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November/December 2006 Featured Stories
What the Bleep We Know Now

by Vicky Thompson

Will Arntz and Betsy Chasse, filmmakers of the highly successful What the BLEEP Do We Know!? documentary now available on DVD, spoke with New Connexion about critical mass, the Big Bang and using quantum theories to affect change in the world.

Q: Since the 2004 release of What the BLEEP, how has society stopped their routine thinking to ponder the deeper questions presented in the film?

Betsy: People are in a place where they really want to make changes and shift not only in their personal lives, but also on a global perspective. I think that concepts in The BLEEP -- that our emotions help to us see patterns and we can change for the better -- help us create a roadmap to a better place.

Will Arntz

Will: Individual change eventually bubbles up into society, so we don't know what the long-term effect will be. If this film is on a 20-year timer, people will see it repeatedly, and 20 years from now, it may hit some bizarre critical mass along with all the other things that will follow it, and boom, change happens.

Betsy: Society in general is seeking change. BLEEP was a part of that collective consciousness. The film was a part of an overall movement from society's collective desire to change.

Q: How do you think the paradigm of separateness can be changed by using the quantum theories presented?

Will: That's the $64,000 question. The interesting thing about quantum is that because of the entanglement theory, it turns out that everything is connected. On the very fundamental physical level, all of the atoms are still touching from the Big Bang. Ideas like that, once you hang with them for a day, a year, a lifetime -- they start changing the way you actually think about things. When you get angry at someone, you realize that you're actually getting angry at a part of yourself, and you're hurting yourself. Again, that takes years of practice, and years of awareness to really reprogram what the senses are telling us.

Betsy Chasse

Betsy: Let me disagree with you slightly. I don't know if it always takes years of practice. I've really been working on this for last five years. I dove in headfirst when we starting making the movie. Once I really decided to accept the concepts that we talked about in the film -- that we're interconnected, that I create my reality -- I could see it almost instantaneously.

Will: Really?

Betsy: I could. I could really see how, for instance, getting mad at someone while driving in my car--how that moment had an effect within that moment and how I created more reality for myself. Yes, it can take years, but I hate to discourage people that it's a big mountain to climb. It's about acceptance. It's about saying, "Yes, I create my reality, I am connected. What I do, my thoughts, affect my reality and the reality of the people around me and their thoughts affect my reality and we're connected." And you can start to see how when you have a thought, you can watch the trickle down effect of that thought if you're just observant enough.

Q: In the film, it says that the moment when you interact with reality, that's when it comes into focus. Mysticism and sacred experiences are believed to represent a truer reality. Have you experienced a mystical moment of truer reality?

Will: There's astronaut Ed Mitchell's story of coming back from the moon. He had this moment where he looked at the Earth and suddenly he had a deep feeling that everything was connected. When he came back into his body, he felt this all was an illusion. I haven't had something like that. I had moments when making the film where it seemed like we were on the right path, and we were in alignment with some sort of force or awareness that was saying, "Yes, keep going."

Betsy: For all of us, that sort of mystical moment was almost a perpetual thing in that even in the darkest of moments when you would think, We're never going to get out of this dark editing room, there was always this piece of me that always felt calm, and that always knew that it was going to be what it needed to be. Things like even filming at Bagdad. For months the people at the Bagdad Theater kept telling us no, but we kept writing the script with the Bagdad because we knew that we were going to film there.

Q: Even though the Bagdad kept saying no, you were continuing with your yes journey to filming there. How does that tie into quantum theory?

Will: There has been experiential evidence that intent or mind or consciousness does seem to affect quantum events. With the random event generators that Dean Radin talks about in the DVD, there's pretty solid evidence that the mind affects things on the quantum level. We're not just talking about the observer effect-this is by using intent to basically push the universe a certain way.

Now that's on a very small basis, with little electrons doing something slightly different. How does that relate to the Bagdad? It shows that the mental world or the world of intent or the world of consciousness, is real. It's as real as the quantum event.

The actual mechanism, can you chart it from the mind to the quantum level to the guy finally one day saying after the twentieth time Betsy badgered him, "Yes, we'll do it." That's a connection that hasn't been made and I guess that's 100 years off in the making. But it shows that by setting our intent on having it happen at the Bagdad, our intent is real so it can produce real results.

Q: What new world view would you like to create?

Betsy: We need to start getting back in touch with that inner spiritual self that knows that we are connected to everything, that knows that we're all one. And from that, we can create the kind of world that we want. But I don't think that we can create that from the outside in. We have to go from the inside out.

What Portlanders Know About What the Bleep

A group of 15 friends gathered to screen What the BLEEP!? at Cascadia Commons Cohousing, a Portland community where private homes share common grounds and facilities. Ranging in age from nine to 85, the group shared their diverse views on the film.

Gretchen, age 43: It felt like the movie was all about the power of positive thinking, but unlike some such movies, it was substantiated in a multidisciplinary manner. Lots of this resonated with what I’ve experienced. It made me feel hopeful about making some changes. I am grateful that some people are willing to step out of the boundaries in standard science to investigate this.

Gerhardt, age 52: I liked a lot of it, but I disagree with what seemed a strongly implied theory that someone who suffers abuse brought it on themselves.

Group discussion: Most members agreed that the film seemed to blame the victims at certain points.

Charley, age 47: I liked the message about unity and reconciliation, yet my life experience has typically been one of isolation and I can’t see how to get to unity.

Dara, age 41: I wanted to know who the interviewees were before they spoke and it was hard to judge how to receive them otherwise.

Group discussion: Does knowing someone’s credentials prejudice a viewer or allow them to take in information in a more informed manner. The group was evenly split on the issue.

Don, age 37: The double slit experiment was the most lucid explanation I’ve ever seen, but the observer effect was not described well. The only way to observe quantum particles is by using or reaching out with other particles. In a way, we’re only “seeing” them by bumping into them with another particle, which is why the observer affects the observed.

Deborah, age 9: I liked it even though there were some parts I didn’t understand. I liked Dr. Quantum best.

George, age 85: It was a trip.

--Cathy McGuire