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“In this infinite sea of potentials that exist around us, how come we keep recreating the same realities?” – Dr. Joseph Dispenza
“Quantum Physics, very succinctly speaking, is the physics of possibilities.” – Amit Goswami
“Your consciousness influences others around you. It influences material properties. It influences your future. You are co-creating your future.” - William Tiller, Ph. D.
What the Bleep Do We Know!? is a new type of film. It is part documentary, part story, and part elaborate and inspiring visual effects and animations. The protagonist, Amanda, finds herself in a fantastic Alice in Wonderland experience when her daily, uninspired life literally begins to unravel, revealing the uncertain world of the quantum field hidden behind what we consider to be our normal, waking reality.
"What the Bleep Do We Know", is a fascinating documentary film that utilizes fictional story lines, computer animation and discussions by several scientists and philosophers to present a viewpoint of the physical universe and human life within it, with connections to neuroscience and quantum physics. The general idea was that since quantum mechanics supposedly says that there isn't one reality, but an infinite number of possibilities, one just has to be enlightened to an awareness of this, and then you can make whatever you want, happen. Within the plot, the main character of the movie (played by Marlee Matlin) essentially was educated of amazing facts about quantum physics, in which helps her deal with her anxiety attacks, bad body image and sex addiction.
"WHAT THE BLEEP DO WE KNOW?!" is a new type of film. It is part documentary, part story, and part elaborate and inspiring visual effects and animations. The protagonist, Amanda, finds herself in a fantastic Alice in Wonderland experience when her daily, uninspired life literally begins to unravel, revealing the uncertain world of the quantum field hidden behind what we consider to be our normal, waking reality.
Ramtha is a 35,000 year-old spirit-warrior who appeared in JZ Knight’s kitchen in Tacoma, Washington, in 1977. Knight claims that she is Ramtha’s channel. She also owns the copyright to Ramtha and conducts sessions in which she pretends to go into a trance and speaks Hollywood’s version of Elizabethan English in a guttural, husky voice. She has thousands of followers and has made millions of dollars performing as Ramtha at seminars ($1,000 a crack) and at her Ramtha School of Enlightenment, and from the sales of tapes, books, and accessories. She must have hypnotic powers. Searching for self-fulfillment, otherwise normal people obey her command to spend hours blindfolded in a cold, muddy, doorless maze. In the dark, they seek what Ramtha calls the ‘void at the center.’
Knight says she used to be “spiritually restless,” but not any more. Ramtha from Atlantis via Lemuria has enlightened her. He first appeared to her, she says, while she was in business school having extraordinary experiences with UFOs. She must have a great rapport with her spirit companion, since he shows up whenever she needs him to put on a performance. It is not clear why Ramtha would choose Knight, but it is very clear why Knight would choose Ramtha: fame and fortune, or simple delusion.
Knight claims to believe that she's lived many lives. If so, one wonders what she needs Ramtha for: she's been there, done that, herself, in past lives. She ought to be able to speak for herself after so many reincarnations.
Knight claims that spirit or consciousness can "design thoughts" which can be "absorbed" by the brain and constructed "holographically". These thoughts can affect your life. If this means what I think it means, then Knight has taken the notion of proving the obvious to new heights: she has discovered that one's thoughts can affect one's life.
Knight not only has rewritten the book on neurology, she has also rewritten the book on archaeology and history. The world was not at all like the scholars of the world say it was 35,000 years ago. We were not primitive hunters and gatherers who liked to paint in caves. No, there were very advanced civilizations around then. It doesn't matter that there is no evidence for this, because Knight has rewritten the book of evidence as well. Evidence is what appears to you, even in visions and hallucinations and delusions. Evidence is anything you feel like making up. So, when you are told that Ramtha came first from Lemuria in the Pacific Ocean, do not seek out scholars to help you understand that ancient civilization because the scholars of the world do not believe Lemuria existed except as a fantasy. When you are told that the Lemurians were a great civilization from the time of the dinosaurs, do not expect to be burdened with evidence. There isn't any evidence. The only mammals around at the time of the dinosaurs were primitive and non-hominid, very much like lemurs. Maybe the Lemurians were really lemurs. No, the Lemurians came from "beyond the North star," according to Knight, which may explain why all humans ever since have looked to the sky with longing.
But as cool as Lemuria was, it could not compare with its counterpart in the Atlantic Ocean. Knight's story of Ramtha in Atlantis is too bizarre to retell. Let's just say that Ramtha was a warrior who appeared to Edgar Cayce and leave it at that. Her story is appealing to those who are not comfortable in today's world. The past must have been better. It must have been safer then, and people must have been nobler. This message is especially appealing to people who feel like misfits.
