the Ancient Mysteries

This may sound ridiculous, but I am ten pages away from finishing The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown and I am having a religious awakening.

Disclaimer: One of the most frustrating parts of reading Dan Brown is I never know what is actual truth and what is suspense or drama created as part of his story. I know Robert Langdon is a fictional Harvard  professor, but that's about it.

The story, about the Ancient Mysteries, propagates that man has the potential to unlock hidden parts of himself (the brain/mind) to become more Godlike, and that God is not a separate entity from man, but that a God-force is inside all of us. It is this latent force or power that we must seize, and by doing so, become the most whole and pure versions of ourselves that anyone has ever been.

Christianity, or more specifically, the Holy Bible of Christianity, is said to hold the Ancient Mysteries woven deep within the lessons we Christians learn from about the age of three. The Bible says that God is within all of us, that Jesus' love is in all of our hearts where'er we go (if you want a quote), and yet many (myself included) believe or just find it easier to picture a physical form of God and Jesus as separate entities. Because Jesus is depicted as the Son of God, we imagine him not to be the same as God, but made in God's own image, to be God on Earth. That implies that God has an image of some kind. But this is not true. If the ancestors of all of us had written down something other than what is inscribed in the pages of the Holy Bible, none of us would have a clue what we were supposed to believe as practicing Christians. [[History class disclaimer about Jesus being a real man.]] A governing, loving, moral and spiritual force that has created the entire world and all of its creatures is a difficult concept to grasp. If we remove God from the theory of creation/evolution, we are left with the lessons taught from the Bible, the way to live our lives, through sacrifice and hard work. Prayer.

Prayer has now begun to take on a different meaning to me as well. This relates back to The Lost Symbol in a second way. The character Katherine Solomon invents a branch of science called Noetics, which is the theory that thoughts have mass, and can affect the physical world. Yes, thoughts, in our head, that only we can see. From all previous interpretations of the Bible, one would believe that prayer is the conference with God, in gratitude, in troubling times, seeking His help or forgiveness. Through the lens of Noetics, I believe that prayers made to God are actually made to ourselves: the spiritual "God" inside all of us. These prayers can be answered. Our thoughts have the power to affect those events for which we pray, if they are focused and strong enough, or repeated enough times. It may not take effect as immediately as society has trained us to expect things, but in time, what we pray for becomes absolute. The prayers we make to God in gratitude and humility, we are acknowledging our selves, thanking ourselves and apologizing to ourselves. It is only by forgiveness of ourselves that we can ever earn forgiveness from God... See where I'm going here?

The last part of Noetic Science is the groundbreaking claim that Katherine Solomon was about to make: that the human soul has a measurable mass. Does this mean that the soul is made of the same matter that a thought is made of? How did this character measure thought in the first place? The method suggested in the book for measuring the mass of a soul was a sound one, but a thought's measurement would not work the same way. The human brain has so many thoughts moving about at once, layers upon layers - conscious and subconscious.. Does a memory constitute a thought as well? Or is it just what is at the top level of consciousness, new ideas, instant feeds (Twitter, anyone?) that counts as a thought? Memories are a record of our lives stored deep within the folds of our minds. They can be recalled again and again at will, so do they count as a thought?
Back to the soul. I have always wondered how to qualitatively measure a soul. Personality, interests, culture, race, ancestry... All plausible candidates. The Lost Symbol makes no suggestions for this, nor as to whether the soul will exist in only one body, ascending to a state of wholeness, "at-one-ment", freedom and peace, or move to a different body after the death of its current one, such as many Aryan religions state. The two different theories are only answered in the religion you were raised with. Noetics have not confirmed either or. Who is even to say that Noetic Science is a real practice?

The movie Matilda, based on the children's novel of the same name by Roald Dahl, says: "It is said that humans use only a tiny portion of our brains." I fully believe that, as there is scientific evidence supporting it. Whatever force or power that created humans, be it God or some other mystery of science and faith, I know he/she/it must have a purpose for the brain power left in storage. If the Ancient Mysteries propagate discovering the key to realizing and using all of that power, then I have to say I am a firm believer in the Ancient Mysteries.