Fritjof Capra's Tao of Physics (1975) was the book that started it all, with Gary Zukav's Dancing Wu-Li Masters (1979) appearing shortly thereafter. Countless others followed throughout the 1980s (for example, Deepak Chopra's Quantum Healing) and 1990s (Michael Talbot's Holographic Universe), and into the new millennium (Arnold Mindell's Quantum Mind and Healing). All of them are based on the premise that quantum physics and mysticism, despite being such seemingly disparate disciplines, actually have much in common. Capra's book, for instance, maintains that while quantum physics and mysticism are completely separate approaches to interpreting reality, both nevertheless exhibit similar logical paradoxes (wave/particle duality for one, Zen koans for the other), and both view the universe as being in a constant state of flux or impermanence. But many authors go further than merely drawing intriguing parallels between the two—much further. Quantum physics and mysticism, these theorists claim, are ultimately indistinguishable—two equivalent paths leading to the same exact truth: that at the deepest level of reality, all is One. The teachings of Ramtha, and the opinions expressed by the physicists interviewed for What the Bleep, are clearly of that more extreme brand of “quantum mysticism.”

The thinking behind this has a number of subtle and complex variations, but there are two lines of thought that seem favored in What the Bleep. The first comes from quantum field theory and says that certain principles of quantum physics suggest that the material world, at its most fundamental level, is actually a limitless sea of energy called the “quantum vacuum,” which is seething with the potentiality for all material manifestation. “At that deepest, subnuclear level of our reality, you and I are literally one,” says Hagelin midway through the film. And this underlying and all-pervasive quantum vacuum, the logic goes, is the same “ground of being” that has been experientially recognized by mystics throughout the ages as our own deepest self or consciousness.

The other version of quantum mysticism presented in What the Bleep, while related to the first, is based on more traditional concepts from quantum physics and is a little more complicated. The basic idea is that the most fundamental units of matter, quanta, can only be considered as clouds of “probability waves” with an indeterminate location, until an unspecified act of measurement “collapses” the waves into a fixed particle with a fixed location. And while physicists and philosophers have carefully debated the finer points of this idea since the 1920s—with a particular focus on what exactly constitutes the “act of measurement” responsible for the collapse of the probability wave—the quantum mystics have seized upon it, ignoring the opposing theories (mechanical detection, “hidden variables,” etc.) to conclude that the act of measurement must imply an observation made by human consciousness. Moreover, they've concluded that if this applies to the quantum micro-world, then it must apply to the everyday macro-world as well (since any material object, no matter how big, can be presumably reduced to its quantum components). “Suppose we ask, Is the moon there when we are not looking at it?” writes Goswami in his 1993 treatise, The Self-Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World. “To the extent that the moon is ultimately a quantum object (being composed entirely of quantum objects), we must say no. . . . Between observations, the moon also exists as a possibility form in transcendent potentia.”

In other words, the idea is that when your consciousness is not perceiving something—like this magazine, or the room you're sitting in, or even other people—then that “thing” loses its apparent solidity and coherence and dissipates back into an indeterminate cloud of potential quantum states until you open your eyes and perceive it again, whereupon it instantly collapses back into actuality. Needless to say, this is hard for most of us to wrap our minds around, reminiscent of the old tree-falling-in-the-forest metaphysical mind-twister. And that's probably why many physicists have dismissed it entirely—including Albert Einstein, who famously remarked, “I like to think that the moon is there even if I am not looking at it.”

The implication inherent in both of these versions of quantum mysticism is that each of us has the potential to affect the world directly, at its most fundamental level, through the power of our own consciousness. If we understand that the universe is a quantum sea of possibilities, then we can learn to bring certain more desirable possibilities into existence via nothing more than our conscious intention—no PhD in physics required. “And therefore, literally,” says Goswami in What the Bleep, appearing before a CGI background of wavy blue quantum energy fields, “I create my own reality.”

It's a fascinating idea. However, it seems that the majority of quantum physicists see no need for the injection of human consciousness into the mathematical formalisms that form the basis of their science. As Ken Wilber pointed out twenty years ago, even the founding fathers of quantum physics/mechanics—Max Planck, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, Sir Arthur Eddington, et al.—who were all self-proclaimed mystics, strongly rejected the notion that mysticism and physics were describing the same realm. The attempt to unify them is, in the words of Planck, “founded on a misunderstanding, or, more precisely, on a confusion of the images of religion with scientific statements. Needless to say, the result makes no sense at all.” Eddington was even more explicit: “We should suspect an intention to reduce God to a system of differential equations. That fiasco at any rate must be avoided. However much the ramifications of physics may be extended by further scientific discovery, they cannot from their very nature [impinge upon] the background in which they have their being.”

And there's the crux of the confusion. Quantum physics deals with the abstract, symbolic analysis of the physical world—space, time, matter, and energy—even down to the subtlest level, the quantum vacuum. Mysticism deals with the direct apprehension of the transcendent Source of all those things. The former is a mathematical system involving intensive intellectual study, and the latter is a spiritual discipline involving the transcendence of the intellectual mind altogether. It's apparently only a very loose interpretation of physics, and a looser interpretation of mysticism, that allows for their surprising convergence—and opens the door to the even wilder idea that by drinking some of this quantum mystical brew, you'll be able to create your own reality.

“I wake up in the morning and I consciously create my day the way I want it to happen,” says Dispenza, a longtime student of Ramtha, during one of his many appearances in What the Bleep. In the film, after Amanda experiences her radical breakthrough into a positive new world, most of the interviewees chime in to explain the mechanics behind such a transformation—all presenting variations on the theme of creating one's ideal reality through the power of thought and intention. However, the degree to which “creating your reality” is taken literally varies widely among the interviewees, from Stanford professor William Tiller's idea that, upon realizing the interconnectedness of all things, we should take responsibility for our effects on the world, to Dispenza's notion of literally “consciously designing our destiny” to suit our own desires by “infecting the quantum field.” It's this latter use of quantum–physical reality creation that begs questioning—if only because it represents, again, that peculiar confluence of physics and mysticism, and appears to also contradict the very nature of mysticism itself. Mystical practice is traditionally aimed toward the mind-shattering revelation that there is actually only one reality and one self, and this revelation is said to liberate the individual from his or her attachment to personal desires. So if we're pursuing the manifestation of our desires by consciously manipulating the quantum field, and thereby attempting to re-create reality itself in our own image, how spiritual can that be, really?

In any case, it is understandable that so many people would feel a need to, as Wilber has put it, “rest their souls on the findings of physics.” In our postmodern and scientific age, what is the most obvious direction for a spiritually seeking soul to turn in search of Truth (with a capital T) after traditional mythic religion has been seen through and left behind? Why, it's toward science, surely, with its claim to universal truth and its mathematical certainty to ten decimal places about the inner logic of space and time. Having our spiritual beliefs backed by science lends them some degree of legitimacy, however tenuous the connection. Moreover, it seems to make those beliefs more easily defensible against the preying guards of scientific authority—that is, the skeptics and scientific materialists of our era—both when encountering such adversaries in the world at large and when the same materialist doubts arise in our own minds.

So maybe the widespread popularity of quantum mysticism, and its latest offspring, What the Bleep, is pointing not just to our cultural propensity to be enamored by the amazing insights and innovations of science but to our innate fear of scientific materialism, which seeks, by definition, to squelch soul or spirit wherever it finds it. That we should even feel the need to overcome the doubt of the scientific materialist worldview indicates how all-pervasive it actually is, and how thoroughly steeped in it most of us are. In fact, the very need to base our belief in the transcendental Divine on the findings of science seems indicative of the strange spiritual desert in which we currently find ourselves, and in which humanity possibly has been lost since modern science first arose to trump religion centuries ago. Having left the world of myth, dogma, and superstition behind, we leapt into the wider embrace of science, logic, and rationality. But the scientific paradigm also has its limits, and despite the insistence of those who claim otherwise, perhaps what humanity needs now is a higher worldview: one that understands the miracles of science to be merely the modern expression of an ever-evolving Mystery, which only reveals—each time it is glimpsed—how little we really do know.