Ramtha, like Christ, ascended into heaven, after his many conquests, including the conquest of himself. He said he'd be back and he kept his promise by coming to Knight in 1977 while she was in her pyramidiot phase. She put a toy pyramids on her head and lo and behold if that wasn't a signal for Ramtha to return to the land of the living dead:
And he looked at me and he said: "Beloved woman, I am Ramtha the Enlightened One, and I have come to help you over the ditch" And, well, what would you do? I didn't understand because I am a simple person so I looked to see if the floor was still underneath the chair. And he said: "It is called the ditch of limitation", and he said: "And I am here, and we are going to do a grand work together."
Apparently, the first rule of the wise is: beware the ditch of limitation. Knight's husband-to-be must have fallen into the ditch. He was there at the time Ramtha first invaded his girlfriend's body, but he was so busy lining up pyramids with a compass that he didn't see Ramtha. He did feel The Enlightened One's magnetic charm, however; for, according to Knight (and who wouldn't believe her?), the compass needle was spinning around madly and they saw "ionization" in the kitchen air.
Ramtha then became Knight's personal tutor for two years, teaching her everything from theology to quantum mechanics. He taught her how to have out-of-body experiences. The experience was so extraordinary she had to dig very deep for a metaphor to try to convey the bliss she felt: "I felt like....like a fish in the ocean."
Her big break came when her son, Brandy, developed "an allergic reaction to life." He had to have a few shots but he was allergic to the allergy shots. Fortunately, "the Ram" (as Knight calls her spirit invader) came to the rescue and taught her therapeutic touch. She healed Brandy with prayer and her touch "in less than a minute," greatly reducing her medical bills. She had performed a miracle and now nothing would stop her from entering the public arena.
Perhaps the reason JZ Knight is so successful in getting followers and students is that Ramtha is a feminist. He recognized that if he appeared in his own masculine body, he would perpetuate the myth that God is male and further contribute to the eternal abuse of women.
That's what he said. So women have been abused by men, and herded by men through religion to perform according to those religious doctrines, and in fact, women were despised by Jehovah. So, he said: "It is important that when the teachings come through, they come through the body of a woman."*
This feminization of God must be pleasing to people who are tired of masculine divinities. According to Knight, Ramtha will help people master their humanity and “open our minds to new frontiers of potential.”
Artfully edited and featuring actress Marlee Matlin as a dreamy-eyed photographer trying to make sense of an apparently senseless universe, the film's central tenet is that we create our own reality through consciousness and quantum mechanics. I never imagined that such a film would succeed, but it has grossed millions.
The film's avatars are New Age scientists whose jargonladen sound bites amount to little more than what California Institute of Technology physicist and Nobel laureate Murray Gell-Mann once described as "quantum flapdoodle." University of Oregon quantum physicist Amit Goswami, for example, says in the film: "The material world around us is nothing but possible movements of consciousness. I am choosing moment by moment my experience. Heisenberg said atoms are not things, only tendencies." Okay, Amit, I challenge you to leap out of a 20-story building and consciously choose the experience of passing safely through the ground's tendencies.
The attempt to link the weirdness of the quantum world to mysteries of the macro world (such as consciousness) is not new. The best candidate to connect the two comes from University of Oxford physicist Roger Penrose and physician Stuart Hameroff of the Arizona Health Sciences Center, whose theory of quantum consciousness has generated much heat but little light. Inside our neurons are tiny hollow microtubules that act like structural scaffolding. Their conjecture (and that's all it is) is that something inside the microtubules may initiate a wave-function collapse that results in the quantum coherence of atoms. The quantum coherence causes neurotransmitters to be released into the synapses between neurons, thus triggering them to fire in a uniform pattern that creates thought and consciousness. Because a wave-function collapse can come about only when an atom is "observed" (that is, affected in any way by something else), the late neuroscientist Sir John Eccles, another proponent of the idea, even suggested that "mind" may be the observer in a recursive loop from atoms to molecules to neurons to thought to consciousness to mind to atoms…
In reality, the gap between subatomic quantum effects and large-scale macro systems is too large to bridge. Stenger computes that the mass of neural transmitter molecules and their speed across the distance of the synapse are about two orders of magnitude too large for quantum effects to be influential. There is no micro-macro connection. Then what the #$*! is going on?
What do you get when you combine bits of quantum physics, brain science and the channeled prophecies of a 35,000 year old god/warrior named Ramtha? The film, What the #$*! Do We Know?, is a fantasy docudrama cult hit that has found national distribution and is playing to full houses across the country.
The film is the latest effort by religious, mystical, and New Age gurus to cloak their views in the mantel of science. Physicist Victor Stenger coined the term “Quantum metaphysics” where “today’s cosmic mind has been repackaged by an appeal to twentieth century science for its authority.” The cosmic mind in this case is that of JZ Knight, who claims to channel a 35,000-year old god/warrior named Ramtha. Because Ramtha instructed her to demand a packet of gold from all who seek his wisdom, she has reaped millions over the past quarter century. The films’ producers, writers, directors, and a number of the stars are members of her Ramtha School of Enlightenment in Washington.
Quantum physics and neuroscience are complex and controversial topics. The film discusses them in twenty-second sound bites mixed with cutting edge graphics. The effect is a blend of riveted attention and confusion that puts the critical mind to sleep, softening up the viewer to ideas that begin with human potential and end with walking on water.
A chiropractor named Joe Dispenza diagnoses her problems with Ramtha’s version of neuroscience. Dispenza notes that in brain imaging parts of the visual cortex light up during both mental imagery tasks and visual perception. From this he draws the absurd conclusion that we don’t know the difference between what is real and what we imagine. Many different mental functions share cortical areas to carry out the complexity of their tasks. Thought and speech both utilize language areas of the brain. Visions during dreaming that use the visual cortex get reality tested upon waking. There are people who have great difficulty seeing the difference between the real and the imagined. They are suffering from psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia, or they have ingested large amounts of drugs or alcohol. If Dispenza is right that we live in an imagined world not grounded in reality, testing his theory on your drive home would lead to a carnage of competing versions of where the road begins and ends.
She is literally plunged into a swirl of chaotic occurrences, while the characters she encounters on this odyssey reveal the deeper, hidden knowledge she doesn’t even realize she has asked for. Like every hero, Amanda is thrown into crisis, questioning the fundamental premises of her life – that the reality she has believed in about how men are, how relationships with others should be, and how her emotions are affecting her work isn’t reality at all!
As Amanda learns to relax into the experience, she conquers her fears, gains wisdom, and wins the keys to the great secrets of the ages. She is then no longer the victim of circumstances, but she is on the way to being the creative force in her life. Her life will never be the same.
"We are so conditioned to our daily lives, so conditioned to the way we create our lives, that we buy the idea that we have no control at all. We have been told to believe that the external world is more real than the internal world. This new science, Quantum Physics, is the opposite – what’s happening within us will create what’s happening outside of us. The way our brain is wired, we only see what is possible. We match patterns that already exist within ourselves through conditioning. Example: Native Americans couldn’t see Columbus’ ships because they had no knowledge that these ships existed. The average person considers their life boring or uninspiring because they’ve made little or no attempt to gain knowledge and information that will inspire them. They’re so hypnotized by their environment – through the media, through television, through unattainable ideals of physical appearance, beauty and valor that everybody struggles to become but cannot – that most people surrender and live their lives in mediocrity. And they may live those lives, and their souls, their desires, may never really rise to the surface. In this infinite sea of potentials that exist around us, how come we keep recreating the same realities? Why can’t I change? What am I addicted to? What will I lose that I’m chemically attached to? What person, place, thing, time or event, that I’m chemically attached to, do I not want to lose, because I may have to experience the chemical withdrawal from it? We bring to ourselves situations that will fulfill the biochemical cravings of the cells of our body. We have to formulate what we want, be so concentrated on it, so focused on it, and so aware of it that we lose track of ourselves, we lose track of time, we lose track of our identity. The moment we become so involved in the experience that we lose track of ourselves, we lose track of time, is the only picture that’s real. Everybody’s had the experience of making up their mind that they’ve wanted something. That’s Quantum Physics in action. That’s manifesting reality."
This film attempts to "prove" the primacy of consciousness by appeals to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics (QM). For those unfamiliar with QM, one of its central mysteries centers on the double slit experiment. In this experiment, scientists send streams of subatomic particles through double slits toward a screen. Unusual phenomenon such as the apparent passage of the same particle through both slits simultaneously, and screen results depicting particles as points or particles as waves depending upon the presence of observers, led physicists collaborating in Copenhagen to advance the idea that subatomic particles -- the constituents of reality -- exist only as "probability wave functions" that collapse into specific points only upon being observed. In other words, reality's nature depends upon the consciousness observing it. Parts of the film also appeal to the many worlds interpretation of QM which argues that the odd results of experiments like the double slit arise from the existence of unobservable parallel universes.The film features the attractive deaf actress Marlee Matlin as the protagonist who plays a divorced photographer. Much like The Secret, it showcases a female central character in distress and looking for answers to get her life on track. As the film progresses, it intermixes the story of Amanda with interviews of scientists in a variety of fields ranging from QM to neurology. The first half of the film features a number of QM scientists of varying degrees of credentials and credibility as they speculate about the nature of reality and its link to spirituality. They all march lockstep to the tune of the primacy of consciousness over existence.
