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Leap! The Movie: Is it all just an illusion? 12/7/2008 4:03:30 AM
The new movie called "Leap!" asks the metaphysical/philosophical question: Is reality nothing more than an illusion? It's an old idea but some new thinking has gone into it. As one interviewer asked: "Is this the next step after The Secret?"
Leap! asks a question that is one of my favorite mysteries to contemplate and/or otherwise boggle my brain: Is reality nothing more than an illusion?
Here's a blurb from the official website for the film:
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Leap! is a film that compels you to consider this ageless theory that “The world is an illusion“.
You may find it confronting to consider your reality is simply a grand illusion.
This idea may challenge your current beliefs and ideals. To think of yourself, your family, friends and everything you know and love is part of an elaborate illusion sounds insane…..
but then again Einstein did say “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
Leap! explores ancient and modern philosophies and philosophers who support the illusion theory.
This philosophy is not about visualization, manifestation, or creating with intention.
This philosophy is a complete paradigm shift in how you can live your life from a deep knowing of who you really are.
Even though we believe it’s all an illusion…. this life is still a great adventure…..
Come, Play and Leap! beyond the illusion with us!
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This idea is along the same train of thought that occurred to me about 15 years ago. I was driving my young teen-age son somewhere when he told me that a video arcade where he liked to hang out was soon going to feature a miraculous new type of video game. He said it was going to be a holographic game where, instead of the game characters being on a video screen, they would be projected onto a platform in 3-dimensional form, holographic images that you could control and view from a complete 360 degree perspective. I think he was mistaken about such a game coming anywhere anytime soon. Nevertheless, the idea intrigued me.
A few days later a friend loaned me a book called The Dancing Wu Li Masters, by Gary Zukov. It was the first book I'd read that explored the idea that some of the notions about the nature of reality coming out of modern quantum physics were beginning to sound a lot like the ideas held by the mystics and shamans of ancient times. Somewhere in the book something (which I can't recall now) started me thinking again about that holographic video game. That's the moment a bizarre idea flashed into my brain and left me somewhat stunned: What if we and this "reality" we're living in are nothing more than some astoundingly advanced, high-tech computer generated hologram?
A whole slew of thoughts raced through my mind in the next few minutes and I realized that if this were true then it would provide answers to most, if not all, of the stranger aspects of our reality, the otherwise unexplainable phenomena that usually get lumped into the category of "paranormal". It could all be explained by the idea that someone or some thing was programing this so-called reality in which we find ourselves playing out the roles of our lives. And that someone or some thing (or several someones or some things) had their hands on the joy sticks and were pretty much just playing a game where we are nothing more than some form of bio-digital characters being manipulated on the stage of a holographically simulated "reality". UFOs? Why not? The programmer just has to insert the right code into the program and there they are! Bigfoot? Same thing. No problem. Ghosts? Gremlins? A burning bush that talks? A pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night to guide the Israelites across the desert? Heck yes! Easily done!
As synchronicity would have it, the following weekend I stumbled onto a book called The Holographic Universe by science writer, Michael Talbot. It was chock-full of postulates and conjectures concerning the holographic nature of the universe as proposed by some of the world's leading edge thinkers and scientists in the strange world of quantum physics. That book, alone, pretty much convinced me that I wasn't too far off the track when I had that ah-ha! moment about us being characters in a world created by some cosmic computer programmer.
Well, as we're all aware by now, a similar idea was eventually made into a movie called The Matrix and an even better movie (in my humble opinion) on the same theme, The Thirteenth Floor (which, by the way, came out at the same time as The Matrix but got stomped into oblivion and out of the public view by the gargantuan marketing machine behind the Matrix). Point is, this idea about our reality being something entirely different from what we think it is, might have something to it. I've always held to the notion that if someone can imagine something (anything at all) then there's a good chance that somehow, someday, it could become a reality. There I go using that word again. But you get the idea. Jules Verne, for example, not only had us in a rocket ship heading for the moon but he had that rocket launch from the same location in Florida where we now actually do launch space ships to the moon. Nothing, I believe, is out of the realm of possibility.
Now, I haven't seen the movie, Leap!, yet. But I've watched the trailer and listened to an interview with some of the people in the movie and I think the idea that they are talking about is a little different from this "holographic video game" idea that I've just been describing. I get the impression that the notion they are proposing has more to do with the idea that we, each of us, are constantly creating the "reality" around us through the use of our consciousness and its impact on the otherwise blank slate that just sits there waiting for us to color it and populate it with our own creations. Nevertheless, it's still basically asking the same question that the audio tape manufacturer used to ask in its commercials: Is it real? Or is it Memorex?
So check out the video trailer for Leap! the movie. I noticed author/lecturer, Joe Vitale, is one of the participants in the film. Many of you probably know him as one of the real gurus when it comes to the business of marketing and promotion.
Click the graphic here. It will take you directly to the Leap! website:
