Nonduality
presents
edited by Jerry Katz
"Within the
prison of your world appears a man who tells you that the
world of painful contradictions, which you have created, is
neither
continuous nor permanent and is based on a misapprehension. He
pleads
with you to get out of it, by the same way by which you got into
it.
You got into it by forgetting what you are and you will get out
of it
by knowing yourself as you are."
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
Important Matrix Links:
http://whatisthematrix.warnerbros.com/
Philosophy and The Matrix: http://whatisthematrix.warnerbros.com/index_phi.html
http://www.innerx.net/personal/tsmith/Matrix.html
The Matrix, Philip K. Dick's "Valis," Nag Hammadi, Gnosism, and The Essenes. by Stephen Lindsey
Japanese Animation: A Creative Source for The Matrix
Even if you have not seen the Matrix movies, you will find this an effective spiritual and mind-healing book. Written by a scientist, it will help you understand “Reality” and lead a stress-free life. Topics which will guide your inner quest include the Self, enlightenment, mystery of the universe, consciousness, God, Soul, purpose of life, nature of the mind. Understand meditation and its real purpose, love, nature of our sensory world, ancient scientific wisdom in mythological stories and scientific interpretation of symbols in myths, the unity of paths in all spiritual traditions, and the path to the Source from which we all descended. |
from the 'follow the white rabbit' scene in Neo's apartment: Choi: Hallelujah. You're my savior, man. My own personal Jesus Christ. Neo: You get caught using that... Choi: Yeah, I know. This never happened. You don't exist. Neo: Right. Choi: Something wrong, man? You look a little whiter than usual. Neo: My computer, it... You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're awake or still dreaming? Interrogation scene: Agent Smith (to Neo): We know that you've been contacted by a certain individual, a man who calls himself Morpheus. Now whatever you think you know about this man is irrelevant. He is considered by many authorities to be the most dangerous man alive. |
Tim Gerchmez. To me, the greatest value of the movie 'The Matrix' is in introducing nondual spiritual concepts to those who have never encountered such possibilities before.
Bruce Morgen. prose equivalents to "The Matrix."
Tomas Dias de Villegas. there's an interview Vernon Kitabu Turner in this months "What is Enlightenment?" issue that reminds me of the later part of the movie.
Petros. The heroes don't realize that they are merely abandoning one "drama" for another.
Tomas and Petros. I notice in The Matrix, the characters plugged themselves in in the back of the neck -- the visuddha chakra.
Jerry Katz. It is a melange of themes and possibilities, and in that way it is very 'Nonduality Salon'.
Christiana Duranczyk. The movie is like a huge puzzle with borrowed pieces from various sources. It is delightful to hold each piece up to the light and examine it's relevance in this new configuration.
David Hodges. "The Matrix" tends to engage consciousness in many levels and it is easy to imagine that you are living in the Matrix. In the big corporation where I am consulting at the moment, this is especially true.
Phil Burton. The Matrix is us.
Gene Poole. What can I say about the 'agents'? They were the 'masters of stop'. The only thing they did was to stop; they were stoppers. Agents of life, on the other hand, are 'goers'; they are on the go, they know that they are life itself, and they promote life and protect life.
Gene Poole and !. why does Neo eat the cookie? he is still rejecting the Real, wants to be stupified, like drinking that intoxicant from the traitor-rebel. he wants to be back in the Matrix but he can't deny the Real nonetheless. it is like becoming aware of the depth of the Real and never being able to go back even if one wishes to. perhaps this is why "masters" sometimes become drug-addled (escapism)
Gene Poole, !, and Jody. There is no non-dual ontology. There is the possibility that one who has realized Brahman has a different 'perspective' with respect to Maya and that this could be termed a 'nondual perspective'.
Gene Poole, !, Jody and Petros. It would have been interesting if at the end of the film, Neo starts to question whether or not he is actually still in the Cocoon . . . that the Computer just *let* him play his little game of awakening, fighting, killing an agent, etc., in order to keep the crew happy.
! (continuing the above conversation). Is he the One? is there only One? have we established the truth of the Oracle? even the main characters in the story hadn't done so.
Marcia Paul. It has been very interesting these last few days. I find I am wearing the Matrix. I have been influenced by the movie and now I see things through the filter of the Matrix movie. And it is penetrating deeper and deeper.
Carey Wilson. Did anyone besides me expect (want) Neo to grab both of Morpheus's offered pills and swallow them down together to see what would result?
Maurice Taylor. It appears that being hooked up and programmed is better or at least more satisfying than not (in the movie), if one has the freedom of self-programming -- "self" programming being ultimately the infinite creative unfolding of Being (in form of Matrix) as Realized input to Self as self rather than limited and narrowed by a "self" constructed and programmed by a cultural-social-matrix.
Gloria Lee. Not to suggest that women have the corner on intuition, but have all oracles historically been female? I just don't see any need for her to represent God. What's wrong with being a plain old oracle, who btw even smoked and was very down to earth?
Melody Anderson (with extensive commentary by David Hodges). As soon as I saw the Oracle I recognized her as the Mother Sophia, from the Gnostic tradition. Like Sophia, the Oracle is no detached witness. They both are personifications of the higher feminine principle.... on a *mission*....to awaken humanity and to assist in their resurrection out of chaos and darkness.
Dirk. Matrix is about the shift in perception of reality. The few kids in the front room in the Oracle's apartment, those "promising student" have learned that reality can shift.
Interview with John Gaeta, Visual Effects Supervisor for The Matrix. The biggest question I've always had, and I don't know if you guys can answer it or not, is why does Neo fly at the end of the movie? John: Because he is self-actualized.
Neo and Phil Burton. How many people go about living their lives in this world with the constant realization that everything they see, hear, read, write, believe is but a projection of their own mind?
KR, Gill Eardley, Terry Murphy and Dan Berkow. Gill: I found it very poignant, and I can't recall anybody mentioning this before, when the agent told morpheus he was desperate to escape, that if he could just do this one thing he would be free. Sound familiar? Terry: I saw the allegory as one of *any* ordinary individual finding enlightenment with the help of the wise and accumulated human spiritual culture and spiritual friends (the triple gem: buddha, dharma, sangha). Dan: I discovered that the generators of the matrix were themselves generated by the matrix. The ones who escaped the matrix escaped because this escape was a program of the comprehensive matrix.
Matrix Within Matrix Within Matrix Gene Poole, with Neo and Jerry. Speaking of The Matrix, there is one line that has always puzzled me. Help anyone?
Yesterday I saw the
movie "Matrix," which definitely is based on some
nondual concepts (the first "popular" movie I've ever
seen that I can claim was based on aspects of Eastern philosophy,
which goes to show how these concepts are now penetrating Western
society very rapidly).
In one of the scenes in the movie, there is a dimension shown
consisting only of blank white space, the "potential"
area for matrix programming .
Well, I made an interesting meditation out of this. First, I
envisioned myself in a 360 degree pure white dimension. This
could be compared to bodilessly floating in the dead center of a
ping-pong ball. I made the mental image as clear as possible. No
matter where I "looked" (up, down, left, right,
anywhere), there was only whiteness, and of course nothing for
the eyes to focus on, so looking around there was no sensation of
change of viewpoint at all. No depth perception either, because
there was nothing to focus the eyes on. Just pure whiteness.
Soon after this, I changed perspectives, and I *WAS* the white
dimension. Allowing myself to BE this dimension, I found myself
in contact with something deeply Divine in myself. I began to
alternate between the viewpoint of "myself" within the
dimension, and *being* the dimension itself.
After a while (I don't know how long), I allowed myself (as the
white dimension) to consciously say "I AM." This
propelled me into a state of Samadhi/SatChitAnanda. The bliss was
so powerful, I was up all night last night because of it. Gotta
get some sleep, or I'm gonna have to leave this body prematurely
due to exhaustion ;-)
...
To me, the greatest
value of the movie "The Matrix" is in introducing
nondual spiritual concepts to those who have never encountered
such possibilities before. The action draws one into the story,
and the concepts are then free to penetrate the mind. The central
theme of the movie is "Nothing is as it seems." Is this
not also one of the central themes of nonduality?
If even one "average" person walks out of this movie
with a slight change of perspective, it is of infinite value.
-----------------------
My
"favorite" scene in the movie had nothing to do with
the fight scenes. It was when Keanu Reeves was talking to the
child who was bending the spoon "with his mind." The
child said "Do not try to bend the spoon. It is not the
spoon that bends. It's the self that bends."
But did you not find my meditative experience interesting as
well? :-) Perhaps it was actually quite ordinary... but it's rare
that mere mental visualization has such a powerful effect.
------------------------
I wish the filmmakers had had the courage to take the movie one step further. Rather than Neo awakening in some far future, as he did, I would have liked to see him awaken to the PRESENT. I would have liked to see Morpheus point to the burned out city and say "This is what our egos really are. This is where we really live." Neo could have been an Avatar, and Morpheus and the others enlightened masters.
----------------------
In "The Matrix," there's a scene where Neo is taken to a formless place of blank whiteness, and told that this is the place where all matrix programming springs from (or something like that). To me, this blank, formless whiteness perfectly represents Brahman, Self, Sunyata, "That emptiness from which all things spring." I've even discovered that meditating on such a blank, depthless, formless, utterly silent white field is a useful technique for me (and so have actually taken something from a movie that is useful in a spiritual context!). A place such as this represents what we really are - formless, featureless, nameless, empty, pure consciousness.
---Tim Gerchmez
---Bruce Morgen
Tomas Dias de Villegas contributed:
I liked
"Matrix"
there's an interview (with a guy named Vernon Kitabu Turner) in
this months "What is Enlightenment?" issue that reminds
me of the later part of the movie. That last fight scene
where....well you know...I don't want to give anything away for
anyone.
check it out here : http://www.moksha.org/wie/j15/turner.html
This was a very
interesting film. I plan on seeing it again, and I don't often
see films more than once.
The film rightly questions our view of "reality," and
asks "what is Real?" like a few other recent films of
the past few years (The Truman Show, Dark City), but the
characters themselves never leave their own dualism. That is to
say, we are to accept the "resistance" as _real_, and
life in the cocoons as unreal. The heroes don't realize that they
are merely abandoning one "drama" for another. What
would have been VERY interesting would have been if, at the end
of the film, we discover that the heroes never really left their
cocoons in the first place, and that the whole struggle was
merely another virtual drama induced by the Machine to keep the
heroes happy.
It also would have added to the dramatic tension if the Agents
were portrayed as "good" guys rather than evil
automatons. I.e., they want humanity to be happy and are willing
to let us keep our brains intact and allow us to live out any
kind of virtual fantasy we like as long as they are able to feed
off of our electrical energy and, eventually, our bodies. If the
Agents had underminded the heroes' faith in their
"resistance" reality, there would have been more
emotional tension as they would have to ask themselves if they
really want to keep fighting or just relax and give in. The deck
would not be so neatly stacked in favor of struggling.
After all, that's basically the way it is in duality. You can
exchange one virtual drama for a million others, but we all get
eaten at the end. During the film, I wondered to myself what a
realized sage (like Ramana for instance) would have done if he
had suddenly realized that he wasn't really sitting on a mountain
but was in fact lying comatose in a liquid-filled cocoon having a
dream that he was a sage, while mechanical spiders were sucking
off his vital bodily fluids and electrical energy. I suspect it
wouldn't make any difference to such an individual.
Tomas Diaz de Villegas legas@pipeline.com wrote:
Hello everyone,
Just saw a new movie: eXistenZ It's set slightly in the future
and is about a new Virtual Reality game which ports into a
surgicaly installed socket in a person's lower spine.
Hmm . . . the muladhara chakra? Appropriate, since the movie
focuses on earthy biological issues and sexuality. This is
Cronenberg's basic modus operandi (see Naked Lunch or
Videodrome.)
I notice in The Matrix, the characters plugged themselves in in
the back of the neck -- the visuddha chakra. This seems
appropriate given the movie's emphasis on more spiritual matters
. . .
---Petros
I saw The Matrix last
night. It is a combination of many well known stories both the
scriptural and the nearly scriptural such as Wizard of Oz and
Alice in Wonderland. There were themes from Bhagavad Gita,
Christianity, Nagualism, Buddhism.
The integrity of the movie is based in the blending of the themes
of man versus machine, man versus mind, mind versus machine. In
that blending man and machine meet at the level of mind. That is
where the nondual perspective shows up. For that is what man has
always been doing, finding convergence at the level of mind until
it comes to appear that the universe is one big thought.
Beyond that, there is the question of the source of that thought.
That convergence is what the movie is about, though the probing
of it is necessarily bare and contained in a line here and there,
such as "Knowing the path is not the same as walking the
path," or "No one knows what the matrix is, you have to
see it for yourself."
