What the Bleep: Down the Rabbit Hole
Rev. Christina M. Neilson
June 11, 2006
"To know that we know
what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true
knowledge."
-
Copernicus
Ever
since humans first developed the capacity to think and wonder, we have been
awed by the magnificence, beauty, and sometimes terrifying forces of nature.
Witnessing the journey of life from the miracle of birth to the finality of
death, our ancestors wondered: Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where
are we going? Like us, they wanted to know how we fit into the world around us.
To
make sense of these mysteries we create stories. Some cultures create stories
about earth spirits embedded in nature, others about a single sky god who rules
from above, still others tell us we are alone in an indifferent universe.
The
ideas presented in the film What the
Bleep Do We Know!? challenge aspects of the prevailing story the West
has told itself for the past 300 years. The paradox is that these challenges
arose from Western science’s deepening study of the world. The history of
science can be viewed as an evolution of ideas that reveal that reality is not
as it appears, nor are we precisely who we think we are. When we try to explain
a reality that is not fixed and explainable, we go down the rabbit hole. We try to find words that clarify, fumble and
stumble through an explanation, and end up wondering, “What the bleep do we know?! The film presents some of the science and
philosophy that are the basis of a new story, and the implications are paradigm
shattering.
Each
of us sees the world through our own lens.
We may have rose-colored glasses or smoky gray. But we each have perceptions that alter our
reality. As a culture in western
society, we have a shared perception or paradigm. Our paradigm, determines what we are able to
see, how we think, and what we do. We do not question its accuracy because
we’re usually unaware of its existence. Trying to reflect on our own worldview
is like trying to study the color blue while wearing blue- colored glasses. We
cannot distance ourselves enough from it to see how much it affects our
perception. We simply assume that the way we see things is the way they really
are. Our paradigms are usually all we know and only become perceptible to us
when we encounter ones that are different from our own.
According
to historian and philosopher Richard Tarnas, the West has moved through three
major phases in its 2000-year history, in which distinct overarching worldviews
prevailed: the Classical Worldview, the Pre-Modern or Medieval Worldview, and
the mechanistic Modern Worldview.
Classical Paradigm —
Age of Gods and Oracles Ancient Greek worldview. Knowledge is delivered from
the gods via oracles. Meaning was bestowed by the gods. Beginning with the
pre-Socratic philosophers and followed by
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle,
Greek philosophy turns away from gods and oracles and increasingly looks to
nature and the power of reason to reveal the nature of reality.
Pre-Modern Paradigm —
Age of Faith/Superstition
Medieval worldview. Knowledge is
derived from authority. The Christian
church came in power as Constantine ruled that Christianity would be the state
church and all who questioned its teachings would be persecuted. The church determined the nature of
reality. As above (in heaven), so below.
(on earth)
Modern Paradigm — Age of
Reason/Empiricism/Science
Beginning in the seventeenth
century through today. Age of analysis, reductionism, individualism, and
mechanism. Meaning is projected by the human mind onto nature. Mechanical
causality is the only way things move or change. The guiding metaphor is the
machine. Time is linear.
For
the last 300 years modern society has relied primarily on scientific discovery
to tell us about the nature of reality. On the one hand, we have all benefited
enormously from the technologies that science has made possible. On the other
hand, many may have felt uneasy when science cannot account for or explain our
most significant personal experiences.
We
find a deepening mismatch between what we know from our own experience and what
we know from science. Experiences such as out-of-body or near-death events,
telepathy, clairvoyance and the powerful healing effects of intention and
prayer are just some of the anomalies that challenge the dominant scientific
explanations for how the world works.
We
are learning that the discoveries of science support spiritual traditions. We
are learning from quantum physics about the ways certain aspects of reality
transcend our usual understanding of time and space, and we are learning from
neurosciences and consciousness studies remarkable connections between mind and
body.
