[Chat] FW: [Discussion] What the Bleep Do We Know?

[WeinsteinM at aol.com]

I read an article in Salon a few months back saying that the film "uses 
questionable on-screen experts -- and appears to be an infomercial for a 
controversial New Age sect."

The website is http://archive.salon.com/ent/feature/2004/09/16/bleep/.   I'd 
paste it in, but it would exceed the 40k message limit.   Well, I'll paste in 
a few choice excerpts below, since they're so juicy.

-Matthew

>From http://archive.salon.com/ent/feature/2004/09/16/bleep/:

At least one scientist prominently interviewed in the film now says his words 
were taken out of context. And two other key subjects in the film are not 
fully identified: a theologian who, the film fails to divulge, is a former priest 
who left the Catholic Church after allegations of sexual abuse; and a 
mysterious woman identified only as Judy "JZ" Knight, who is actually a sect leader 
claiming to channel a 35,000-year-old warrior spirit named Ramtha. The film's 
three co-directors are among those who follow Ramtha and look to Knight's 
channeled maxims to decipher the mysteries of life. These Ramtha followers 
reportedly number in the thousands. But critics call the sect a cult.

In the movie, the 58-year-old Knight, whose accent is as thick as her 
mascara, makes the boldest statements -- pronounced with long, rolling R's -- about 
particles and God. "We have grrreat technology. But we still have this ugly, 
superrrstitious, backwahds cohncept of Gahd," she says, adding that "the height 
of arrrrrrogance is the belief of those who would see Gahd in their own image.
" Musing on the unity of consciousness and matter, she reminds us that "it 
only takes a fantasy for a man to have a harrrd-on." In her normal mode, Knight 
speaks the plain talk of her native Roswell, N.M., but in the manly presence of 
Ramtha, said to have conquered the continent neighboring Atlantis, Knight's 
jaw juts and her voice deepens into something magisterial and brash (view her 
here [http://ramtha.com/images/products/video/v1.40.ram]). Her Ramtha's School 
of Enlightenment, on a $2 million compound based in Yelm, Wash., boasts 
followers -- including celebrities like actress Shirley MacLaine (who attended 
Knight's seminars in the late '80s) and "Dynasty" star Linda Evans -- willing to 
pay up to $1,600 for a seminar.

Reached by Salon, Meyer Gottlieb, president of Samuel Goldwyn Films, says 
he's seen "Bleep" about eight times. Its fledgling distribution company Roadside 
Attractions had its first real hit earlier this year when it launched festival 
favorite documentary "Super Size Me" and is hoping for a similar sleeper hit 
with " Bleep." Asked what he thought of the expressed desire by filmmaker Mark 
Vicente (on a Ramtha Web site, BeyondTheOrdinary.net) for his viewers to 
emerge from his movie in an "almost trance-like state," Gottlieb only laughed.

....

David Albert, a professor at the Columbia University physics department, has 
accused the filmmakers of warping his ideas to fit a spiritual agenda. "I 
don't think it's quite right to say I was 'tricked' into appearing," he said in a 
statement reposted by a critic on "What the Bleep's" Internet forum, "but it 
is certainly the case that I was edited in such a way as to completely suppress 
my actual views about the matters the movie discusses. I am, indeed, 
profoundly unsympathetic to attempts at linking quantum mechanics with consciousness. 
Moreover, I explained all that, at great length, on camera, to the producers 
of the film ... Had I known that I would have been so radically misrepresented 
in the movie, I would certainly not have agreed to be filmed."

 "I certainly do not subscribe to the 'Ramtha School on Enlightenment,' 
whatever that is!" he finished. Albert provided Salon with an excerpt from a piece 
he's writing on the subject, in which he says, in part, "I'm unwittingly made 
to sound as if (maybe) I endorse its thesis."

....

Knight's role as the voice of Ramtha is the most striking -- but hardly the 
only -- omission of the film, which could easily be interpreted as a full-blown 
infomercial for Ramtha. Two other on-screen experts are not identified as 
Ramtha associates: Dr. Joe Dispenza, chiropractor and mystic, listed as a student 
on the Ramtha Web site; and a man identified only as "Dr. Miceal Ledwith."

 Ledwith (at one time Monsignor Michael Ledwith) was once on track to be the 
next archbishop of Dublin, but the theologian stepped down as president of 
Maynooth College in 1994, after a complaint that he had sexually harassed a young 
seminarian. It was later revealed that Ledwith had allegedly paid an 
six-figure sum to a man who accused him of sexual abuse. Ledwith has maintained his 
innocence but left Ireland for the more placid confines of Monterey, Calif. On 
the "Bleep" Web site, Ledwith's relationship with the Catholic Church is only 
alluded to in a claim that he was once "charged with advising the Holy See on 
theological matters," but he is not identified as ever having been a priest, or 
even as a lecturer at the Ramtha school. According to a Ramtha Web site, 
Ledwith has joined "Ramtha's core of appointed teachers." (The Ramtha school and 
Ledwith have not responded to requests for interviews. The "Bleep" Web site 
recommends that journalists contact an independent publicist, but the movie 
previously listed as its P.R. contact Pavel Mikoloski, also director of public 
affairs for Ramtha's school.)

 Later in the film, a "scientist" explains that, thanks to the strangeness 
quivering below the subatomic level, meditating monks have lowered the crime 
rate in Washington, D.C. But not until the end of the film do we learn that the 
scientist making this claim, John Hagelin -- who once ran for president -- 
conducted the research while teaching (until 1999) at Maharishi University, the 
school named for the Beatles' guru. In JZ Knight's own publications, Ramtha's 
existence, too, is frequently explained in terms of quantum mechanics.

 Funding for the $5 million "Bleep," according to various published 
interviews with the film's creators, comes not from Ramtha but the software fortunes of 
director Arntz, who designed the job-management application AutoSys. Now 
popular in Unix environments, the program sold for more than $14 million in 1995. 
(Eerily, the startup money for AutoSys was also of Atlantean origin, or so the 
original investor claimed. A 1999 piece in Wired by David Diamond described 
the life and suicide of Frederick Lenz III, a guru in his own right, who called 
himself not Ramtha but Rama. The software mogul told those who rendezvoused 
with Rama that he'd taught meditation classes on Atlantis. Later, Lenz said his 
students were bent on his murder, and he plunged himself into the waters of 
Long Island Sound with a $30,000 watch on his wrist and 150 tabs of Valium in 
his bloodstream.)

In a message dated 1/26/05 10:00:56 PM, langwidge at erols.com writes:


> 
>  
> 
> 
> 
>  http://www.whatthebleep.com/scientists/
> 
>   
> 
>  Has anyone seen or heard anything about the film What the Bleep Do We Know?
> 
>   
> 
>  Christine Gray
> 
> 
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