The Matrix borrows from everyone and everything and is very
symbolic. There are tons of Great Action, and tidal waves of
sound coming from all directions to keep everybody happy. Though
it is a mish-mash of symbols and themes, the movie has integrity,
as discussed above, and it may stand up as a fine work of art.
It is a melange of themes and possibilities, and in that way it
is very 'Nonduality Salon'. Rather than criticize the movie for
that crazy mix, I find it just as easy to find enjoyment in the
abundance of those themes and possibilities.
The complexity of The Matrix is its downfall and what makes it
palatable at the same time, for it allows for lots of action and
all kinds of fun possibilities, while being hard to follow and
understand. The simplicity of the movie is what makes it artful,
if not accessible.
The girl I saw it with, we talked about the movie quite a bit.
It's good in that way. The Matrix could be used in a university
course as a springboard for discussion on any number of themes, I
would think.
Get a screensaver and view the rest of this Matrix site:
http://www.whatisthematrix.com/cmp/screensaver_index.html
-------------------
I enjoyed The Matrix
as much, if not more, the second time. In fact, it was almost
like a whole new movie. I understood it a lot better the second
time.
To my previous comments I would add that Love is what sets man
above artificial intelligence. The movie demonstrates that, but
doesn't make a big deal about it. In fact, I didn't mention it in
my first report, and I don't know if many people here have.
That's to the movie's credit, as they could have gone all mushy.
The theme of love passed me by the first time.
The Matrix is psycho-cyberspace: the meeting of mind and
cyberspace. When the mind is transcended by love, the software is
no match for it. That problem 'solved', the next step is
separating everyone else's mind form its cyber-hold. That should
take a few thousand years. Sound a lot like spiritual life? There
is easily room for a trilogy here, and more, as the ending is one
of those 'it is only the beginning' kind of endings.
Though the movie plays it down, I see it as being about
transcendence of the mind -- and therefore psycho-cyberspace, or
The Matrix -- through love.
Transcendence is liberation or freedom. There are connections
with Eastern religions as well as New Age thought. Another
parallel is with Eucharist or Communion, where the red pill
represents blood, and the Oracle's cookie represents the body.
Whose blood and whose body? The One. Neo. The red pill represents
the wholeness of his blood, its natural and free flow, Divine
Life or Real Life itself; the cookie represents the wholeness of
his body, its ability to resurrect and move fearlessly through
the Matrix.
The Oracle would never give ordinary food; it has to be spiritual
food. It has to be given for the same purpose it is given in
Eucharist: because it is Truth itself.
Being given only the red pill, one only knows reality as it is,
or real life. Being given also the bread or the cookie or the
wafer, whatever you want to call it, one is empowered in the
body, fearless and able to resurrect. But neither the red pill
nor the Oracle's cookie work to their fullest without the
ingredient of love.
------------------------
If Nisargadatta saw
The Matrix, this quote from I Am That might be his report:
"In my world nobody is born and nobody dies. Some people go
on a journey and come back, some never leave. What difference
does it make since they travel in dreamlands, each wrapped up in
his own dream. Only the waking up is important. It is enough to
know the 'I am' as reality and also love."
Love was a thankfully underplayed theme in the movie. So where
does I AM come into the movie? When Neo realized he was the One.
He silently would have said 'I AM the One.' Love...I AM...The
One...Neo: they are all the same. They serve to bring liberation
from the Matrix.
--Jerry M. Katz
I saw this movie two
days ago with a friend. We also spent hours piecing and assessing
the symbolism. The imagery and currents of meaning have stayed
with me strongly all weekend. I am a visual learner and there
were many ideas I've grappled with right there for the visual
picking.
Jerry: "The integrity of the movie is based in the blending
of the themes of man versus machine, man versus mind, mind versus
machine. In that blending man and machine meet at the level of
mind. That is where the nondual perspective shows up. For that is
what man has always been doing, finding convergence at the level
of mind until it comes to appear that the universe is one big
thought."
While I don't disagree with this assessment, what I would
identify as the integrity and the theme is... man becoming
conscious of the creative vital energy lost by being embedded in
the trance of the world dream, and the ultimate potential of Self
operating with a liberated mind... after, of course, overcoming
threatening resistance of the matrix (programmed self).
The movie is like a huge puzzle with borrowed pieces from various
sources. It is delightful to hold each piece up to the light and
examine it's relevance in this new configuration.
One which I thought was significant was.. our alleged history,
seen from the perspective of the future.. a statement made that
there was a time when humans started to become aware that they
could foil the matrix programming and ultimately see, which
resulted in a rewrite of the matrix program.
May it not be so! <smile> Your list does it's part in
foiling the matrix program.
As you said, the plot has complexity and the teachings whiz by
(and from reviews and comments overheard, I sense that many don't
grasp the metaphoric implications), so let's hope that the
message is received subliminally or that this becomes a classic
film and hangs around for a while.
Christiana... binary sequence on the left
---------------------------
I saw "The
Matrix" again last night. My daughter hadn't seen it so we
went together.
I noticed a number of movie references. There are several to
"The Wizard of Oz" - Cypher says something about
"you'll find out that you aren't in Kansas anymore"
near the beginning. And later on one of the characters, calling
Tank for rescue, says something like, "Hurry up, Mr.
Wizard".
When Trinity is escaping through the phone in the subway station,
she yells, "Run, Neo, Run!" which is an obvious
reference to Forrest Gump's Jennie who liked to advise "Run,
Forrest, Run." Only Neo, unlike Forrest, doesn't take her
advice!
That tracking thing that is inserted into Neo's navel and then
extracted again by Trinity seems to echo the "Alien"
movies with their creatures that burst out of people's bellies.
And in the moment that Marcia mentioned, when Trinity kisses Neo
in that Sleeping Beauty moment and then says, "Now Get
Up!" there is more than an echo of the moment in the first
Terminator movie when Linda Hamilton says, "Get Up,
Soldier" to her wounded protector and father-to-be of her
child, who will be the rescuer of mankind.
In the final subway station fight scene, my daughter pointed out
that the way that the subway train that arrives reminded her of
Keanu Reaves's movie, "Speed", in which a subway train
also figures prominently.
When Agent Smith keeps calling Neo "Mr. Anderson," Neo
finally says "My name is....Neo!" This reminded me of
....some movie....but I can't think which. Anyone got any clues?
(Unless its Forrest Gump again..."My name is
Forrest...Forrest Gump."
There is also the literary symbolism of Alice in Wonderland -
"follow the White Rabbit", the two pills, "Down
the Rabbit hole".
Moving on to other things, the hotel where the movie starts,
where Trinity is ensconced in Room 303, and where Neo makes his
final escape, is called "Heart O' the City." Several
times during the film the camera pans down that giant neon sign
word, "HEART". It seems to be a bit of obvious
symbolism that Trinity supplies HEART and that Neo grows into
HEART via Trinity.
It was mentioned in one of the reviews, I think, that Trinity's
room number in that hotel is 303. Neo's room number where he
lives in the beginning of the film is 101. Neo, the one, and
Trinity, the three.
I don't make too much of the symbolism of the names. I have a
hard time doing much Christian symbol-izing, and I think maybe
the film-makers went for easy resonance with some of the names
rather than having deep thought-out connections.
Trinity - we all know what that is. Why she is called that isn't
really obvious. She is NOT a God figure. Neo - the New
Morpheus - seems to be a combination of Shape-Shifter
(morph=shape) and Morphine, feels no pain.
Nebuchadnezzar - the name of Morpheus's ship. Why call it that?
Nebuchadnezzar was the king of Babylon whose dreams were
interpreted by the prophet Daniel; who threw Shadrach, Meshach,
and Abednego into the Fiery Furnace; and who went insane:
"He was driven away from people and ate grass like cattle.
His body was drenched with the dew of heaven until his hair grew
like the feathers of an eagle and his nails like the claws of a
bird." Make of it what you will. Zion, the place where
people are free of the Matrix - obvious tie-in to the mystical
holy city.
The movie has a definite mythic structure, which is similar to
the Star Wars trilogy. It is the story of the hero Thomas
Anderson, aka Neo, who receives his Call to Adventure,
experiences a new birth via a journey through water, suffers
trials and initiations, visits the Oracle, descends into the
"underworld" (i.e. the Matrix) to rescue Morpheus, and
ends up transformed into a Warrior with Heart and a Savior of his
people.
The Call to adventure: Trinity functions at the beginning as a
kind of Herald angel, appearing to Neo in a magical way and
calling him to leave what is familiar for the high road of
adventure. Next we see Neo in his boss's office. The boss is
chewing him out for being late. Outside, two window-washers are
squeegeeing the boss's windows and Neo is distracted by them. I
couldn't help thinking of Aldous Huxley's famous line about
"cleansing the doors of perception." This seems to be a
sign to Neo that his perceptions are going to radically change.
Refusal of the Call to Adventure: After initially trying to
escape, Neo gives up and lets himself get captured by the Agents.
This sort of thing happened in Star Wars too. Luke Skywalker
initially refuses Obie Wan Kenobi's offer to leave the planet.
His mind is changed when his guardian's farm is torched. And as
in Star Wars, Neo's initial refusal does not really change
anything.
The New Birth (Crossing the threshold): Like many heros, Neo must
cross the threshold into the magical land via an initiation or
rebirth. This is particularly well-done in this movie as we see
Neo's real physical body in embryo, its umbilical chords
snapping, its body flushing down a long birth canal and
descending underwater for a kind of baptism before being lifted
up into the air. Neo starts out on the ship as a hairless blank
who has to be taught everything. Luke Skywalker's comparable
experience, the trash-masher scene where he is pulled under water
by some beast, pales by comparison.
The Mentor: Neo has a Mentor, Orpheus, just as Luke Skywalker has
Obie Wan Kenobi.
Visit to the Oracle: Also extremely well done. the Film-makers
reverse the usual drift of such scenes by having the Oracle
confound him by saying he's NOT the one. Compare Luke Skywalker's
visit to the Yoda.
Descent to the Underworld: Now we are set up for Neo's big test,
the Hero's descent into the underworld where he must fight the
dragon, find the gold, or some such. In this movie, he must
rescue his Mentor, which is a brilliant plot innovation because
in many such stories, after a time the Mentor doesn't have much
to do (Star Wars actually dispatches Obie Wan rather early on
though he appears from time to time as a ghostly voice). But in
The Matrix Morpheus needs saving, and Neo earns his hero's
stripes by being his saviour.
The Return: Typically, the Hero's work isn't done after meeting
his big test. He still has to find his way back from the
Underworld, often by defeating some final enemy. Neo finally
defeats Agent Smith to do this and in the process becomes a Shape
Shifter himself, invading Smith's body and exploding it from the
inside.
Now Neo is fully tested and transformed. He has become the
Warrior (thanks to Morpheus) with a Heart (thanks to Trinity) who
is also ready to become the Savior of humankind. It will be
interesting to see how the future episodes of this planned
trilogy are plotted out, since, unlike Star Wars which took three
movies to fully effect Luke's transformation, this movie
only took one.
My source for some of the terms used in this discussion is a most
interesting book for anyone interested in Mythology and the
Movies. It is "The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for
Writers," by Christopher Vogler. Vogler in turn got his
ideas from Joseph Campbell's great "The Hero with a Thousand
Faces".
---David Hodges
-------------------------
My $.02. "The
Matrix" is the film itself. "The Matrix" is a loop
embedded in a larger Matrix which is life itself. The key to the
Matrix is "follow the white rabbit" or follow a hunch
and take a risk.
Neo emerging from the amniotic water is clearly birth and
separation.
Living in the designated "reality" is not better than
living in the
Matrix, because a reaction to the Matrix is itself a programming.
The only freedom is in becoming conscious of the whole process,
the
whole (self-)deception. The becoming conscious is facilitated by
the "deja vu" glitches that are also part of the system
(the cat in
the corridor).
The Matrix is also metaphorical for the way in which human beings
succumb to their own mental creations or representations. The
Matrix
is us. The group-mentality prevails, in the interest of survival,
and the inner censor is the "agent" that filters out
the unfit, or
unacceptable thoughts.
My problem with the movie is that it has a gnostic/dualistic
undercurrent. It's all about reacting and polarizing. But
"escape"
is part of the self-deception, and so is the notion of
"offing" the
Matrix. The Matrix exists (in the movie) as a gambit for human
survival in the wake of environmental catastrophe, and in that
sense
it's just doing what "we" want it to do.
--Phillip Burton
Gene Poole
Here is another
imprecise, metaphor-laden, sure-to-elict some corrective remarks,
few paragraphs of my thoughts on THE MATRIX, the movie. This sure
is fun!
