Newage guru Ramtha seeks followers through movie What The bleep Do We Know?

Finally went to see What the Bleep do We Know? Several people have strongly urged me to see it, including one Orthodox priest I respect a great deal, but it seems to have taken a while to get to Salt Lake.

Well, I never was much of a fan of Fritjof Capra and his ilk, and within two minutes it was pretty clear that the Starship Enterprise was headed straight for that Sector. So I was ready, and not exactly suprised, to get a strong whiff of familiar rat when one "scientist" (anonymous until the credits rolled) started talking about how 4000 meditators had converged on Washington DC one summer and reduced crime by 25% by thinking nice thoughts. Um, could you pass me some of those police reports, please? Anyway, anonymous or not, after a while you start to recognize the stories, and this is classic Transcendental Meditation marketing— and yup, the credits confirmed it: the guy works for TM. Hmmmm. I can't help it; I've always been just a tad sceptical of the Maharishi's team, ever since somewhat before those flying pictures turned out to be a little less than honest, if you know what I mean.

Well, obviously the woman with the "British" accent was another professional newager of some kind, but she didn't seem to be spouting TM, and I just couldn't place her. She looked familiar, though— a bit chubbier than back "then"— but when was that, and where? "We are all God", she pontificated (and if so, then why am I not moved to adore this woman?); but by itself, that wasn't much of a clue as to who she was. Well, at the end of the movie, when the talking heads all told who they were— voila mystery solved— turns out she was none other than JZ Knight, actually channeling "Ramtha", a "35000 year old spririt warrior" with a fake British accent. Knight has been channeling "Ramtha" ever since the 70s from her spread in Yelm, Washington, although her ex-husband reports coming across her practicing up the "Ramtha" voice out in the toolshed one day. But nevermind that, "Ramtha" instructs us followers on reincarnation and past lives, you are all god, etc; all important messages for everybody. Anyway, in case you missed what I just said: Knight is actually "channeling Ramtha" right there onscreen, for the whole movie. Knight/Ramtha doesn't go too deep into reincarnation and past lives here, but this is the vantagepoint from which we learn that organized religion is Bad Bad Bad.

Ah, yes. Ah ha. Ah bleep.

Well, because of a conversation with my sister, I got to browsing around the net looking for more info on Ramtha and her movie, and here's an interesting post from the FACTNet Message Board on Religious Cults and Sects way back on 5/16/04:

Get ready for Ramtha folks. The Ramtha School of Enlightenment has gone Hollywood and... even got an Academy Award winning actress to star in [their new movie] (Marlee Maitlin).

What the #&@*%$! Do We Know?! is a cleverly crafted, well-acted, nicely animated, and seemingly benign movie... [whose] messages to love yourself, open your mind, lose your addictions, and find that spot in your life where linear time is not the dominant factor... are put forth with great humor and very creative filmmaking.

Of course the other messages are that organized religion is very, very bad and there is no such thing as... good or bad.

Alrightee then. That said... get ready to deprogram your aunt Betsy in the coming months. The movie is gaining legs and is going to go national— it opened in LA (albiet only one theater) May 14. It is playing all over Arizona and Oregon. And it is winning prizes in film festivals because it truly is very well done. It's the mixture of science and spirituality New Agers have been hoping for and features none other than JZ KNIGHT! It is so cleverly disguised as a mystics' and seekers' film that not one single press report is out there stating where the #&@*%$! this movie came from.

The biggest clue to the film's creators is its debut location: Yelm, Washington— home of the Ramtha School of Enlightenment (RSE). The buzz on the film is talked about at Masters Connection which is the RSE bulletin board. Despite the film’s [assertion] that it is a Lord of the Wind production, this film is a production of the RSE.... JZ Knight hand-picked the scientists that are used in the film, verifiable at www.ramtha.com. The filmmakers— William Arntz, Betsy Chasse, and Mark Vicente— are students of Ramtha. Mark Vicente’s site www.markvicente.com directly links to RSE. The press contact on whatthebleep.com was Pavel Mikoloski, who is identified on other websites as a student of the RSE (see beyondthe ordinary.net/journeytoramtha.shtml); but they have since changed to a new contact by the name of John Raatz of the Visioneering Group, an entity not related to the RSE.

I attended the movie and received a handout (cult invitation) about the movie when I handed over my ticket for admission. It advised me to go to www.whatthebleep.com to learn more about spreading the word on the film. The website has a host of information on the movie and a well rounded reading list that also includes all of Ramtha’s works. There is a world of good within this reading list— and then there is the Ramtha stuff too. Whatthebleep.com has a message board hosted by Ramtha followers. It does not appear to have room for threads that do not support Ramtha. Additionally, the film's producers are attending screenings to help spread the concepts in the film.

...I know two people who spent over a year at the RSE in the early 1990's. Both described their departures as “escapes”. This is the type of cult that "cultivates" your assets. Like Scientology with Cruise and Travolta, RSE has celebrities like Linda Evans that say how wonderful and divine it is.... But for average people a decade ago, the experience was of indentured servitude and control. The degrading stories I heard were unbelievable, given the premise of the organization: enlightenment.

What the #$$%*!! Do We Know?! has merits... it is creative and interesting. I just wish it had been made by someone innocuous like Steven Spielberg and not JZ Knight getting ready to sign everyone up for summer camp. There is an agenda here— brilliantly disguised— and we need to get the word out.

Well, alrighteee then!

One little scene that flashed with slight variations several times at the very heart of the movie later struck me as a great cameo of the whole flick: The main actor (a photographer) was shooting a sumptuous Polish wedding in a Catholic church— all glittering vestments, high art, the whole scene— Catholicism, high society, and wedding as metaphors for repression, of course; and Polishness as an occasion to have some fun while getting some somewhat mildly repulsive animations to expatiate about the chemistry of addiction and repression.

During the photoshoot, the photographer keeps flashing back to her own disastrous wedding, which had taken place in the same church. As the movie's ultimate metaphor for false religion and repression, in these flashbacks the priest's vestments were black!— in fact of a quality not seen except on Good Friday or at state funerals, in the good ol' days; certainly not something you'd find at any RC funeral today— and how much less at a wedding, today or otherwise!

Priestly vestments are powerful icons and we have deep reactions to them when we see them, conscious or not. Black vestments are different than the kind of thing you wear to the Black & White Ball: they create an impression of great solemnity, and also of sadness.... what can I say?— they're for funerals!

Well, but this is Hollywood, so expect a little eye-candy and detail-fudging. "Gothic" is cool— a little sultry fascination and horror, a slinky mix of high baroque and black repression, glimpses of temporal corruption and spiritual power— irresistable to the the trench-coat highschoolers next door, and thrilling to the spiritual conspiracy buffs on late-night talk radio, who are as often as not just a tad anti-Catholic. And more than a tad ignorant, which is why Hollywood can get away with such tricks, or believe them itself.

Of course, like most other True Crime shows, there's quite a bit more thrill here than truth, and, well, we did have the idea that this movie was all about truth, right? Hey, but what the bleep do I know. Why do I get the feeling, though, that these Black Wedding vignettes would be a fine example of the kind of fact-checking, atmospherics, and police reports that are behind all the other quantums of marvellous newage nostrums in the movie as well?

Okey I'll concede some, on the quantum stuff. Modern physics is is pretty marvellous, and what the bleep do I really know about it, anyway? But I do know a thing or two about theology, philosophy, and culture, so won't somebody pleeeeez! just tell me two things: How is it that we simply cannot seem to understand the difference between science, with its limited method and limited, this-worldly horizon, and religion, which speaks as it were from beyond all horizons? And how is it that even presumably mature thinkers like the flick's talking heads never seem to have gotten past the adolescent notion that (the Christian) "God" is a big daddy in the sky / cosmic policeman / universal hitler?? (Sigh.)

I mean like, Hello-o!? Would anyone like a little culture with their PhD? Or is this whole thing really as self-serving as it seems?

Well, given the state of, precisely, our culture, I guess it would be asking too much to hope that instead of toadying to mass prejudices and misconceptions and juvenile excuses for disliking "organized religion", a movie might be made (not by Ramtha and her TM friends, I'm sure) that actually took our own culture as seriously as we take the Dalai Lama's and the newage implications of String Theory! But then, um, come to think of it... with Mel Gibson as the best celebrity endorsement that Christianity can come up with these days, it's pretty hopeless.

Great punchline in a review by Greg Beacham in the Salt Lake City Weekly, by the way: "It’s an audacious, fresh idea for a movie: Physicists, scientists, professors and at least one chiropractor stand in front of a camera, each expounding theories about nearly everything... from quantum mechanics to the existence of God..... Yes, it's audacious and fresh— and... some of the most pseudointellectual psychobabble-rific hooey [ever] to reach the big screen.... More than that, it’s boring for the longest stretches... simultaneously impenetrable and laughably simplistic, and almost none of it is watchable. I don’t know much, but I know what sucks."

Bleep.