The second half of the film steps up a notch to the molecular level of human neurology and the nature of emotions. Had the film focused solely on this fascinating subject and foregone the QM silliness altogether, I could have recommended it without hesitation. It hints at links between reason and emotion and the idea that we can volitionally reprogram our thoughts to alter our emotional responses. Here, Amanda finds herself at a Polish wedding at the church where she herself got married the same day her husband met his future marriage-busting mistress at Amanda's own wedding. Finding herself in emotional distress at these memories, Amanda embarks on a drinking binge that leads to hilarious results. The film accompanies these antics with some impressive anthropomorphized computer animations of chemical interactions within the human endocrine system. This section alone makes the movie worth watching.
Amanda finally reaches a turning point when she looks at herself in the mirror the next morning, hung over, and says that she hates herself. Recalling some supposed words of wisdom heard earlier in the story, she decides consciously to begin to love herself and her existence in this world. Objectivists will have no objection to making such a conscious decision, though they will object to the pseudoscience that led Amanda to make that choice. She decides to do so because water constitutes the bulk of the human body and a Japanese "scientist" did a study showing how thoughts affect the beauty of water crystals.
Perhaps the most frightening and offensive aspect of this film comes from the end credits. Nowhere during the body of the movie do the names or credentials of any of the talking heads caption the visuals. Instead, the viewer must wait until the end credits roll to see that one of the talking heads, a blond woman in her middle years wearing heavy makeup who talks with a thick "Count Chocula" accent, has throughout the film served as a "channel" for a mystical figure named "Ramtha." Even this part requires further research on the part of the viewer to learn that supposedly Ramtha lived millennia ago in the ancient civilization of Atlantis and now speaks through J. Z. Knight -- the woman -- to inform us of our god-like powers of human potential.
Critics on various open review sites such as the Internet Movie Database have observed that this film serves as a lure to draw gullible people into Ramtha's School of Enlightenment -- a costly cult trap.

Horror stories of credulous relatives drawn into this school and made the poorer for it have made their way into these comments. Objectivists grasp the primacy of existence well enough to avoid these traps.

Certainly, this movie was very fascinating for me, and was definitely not a documentary style movie I had ever come across. Of course, it may not have been very simple to take in the varieties of theories pertaining to quantum mechanics/physics all at once; however, I did strongly agree on the theory that beliefs about who one is and what is real form oneself and one's realities. This is something I had thought about for a copious amount of years, but I do believe that if one strongly desires someone or something mentally, and is all concentrated to that particular value, it will become reality. Astoundingly, within my experience, many of the things I strongly desired and concentrated on had come into my possession, whether it was an expensive cell phone, or simply obtaining a high score on the SAT. I believe that my strong desire gave me a motivational push to work hard in raising enough money to buy a cell phone or to enable me to study harder in obtaining a good grade In addition, it is certainly not merely pertaining to something we strongly want to acquire, but also our "luck" or "fortune". I personally take strong belief in that the positive ness or the negative ness within a human mind will affect...
story and incredible special effects" which aims to bring together many leading scientific minds of the day to ponder what modern science can tell us about life. The film takes aim at the most basic questions of life such as the nature of reality, consciousness, and individuality.
While this film does not dive deep into quantum mechanics it does a good job early on of explaining some of the peculiarities in modern science and how scientific discoveries are raising questions about everything we have held fast to throughout the centuries. Most interesting in this discussion is how the lines between science, religion, and philosophy are blurring. It is also a direct attack on much of traditional science which has relied on a more dualistic or naturalistic view of the world.
Dualism is the view that both mind and matter are real, but separate. The problem for dualists is that this is counterintuitive to our experience. Dualism struggles to explain the mystery of how these two distinct and utterly separate realities can ever interact. As such, matters of faith and values are essentially written off as a separate unquantifiable reality distinct from the knowable world. Materialism is the view that only matter is ultimately real. Darwinism, a natural by-product of materialism, has had a tremendous influence on thought and science by explaining one of the key problems for a materialist emergence. While the passage of infinite time is often cited as the solution to the seemingly insurmountable problem of a naturally evolved consciousness in matter, Darwinism is receiving increased skepticism even from its traditional allies in science for representing little more than wishful thing in explaining the emergence of consciousness.