At the moment that the scary hovering robotic machine grabbed Neo
and pulled the plugin/probe from the base of his skull, he was
'officially' disconnected from the _world-dream_. Did you notice
that he was terrified of this process... and that as soon as he
was disconnected, that he was 'rejected' by the 'dream-machine',
and essentially 'flushed down the toilet'?
It is that way, friends. If you dare ('you' in the editorial
sense) to disconnect from the world-dream, you too will be
worthless to that machine, just so much scrap meat. ('Lower
cannot see higher') means that when one is (by dint of effort,
intention, or by grace) invisible to the dreamers...
that one has lost dream-world identity... this can kindle a major
identity-crisis; one may wish to reentr the Eden of the dreamers.
(This is when the huge klaxons begin blaring... and the
loudspeakers boom out, "ABORT! ABORT!")
It is at that moment that one can deliberately intiate connection
with the 'actual', and thus gain the 'impossible' nondual
perspective. How does one connect with the actual? One _is_ the
actual; that is how. No world-dream label fits, and the eyes of
the dreamers (including the now-decommisioned 'self' of the
world-dream) are blind to the presence of This One, the actual.
[Tips from the TimeStoppers Textbook: "The 'nondual
perspective' derives from having first one, and then another,
point of view. Comparison of these points of view offer what is
called 'perspective'."]
Yes... what this means is that when one switches to the
'non-nondual perspective' that one cannot see oneself! In other
words, the mirrors of the world-dream will not reflect the
'actual'! (does this explain a lot, or what? Yeah... this is NOT
all tidy and neat, it is WILD! It is ALIVE! It is not the fantasy
of some anal-retentive precisionist... at all! No, friends, this
is a huge, throbbing, LIVING PARADOX! And guess what?
"You" just have to LIVE WITH IT! BWHAHAHAH HA!)
Now, just what would Dr Von Helsing, the vampire-hunter of
DRACULA, have to say about this "mirror problem"???
Yes... Neo is now 'The One'. Yes, he DOES now wear the 'agent'
look; he is now able to move about in the Matrix (world-dream)
and is not noticed...
because now, HE KNOWS WHO HE IS.
Neo is now... not 'all powerful' like some god or comic-book
character, but instead, a MASTER PREDATOR! And just guess,
who/what is his prey... heh heh heh..
--author unknown!
-------------------
Sooner or later, it
had to happen; what is, is outpictured in a
near-literal/metaphorical way, in 'The Matrix'.
Just as television is an extension/outpicturing of our visual
sense, and
cars an outpicturing of our locomotion, so is this movie an
outpicturing of
the SYSTEM which underlies our perceived reality.
Consider the scene in which Neo, the star ("The One")
is finally
surrendering to the persuasions of his new friends/rescuers, is
sitting in
a special chair. He asks of Morpheus, "What are you
doing?" and Morpheous
replies to him. "We are attempting to ascertain your
location". This is
mightily similar to the process which is carried out here, in the
NDS. It
is common for one to be puzzled as to the stated assumptions of
others,
that one is are not where they are, that one will awaken, to
their true
nature, to freedom. It is also similar to the actuality, the
realization
that once awakening is initiated, that the work is just
beginning. Leaving
the cocoon/simulated reality of the Martix, is similar to leaving
the
paradise of Eden... independence requires work, and wits, to
survive. The
risks undertaken by one awakened are monumental, requiring
full-time
attention.
Our own 'Matrix' is the world-dream, the
concensus/social/tribal/familial
'reality' which has given us our languages, our values, and our
illusion of
separateness. We suffer in the dream, and apply dream-remedies to
relieve
our dream-sufferings.
The 'nondual perspective' says that all of the sufferings and
pleasures of
the world-dream become irrelevant upon awakening; that for all
ills of the
dream, there is only one remedy, which is to awaken from the
dream. While
this is technically true, and is a convenience of expression, an
attempt to
explain something, the reality of the situation is similar to the
reality
expressed in The Matrix; one must actually have the experience of
Being in
one, and then the other, to realize the nature of either.
When Neo was inducted into the 'resistance', he was subjected to
martial-arts trainings. In those episodes, he learned of his own
assumptions as to his abilities; he was showed by the 'master'
Morpheus
that his assumptions as to his own vulnerabilities and strengths
were off
the mark. He had to relearn his entire perspective of reality,
using the
arena of combat as the proving-ground. He learned that he did not
know, and
he learned that he had been assuming.
Finally, after the confrontation with the 'Oracle' in her funky
kitchen (I
loved that scene), Neo goes up against the 'agents'.
Will he survive? Yes. In fact, his realization is such, that he
becomes the
essence of life itself; he enters/invades an 'agent', as Shakti
enters a
person... and in effect, demolishes that agent, remaining only as
himself,
The One, now fully powerful and realized.
What can I say about the 'agents'? They were the 'masters of
stop'. The
only thing they did was to stop; they were stoppers.
Agents of life, on the other hand, are 'goers'; they are on the
go, they
know that they are life itself, and they promote life and protect
life.
Life demands expression in all of its varities; life demand
evolution, the
inevitable migration from cocoon to realization, with all of the
mind-exploding and world-dream exposing and pains and ecstasies
which are
part of the process.
Life is good, and The Matrix is a true 'Millenial Movie'. It is a
harbinger
of the harmony which is the underlying SYSTEM which we are. I
salute the
makers of this movie, who apparently are planning a sequel, and
maybe even
a trilogy.
#Sooner or later, it
had to happen; what is, is outpictured in a
# near-literal/metaphorical way, in 'The Matrix'.
it's been done many times before (Outer Limits, Night Gallery,
Twilight Zone, many sci-fi novels and novellas and even a few
films)
# ...this movie an outpicturing of the SYSTEM which underlies
# our perceived reality.
exploration of brahman beyond maya
# ..."We are attempting to ascertain your location".
This is
# mightily similar to the process which is carried out here,
# in the NDS. It is common for one to be puzzled as to the
# stated assumptions of others, that one is are not where they
# are, that one will awaken, to their true nature, to freedom.
Chuangtse, dreaming/waking: butterfly <==> man
Carroll, dreaming/waking: White King
Indian, dreaming/waking/creation: Visnu
Solipsism, fabrication: self
Buddhism, ignorance/attachment: buddha-nature vs sunyata
# Leaving the cocoon/simulated reality of the Martix, is
# similar to leaving the paradise of Eden... independence
# requires work, and wits, to survive....
except that Eden is the Real, not a perceptual fiction
# Our own 'Matrix' is the world-dream, the
# concensus/social/tribal/familial 'reality' which has
# given us our languages, our values, and our illusion
# of separateness. We suffer in the dream, and apply
# dream-remedies to relieve our dream-sufferings.
language: arises out of desire to communicate; it is not a
fiction
in that it implies intended meaning and succeeds in this
implication (thus directed language like 'stop' and 'paint this')
values: these underly and precede language
separateness: an "illusion" or not? this precedes
values
# The 'nondual perspective' says that
there is no 'nondual perspective', since perspective requires
duality
between subject and object; a perspective doesn't say anything
# all of the sufferings and pleasures of the world-dream become
# irrelevant upon awakening; that for all ills of the dream,
there
# is only one remedy, which is to awaken from the dream.
why does waking from the dream solve everything?
# While this is technically true,
it is? how did you determine this?
# and is a convenience of expression, an attempt to explain
# something, the reality of the situation is similar to the
# reality expressed in The Matrix; one must actually have
# the experience of Being in one, and then the other, to
# realize the nature of either.
why not like butterfly and Chuangtse? both butterflies and
men suffer and are pleased according to their individual
experiences, but both may dream that they are the other
the reality expressed in the Matrix would have been more
convincing to me if there was ANOTHER, more fundamental
and ineffable (i.e. unshowable on film), reality 'behind'
the secondary ("real") world of the pods and
grit-rebellion
# ...after the confrontation with the 'Oracle' in her funky
# kitchen (I loved that scene), Neo goes up against the
# 'agents'.
why does Neo eat the cookie? he is still rejecting the Real,
wants to be stupified, like drinking that intoxicant from the
traitor-rebel. he wants to be back in the Matrix but he can't
deny the Real nonetheless. it is like becoming aware of
the depth of the Real and never being able to go back even if
one wishes to. perhaps this is why "masters" sometimes
become
drug-addled (escapism)
# ...his realization is such, that he becomes the essence of life
# itself;
does he, or does he merely learn how to manipulate the program
in its binary code and therefore shift position and form? let
us not over-emphasize his role. if the Oracle was correct,
he may be the one who sets the STAGE for the One
# he enters/invades an 'agent', as Shakti enters a
# person... and in effect, demolishes that agent,
# remaining only as himself, The One, now fully powerful
# and realized.
wishful thinking. compare "Tron". Neo dives into the
agent
and possesses him, assimilating his program and therefore
transcending him and his mechanical overlords; but is this
a 'victory'? at the end of the film he communicates to the
rest of the world via computer, wears "agent" glasses,
and
sets off on his own rather than becoming a more central
operative for "the resistance". he has fused Machine
and
Human, becoming something more than either
# What can I say about the 'agents'? They were the 'masters
# of stop'. The only thing they did was to stop; they were
# stoppers.
they also steered (individuals). they cajoled and elicited
(information). they operated on behalf of the Machine so as
to maintain control of their power-source (human batteries).
putting the battery out of commission harms machines, stopping
the surge is as antithetical to the function of the agent
(unless it is terminally malfunctional) as would be destroying
a malfunctioning machine part rather than cordoning and
repairing it
# Agents of life, on the other hand, are 'goers'; they are on
# the go, they know that they are life itself, and they promote
# life and protect life.
until it serves their purpose to sacrifice it for the Greater
Good
# Life demands expression in all of its varities; life demand
# evolution, the inevitable migration from cocoon to realization,
# with all of the mind-exploding and world-dream exposing and
# pains and ecstasies which are part of the process.
but what does a permanently Matrixed 'Prophet' really 'do'?
is it merely the 'grounding' of the Real into the Unreal,
inspiring a movement of rebels? why not wake everyone in
their coccoons up at the same time, a 'wake up call' in the
same manner as the world-telephone-ring of "Lawnmower
Man"
(with which this film *ought* to be compared)?
# Life is good, and The Matrix is a true 'Millenial Movie'.
# It is a harbinger of the harmony which is the underlying
# SYSTEM which we are.
the Matrix is not destroyed or seriously debilitated in any
way that we can discern by the end of the film. it is a
typical film about some guy developing super powers in a
world that few understand (compare Dr. Strange or any
number of comic book superheroes whose efforts enable them
to transcend the common paradigms -- Gautama Buddha is a
very good example, another reason that I have called these
films 'cyberbuddhist' as they combine Buddhist cosmology
and metaphysics with cyberspace themes after Gibson and
others; Keanu Reeves appears to enjoy these films as star)
# I salute the makers of this movie, who apparently are
# planning a sequel, and maybe even a trilogy.
not surprising. this is very like religion, which seeks to
keep the viewer hooked to a continuing story rather than
to expose hir to a real 'waking up' on a mass scale.
also compare this film with "City of Darkness", in
which
the protagonist doesn't believe in a dual-system wherein
there is one reality which is false and another which is
true so much as that the Sleepers are ignorant of the
underlying system which coincides and creates their world
(that they are zoo-animals and lab rats in a world that
transcends their wildest imagination).
# ...this movie an
outpicturing of the SYSTEM which underlies
# our perceived reality.
> exploration of brahman beyond maya
There is nothing to 'explore'. We can explore Maya from the
perspective of realization, but in Brahman there is no thing
or place to check out.
# The 'nondual perspective' says that
> there is no 'nondual perspective', since perspective
requires duality
> between subject and object; a perspective doesn't say
anything
There is no non-dual ontology. There is the possibility that one
who
has realized Brahman has a different 'perspective' with respect
to
Maya and that this could be termed a 'nondual perspective'.
# all of the sufferings and pleasures of the world-dream become
# irrelevant upon awakening; that for all ills of the dream,
there
# is only one remedy, which is to awaken from the dream.
> why does waking from the dream solve everything?
In most ways it doesn't.
# While this is technically true,
> it is? how did you determine this?
It is wishful thinking to believe that once we "reach"
realization we "go beyond" our ordinary lives in the
world,
with all its joys and suffering. We don't. What we
have is the sure knowledge that we are the Self, and this
can certainly be a comfort. However, we still have our
likes and dislikes, our dreams and failures.
> the reality expressed in the Matrix would have been more
> convincing to me if there was ANOTHER, more fundamental
> and ineffable (i.e. unshowable on film), reality 'behind'
> the secondary ("real") world of the pods and
grit-rebellion
The only way you could express this on film is to show
peoples eyes. Brahman is not somewhere you "go", it is
*who* you are.
