Bleep This!
by Sensei David Schneider
Column in The Johnson City Record-Courier

   "God said, 'Let there be . . . and there was . .  .'" so we read in the book of Genesis.  The gospel of John starts, "In the beginning was the Word, ["logos" in the Greek] and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . . All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made."  What is a spoken word but a vibration?
    Quantum physics tells us that everything is made of insubstantial vibrating packets of energy, having no mass, that flash in and out of existence at a rate of 10 to the 23d power every second.
    Does all this mean that everything exists as the voice of God and that the voice of God is the only thing that does exist?  Is every word we speak a creative, godlike act?  Do we create our own reality?  Is this why Jesus said that not what goes in the mouth but what comes out of the mouth is what defiles a man?  What have you created lately?  Did it defile you?  
    We are also told that "Life and death are in the power of the tongue."  Did the ancient Biblical writers anticipate Quantum Physics?  Did you exercise the power of life today?
    These thoughts came to me after watching "What the Bleep do We Know," a movie about Quantum Physics and spirituality.  This is a movie you will want to see more than once because it is loaded with things to ponder and contemplate.  Flip the DVD over for "Filmmakers' Q and A."
    One thing that stood out was the presentation of emotions as chemical addictions.  Emotions cause the hypothalamus to create and send to the pituitary gland neuropeptides (short-chain amino acid sequences) to be delivered to every cell in the body where they create profound chemical changes in the cell after docking with receptors on the cell wall.  As with all chemical addictions, we become increasingly immune and need more to satisfy out craving as time passes.  When the cell divides, the resulting cells have more receptors for that particular peptide and fewer receptors for vitamins, minerals, proteins and waste elimination.  This inability to absorb nutrients and eliminate waste causes aging on the cellular level.  
    Emotions allow us to transfer experiences into long-term memory.  As we repeat the thought or emotion, the brain creates long-term relationships in a neural network.  Nevertheless, one can change that wiring by controlling one's emotions.
    Clearly, emotions are not bad but emotional addiction is.  The detached person or the emotionally addicted person is living in the past.  Emotions are to be experienced and processed in a healthy way.
        Emotions follow thoughts.  Thoughts are subject to the will.  A person with a mood disorder or recurring negative emotion can exercise his will to stop the train of thought and send it on to another track.  The emotions must follow.  That brings us back to the beginning of this article when we speak a new reality:  "This is not me.  I choose to be that.  I will order my thoughts in a more positive direction."  Emotions follow.  Peptide distribution changes
    We now find that science and religion are not in conflict:  both are about finding the truth and one can lead to the other.  Quantum physics gives us a new way to see what the Early Church Fathers and great saints tried to describe to us.  The Roman Catholic theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin presented to us his Omega Point theology where he foresaw the convergence of the material and spiritual into a superconsciousness of which Jesus Christ was the shining example.  Sounds like Quantum physics.
    No wonder they call Theology the Queen of the Sciences.

   Sensei David Schneider can be contacted at schneidermartialarts@hotmail.com