's mind to the matter, one could achieve the physically impossible.

This is what Brown's novel proposed, and this is what I had believed for some time.

From my perspective, the abilities of the human mind far outreaches what is scientifically accepted. I do believe it is capable of physical manipulation and influencing external events. When I try to will things to work, I imagine these streams or waves of energy flowing from my head to the objects. Call me weird, but I think it helps.

In the novel, Katherine Solomon used Noetic science to support this belief. It seems like an interesting thing for me to look into.