The
power of mind and emotions to affect the body do not fit the dominant story
about how the world works. Gradually,
purely mechanistic views are likely to be replaced by the truly mind-boggling
revelations issuing from quantum physics, systems theories,
psychoneuroimmunology, and other mind-body studies in consciousness research. Science is creating a new paradigm.
What the Bleep Do We Know!? has touched a nerve with several
people who have seen it because it is the first public validation of what we
have suspected for many years: Reality is far more mysterious than we have been
taught. And at the core of this mystery is the creativity and potency of
consciousness. Or as Emerson said, “We lie in the lap of immense
intelligence."
Philosopher
Duane Elgin puts it this way:
“I believe that the most far-reaching trend of our times is an emerging
shift in our shared view of the universe—from thinking of it as dead to
experiencing it as alive. In regarding the universe as alive and ourselves as
continuously sustained within that aliveness, we see that we are intimately
related to everything that exists. This insight ... represents a new way of
looking at and relating to the world and overcomes the profound separation that
has marked our lives.”
How
will quantum science change our worldview?
Quantum mechanics tries to understand the nature of physical
reality. It is a precise mathematical
description of the behavior of particles and waves. So far all of its
experimental predictions have been confirmed to astounding degrees of accuracy.
Before
you can understand anything about Quantum physics, you have to understand the
assumptions underlying Classical physics.
Classical physics began as a science when Isaac Newton and others
discovered that mathematics could accurately describe the observed world. It is
a mathematical description of common sense. It makes four basic assumptions
about the fabric of reality that correspond more or less to how the world
appears to our senses. These assumptions are reality, locality, causality, and
continuity.
Reality
refers to the assumption that the physical world is objectively real. That is,
the world exists independently of whether anyone is observing it, and it takes
as self- evident that space and time exist in a fixed, absolute way.
Locality
refers to the idea that the only way that objects can be influenced is through
direct contact. In other words, unmediated action at a distance is prohibited.
Causality
assumes that the arrow of time points only in one direction, thus fixing
cause-and-effect sequences to occur only in that order.
Continuity
assumes that there are no discontinuous jumps in nature, that space and time
are smooth.
Classical
physics developed rapidly with these assumptions, and classical ways of
regarding the world are still sufficient to explain large segments of the
observable world, including chemistry, biology, and the neurosciences.
Classical physics got us to the moon and back. It works for most things at the
human scale. It is common sense.
Modern
or Quantum physics tells us that the world of common sense reveals only a
special, limited portion of a much larger and stranger fabric of reality.
Quantum physics studies electrons composed of particles and waves, and says
that their reality is that they respond differently if they are observed or
unobserved. Particles are studied in
relationship, how they affect one another rather than just one piece in
isolation. Studying how one piece
affects the other. And you can’t observe
how a piece is and how it is changed at the same time. Changes don’t happen at the speed of light,
change is instantaneous.
In
essence, the piece has two simultaneous realities. The inherent nature of the particle and the
changed nature of the particle from being observed. In this relationship, locality can be
affected from a distance, continuity does have laps and jumps, cause and effect
doesn’t happen in a linear order, and reality is not fixed and absolute. In essence, quantum physics disproves all
accepted understandings of classical physics.
We are in a creative process, full of multiple possibilities. The
observer has great impact on the particle.
Now
I’ve taken you too far down the rabbit hole.
Let me see if I can explain it with and example.
Practice: Look
around you. Imagine that what you are seeing is just the tip of the iceberg, a
“special limited portion of a larger fabric of reality.”
Look where there appears to be
nothing and imagine that this space is teaming with possibilities. Look where
there appears to be something and imagine that what appears solid is mostly
space. Feel your hands.
Imagine them on the quantum level,
particle/waves flashing in and out of existence. Consider how our hands are
communicating in quantum language with the rest of the universe. What do you
notice?
Quantum
science is important to religion because we are all part of each other. Each of us has an impact on the other,
whether we are in the room or not. And
by our conscious awareness and intention, we can have a positive or negative
impact. We can consciously create our
day.