By challenging a dualistic and naturalistic view of the universe, the producers have opened up traditional science for critical view in light of more recent discoveries and have made a strong case for reevaluating the role of spirituality in interpreting who we are, why we are, and what our purpose is. This rejects a popular notion that religion and spirituality are highly "unscientific." Of course, every director has their own agenda and this is also the case in "What the Bleep Do We know!?". While even some of the more bizarre science presented in this film is "good" science the majority of the film is more about deriving a new philosophy. The film serves as a strong apologetic for their particular brand of faith.
All reality is a unity. The views expressed are similar to Hinduism which sees the entire universe as making up the divine entity who is simultaneously at one with the universe and transcends it while constantly creating new realities.
Your reality is your mind. Rather than succumbing to patterns of addiction and defeat, one must recognize the power to literally create a new reality for yourself.
The reality you create has the power to affect the reality of others.
By embracing your ability to transcend the world around you and recognize your creative powers you are in actuality God.
While trying desperately to sound objective and rational throughout, this film takes a strangely polemic tone towards Christianity. This seemed out-of-place to me in the overall dialog which goes to great lengths to explain that the universe is infinite and unknowable, that God (or at least a concept of God) most certainly exists and is "near" but unreachable, that prayer actually works, that no matter how "positive" or "good" we want to be our bodies and minds seem curiously programmed for corruption, and that science which denies spirit is misguided denial of the reality we all experience. The filmmakers are careful to guide the audience away from certain conclusions. While Christianity provides a worldview that is remarkably consistent with these findings (e.g. intelligent design, the fallen-ness of creation, a conscious Creator that is infinite and unfathomable) the filmmakers make a direct effort to avoid those conclusions by proposing a "way of looking at the Universe through the eyes of the Spirit without the archaic trappings of religion: i.e. guilt, judgment, condemnation, assuming everyone who doesn't believe like you IS WRONG (and is a candidate for The Sword), etc..."
The film says that one of the greatest tragedies in human history is the creation of a religion where men are taught that there is a God waiting to strike you down for your evil deeds and He must be appeased by doing good. It is sad to say that throughout history many vocal "Christians" have misrepresented the gospel of Jesus Christ, which stresses that it is through grace alone that we are saved and our good or bad deeds can do absolutely nothing to reconcile us to God or even appease or impress him -- our deeds are in fact irrelevant with no power to save or secure favor. Many have used Christianity as an excuse to condemn and justify unspeakable acts against humankind all the while following nothing more than their own ego or lust for power.
And there are large and serious problems with the film:
1) The film neglects to make any mention whatever of the fact that there has been a growing consensus among serious investigators of the foundations of Quantum Mechanics for 30 or 40 years now that this crisis of mechanism has PASSED, that we now see a way OUT of it, that (in so far as we can tell at present) the original, mechanistic, scientific project is very much alive and well.

2) The film open end questions (the answers never comes right to the viewers of different places believes and religions from different places over the world) around believes, life philosophy, and religions it's not easy to be solved through one film where it took thousands of years for discussions .
2) The film is wildly wrong about what a collapse of the project of mechanism (if such a collapse had indeed occurred, which it did not!) would have MEANT would have LEFT us.

The film makers are apparently convinced that such a collapse would straightforwardly resuscitate the old metaphysics of God and spirit and so fourth, but they offer no reasons whatsoever for thinking that, and I cannot imagine what such a reason might be.
It seems to me that what's at issue (at the end of the day) between serious investigators of the foundations of quantum mechanics and the producers of the "what the bleep" movies is very much of a piece with what was at issue between Galileo and the Vatican, and very much of a piece with what was at issue between Darwin and the Victorians. There is a deep and perennial and profoundly human impulse to approach the world with a DEMAND, to approach the world with a PRECONDITION, that what has got to turn out to lie at THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE, that what has got to turn out to lie at THE FOUNDATION OF ALL BEING, is some powerful and reassuring and accessible image of OURSELVES. That's the impulse that the What the Bleep films seem to me to flatter and to endorse and (finally) to exploit - and that, more than any of their particular factual inaccuracies - is what bother me. It is precisely the business of resisting that demand, it is precisely the business of approaching the world with open and authentic wonder, and with a sharp, cold eye, and singularly intent upon the truth, that's called science.

At least this is my view, I am not sure that I am not correct also, where this type of fils need deep and real discussion to hear from others their views as well to reach to mature view around it, but the film remain deserve to be watched and think about.