Of Nicholas Cage,Dan Brown and Scott Adams

One dependable way i use to determine how much i enjoyed a book/movie is to observe the amount of time i spent contemplating about the same after reading/watching it. In that way, i had a double bonanza yester day. I saw Nicolas Cage's latest - KNOWING and Dan brown's much anticipated thriller - THE LOST SYMBOL.

Both of them surprised me because they dealt with the themes i am already familar with, thanks to this impossibly witty and visionary cartoonist: Scott Adams.

The movie started off interestingly. It had a spooky feel to it. But after the first 70 minutes or so, it lost me. It became just another dooms day story. "What a waste!" I thought until i saw the last shot of the movie. While the earth is destroyed by a catastrophe, few children are rescued from all over the world by some mysterious people; call them aliens or angels. And in the last shot, we see two of the kids being dropped off on a distant planet and them running towards a huge lonely tree: unmistakabley refering to the tree of knowledge from the Genesis.

Now, Scott adams already discussed this idea in many of his blogposts. What if this apocalypse already happened? What if Adam and Eve or people from just another earth like planet who seek refuge on ours? What if the so-called Gods are just a highly advanced alien race?? The possiblities are endless!

Coming to the book, i must say i am a fan of Dan Brown. I can't argue with the critics when they dismiss his work as "Popular and pulp fiction". But his books are infinitely better than other writers of pulp genre- Sheldon,Hailey,Grishm and likes. What i find appealing about his books is his meticulous research into the subject he had chosen and the questions the books pose to us and allows us to contemplate. From that perspective, Lost symbol Scores high. But It is not as gripping as Angels and Demons or not as controversial as Davinci Code. No where near!What i liked most in the book are the last fifteen odd pages after the whole mystery is solved; where the lead characters discuss god,faith,religion and science.

And surprisingly, scott striked me again while reading the book.One of the main themes of the book "Collective conciousness" is already dealt by him few years ago. Actually a paragraph in the book which tells us that " in the age of twitter,facebook and essentially internet, which gives all the people over the internet the opportunity to seamlessly connect with eachother, the one-ness that forms out of the individuals can be treated as GOD " is just a paraphrase of one of his blog posts. Another thing the book discusses is the field of Neotic science: The science that studies the power of human thought. The idea is that if enough people believes in something with enough conviction , it WILL happen. And when scott adams talked about affirmations, i thought he was nuts!

Anyway, The book and the movie made me think a lot of about god and spirituality yesterday. I did something i never thought i would do in my life. I visited the spiritual section of our IMT library!