# ...after the confrontation with the 'Oracle' in her funky
# kitchen (I loved that scene), Neo goes up against the
# 'agents'.
> why does Neo eat the cookie? he is still rejecting the Real,
> wants to be stupified, like drinking that intoxicant from
the
> traitor-rebel. he wants to be back in the Matrix but he
can't
> deny the Real nonetheless. it is like becoming aware of
> the depth of the Real and never being able to go back even
if
> one wishes to. perhaps this is why "masters"
sometimes become
> drug-addled (escapism)
So what you are saying is that realized people take drugs to
somehow escape realization. There is nothing to escape. You've
lost something, your idea of 'me', but you're still in this
damn world, so maybe that's what they are trying to escape.
As for your idea of 'me', when you've lost it you'll wonder
why you needed it in the first place.
# he enters/invades an 'agent', as Shakti enters a
# person... and in effect, demolishes that agent,
# remaining only as himself, The One, now fully powerful
# and realized.
> wishful thinking.
Indeed, wishful thinking. Shakti does whatever She wants,
this is true. She may get a little rough as She rearranges
you, but you can forget about the power. What She offers
us in the body is freedom from ignorance. This is the
greatest blessing She can bestow on us. Power and all the
rest are trivial to Her and to Her devotees.
The following, by Petros, further extends the conversation:
># Sooner or
later, it had to happen; what is, is outpictured in a
># near-literal/metaphorical way, in 'The Matrix'.
>
>it's been done many times before (Outer Limits, Night
Gallery,
> Twilight Zone, many sci-fi novels and novellas and even a
few films)
Yes. Philip K. Dick novels most notably.
># all of the sufferings and pleasures of the world-dream
become
># irrelevant upon awakening; that for all ills of the dream,
there
># is only one remedy, which is to awaken from the dream.
>
>why does waking from the dream solve everything?
It doesn't solve anything, but puts everything in perspective. It
realizes
there is nothing to 'solve.' Just let be.
># and is a convenience of expression, an attempt to explain
># something, the reality of the situation is similar to the
># reality expressed in The Matrix; one must actually have
># the experience of Being in one, and then the other, to
># realize the nature of either.
>
>why not like butterfly and Chuangtse? both butterflies and
> men suffer and are pleased according to their individual
> experiences, but both may dream that they are the other
>
>the reality expressed in the Matrix would have been more
> convincing to me if there was ANOTHER, more fundamental
> and ineffable (i.e. unshowable on film), reality 'behind'
> the secondary ("real") world of the pods and
grit-rebellion
Yes. I noted in another post that Morpheus himself suggests to
Neo (when
they are in the White Room with TV) something like, "How do
we know what is
real? It's all just signals in the brain." Cocoon life and
Resistance life
could be the same for all they knew. It would have been
interesting if at
the end of the film, Neo starts to question whether or not he is
actually
still in the Cocoon . . . that the Computer just *let* him play
his little
game of awakening, fighting, killing an agent, etc., in order to
keep the
crew happy.
The ineffable reality behind all this would be unmanifest,
nondistinct; thus
there would be no one in it to recognize that it exists.
># ...his realization is such, that he becomes the essence of
life
># itself;
>
>does he, or does he merely learn how to manipulate the
program
> in its binary code and therefore shift position and form?
let
> us not over-emphasize his role. if the Oracle was correct,
> he may be the one who sets the STAGE for the One.
Yes, I think Neo just learns how to gain power over the AI
program.
With full realization, or whatever it may be called, there would
no longer
be a motivation to distinguish between the AI program and any
alternative;
both cocoon life and "awakened" life would be seen as
necessary parts of
Totality. I.e., he might be inclined to agree with AI that the
purpose of
homo sapiens really was to bring life to AI and become its
"food"
thereafter. He might see the mercifulness of AI in allowing the
humans to
keep their minds and their fantasies. After all, the computer
could have
grown them without brains or heads if it wanted to.
># he enters/invades an 'agent', as Shakti enters a
># person... and in effect, demolishes that agent,
># remaining only as himself, The One, now fully powerful
># and realized.
>
>wishful thinking. compare "Tron". Neo dives into
the agent
> and possesses him, assimilating his program and therefore
> transcending him and his mechanical overlords; but is this
> a 'victory'? at the end of the film he communicates to the
> rest of the world via computer, wears "agent"
glasses, and
> sets off on his own rather than becoming a more central
> operative for "the resistance". he has fused
Machine and
> Human, becoming something more than either.
Yes. He goes from playing one game to playing another.
># Life demands expression in all of its varities; life demand
># evolution, the inevitable migration from cocoon to
realization,
># with all of the mind-exploding and world-dream exposing and
># pains and ecstasies which are part of the process.
>
>but what does a permanently Matrixed 'Prophet' really 'do'?
> is it merely the 'grounding' of the Real into the Unreal,
> inspiring a movement of rebels? why not wake everyone in
> their coccoons up at the same time, a 'wake up call' in the
> same manner as the world-telephone-ring of "Lawnmower
Man"
> (with which this film *ought* to be compared)?
Maybe he didn't have that power. Remember how difficult it was
for Morpheus
to wake Neo up. Maybe a sudden forced awakening would be too
traumatic for
most people in the cocoons. Thus, the crew prefers to drop little
"clues"
in people's dreams, as in PKD's novels.
># Life is good, and The Matrix is a true 'Millenial Movie'.
># It is a harbinger of the harmony which is the underlying
># SYSTEM which we are.
>
>the Matrix is not destroyed or seriously debilitated in any
> way that we can discern by the end of the film. it is a
> typical film about some guy developing super powers in a
> world that few understand (compare Dr. Strange or any
> number of comic book superheroes whose efforts enable them
> to transcend the common paradigms -- Gautama Buddha is a
> very good example, another reason that I have called these
> films 'cyberbuddhist' as they combine Buddhist cosmology
> and metaphysics with cyberspace themes after Gibson and
> others; Keanu Reeves appears to enjoy these films as star)
But like Buddha, Neo may have the ability to communicate or
transmit the
same awakening to others. Not everyone perhaps, but a few here
and there,
maybe more later on. This may or may not confer the same degree
of "power"
over the Matrix that Neo has (since he is the One.) I don't see
the
average superhero (even Dr. Strange) as "awake" at all
to the real nature of
their world, only playing dramas *within* the world.
It is an interesting thought -- can one wake up to the nature of
the Matrix,
yet remain powerless to actually do anything about it? To remain
within the
drama of the cocoon, while knowing somehow that it is phony? It
seems that
in the real world (!), enlightened beings (sic) generally live
out the same
lives as everyone else and are not able to overcome the basic
physical laws
of our reality, despite seeing its relativity.
># I salute the makers of this movie, who apparently are
># planning a sequel, and maybe even a trilogy.
>
>not surprising. this is very like religion, which seeks to
> keep the viewer hooked to a continuing story rather than
> to expose hir to a real 'waking up' on a mass scale.
Then again, What do you do once you wake up? Become a
"master idler"
(Ramana Maharshi) is only one option; jumping back into the game
is another.
You play life *as* a game, recognizing it is only virtual
reality.
The Gita speaks of this "problem of action."
i@no.self (!):
|# the Matrix is not destroyed or seriously debilitated in any
|# way that we can discern by the end of the film. it is a
|# typical film about some guy developing super powers in a
|# world that few understand (compare Dr. Strange or any
|# number of comic book superheroes whose efforts enable them
|# to transcend the common paradigms -- Gautama Buddha is a
|# very good example, another reason that I have called these
|# films 'cyberbuddhist' as they combine Buddhist cosmology
|# and metaphysics with cyberspace themes after Gibson and
|# others; Keanu Reeves appears to enjoy these films as star)
xristos@earthlink.net (Peter J. Lima):
| But like Buddha, Neo may have the ability to communicate or
| transmit the same awakening to others. Not everyone perhaps,
| but a few here and there, maybe more later on. This may or
| may not confer the same degree of "power" over the
Matrix
| that Neo has (since he is the One.)
is he the One? is there only One? have we established the truth
of the Oracle? even the main characters in the story hadn't
done so
| I don't see the average superhero (even Dr. Strange) as
| "awake" at all to the real nature of their world,
only
| playing dramas *within* the world.
countless stories have Strange battling interlopers to the
dimension of which he is the 'Sorceror Supreme'. little do
the sleeping normals know what kind of cosmic threat they
are defended against in the 'spiritual' or 'astral' world,
and it is the duty of Dr. Strange to protect them in just
this fashion. this is more like "City of Darkness" than
it
is "The Matrix"
| It is an interesting thought -- can one wake up to the nature
| of the Matrix, yet remain powerless to actually do anything
| about it?
this was the initial condition of Neo
| To remain within the drama of the cocoon, while knowing
| somehow that it is phony?
depends on what 'within the drama' includes. if the drama is
the emotional investment and belief in its reality, then it
would seem not. if one could understand that one was actually
interacting with real humans through a FILTER of a constructed
artificial reality, then the drama remains, even if its exact
nature is disputed
| It seems that in the real world (!), enlightened beings (sic)
| generally live out the same lives as everyone else and are
| not able to overcome the basic physical laws of our reality,
| despite seeing its relativity.
by 'real world' I gather you mean nonmovie dimension; by
'enlightened beings' I'm not sure what you mean. how can we
tell if someone is 'enlightened' unless they are somehow
different from the run-of-the-mill norm? aren't there special
characteristics of these folks and wouldn't these profoundly
affect the kind of lives such people live out?
|#> I salute the makers of this movie, who apparently are
|#> planning a sequel, and maybe even a trilogy.
|#
|# not surprising. this is very like religion, which seeks to
|# keep the viewer hooked to a continuing story rather than
|# to expose hir to a real 'waking up' on a mass scale.
|
| Then again, What do you do once you wake up?
why is there a presumption that life changes at this juncture?
'first there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then
there is'? 'nothing special'? 'practice is enlightenment'?
waking up seems to me to be a greater cognizance surrounding
intentional choice. such a wake-up should lead to greater
concern about the totality of one's impact upon others,
a refinement of lifestyle and deathstyle to a beauteous
repercussion, and the promotion of vitality and peace,
whether in one's own back yard or throughout the cosmos
| Become a "master idler" (Ramana Maharshi) is only one
option;
in one's own back yard
| jumping back into the game is another.
one's back yard is not 'the game'? is travelling and sporting
the necessary means of promulgating the Dharma? must one
venture outward to mature inwardly and transmit this Dharma?
or is there no real difference between 'here' and 'there'?
| You play life *as* a game, recognizing it is only virtual
reality.
cf. "Liber MUD: MUDs and Western Mysticism", by
Haramullah,
http://www.abyss.com/avidyana/gnostik/libermud.tn which
explains how "virtual reality" is an oxymoron
| The Gita speaks of this "problem of action."
not duty vs compassion?
---!
----------------------------
I loved the part
about Trinity and Neo.
After Neo apparently is not the One and is lying apparently
dead having been blown apart by the Machine Man, Trinity
leans over him in the real world and says that the Oracle
told her that she would fall in love with the One and since
she is in love with him he has to be the One. She leans over
and in a reverse Sleeping Beauty kiss, kisses him.
And then after pausing just a moment she says.......
"Now Get Up!!!!!"
Ain't it the truth? :-)
And..........
When Neo is both being and becoming the One, Morpheous
says....."Now he is starting to believe. There is a
difference between
knowing about the Path and walking the Path."
And........
The Machine Men are the instincts. In the end Neo incorporates
the
Machine Man. He goes inside the Machine Man.
-----------------------
It has been very
interesting these last few days. I find
I am wearing the Matrix. I have been influenced by the
movie and now I see things through the filter of the Matrix
movie. And it is penetrating deeper and deeper.
Today I noticed a slight paranoia about something. I can't
even remember what it was. So I started to trace it back
to see if I could discover what the initial trigger was for the
paranoia. What I noticed was that I began to think of it as
a tear in the Matrix. Something of reality had crept in for
just a moment and my response in the dream world was
paranoia. I held real still and I realized why this was. The
reason for the paranoia was that I would rather be paranoid
then see that in the real world the trigger was nothing. That
the paranoia served to keep "me" in the center of the
focus.
Self focused in other words. Realizing my own nothingness
was the initial response and the second response quick on it's
heals was paranoia.
At this point I have a choice. I can wake up all the way or I
can become paranoid about being paranoid. There must be
a third choice. Maybe it is just to stay exactly where I am in
the perceiving process.
Marcia
--------------------------
Hi Marcia,
Thanks for your insight about Matrix. I seem to remember the
Oracle's
message to Neo was that he was not the One in this life, but
might be in
another. When Neo dies and is brought back to life by Trinity's
love and
belief Neo is in this other life. So the Oracles' prophesy is
fulfilled. Who
then is the Oracle and what is the reality of her world?