As
we know just by looking around the world, there are a lot of other conscious
beings participating in this creative process along with us. The philosopher
Alfred North Whitehead put forward the view that everything in the universe,
from particles to planets alike, is in constant contact, exerting varying
degrees of creative influence on each other.
In
the film, "What the Bleep do we know," the main character Amanda is
divorced after having caught her husband having an affair. She is asked to photograph a wedding, and
imagines seeing the groom having an affair with one of the bridesmaids. She can see little cartoon-like creatures
that represent emotions coming out of all the people. Some are acting sexy, some are drunk, some
are angry, all in response to how they are feeling.
She
calls out to the crowd “Don’t you see what is going on?” The crowd all stops and looks at her like she
is crazy. The couple that was getting it
on comes back into the room. It was not
the groom, but a couple in the wedding party.
Amanda’s reality was clouded from her own experiences. She proceeds to get drunk herself.
The
next day she stands in front of the mirror with most of her clothes off, and is
embarrassed about her behavior the night before and has a huge hangover. She
starts screaming at herself, hitting the mirror and getting toothpaste all over
the place, saying, “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.”
Then
she has a moment of insight, and the world suddenly changes. She realizes that she can affect her day by
her positive or negative thoughts. And rather than hating herself, her takes
her make-up and starts drawing hearts and loving words all over her body. We are part of a loving, interconnected
universe, and how we see ourselves really matter. The observer creates a loving presence that
envelops all.
Edgar
Mitchell, the sixth astronaut to walk on the moon, played a significant role in
supporting the scientific investigation of consciousness. The view he had of
the Earth from space gave him deep insights into the creative nature of
consciousness in the universe: “If we change our heads about who we are—and can see
ourselves as creative, eternal beings creating physical experience, joined at
that level of existence we call consciousness—then we start to see and create
this world that we live in quite differently.”
Scientists
used to believe that the brain stopped developing in early childhood, but we
now know that are brains continue to develop.
Violence learned in childhood can be unlearned. We can train our nerve pathways to generate
success in our lives, much like an athlete trains his body to remember the
moves on the slopes or in the water. We
can repattern learned behaviors by consciously changing our habitual response.
Even
though we can play an important role in what manifests in our lives, and we can
consciously create our days (or at least our reactions to daily events), there
are limits to how much responsibility we can claim for what actually happens in
our daily lives. We may not recognize our potential as co-creators and become
victims of life’s circumstances. Or we may claim more than our individual share
of credit for what happens in our lives. We may develop a distorted view and
blame ourselves for a devastating illness or take all the credit for our
healing. How can we have an accurate sense of our own powers? We can develop it
through meditation and spiritual practice.
Pat
Allen, artist and author, states, “Achieving awareness of what mind is creating
is a goal of spiritual practice... We create thoughts, feelings, and ideas that construct our
view of the world and our experience of reality. We become aware of the stories
we are living. When these are visible to us, we can choose whether or not they
serve us, whether or not we are creating the world we truly want. We open
ourselves not only to what mind is creating—often a frenetic monkey chase of
judgments, guilts, and circular thoughts—but to what mind can create—beauty,
wisdom, meaning”
As we learn
to create our day, we discover that we can:
Wire our Mind To Succeed
Dedicate ourselves each day to an emotionally healthy
view of our present, past and future.
Live Out our Best Intentions
Overcome habits that have plagued us for years.
Create positive habits
Release failure and negative emotions
Let go of failed goals and thinking. Focus on what is important now.
Make a more positive impact
on friends
Quantum
science leads us to a new way of thinking about the world, ourselves and
others. It challenges our assumptions
about the nature of reality, and the power we have to affect each other. If we take just one moment a day, to ask
ourselves, “How can I be more loving and effective today,” we will create a
more positive impact on our lives and turn the nature of the world toward a
more loving place. We may still wonder
what the bleep do we know, but we will explore the mystery of a loving
observer. Which may be ourselves, may be
God, or consciousness… there I go again- down the rabbit hole toward that which
can’t be explained.
Blessed be…