Sacred Texts in Multi-Media Formats

I explore how traditional printed texts are represented and interact with other texts in multimedia formats through an examination of the website, sacredtexts.com, while also considering how sacred texts are constructed in such multimedia formats as the movie, “What the Bleep Do We (k)now!?.” This movie also has a textual commentary, a study guide that is available free on the internet from Noetic Sciences that can be viewed as a commentary, such as many sacred texts have. These subjected resources will be analyzed in reference to the frameworks of their textual, cinematic and virtual contexts through the application of Robert Detweiler’s seven traits of sacred texts. This examination of multimedia formats challenges the academic study of religion to expand their conceptions and definitions of what are sacred texts, a discourse which is all ready strained by the inclusion of oral and performance conceptions around texts. This will open up discussion in how to construct a more technologically inclusive framework that recognizes the multimedia resources available to, and the objects of study for, contemporary scholars of religion.

Sacred Texts in Multimedia Formats

(Tina)Theresa Hannah-Munns

copyright claimed 2006

In this essay I will examine a traditional text within an untraditional format, an internet edition, and contrast this with a film project that has become a sacred text for many contemporary individuals. The theme of multimedia runs through both, with the standard printed format of the traditional Buddhist, Servivānija-jātaka,[1] viewed bifocally as a document of a specific religious tradition and contextually placed into the more multicultural setting of a pluralistic internet collection that contains both sacred and classical texts on sacred-texts.com. With this said the movie, What the Bleep Do we (k)now !?[i], is also expanded upon in print as the What the Bleep Do we (k)now!? Study Guide and Manual for Navigating Rabbit Holes,[ii] also available for free on the internet. A second expanded quantum version was developed, What the Bleep!?: Down the Rabbit Hole,[iii] which brings the film’s notion of infinite possibilities out from the conceptual stage and into a multi-modal framework that uses multimedia technology. In other words, the dramatic scenes within the movie are randomly reshuffling themselves so that each viewing of the movie becomes a unique experience. Using these resources, the concepts of sacred texts will be explored in the printed, film and virtual contexts through the theoretical model proposed by Detweiler in his seven traits of sacred texts.[iv]