Namaste,
Dirk
Did anyone besides me expect (want) Neo to grab both
of Morpheus's offered
pills and swallow them down together to see what would result?
Given that
he didn't, I thought the movie was good for a few laughs and
squirms, and
may have even been momentarily thought provoking to its target
audience of
neophyte stoners, of which there seemed to be plenty in
attendance. Given a
choice I'd rather watch Terry Gilliam's film version of Fear and
Loathing
in Las Vegas, which explores much of the same
ideological/spiritual
terrritory from a different, though probably equally puerile,
perspective.
Enthusiasts of this sort of fantastically violent, kid macho
esoterica (of
which I grudgingly count myself one) may also be interested in
the comic
"The Invisibles," by Grant Morrison, put out by DC
Comic's Vertigo imprint.
It's like, COOOOoool, man.
Cheers to All,
Carey Wilson
cwilson@moon.com
The Matrix has some interesting
"consciousness" themes and I offer some
observations:
A main theme is freedom. But, interestingly, it is not freedom
from the
Matrix, but from the dominant form of control within the Matrix.
This
control is that of an evolved computer-machine complex that uses
humans for
food or electrical power. Humans are grown from birth and hooked
up
mechanically and brain fed to keep them alive and
"happy" for the machine
complex. From birth humans are fed a social program that makes
them think
and act as though this virtual really were real. Note: this is
our present
social matrix as an analogy. In the movie, humans are simply
asleep, hooked
up to a Matrix program and living a virtual reality (our present
social
reality).
However, in the movie, some humans have woke up having acquired
some special
matrix codes and hacked through the illusion. You take the
"red" pill and
you get to see the truth. However, seeing this truth, you are not
outside
the dominant control of the present social matrix law and
"they" are after
you. Any "freedom" that is not of the socially
programmed sort is against
the law. The matrix police are specially programmed to track down
and
destroy, and given super powers to do this (since they are
programmed to do
this it is quite logical they have specially programmed abilities
that the
regular inhabitants of virtual reality do not have).
However, the matrix police are still programmed and are in that
way still
limited. The rebels (humans who have acquired access to how to
code
themselves) have a slight advantage if they can get beyond their
usual
programming. Once they know this is all virtual reality (a big
step) they
can begin to program themselves in ways never dreamed possible.
The "One"
(main hero-character -- Atman?) is the first to begin to realize
this in the
most complete sense (he was also a programmer in the
"real" virtual-world).
It appears that being hooked up and programmed is better or at
least more
satisfying than not (in the movie), if one has the freedom of
self-programming -- "self" programming being ultimately
the infinite
creative unfolding of Being (in form of Matrix) as Realized input
to Self as
self rather than limited and narrowed by a "self"
constructed and programmed
by a cultural-social-matrix. This point however, as many of these
points, is
not explicit in the movie, exactly. In the case proposed here,
Matrix = Self
(Brahman = Atman). There is more here but I think this is enough,
perhaps,
too much <g>.
Maurice
postage@jps.net
http://www.radicalconsciousness.net
---Gloria Lee
--Melody Anderson
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Hodges' response to Melody:
Nice illumination,
Melody. I agree that the Oracle partakes of the same
archetype as Sophia. Her function in the movie seemed so natural
to me that
it took Dirk's question to really make me think about her and
what she is
doing in this story of the trials of the Hero, Neo.
"Going to see the Oracle" represents simulataneously a
kind of graduation
for Neo from his training, and an initiation into the deeper life
he is to
live and the darker ordeal he is to face. The Oracle is no
real-life
survivor in the saved city of Zion, but someone who lives right
in the
Matrix. She is perhaps part of the simulation that is the Matrix,
or
someone cleverly hidden in plain sight within the Matrix. I
couldn't help
thinking of Oracle, the database software. Like other operating
system-level software, Oracle is a many-armed dispatcher of
threads and
processes, a kind of inner clearing house of transactions and
retriever of
hidden information. And like its cousin server software, the Web
Server,
Oracle might give its clients a "cookie" to track their
activities once
they detach from the current session. The Oracle, then, does
routing and
dispatching within the labyrinth of the Matrix and leaves those
that come
to her marked with a cookie as they move off to their further
journey. This
reminds me of the Eucharist, and the Oracle of a High Priestess.
The cookie
that Neo solemnly bites into is the wafer of communion that marks
him and
changes him and makes him ready for his ordeal to come.
Trinity, the young female, issues Neo's Call to Adventure early
in the
movie, but it is the Oracle, the older, wiser female, who
initiates him
into the depths. She announces to him the further details of the
mystery
that Trinity could not know about - the riddle that he or
Morpheus will
have to be sacrificed. I agree that it was quite right of her to
say that
ne was not the One - at that moment. He becomes the One when he
passes the
test and solves the riddle by saving Morpheus.
But also at that moment with the Oracle, Neo is not "The
One" because he
is a man, a human. His connection with the deeper powers
available to him
comes only after he leaves the Oracle, as that cookie takes hold
and
becomes a kind of "I AM" that opens him to transcendent
experience. Neo, as
Thomas Anderson, never IS The One, but Thomas Anderson, who at
the end
proclaims "My name is Neo", becomes a vehicle for The
One to come into the
world and begin it's deeply loving, compasssionately
understanding,
completely inevitable work of salvation.
MEET JOHN GAETA, VISUAL EFFECTS SUPERVISOR FOR 'THE MATRIX'
John Gaeta won the Oscar for visual effects. The following is taken from a chat session with John Gaeta. I've deleted the portions with the other guests. If you want to read the entire chat session, go to http://www.whatisthematrix.com
Even if you've seen
the Matrix three times, you'll want to see it again after reading
the chat transcripts, or even after reading what follows.
guest-Jaisin says: What was the inspiration behind the Matrix
"code"?
John: It's the fabric of life.
guest-shokker says: what is your favorite scene?
John: My actual favorite scene is the one in which Morpheus and
Neo and Trinity and the group go into the Matrix and this is the
scene at which point Neo understands what he is going into and
there is a very simple shot of them exiting an apartment building
in slow motion that despite the fact that it is a very simple
camera trick, it is incredibly powerful and is so well set up,
that you really believe you have entered an altered state of
reality.
guest-BatNeal says: What advice would you give to anyone
interested in a special effects carreer?
John: Work for free--anything to get your foot in the door.
It's such a strange field. People come in from all different
types of places and their path of entry is always unique. There
is no one way unless, of course, you have computer skills,
especially in graphics.
guest-wry says: John--every time I come down my steps I think of
that slow-mo scence. It was great! Thanks.
John: Me too. My life works in slow motion.
guest-uga says: how hard was it to do the bullet time effects?
John: Any time you are asked to do something that has never been
done before, it is as hard from an emotional and self-confident
point of view as it is from a technical point of view.
guest-jonandben says: How did you guys get started in special
effects?
How would you recommend I get in?
John: Work for nothing--that's how I did it.
guest-NEO says: Is editing the hardest job to do?
John: I would say marketing.
guest-Batbat224 says: Are you going to be making any other movies
in the style of the Matrix in the future?
John: I think Matrix is a very contemporary type of movie and
it's arrival comes with the arrival of a few other equally
contemporary and free type of movie experiences and I think there
will be many movies that appear as a gimmick or a copy of the
Matrix but then again there will be many many more movies that
are authentically becoming part of modern cinema.
guest-ZEUS says: I was wondering if you will do the Visual Effets
on Matrix 2 and 3? if so can you tell us what will be in it?
John: I actually love the spoon scene because it is a simple
application of visual effects towards a story concept and it
serves the story as opposed to being just an eye catching scene.
John: Absolutely I will do the Visual Effects on the Matrix
trilogy and No, I can't tell you what will be in it.
guest-ScubaMDW says: What was the most expensive special effect
in the movie?
John: Probably the shot with the babies in the field of pods.
...
John: I was just in Poland in Warsaw a month ago and attended a
Matrix DVD lodge party that was much cooler than any of the LA
parties and hats off to the undergound kids on that side of the
world. They know exactly what the vibe is.
John: Without giving anything away, I believe that visual effects
will slowly become more and more used to visualize a character's
perception of the world and applied in more subtle and subliminal
ways as opposed to purely eye-catching and I intend to pursue all
manner of perceptual trickery.
...
guest-DHoberer says: I loved the scene at the end where Neo flies
into the Agent and the Agent explodes. How'd you do that?
John: Basically by rebuilding the Agent as a 3D form and mapping
the image of his performance upon that form and then using some
particle system dynamics simulation, we create the breakage of
that image and that 3D form.
guest-mlscs says: The biggest question I've always had, and I
don't know if you guys can answer it or not, is why does Neo fly
at the end of the movie?
John: Because he is self-actualized.
******
That
"everything" which you see is loaded. If you could see
"everything" you could not function. You see
selectively, and what
you see is not you. Like we speak glibly of the
"universe" and we are
merely pointing to some expansive emotion. In the context of the
Matrix, you may see what you are permitted to see: the display
that
the system generates. --Phil Burton
gill eardley:
The only way to know for sure what it was intended to be would be
to
ask the wachowski brothers. That said, it seems a rather narrow
view.
To me it seemed an allegory to the level of control exerted on
the
minds of most of humanity (not just Americans) by a few 'men in
suits'.
The media, governments, business magnates; those who crave what
they
view as 'control', and have a vested interest in keeping that
control.
Paradoxically, it is those people who are most in need of
'freeing
their minds', those who are chasing ever more after 'power' which
they
think will bring them freedom and happiness, and which is
ultimately
like digging yourself deeper and deeper into a hole, with less
and less
chance of escape. I found it very poignant, and I can't recall
anybody
mentioning this before, when the agent told morpheus he was
desperate
to escape, that if he could just do this one thing he would be
free.
Sound familiar?
terry murphy:
I saw the allegory as being much greater than simply media
control.
Note the numerous reference to Lewis Carroll: was he simply
talking
about media control? 'How deep does the rabbit hole go?' Morpheus
was a
Buddha (awakened one); that 'morpheus' refers to sleep/death
shows how
topsy turvy the phenomenal world is from Reality, as jesus points
out,
those who seek to save their lives lose them, and those who lose
them
preserve them, while he himself lived that nondual view as a
martyr.
The 'matrix' itself is Maya, the world-illusion, the construct
that
each individual creates and imagines that they live 'in.' The
'illusion-dwellers' for the most part are not ready to be
'unplugged,'
but morpheus/buddha and his crew/disciples were prepared to
awaken
those individuals who could be awakened, with the ultimate aim of
awakening all sentient beings. 'Neo' was 'the One,' the ordinary
you
and me sitting at our computer consoles seeking 'the truth' about
the
matrix/maya. When 'neo' was prepared, by the oracle/insight, to
sacrifice his individual life to save the buddha/morpheus, then
he
became the One/an enlightened being/bodhisattva. The
buddha/avatar was
always searching for a being he could turn into a bodhisattva,
and was
trying to free people from the world illusion (the truth: there
is no
spoon/there are no things). Neo simply wanted answers, but
morpheus'
sole aim was to turn a neos into Ones. The 'suits' were
machines/mental
constructs/ego, whose primary function in being was to remain in
control, and utilize 'life' as a power source for machine
functioning.
They would be happy to create a 'perfect world'/happy world
illusion
but life 'wouldn't accept the programming,' because as 'some
said,'
they 'didn't have the programming *language* to describe such a
world'
(language is inherently dualistic and happiness can only be
described
by referring to unhappiness) or because humans 'defined their
lives by
misery' (dualism is inherent in the development of life). You are
right
that the suits/ego always think they can make some sort of
progress,
accomplish one more thing and be done with this 'stink,' this
world
that they 'hate' and 'can't stand'; the suits had to unplug from
each
other even to admit that much. The suits had more raw physical
power
than real people within the matrix, but they were inherently
limited by
the rules of the matrix, while neo, being potentially the One,
was not
limited at all by the rules of the matrix, once he realized the
truth
('physical strength' means nothing 'in this place'). So I saw the
allegory as one of *any* ordinary individual finding
enlightenment with
the help of the wise and accumulated human spiritual culture and
spiritual friends (the triple gem: buddha, dharma, sangha).
Great movie...
Dan Berkow:
aloha, terry
Yes, Terrry.
You are on-target.
Well-said and namaste!
After knowing myself
as the One, I found out
that Neo, the oracle,
and Morpheus,
and the outside of
the matrix from which
reality was seen,
and the One,
were just other programs
of the "comprehensive" matrix.
I discovered that the
generators of the matrix
were themselves generated
by the matrix. The ones
who escaped the matrix
escaped because this
escape was a program
of the comprehensive matrix.
I am speaking to you simply
as a program occurring
here to a program occurring
there.
The matrix that generates
the matrix has described
itself to its own
self-generated programs
as the "uncreated" --
thus giving form to yet
another program ...
http://www.geocities.com/prithwis/Philo001/MV-MatrixVedanta.html
Background
What is The Matrix ? It is a science fiction movie featuring
Keanu Reeves ("Neo"), Carrie-Anne Moss
("Trinity") and Laurence Fishburne
("Morpheus") released by Warner Brothers in 1999 that
explores the complex relationship between physical human beings
and their perception of reality as controlled by a gigantic
computer programme - "The Matrix". The movie has most
of the Hollywood elements of high drama, action, violence and a
cameo love affair but what is most intriguing -- and most
probably overlooked -- is its striking similarity with the
philosophy of Vedanta. There is an uncanny echo of Sankara's
treatment of the Atman, the Self, and Maya -- the veil that
shields the Atman. What is science fiction today may just become
scientific fact tomorrow and this apparent convergence may just
be a harbinger of a more significant convergence of rational
science and the intuitive insight of Indian philosophy. Hence
this analysis.
The Movie
The year is 2199 and computers with artificial intelligence have
taken over the world. Human beings are born (or
"cultivated") in captivity and at birth are connected
to a life support system that feeds then intravenously till
death. The bio-chemical activity in their bodies is used as a
source of electric power to support the computers -- but that is
not relevant in this case. What is important is that each
person's brain is connected to the central computer. Complex
programmes -- the Matrix -- running on this computer feed a
continuous stream of stimuli to the brain and this causes the
individual to perceive a full range emotions associated with
growing up, moving around -- including flying through space,
working, growing old and finally dying. The Matrix programme is
smart enough to simulate a whole range of physical locations like
parks, gardens, restaurants, train stations that people can visit
-- or perceive to visit -- and interact with just as if they were
physically there. They also perceive images of other individuals
-- some rooted in other physical captive bodies, while others
could be pure creations of the computer simulation process.
Interactions between two individuals are also simulated.
There is a small group "independent" humans who live
outside the Matrix in place called Zion. They have their own
computers through which they are able to "hack into"
the Matrix programme. This allows them to "enter" and
"exit" the Matrix through telephone lines. When the
enter the Matrix, their physical bodies remain at Zion, connected
to the Zion computers, just as the bodies of the captive humans
remain in their incubators. The crucial difference between the
independents and the captives is that the former can actually
"exit" from the Matrix and detach themselves from the
Zion computers. Then they can live and perceive Reality.
Within this complex environment, the movie weaves a fantasy of
heroism and love. Morpheus is the leader of the independent
people and he has located and identified Neo -- currently a
captive -- as the one who will destroy the Matrix and free
mankind from this slavery to computers. Neo's arrival has been
foretold by the Oracle. Morpheus and his band of independent
humans, enter the Matrix, contact Neo and convince him of his
importance. Then they detach his body from the Matrix computer,
remove his body from the incubators and take it to Zion. Here
they rejuvenate and repair his degenerated body. Now Neo, like
the other independent humans can connect to the Zion computers
and enter and exit from the Matrix at will. Would he succeed in
his mission ? Since the actual outcome of the adventure is not
relevant to this analysis, we will not reveal the ending for
those who wish to see the film.
Vedanta : a brief outline
The Indian or Sanskrit word for philosophy is darsana -- which
means direct vision. This word highlights a major difference
between modern Western philosophy -- that predominantly depends
on intellectual pursuit, and Indian philosophy that relies on
direct visions of truth and Buddhi or reasoning. These visions of
truth forms the foundation of all schools of Indian philosophy
and were directly experienced by ancient sages living in various
parts of India. The direct and transcendent experience of reality
beyond the logical and material domains is both the source and
the ultimate goal of these systems. The mind and the senses are
the necessary tools that are initially used in the process of
attaining the highest state, but they are not adequate to attain
the final goal -- transcendent insight alone provides the whole
truth.
These direct intuitive insights were first formalised as the four
Vedas - Rig, Sama, Yajur and Atharva, possibly as early as 4000
BC. The original Rig-Veda consists of nearly 20,000 verses that
appear as simple prayers to deities, yet couched in highly
symbolic language, they contain great philosophical and
metaphysical meaning. With the passage of time, this body of
vedic literature evolved through four chronological phases,
Samhita, Brahmana, Aranyaka and the Upanishad. The Upanishads
represent the culmination of the Vedic approach. There are one
hundred of eight Upanishads of which eleven are considered
pre-eminent and in these eleven, the wisdom of the Vedas reach
its acme. The word Veda means "knowledge" and Vedanta
-- another name for the Upanishads -- means "the end of
knowledge". The Upanishads are written as a dialogue between
a teacher and a student and the truth is revealed in stages
according to the capacity of the student.
Over the past 2000 years, many learned men and women, have
interpreted this mass of knowledge according to their
understanding and this has resulted in the various schools of
Indian philosophy like Nyaya, Sankhya, Yoga and Vedanta. All
these schools try to answer the following fundamental questions :
1. Who am I ? From where have I come from and why ? What is the
relationship between me and the universe and other human beings ?
2. What is the essential nature of my being and what is the
essential of the universe ?
3. What is the relationship between consciousness and the objects
of the universe ?
4. What is truth and how do we arrive at rational conclusions on
the question of truth
The Vedanta school, formalised by Sankara sometime between the
sixth and ninth century AD, is acknowledged by many to be the
most comprehensive interpretation of the direct intuitive
insights that form the foundations of Vedic literature. A full
exposition of the Vedanta school is impossible within the scope
of this analysis. Nevertheless, some of the key concepts which
are relevant for this comparison with the movie Matrix are
described below :
1. Atman - the Self : The entire phenomenal world is bound by
time, space and causation and as long as one is confined by these
concepts, the experience is limited. Beyond the realms of time
and space, there is an absolute and unconditional Reality that
has no beginning and no end. That is Atman, the Self. The Self
cannot be experienced by the senses. This Self is both within and
outside the body. Unlike the body it is beyond death and decay.
The Self is the fountainhead of the life force that animates and
motivates the mind-body complex. According to Sankara, this Self
is the all-pervading, self-illumined Consciousness.
2. Brahman - the Supreme Consciousness : Brahman is the ultimate
Truth within and without. Brahman is also all-pervading and
self-illumined Consciousness and the relationship of the Brahman
to the Self is that of the forest to the tree. The entire
universe emanates from Brahman, exists in Brahman and at the time
of dissolution returns into Brahman. Stepping beyond the
primitive monotheism of the Judeo-Christian philosophy/theology,
Sankara asserts that the individual Atman and the universal
Brahman are one and the same and the concept of a creator that is
distinct from the creation is a cosmic illusion.
3. Maya - the Illusion : The phenomenal universe that can be
perceived by the senses is actually an illusion called Maya. This
Maya is what causes human beings to perceive worldly phenomena
and respond to the environment. Vedanta states that Maya shields
the Truth or Brahman from the Self or Atman. The concepts of time
and space that veil the face of Truth are aspects of Maya.
Because Maya veils the Truth, the individual Atman misconstrues
both the world and itself as different from the Truth or Brahman.
The individual Self is liberated when it succeeds in breaking
through this illusion and progressively understands that
v Brahman alone is real and the universe is unreal
v There is only one Brahman without a second
v I, that is the Self, is the Brahman
v The entire universe is Brahman
These truths have to be understood, not at the gross level of
conventional "bookish" learning, but at an intuitive
level of passionate conviction and belief. One can read the
Upanishads from cover to cover and understand every word and
paragraph. However the Truth dawns if and only if the individual
Atman is conditioned to receive the Truth -- this happens through
a variety of devices including but not limited to Yoga,
meditation and the influence of certain narcotic drugs.
Vedanta has many more interesting concepts but a full discussion
of all of them is beyond the scope of this study. Let us get back
to the Matrix.
The Similarities
The movie obviously does not have a one to one correspondence
with Vedanta. Nevertheless there are certain similarities.
Consider the following passage where Morpheus introduces Neo to
the Matrix :
Morpheus : I know..._exactly_ what you mean. Let me tell you why
you're
here. You're here because you know something. What you know,
you can't explain. But you feel it. You've felt it your
entire life. That there's something _wrong_ with the world.
You don't know what it is, but it's there...like a splinter
in you're mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has
brought you to me. Do you _know_ what I'm talking about?
Neo : The Matrix
Morpheus : Do you want to know...._what_ _it_ is....?
Neo nods
Morpheus : The Matrix is everywhere. It's all around us, even in
this
very room. You can see it when you look out your window or
when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you
go to work, when you go to work, when you pay your taxes.
The Matrix is the world that has been pulled over your eyes,
to blind you from the truth.
Neo : What truth?
Morpheus :That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were
born
into bondage, born into a prison that you cannot smell or
taste or touch. A prison...for your mind....Unfortunatly,
no one can be..._told_ what the Matrix is...you have to see
it for yourself.
The Matrix computer programme is analogous to the Maya of
Vedanta, the illusion that is perceived by the senses as the
physical world. Morpheus "detaches" Neo's body from the
Matrix computer (and the associated computer programme) and
brings him to actual physical "reality" and this is
what Neo looks and feels :
The metal harness opens and drops the half-conscious Neo onto the
floor. Human hands and arms help him up as he finds himself
looking straight at Morpheus, Trinity and Apoc, along with others
he doesn't recognize. Morpheus smiles, and speaks quietly to Neo.
Morpheus : Welcome to the real world....
Neo passes out.
As he is unconscious, Morpheus and Trinity talk in hushed voices
Morpheus : ...We've done it, Trinity...we've found him.
Trinity : I hope you're right...
Morpheus : I don't _have_ to hope. I know it.
Neo wakes up later on, and looks at Trinity and Morpheus, who are
standing watching him.
Neo : ....Am I dead?
Morpheus : Far from it...
Neo passes out again.
Later on, he wakes up. He sees his body pierced with dozens of
acupuncture-like needles wired to a strange device.
Dozer: He still needs a lot of work.
Neo : What are you doing?
Morpheus : Your muscles have atrophied, we're rebuilding them.
Neo : Why do my eyes hurt?
Neo blinks
Morpheus : You've never used them before.
Neo looks confused
Confronted with this reality, Neo feels helpless, and wants to go
back to the illusory comfort of the Maya / Matrix. Morpheus
allows him to do so
Morpheus : You wanted to know...what the Matrix is, Neo?
Neo nods unsteadily
Morpheus nods to Trinity
Morpheus : Trinity...
Trinity approaches Neo, and helps him into an armchair, strapping
in his feet, and leaning his head back against the head rest.
Morpheus looks at Neo
Morpheus : Try to relax...this will feel....a little _weird_.
As Morpheus guides a coaxial line into the jack at the back of
his neck, Neo screams and makes a few other disturbing noises.
When he opens his eyes, he is standing in a totally white place.
His hair is back, and he is wearing different clothes.
As Neo spins around a bit, trying to see what's going on,
Morpheus appears in front of him.
Morpheus : This is the construct. It is our loading program. We
can
load anything from clothing, to equipment, weapons,
training simulations, anything we need.
Neo is having a hard time getting a grasp of this.
Neo : Right now....we're inside a computer program?
Morpheus : Is it really so hard to believe? Your clothes are
different. The plugs in your arms and head are gone. Your
hair has changed.
Neo puts a hand to his head and touches his hair
Morpheus : Your appearance now is what we call residual self
image.
It is the mental projection...of your digital self.
Two chairs appear in front of them, and Neo reaches out to touch
one. He runs his hand along it's back.
Neo : This....this isn't real?
Morpheus looks at him
Morpheus : What _is_ real? How do you _define_ real? If you're
talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what
you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical
signals interpreted by your brain.
A television appears in front of the two chairs, as Neo sits down
in the chair beside Morpheus. Morpheus picks up the television
control and turns it on.
Morpheus : _This_ is the world that you know. The world as it was
at
the end of the twentieth century. It exists now only as
part of a neural-interactive simulation, that _we_ call
the Matrix.
There are some other interesting similarities between Maya and
the Matrix programme. In explaining Maya, Sankara very often
refers to the example of the rope and the snake. As long as one
mistakes a rope for a snake, he is frightened and reacts to the
rope as if it were a real snake. When he realizes that what he
sees is only a rope he laughs. Similarly, as long as one is
engrossed in the ignorance of relative consciousness, the world
is indeed quite "real". But when true knowledge dawns,
one becomes aware that the world was a fake.
Perceiving the "real" world as a "fake" needs
deep insight and sceptics have often wondered that if the snake
was a fake rope, how is it possible for it to actually kill
someone. Sankara argues that the vivid imagination creates the
presence of the snake in a rope and this imagination is so strong
that a person can die from an imaginary snakebite. Thus, wrongly
perceived situations may result in physical or psychological
reactions.
There is a very similar situation that happens in the movie. Neo
has entered the Maya / Matrix and makes his first attempt to fly
through the air.
Summoning every ounce of strength in his legs, Neo launches
himself into the air in a single maniacal shriek - But comes up
drastically short.
His eyes widen as he plummets. Stories fly by, the ground rushing
up at him, but as he hits - The ground gives way, stretching like
a trapeze net.
He bounces and flips, slowly coming to a rest, flat on his back.
He laughs, a bit unsure, wiping the wind-blown tears from his
face.
Morpheus exits the building and helps him to his feet.
Inside the Nebuchadnezzar, the crew are feeling kind of let down
by Neo.
Mouse : What...what does this mean?
Switch : It doesn't _mean_ anything...
Cypher : Everybody falls the first time. Right, Trin?
But Trinity has left. Neo's eyes open as Tank eases the plug out.
He tries to move and groans, cradling his ribs. While Tank helps
Morpheus, Neo spits blood into his hand.
Neo : I thought it wasn't real.
Morpheus : Your mind makes it real...
Neo : If you're killed in the Matrix...you die here?
Morpheus : The body cannot live without the mind.
To sum up
Indian philosophy relies on intuition and insight, functions that
are performed by the right part of the human brain.
"Modern" western science depends on rational analysis,
that utilises the left side of the brain. This rational approach
has given us mathematics, computer science, the concept of
virtual reality and is trying to create artificial
"intelligence". We have for a long time believed that
'East is East and West and West and never the twain shall meet'.
Is this really so ? As mankind tries to push back the frontiers
of knowledge, perhaps the time has come to realise that the two
paths are converging towards a common understanding of the great
riddle that has puzzled philosophers down the ages. Who knows how
human knowledge will evolve in the future.
Acknowledgements
Vedanta is a part of the common heritage of the Indian nation.
However these concepts are presented here in a manner that is
based on the book "Seven Systems of Indian Philosophy"
by Pandit Rajamani Tigunait, Ph.D. ISBN 0-89389-076-6 Đ 1983 by
The Himalayan International Institute
[www.himalayaninstitute.org].
The portions of the script of the movie Matrix that are used here
was compiled by Shelly Poole [Shelley_Poole@btinternet.com] and
is available in the internet.
About the Author
Dr. Prithwis Mukerjee is an engineer from IIT, Kharagpur and has
done his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Dallas,
USA. A computer professional, he has worked in Tata Steel, Tata
IBM and is currently an Executive Director of
PricewaterhouseCoopers Ltd., India. He "publishes" an
electronic magazine ("ezine") that is available on the
internet at www.yantrajaal.com
http://music.ign.com/articles/458/458007p1.html
GN: Unless I'm completely
off base here, the music for Revolutions seemed a lot more epic,
almost operatic, than what you had written for the previous two
installments. There was much more choral arrangements and, I
hesitate to use the term, but much more of a Wagnerian vibe, an
overall epic, over-the-top intensity about it.
Don Davis: Don't hesitate, use the word! Because when we were
spotting Revolutions the word "Wagnerian" came up very
often. And the reason was because, you know Wagner was very much
a fan of Schopenhauer. He was actually obsessed with the
Schopenhauer ideas of will and representation. And these ideas
turned up consistently in his symphonies, particularly in
Parsifal and Die Meistersinger and Tristan und Isolde. And it was
significant enough to both Larry and Andy and myself that we felt
working on the third part of this trilogy, which is significantly
about philosophy—no less Schopenhauer than Hegle and Kant
and Heidegger and Kierkegaard, but still definitely
Schopenhauerian and also Nietzsche, who was a close friend of
Wagner's up until Parsifal, when they had a falling out. One of
the things I did in acknowledging this Wagnerian tradition of
philosophy in multi-media drama was that I quoted the
"Tristan" chord over the "Deus Ex Machina."
It was kind of hidden amongst the orchestration, but it was
definitely there. But the "Tristan" chord kind of came
to symbolize the end of harmony, of classical theory and the
beginning of atonality. I kind of thought it would be cool to use
the "Tristan" chord to show this pivot at the end of
these three Matrix movies.
IGN: That's cool that you stuck in some "subliminal"
musical references like that.
Don Davis: Yeah. And, you know, when we first looked at
Revolutions , Larry and Andy told me they wanted the super burly
brawl, which is the cataclysmic fight mano-et-mano between Neo
and Agent Smith, they wanted the choir to have a significant
voice in that scene. And I told them that I thought that was a
really good idea but if the choir just sang "ooooohs"
and "aaaaaaaahs" it would be significantly not very
good. So I asked them if they would look for something in
literature that represented some of the ideological themes that
had influenced them when they were writing The Matrix that we
could give to the choir and have them sing. And I told them that
I actually preferred a language that wasn't English and if
possible a "dead" language like Latin, so that even
around the world there's nobody who is actively speaking the
language that the choir is singing. They eventually came up with
about six passages from the Vedic scriptures called the
Upanishads. And we had them sing it in the original Sanskrit. And
these texts are amazingly apropos to the whole ontological
concept of The Matrix. It refers to "the one." Let me
read one of them: "In him are woven the sky and the earth
and all the regions of the air. And in him rests the mind and all
the powers of life. Know him as "The One" and leave
aside all other words. He is the bridge of immortality." I
mean [laughs] that's amazing. And the first text you hear sung in
the burly brawl sequence is a prayer which goes "From
delusion lead me to truth, from darkness lead me to light, from
death lead me to immortality." I think that adds a whole
layer of meaning to the entire trilogy.
http://grove.ufl.edu/~hsc/doc/matrix.pdf Vedantic interpretation
http://nisargadatta.net/Matrix/matrix_philosophy_1.htm
Journal of Religion and
Film
Wake up!
Gnosticism and Buddhism in The Matrix
By Frances Flannery-Dailey, Hendrix College
and
Rachel Wagner, The University of Iowa
Vol. 5, No. 2, October 2001
Wake up! Gnosticism and Buddhism in The Matrix
By Frances Flannery-Dailey, Hendrix College
and
Rachel Wagner, The University of Iowa
Abstract
[1] The Wachowski brothers' 1999 hit release The Matrix draws on
multiple religious traditions to establish its complex worldview.
Two of the most prominent are Gnostic Christianity and Buddhism,
which, like the film, pose humanity's fundamental problem and its
solution in terms of ignorance and enlightenment. Because of
ignorance, people mistake the "material" world for
something real, but they may "wake up" from this dream
with help from a guide who teaches them their true nature. This
article explores the film's pervasive allusions to Gnosticism and
Buddhism, which in turn opens up the question of the film's
overarching message and ultimate view of reality.
Article
[2] In The Matrix, a 1999 film by the Wachowski brothers, a
black-clad computer hacker known as Neo falls asleep in front of
his computer. A mysterious message appears on the screen:
"Wake up, Neo."1 This succinct phrase encapsulates the
plot of the film, as Neo struggles with the problem of being
imprisoned in a "material" world that is actually a
computer simulation program created in the distant future by
Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) as a means of enslaving humanity,
by perpetuating ignorance in the form of an illusory perception
called "the matrix." In part, the film crafts its
ultimate view of reality by alluding to numerous religious
traditions that advance the idea that the fundamental problem
which humanity faces is ignorance and the solution is knowledge
or awakening. Two religious traditions on which the film draws
heavily are Gnostic Christianity and Buddhism.2 Although these
traditions differ in important ways, they agree in maintaining
that the problem of ignorance can be solved through an
individual's reorientation of perspective concerning the material
realm.3 Gnostic Christianity and Buddhism also both envision a
guide who helps those still trapped in the limiting world of
illusion, a Gnostic redeemer figure or a bodhisattva, who
willingly enters that world in order to share liberating
knowledge, facilitating escape for anyone able to understand. In
the film, this figure is Neo, whose name is also an anagram for
"the One."
[3] Although as a "modern myth"4 the film purposefully
draws on numerous traditions,5 we propose that an examination of
Gnostic Christianity and Buddhism well illuminates the
overarching paradigm of The Matrix, namely, the problem of
sleeping in ignorance in a dreamworld, solved by waking to
knowledge or enlightenment. By drawing syncretistically on these
two ancient traditions and fusing them with a technological
vision of the future, the film constructs a new teaching that
challenges its audience to question "reality."
Christian Elements in The Matrix
[4] The majority of the film's audience probably easily
recognizes the presence of some Christian elements, such as the
name Trinity6 or Neo's death and Christ-like resurrection and
ascension near the end of the film. In fact, Christian and
biblical allusions abound, particularly with respect to
nomenclature:7 Apoc (Apocalypse), Neo's given name of Mr.
Ander/son (from the Greek andras for man, thus producing
"Son of Man"), the ship named the Nebuchadnezzar (the
Babylonian king who, in the Book of Daniel, has puzzling symbolic
dreams that must be interpreted),8 and the last remaining human
city, Zion, synonymous in Judaism and Christianity with (the
heavenly) Jerusalem.9 Neo is overtly constructed as a Jesus
figure: he is "the One" who was prophesied to return
again to the Matrix, who has the power the change the Matrix from
within (i.e., to work miracles), who battles the representatives
of evil and who is killed but comes to life again.
[5] This construction of Neo as Jesus is reinforced in numerous
ways. Within minutes of the commencement of the movie, another
hacker says to Neo, "You're my saviour, man, my own personal
Jesus Christ."10 This identification is also suggested by
the Nebuchadnezzar's crew, who nervously wonder if he is
"the One" who was foretold, and who repeatedly swear in
Neo's presence by saying "Jesus" or "Jesus
Christ."11 In still another example, Neo enters the
Nebuchadnezzar for the first time and the camera pans across the
interior of the ship, resting on the make: "Mark III no.
11." This seems to be another messianic reference, since the
Gospel of Mark 3:11 reads: "Whenever the unclean spirits saw
him, they fell down before him and shouted, ' You are the Son of
God!'"
Gnosticism in The Matrix
[6] Although the presence of individual Christian elements within
the film is clear, the overall system of Christianity that is
presented is not the traditional, orthodox one. Rather, the
Christian elements of the film make the most sense when viewed
within a context of Gnostic Christianity.12 Gnosticism was a
religious system that flourished for centuries at the beginning
of the Common Era, and in many regions of the ancient
Mediterranean world it competed strongly with
"orthodox" Christianity, while in other areas it
represented the only interpretation of Christianity that was
known.13 The Gnostics possessed their own Scriptures, accessible
to us in the form of the Nag Hammadi Library, from which a
general sketch of Gnostic beliefs may be drawn.14 Although
Gnostic Christianity comprises many varieties, Gnosticism as a
whole seems to have embraced an orienting cosmogonic myth that
explains the true nature of the universe and humankind's proper
place in it.15 A brief retelling of this myth illuminates
numerous parallels with The Matrix.
[7] In the Gnostic myth, the supreme god is completely perfect
and therefore alien and mysterious, "ineffable,"
"unnamable," "immeasurable light which is pure,
holy and immaculate" (Apocryphon of John). In addition to
this god there are other, lesser divine beings in the pleroma
(akin to heaven, a division of the universe that is not earth),
who possess some metaphorical gender of male or female.16 Pairs
of these beings are able to produce offspring that are themselves
divine emanations, perfect in their own ways.17 A problem arises
when one "aeon" or being named Sophia (Greek for
wisdom), a female, decides "to bring forth a likeness out of
herself without the consent of the Spirit," that is, to
produce an offspring without her consort (Apocry. of John). The
ancient view was that females contribute the matter in
reproduction, and males the form; thus, Sophia's action produces
an offspring that is imperfect or even malformed, and she casts
it away from the other divine beings in the pleroma into a
separate region of the cosmos. This malformed, ignorant deity,
sometimes named Yaldaboath, mistakenly believes himself to be the
only god.
[8] Gnostics identify Yaldabaoth as the Creator God of the Old
Testament, who himself decides to create archons (angels), the
material world (earth) and human beings. Although traditions
vary, Yaldabaoth is usually tricked into breathing the divine
spark or spirit of his mother Sophia that formerly resided in him
into the human being (especially Apocry. of John; echoes of
Genesis 2-3). Therein lies the human dilemma. We are pearls in
the mud, a divine spirit (good) trapped in a material body (bad)
and a material realm (bad). Heaven is our true home, but we are
in exile from the pleroma.
[9] Luckily for the Gnostic, salvation is available in the form
of gnosis or knowledge imparted by a Gnostic redeemer, who is
Christ, a figure sent from the higher God to free humankind from
the Creator God Yaldabaoth. The gnosis involves an understanding
of our true nature and origin, the metaphysical reality hitherto
unknown to us, resulting in the Gnostic's escape (at death) from
the enslaving material prison of the world and the body, into the
upper regions of spirit. However, in order to make this ascent,
the Gnostic must pass by the archons, who are jealous of his/her
luminousity, spirit or intelligence, and who thus try to hinder
the Gnostic's upward journey.
