What the Bleep Do We Know!? (What the #$*! Do We (K)now!?)

What's going on, and why am I here?

- Where do we come from? - What do quantum physics--

- Immense quantum mechanical isotopes. - Physics of possibility.

Quantum mechanics allows--

Supreme mind.

- Brain is capable of millions-- - A neural net.

- Cascade of biochemical-- - An emotional response--

Molecules--

The brain does not know the difference between...

what it sees in its environment and what it remembers.

We are running the holodeck.

Whatever way we observe the world around us--

So how can you continue to see the world as real...

if the self that is determining it to be real is intangible?

Are all realities existing simultaneously?

Is there a possibility...

that all potentials exist side by side?

Have you ever seen yourself through the eyes of someone else that you have become...

and looked at yourself through the eyes of the ultimate observer?

Who are we?

Where do we come from, what should we do...

and where are we going?

Why are we here? Well, that is the ultimate question, isn't it?

What is reality?

What I thought was unreal, now for me...

seems in some ways to be more real than what I think to be real...

which seems now more to be unreal.

You can't explain it, um...

and anybody who gets too lost in try--

anybody who spends too much time trying to explain it...

is likely to get lost forever down the rabbit hole of mysteriousness.

I think the more you look at quantum physics...

the more mysterious and wondrous it becomes.

Quantum physics...

very succinctly speaking...

is a physics of possibilities.

These are questions--

These are addressing questions, um, of how the world feels to us...

of-of whether there's a difference between the way the world feels to us...

and the way it really is.

Have you ever thought about what thoughts are made of?

I think some of the things we're seeing with the children today...

is a sign that the culture is in the wrong paradigm...

and not appreciating the power of thought.

Every age, every generation has its built-in assumptions--

That the world is flat, or that the world is round, et cetera.

There are hundreds of hidden assumptions...

things we take for granted, that may or may not be true.

Of course, in the vast majority of cases, historically, these things aren't true.

So presumably, if history is any guide...

much about what we take for granted about the world simply isn't true.

But we're locked into these precepts without even knowing it of ten times.

That's a paradigm.

Modern materialism...

strips people of the need to feel responsible...

and often enough, so does religion.

But I think if you take quantum mechanics seriously enough...

it puts the responsibility squarely in your lap.

And it doesn't give answers that are clear-cut...

and comforting.

It says, yes, the world is a very big place. It's very mysterious.

Mechanism is not the answer, but I'm not gonna tell you what the answer is...

because you're old enough to decide for yourself.

Is everyone a mystery?

Is everyone an enigma?

They most certainly are.

Asking yourself these deeper questions opens up new ways of being in the world.

It brings in a breath of fresh air.

It makes life more joyful.

The real trick to life is not to be in the know...

but be in the mystery.

Why do we keep re-creating the same reality?

Why do we keep having the same relationships?

Why do we keep getting the samejobs...

over and over again?

In this infinite sea of potentials that exist around us...

how come we keep re-creating the same realities?

Isn't it amazing that we have options and potentials that exist...

but we're unaware of them?

Is it possible that we're 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've been conditioned to believe...

that the external world is more real than the internal world.

This new model of science says just the opposite--

It says what's happening within us will create what's happening outside of us.

There's a physical reality that is absolutely rock-solid...

and yet... it only--

If you wanna put it this way, it only comes into existence...

when it bumps up against some other piece of physical reality.

That other piece may be us, and of course, we're partial to those moments...

but it doesn't have to be either.

You know, it could be just some incidental rock comes flying along...

and interacts with this fuzzy mass of stuff...

and sure enough, it provokes it into a particular state of existence.

There were philosophers in the past that said, ''Look, if I kick a rock...

''and I hurt my toe, that's real.

''I feel that. It feels real. It's vivid.

And that means that it's reality.''

But it's still an experience, and it's still this person's perception of it being real.

Scientific experiments have shown that if we take a person and, uh...

hook their brains up to certain PET scans or computer technology...

and ask them to look at a certain object...

and they watch, certain areas of the brain light up.

And then they've asked them to close their eyes...

and now imagine that same object.

And when they imagine that same object...

it produced the same areas of the brain to light up...

as if they were actually visually looking at it.

So it caused scientists to back up and ask this question.

So who sees then? Does the brain see? Or do the eyes see?

And what is reality? Is reality what we're seeing with our brain...

or is reality what we're seeing with our eyes?

And the truth is is that the brain does not know the difference...

between what it sees in its environment and what it remembers...

because the same specific neural nets are then firing.

What is reality?

We're bombarded by huge amounts of information...

and it's coming into our body, and we're processing it--

coming in through our sense organs, and it's percolating up and up...

and at each step we're eliminating information.

And finally, what is bubbling up to consciousness is...

the one that's the most self-serving.

The brain processes 400 billion bits of information a second...

but we're only aware of 2,000 of those.

But our awareness of those 2,000 bits of information...

arejust about the environment, our body and about time.

We're living in a world where all we see is the tip of the iceberg--

the classical tip of an immense quantum mechanical iceberg.

- Hey, wow! You got a lot of shots to develop? - No.

Oh, bummer. Well, I'll catch you later.

If the brain is processing 400 billion bits of information...

and our awareness is only on 2,000--

that means reality's happening in the brain all the time.

It's receiving that information, and yet we haven't integrated it.

The eyes are like the lens.

But the tape that's really seeing is the back of the brain.

It's called the visual cortex. It's right back here.

It's like this camera and its tape.

Did you know that the brain imprints what it has the ability to see?

This is important.

For example:

This camera is seeing a lot more around me...

than what is here...

because it is-- has no objection and no judgment.

The only movie that's playing in the brain...

is what we have the ability to see.

So is it possible our eyes, our cameras...

see more than what our brain...

has the ability to consciously project?

Well, the way our brain is wired up...

we only see what we believe is possible.

Um, we match patterns that already...

uh, exist within ourselves through conditioning.

So, a wonderful story that I believe is true...

is that when the Indians-- the Native American Indians...

on the Caribbean Islands saw Columbus's ships approaching...

they couldn't see them at all.

Because it was so...

unlike anything they had ever seen before, they couldn't see it.

When Columbus's armada landed in the Caribbean...

none of the natives were able to see the ships...

even though they existed on the horizon.

The reason that they never saw the ships was because...

they had no knowledge in their brains, or no experience, that clipper ships existed.

So the shaman starts to notice that there's ripples out in the ocean, but he sees no ship...

but he starts to wonder what's causing the effect.

So every day he goes out and looks and looks and looks.

And after a period of time, he's able to see the ships.

And once he sees the ships, he tells everybody else that ships exist out there.

Because everybody trusted and believed in him, they saw them also.

We create reality. We're reality-producing machines.

We create the effects of reality all the time.

We always perceive something after reflection in the mirror of memory.

As far as whether or not we're just living in a big holodeck or not...

it's a question we don't necessarily have a good answer to.

I think this is a big philosophical problem we have to deal with...

in terms of what science can say about our world...

because we are always the observer in science.

So we are still always constrained...

by what is ultimately coming into the human brain...

that allows us to see and perceive the things we do.

So it is conceivable that all of this really is just a great illusion...

that we have no way of really getting outside of to see what is really out there.

Your brain doesn't know the difference between what's taking place out there...

and what's taking place in here.

There is no ''out there'' out there independent of what's going on in here.

You okay? I heard you scream earlier. Was it another dream?

You were an Indian...

watching Columbus's ship materialize out of thin air.

Wow.

And this medicine man kept hitting you.

Cool. That's--

Hey, maybe it was a past life or a parallel reality...

or a future life.

Get real.

Or maybe that dream was trying to tell you the truth.

I guess it just depends on what you think is real.

Maybe you should try different anxiety pills.

My pills are fine, okay? Thank you.