The plot follows the fictional story of a photographer, using documentary-style interviews and computer-animated graphics, as she encounters emotional and existential obstacles in her life and begins to consider the idea that individual and group consciousness can influence the material world.

Bleep was conceived and its production funded by William Arntz, who serves as co-director along with Betsy Chasse and Mark Vicente; all three were students of Ramtha's School of Enlightenment.

[3] The visual-effects team, led by Evan Jacobs, worked closely with the other film-makers to create visual metaphors that would capture the essence of the film's technical subjects with attention to aesthetic detail.

This has led to accusations, both formal and informal, directed towards the film's proponents, of spamming online message boards and forums with many thinly veiled promotional posts.

Suddenly people who were talking about subatomic particles are alluding to alternate universes and cosmic forces, all of which can be harnessed in the interest of making Ms. Matlin's character feel better about her thighs.

"[2] It offers alternative spirituality views characteristic of New Age philosophy, including critiques of the competing claims of stewardship among traditional religions [viz., institutional Judaism, Christianity, and Islam] of universally recognized and accepted moral values.

[11] Amongst the assertions in the film that have been challenged are that water molecules can be influenced by thought (as popularized by Masaru Emoto), that meditation can reduce violent crime rates of a city,[12] and that quantum physics implies that "consciousness is the ground of all being."

Professor Clive Greated wrote that "thinking on neurology and addiction are covered in some detail but, unfortunately, early references in the film to quantum physics are not followed through, leading to a confused message".

[10] The American Chemical Society's review criticizes the film as a "pseudoscientific docudrama", saying "Among the more outlandish assertions are that people can travel backward in time, and that matter is actually thought.

It comes from the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and it's about the limitations of trying to measure the position and momentum of subatomic particles... this only applies to sub-atomic particles—a rock doesn't need you to bump into it to exist.

Hambling says it is likely that both the Hughes account and the story told by Pert were exaggerations of the records left by Captain Cook and the botanist Joseph Banks.

[17] According to Margaret Wertheim, "History abounds with religious enthusiasts who have read spiritual portent into the arrangement of the planets, the vacuum of space, electromagnetic waves and the big bang.

But no scientific discovery has proved so ripe for spiritual projection as the theories of quantum physics, replete with their quixotic qualities of uncertainty, simultaneity and parallelism."

Wertheim continues that the film "abandons itself entirely to the ecstasies of quantum mysticism, finding in this aleatory description of nature the key to spiritual transformation.

"[18] Journalist John Gorenfeld, writing in Salon, notes that the film's three directors, William Arntz, Betsy Chasse, and Mark Vicente, were at the time students of Ramtha's School of Enlightenment, which he says has been described as a cult.

[1] Mark Vicente later became involved with another prominent cult: NXIVM, the human-potential-development and sex-trafficking pyramid scheme founded by convicted con artist Keith Raniere.

HCI president Peter Vegso stated that in regard to this book, "What the Bleep is the quantum leap in the New Age world," and "by marrying science and spirituality, it is the foundation of future thought.