The Buddhist canon is the Pali Canon and is composed of three baskets, the tripitaka. The Jataka tales is the tenth of fifteen books found within the Khuddaka-nikaya under the sutra-pitaka (basket) that expounds the teachings of Buddha through his past samsaric incarnations.[v] The Servivānija-jātaka is the third of a series of past-life narratives expounded by the Buddha in order to forward insight into his dharma, teachings, that were shared to instruct on contemporary situations of the sangha, or the Buddhist community. Parts of the Pali Canon appear within the pages of sacred-texts.com with the Servivānija-jātaka being a very small entry among a variety of texts. This pluralism can be hard to negotiate when the reader enters this web domain without the scholarly background of religious studies and the reader may view this Jataka tale as a simple myth versus the more discursive texts available in more Westernized frameworks of writing styles and genres. While the web site is well structured and maintained, any reader can “hit” this website without the contextual cultural knowledge needed to adequately “read” and understand the “authoritative teachings”[vi] that defines this as a sacred text of Buddhism. Authority as defined by academic standards is not an issue when viewing the film, What the Bleep Do we (k)now !? since the documentary evidence, mainly obtained through filmed interviews, are with professors of various disciplinary positions within university settings. From beginning to end, documentary vignettes are interwoven with dramatic sequences that revolve around the narrative of one woman’s psychological (including spiritual) life crisis. Intermingling with these dramatic and documentary segments is animated scenery that expounds the scientific explanations with vivid clarity. Together, these different film genres create a new medium in cinematography and teach a new paradigm of perception that brings together the rift between science and religion in a creative sacred text format. To understand how these diverse products could be called sacred texts, the criteria used by Robert Detweiler can be used as an analytic tool that frames both the traditional Servivānija-jātaka text and the non-traditional What the Bleep Do we (k)now !? text. His seven criteria include: generates claims of divine inspiration; reveals divinity; hidden knowledge encoded; need privileged interpreters; transforms lives; used in religious ritual; and evokes divine reality, the sacred presence. In the Servivānija-jātaka, Buddha is the “Blessed One” who shares this teaching using stoires from his own past-lives experiences, which to his followers is the stumbling block to their not recognizing their own true natures. This fulfills the first requirement of divine inspiration in the sense that Buddha can be emulated by those that follow him and obtain “Arahatship” by remembering their past lives. Through his story the “Blessed One made clear a thing concealed from them by re-birth.”[vii] It is this story that reveals divinity, the second criteria of sacred texts, while this story also shows how Buddha himself acted as an interpreter for his contemporaries, the fourth requirement. The “Brother” that heard this story spoken at Sāvatthi is said to have reached Arahatship, transforming his life as stated in criteria number five. As far as using this sacred text in ritual, it can only be assumed. One course known to me is the use of storytelling to educate children through these tales. Also, there is a prophesy that the dharma will be fully corrupt once the Jātaka tales are no longer remembered. It is in the telling of the Buddha past-life stories that the last criteria is fulfilled; the divine reality evoked is the presence of the three jewels, that of the Buddha, his dharma, and the sangha, in contemporary times. This analysis of one sacred text shows how the seven criteria does model the traditional notions of written sacred texts, but can these same criteria be used to explicate the sacred text of a cinematography form? One nuance that must be pointed out is that most film productions begin with some form of written script. In the case of What the Bleep Do we (k)now !?, many different scripts were utilized individually before coming together as a unified storyboard design. Interview questions had to be written out, three screen writers produced a script for the dramatic storyline and ideas were emailed to the animators to utilize the quantum ideas surrounding the notion of addiction. All of these preliminary writings could be seen as a pre-canonization process that lead to the canonized version of clips that make up the film. These were then added to by the inclusion of more interview footage originally obtained for the first movie, but added to the original storyboard in the second quantum edition. The printed study guide is not a sacred text but a commentary on the original film. With this point aside, the task of applying Detweiler’s seven criteria of sacred text is harder to envision since the printed text is not available but must be analyzed through multiple viewings of the film. This could prove to be disheartening to a researcher and limit the knowledge and understanding potential within the discourse on sacred texts. Yet, multimedia is a sign of our times, a three dimensional interpretation that expands from a written, two dimensional format into the arena of interactive performance texts. What the Bleep Do we (k)now !? brings the concept of sacred texts alive from the printed page; the abstract notions of scholarly debate are moved into a multidisciplinary discussion between various authoritative individuals and are anchored through concrete examples that lay people in contemporary situations can understand. Science and religion meet together in an authoritative format that provides meaning in our technological and global communications age. The scientific results of quantum physics generate claims of divine inspiration, as expressed in notions of unending possibilities through unified quantum field theory. This theory is discussed by many professionals in the film, but is revealed most eloquently by John Hagelin, Ph.D and professor of Physics and Director of the Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy at Maharishi University. The way this theory is handled within the sacred text of the film meets the criteria of revealing divinity as well as the need for privileged (in the know) interpreters to reveal the hidden knowledge encoded in the abstract language. These criteria were also achieved concerning the explanation of the coexistence of wave and particles within scene 4: Duke Reginald’s Court of Unending Possibilities. Amit Goswami, Ph.D and Professor of Physics at the University of Oregon (also senior scholar in residence at the Institute of Noetic Sciences) is also a privileged interpreter that reveals the divinity found within quantum field theory and speaks on how this information can transform lives once people can comprehend the complex nature of multiple forms of divinity, the self-divine sacred presence of possibilities hidden within one’s perception of oneself as a member of a larger conception of divinity, as one potentiality or possibility within the divine matrix of the whole universe. This revealed divinity is called the “ultimate observer” by Ramtha, master teacher at Ramtha School of Enlightenment, channeled through J.Z. Knight in scene 1: Opening Sequence. Ramtha’s screen presence and grounded examples that use a camera lens as perceptual viewpoint evokes a sense of the divine reality hidden within our mechanistic conditioning. William Tiller, Ph.D and Professor Emeritus of Material Science and Engineering at Stanford University, emphasizes that it is our conceptions of physical reality that hides the divinity that is being remodeled by quantum science, as expressed in scene 2: What is reality?

Not only is our conceptions of mechanistic science, but our religious ideas that hide the knowledge of self-divinity as an expression of a larger divine nature that organizes energy and information into situations to be played out by each of us as co-creators in our lives. In scene 8, the concepts concerning God are reviewed and analyzed from a quantum perspective rather than a mechanistic perspective. This was done most efficiently by Dr. Miceal Ledwith, formerly a professor of Systematic Theology at Maynooth College in Ireland, with the aid of the dramatic scenes of Amanda remembering herself as a little girl within her catholic experience. Another way that this sacred text reveals divinity and interprets the veil that hides divine nature from ourselves is through the lens of diverse addictions, especially their foundation within our biochemical addiction to emotional upheaval. Candace Pert, Ph.D and professor at Georgetown University Medical School, who holds various patents for modified peptides, addresses these neurological processes in scenes 8-11, overlapping the animation and dramatic scenarios in a complex interaction that calls for a re-definition and re-conceptualization of sacred texts. The most vivid use of privileged interpreters can be seen within scene 3: Seeing the Ships. Here the use of interviewed voices speak over the dramatic action of Amanda’s dream of a shaman and narrates her dream through scientific and theological worldviews. Andrew B. Newberg, M.D. and assistant professor in the Department of Radiology and a staff physician in Nuclear Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania speaks within this scene and later shares in an excerpt of his interview how all his life he had asked deep questions and wanted to bring science and spirituality together. His current work does this and he expresses these holistic notions within the sacred text of the movie as a result. Fred Alan Wolf, Ph.D in Physics from U.C.L.A. is currently a physicist, lecturer and writer that speak on “the chaotic, wacky world” of quantum physics. He points to the fulfillment of the fifth criteria, that of the transformation that occurs in people’s lives once they realize that “the real trick to life is not to be in the know, but be in the mystery.” Jeffrey Satinover, with a M.D. in Psychiatry and M.S. in Physics (also past president of the C.G. Jung Foundation of New York and William James lecturer in the Psychology and Religion at Harvard University), best explains how to “be in the mystery” through his recognition that people need new frameworks in which to perceive the divine, especially in scenes 12 and 13. Once these new frameworks are in place, such as found within the sacred texts that bring quantum science and spirituality together, the texts can be used in ritualistic ways, such as those pointed to by Dr. Joe Dispenza, Doctor of Chiropractic Medicine at Life University in scene 6: Effecting the Reality. These are further expanded upon and formatted into group sessions in the written commentary of the internet study guide[viii] and further extracted within the second video, What the Bleep!?: Down the Rabbit Hole - Quantum Edition. [ix]

More than any other criterion, the evocation of divine reality or presence is epitomized throughout the movie in the notion of self-divinity and reaches its full clarity within the last two scenes of the movie as Amanda fully embraces her role as the “ultimate observer” and sees her connection with her perceptions of the world as a unified ground of her being. Scene 15: Down the Rabbit Hole shows the perpetual nature of all potentialities existing within her perceptual construction of the now, of “making known the unknown,” and of embracing the divinity in her everyday life. Authority comes from both science and religion as they meet within the construction of this sacred text for a contemporary age. As can be seen within the frameworks of this analysis, it is much easier to follow a linear model of criteria for the analysis of sacred texts within a printed “traditional” format than it is within a multimedia text. Not only is the printed page easier to view as a document, it is also designed for such linear models, unlike the spiraling and repetitive nature of three dimensional sacred texts. The expansion of notions concerning sacred texts to allow for the new theoretical possibilities contained within our technological age will move research paradigms into the multimedia formulations of our globalized communications era. With such re-working of our ideological frameworks, new understandings will emerge out of the old and a more pluralistic conception of labels, tropes and terms can be forwarded, such as explored within this discourse on multimedia formats of sacred texts, first through viewing specific sacred texts within the plura of written work and then into the artistic domains of our media designs.

Notes