The Lost Symbol

The Lost Symbol

Author: Dan Brown

Publisher: Doubleday

Pages: 478

The latest thriller by the creator of ‘Da Vinci Code’ and ‘Angels and Demons’ is another page turner in the inimitable style of the master story teller. The book is based on the esoteric rituals and practices of the very poweful secret society ‘Free Masons’ in which the most prominent personalities of the USA are members. The prodigal son of the society’s tallest leader tries to break in to the society through a map encoded in a small stone pyramid kept in secret cellars. This man was practising occultism and believes that the knowledge or ‘lost word’ which can be located by deciphering the engraving on the pyramid will turn him into a demon with mystical powers if he sacrifices himself at the altar of the House of the Temple of Freemasons. Robert Langdon, the hero of the two earlier super hit books, along with the help of Katherine Solomon, the sister of the freemason’s leader averts this crisis by unlocking the secret codes. The villain of the piece possesses a video of occult practises performed by the freemasons in which several influential senators and justices of the Supreme Court are participating. The CIA is determined to stop the video from circulating and declares its recovery as a concern for national security. All is solved at the last minute by the lead characters. A thrilling piece of work which holds the suspense in every word of it. Superbly done.

So much for the thriller part! But the contents however, is disappointing particularly after Angels and Demons in which Brown resorts to science fiction in which a positron explosive device is used. Such a device, though doesn’t exist now, is certainly feasible if technology is sufficiently advanced. Angels and Demons is based on solid science and many chapters are staged at the CERN (European Centre for Nuclear Research) giving the author an air of scientific honorability. Alas, all that is dashed in the present work! Here, Brown praises the power of human mind, how the ancients had possessed greater knowledge than the present society, a pseudo-science called Noetics which explores whether the power of mind can alter the physical world and answers in the affirmative. There are passages in which Katherine declares that it is a solid scientific reality that thoughts have mass and prayer groups or minds working in unison can affect the world in a beneficial or harmful way.

Coming so close on the heels of Angels and Demons, surely many of the laymen who read these false premises will falter towards the junk science of mind power or Noetics or what ever you call it! There are laughable references that proves the Ancients had more wisdom than us and many scientific theories are described in an encrypted form in the old texts. We are led to believe that String theory, the physical theory for unification of the four fundamental forces of nature is detailed in the Book of Zohar, a Jewish work many thousands of years old! It has now become the fashion of a few people to declare that the ancient texts describe what we know today as scientific facts. The advocates of Vedic Science comes readily to mind. Whatever you say to them, they will show the text in the Vedas where it is described in an esoteric form. The only problem is that since the text is obscure, you have to interpret it in the way the advocates do. String theory however, is still debated and not proved true by any stretch of the imagination. I wonder how Brown can explain the irregularity if it is indeed proved wrong in future accelerator projects! Interpretation is a vast portal through which any scientific theory can be embedded in any text!

Strangely, the author seems to be doing penance after the allegations of blasphemy in the earlier works. He praises all religious books, particularly the Bible and claims that it contains scientific ideas beyond which we need not look further. The human mind, he says, is the true God and its power makes us Gods. A strong link to the Advaita theory is noticeable, in fact, the book is littered with references to Hindu concepts and ideologies. After all such trash, there is one inconsistent sentence in one the final passages, “If the ancestors could see us today, surely they would think us gods”. This is with reference to the achievements of modern Science which we have around us, but it runs counter to argument thread of the book.

Altogether, the book is a disappointing one, which comes only marginally above in quality to ‘Digital Fortress’, the poorest of Brown’s five books. The author is obsessed with Robert Langdon, the hero of three of his works! In a lighter vein, one would be tempted to ask him what happened to Sophie Novou and Vittoria Vetra, the heroines of the previous two works, when we see his romantic overtures to Katherine Solomon, the heroine of this book!

Rating: 3 Star