[10] To a significant degree, the basic Gnostic myth parallels
the plot of The Matrix, with respect to both the problem that
humans face as well as the solution. Like Sophia, we conceived an
offspring out of our own pride, as Morpheus explains: "early
in the 21st century, all of mankind was united in celebration. We
marveled at our own magnificence as we gave birth to A.I."18
This offspring of ours, however, like Yaldabaoth is malformed
(matter without spirit?). Morpheus describes A.I. as "a
singular consciousness that spawned an entire race of
machines," a fitting parallel for the Gnostic Creator God of
the archons (angels) and the illusory material world. A.I.
creates the matrix, a computer simulation that is "a prison
for your mind." Thus, Yaldabaoth/ A.I. traps humankind in a
material prison that does not represent ultimate reality, as
Morpheus explains to Neo: "As long as the matrix exists, the
human race will never be free."
[11] The film also echoes the metaphorical language employed by
Gnostics. The Nag Hammadi texts describe the fundamental human
problem in metaphorical terms of blindness, sleep, ignorance,
dreams and darkness / night, while the solution is stated in
terms of seeing, waking, knowledge (gnosis), waking from dreams
and light / day.19
[12] Similarly, in the film Morpheus, whose name is taken from
the Greek god of sleep and dreams, reveals to Neo that the matrix
is "a computer generated dreamworld." When Neo is
unplugged and awakens for the first time on the Nebuchadnezzar in
a brightly lit white space (a cinematic code for heaven), his
eyes hurt, as Morpheus explains, because he has never used them.
Everything Neo has "seen" up to that point was seen
with the mind's eye, as in a dream, created through software
simulation. Like an ancient Gnostic, Morpheus explains that the
blows he deals Neo in the martial arts training program have
nothing to do with his body or speed or strength, which are
illusory. Rather, they depend only on his mind, which is real.
[13] The parallels between Neo and Christ sketched earlier are
further illuminated by a Gnostic context, since Neo is
"saved" through gnosis or secret knowledge, which he
passes on to others. Neo learns about the true structure of
reality and about his own true identity, which allows him to
break the rules of the material world he now perceives to be an
illusion. That is, he learns that "the mind makes it [the
matrix, the material world] real," but it is not ultimately
real. In the final scene of the film, it is this gnosis that Neo
passes on to others in order to free them from the prison of
their minds, the matrix. He functions as a Gnostic Redeemer, a
figure from another realm who enters the material world in order
to impart saving knowledge about humankind's true identity and
the true structure of reality, thereby setting free anyone able
to understand the message.
[14] In fact, Neo's given name is not only Mr. Anderson / the Son
of Man, it is Thomas Anderson, which reverberates with the most
famous Gnostic gospel, the Gospel of Thomas. Also, before he is
actualized as Neo (the one who will initiate something
"New," since he is indeed the "One"), he is
doubting Thomas, who does not believe in his role as the redeemer
figure.20 In fact, the name Thomas means "the Twin,"
and in ancient Christian legend he is Jesus' twin brother. In a
sense, the role played by Keanu Reeves has a twin character,
since he is constructed as both a doubting Thomas and as a
Gnostic Christ figure.21
[15] Not only does Neo learn and pass on secret knowledge that
saves, in good Gnostic fashion, but the way in which he learns
also evokes some elements of Gnosticism. Imbued with images from
eastern traditions, the training programs teach Neo the concept
of "stillness," of freeing the mind and overcoming
fear, cinematically captured in "Bullet Time"
(digitally mastered montages of freeze frames / slow motion
frames using multiple cameras).22 Interestingly enough, this
concept of "stillness" is also present in Gnosticism,
in that the higher aeons are equated with "stillness"
and "rest" and can only be apprehended in such a
centered and meditative manner, as is apparent in these
instructions to a certain Allogenes:
And although it is impossible for you to stand, fear nothing; but
if you wish to stand, withdraw to the Existence, and you will
find it standing and at rest after the likeness of the One who is
truly at rest...And when you becomes perfect in that place, still
yourself... (Allogenes)
[16] The Gnostic then reveals, "There was within me a
stillness of silence, and I heard the Blessedness whereby I knew
my proper self" (Allogenes).23 When Neo realizes the full
extent of his "saving gnosis," that the matrix is only
a dreamworld, a reflective Keanu Reeves silently and calmly
contemplates the bullets that he has stopped in mid-air, filmed
in "Bullet Time."
[17] Yet another parallel with Gnosticism occurs in the portrayal
of the agents such as Agent Smith, and their opposition to the
equivalent of the Gnostics - that is, Neo and anyone else
attempting to leave the matrix. A.I. created these artificial
programs to be "the gatekeepers - they are guarding all the
doors, they are holding all the keys." These agents are akin
to the jealous archons created by Yaldabaoth who block the ascent
of the Gnostic as he/she tries to leave the material realm and
guard the gates of the successive levels of heaven (e.g.,
Apocalypse of Paul).24
[18] However, as Morpheus predicts, Neo is eventually able to
defeat the agents because while they must adhere to the rules of
the matrix, his human mind allows him to bend or break these
rules.25 Mind, though, is not equated in the film merely with
rational intelligence, otherwise Artificial Intelligence would
win every time. Rather, the concept of "mind" in the
film appears to point to a uniquely human capacity for
imagination, for intuition, or, as the phrase goes, for
"thinking outside the box." Both the film and the
Gnostics assert that the "divine spark" within humans
allows a perception of gnosis greater than that achievable by
even the chief archon / agent of Yaldabaoth:
And the power of the mother [Sophia, in our analogy, humankind]
went out of Yaltabaoth [ A.I. ] into the natural body which they
had fashioned [the humans grown on farms by A.I.]... And in that
moment the rest of the powers [archons / agents ] became jealous,
because he had come into being through all of them and they had
given their power to the man, and his intelligence
["mind"] was greater than that of those who had made
him, and greater than that of the chief archon [Agent Smith?].
And when they recognized that he was luminous,and that he could
think better than they... they took him and threw him into the
lowest region of all matter [simulated by the matrix]. (Apocry.
of John 19-20)
[19] It is striking that Neo overcomes Agent Smith in the final
showdown of the film precisely by realizing fully the illusion of
the matrix, something the agent apparently cannot do, since Neo
is subsequently able to break rules that the agent cannot. His
final defeat of Smith entails entering Smith's body and splitting
him in pieces by means of pure luminosity, portrayed through
special effects as light shattering Smith from the inside out.
[20] Overall, then, the system portrayed in The Matrix parallels
Gnostic Christianity in numerous respects, especially the
delineation of humanity's fundamental problem of existing in a
dreamworld that simulates reality and the solution of waking up
from illusion. The central mythic figures of Sophia, Yaldabaoth,
the archons and the Gnostic Christ redeemer also each find
parallels with key figures in the film and function in similar
ways. The language of Gnosticism and the film are even similar:
dreaming vs. waking; blindness vs. seeing;26 light vs. dark.27
[21] However, given that Gnosticism presumes an entire unseen
realm of divine beings, where is God in the film? In other words,
when Neo becomes sheer light, is this a symbol for divinity, or
for human potential? The question becomes even more pertinent
with the identification of humankind with Sophia - a divine being
in Gnosticism. On one level, there appears to be no God in the
film. Although there are apocalyptic motifs, Conrad Ostwalt
rightly argues that unlike conventional Christian apocalypses, in
The Matrix both the catastrophe and its solution are of human
making - that is, the divine is not apparent.28 However, on
another level, the film does open up the possibility of a God
through the figure of the Oracle, who dwells inside the matrix
and yet has access to information about the future that even
those free from the matrix do not possess. This suggestion is
even stronger in the original screenplay, in which the Oracle's
apartment is the Holy of Holies nested within the "Temple of
Zion."29 Divinity may also play a role in Neo's past
incarnation and his coming again as the One. If, however, there
is some implied divinity in the film,30 it remains transcendent,
like the divinity of the ineffable, invisible supreme god in
Gnosticism, except where it is immanent in the form of the divine
spark active in humans.31
Buddhism in The Matrix
[22] When asked by a fan if Buddhist ideas influenced them in the
production of the movie, the Wachowski brothers offered an
unqualified "Yes."32 Indeed, Buddhist ideas pervade the
film and appear in close proximity with the equally strong
Christian imagery. Almost immediately after Neo is identified as
"my own personal Jesus Christ," this appellation is
given a distinctively Buddhist twist. The same hacker says:
"This never happened. You don’t exist." From the
stupa-like33 pods which encase humans in the horrific mechanistic
fields to Cypher’s selfish desire for the sensations and
pleasures of the matrix, Buddhist teachings form a foundation for
much of the film’s plot and imagery.34
[23] The Problem of Samsara. Even the title of the film evokes
the Buddhist worldview. The matrix is described by Morpheus as
"a prison for your mind." It is a dependent
"construct" made up of the interlocking digital
projections of billions of human beings who are unaware of the
illusory nature of the reality in which they live and are
completely dependent on the hardware attached to their real
bodies and the elaborate software programs created by A.I. This
"construct" resembles the Buddhist idea of samsara,
which teaches that the world in which we live our daily lives is
constructed only from the sensory projections formulated from our
own desires. When Morpheus takes Neo into the
"construct" to teach him about the matrix, Neo learns
that the way in which he had perceived himself in the matrix was
nothing more than "the mental projection of your digital
self." The "real" world, which we associate with
what we feel, smell, taste, and see, "is simply electrical
signals interpreted by your brain." The world, Morpheus
explains, exists "now only as part of a neural interactive
simulation that we call the matrix." In Buddhist terms, we
could say that "because it is empty of self or of what
belongs to self, it is therefore said: ‘The world is
empty.’ And what is empty of self and what belongs to self?
The eye, material shapes, visual consciousness, impression on the
eye -- all these are empty of self and of what belongs to
self."35 According to Buddhism and according to The Matrix,
the conviction of reality based upon sensory experience,
ignorance, and desire keeps humans locked in illusion until they
are able to recognize the false nature of reality and relinquish
their mistaken sense of identity.
[24] Drawing upon the Buddhist doctrine of Dependent
Co-Origination, the film presents reality within the matrix as a
conglomerate of the illusions of all humans caught within its
snare. Similarly, Buddhism teaches that the suffering of human
beings is dependent upon a cycle of ignorance and desire which
locks humans into a repetitive cycle of birth, death, and
rebirth. The principle is stated in a short formula in the
Samyutta-nikaya:
If this is that comes to be;
from the arising of this that arises;
if this is not that does not come to be;
from the stopping of this that is stopped.36
[25] The idea of Dependent Co-Origination is illustrated in the
context of the film through the illusion of the matrix. The
viability of the matrix’s illusion depends upon the belief
by those enmeshed in it that the matrix itself is reality.
A.I.’s software program is, in and of itself, no illusion at
all. Only when humans interact with its programs do they become
enmeshed in a corporately-created illusion, the matrix, or
samsara, which reinforces itself through the interactions of
those beings involved within it. Thus the matrix’s reality
only exists when actual human minds subjectively experience its
programs.37
[26] The problem, then, can be seen in Buddhist terms. Humans are
trapped in a cycle of illusion, and their ignorance of this cycle
keeps them locked in it, fully dependent upon their own
interactions with the program and the illusions of sensory
experience which these provide, and the sensory projections of
others. These projections are strengthened by humans’
enormous desire to believe that what they perceive to be real is
in fact real. This desire is so strong that it overcomes Cypher,
who can no longer tolerate the "desert of the real" and
asks to be reinserted into the matrix. As he sits with Agent
Smith in an upscale restaurant smoking a cigar with a large glass
of brandy, Cypher explains his motives:
"You know, I know this steak doesn’t exist. I know that
when I put it in my mouth, the matrix is telling my brain that it
is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I
realize? Ignorance is bliss."
[27] Cypher knows that the matrix is not real and that any
pleasures he experiences there are illusory. Yet for him, the
"ignorance" of samsara is preferable to enlightenment.
Denying the reality that he now experiences beyond the matrix, he
uses the double negative: "I don’t want to remember
nothing. Nothing. And I want to be rich. Someone important. Like
an actor." Not only does Cypher want to forget the
"nothing" of true reality, but he also wants to be an
"actor," to add another level of illusion to the
illusion of the matrix that he is choosing to re-enter.39 The
draw of samsara is so strong that not only does Cypher give in to
his cravings, but Mouse also may be said to have been overwhelmed
by the lures of samsara, since his death is at least in part due
to distractions brought on by his sexual fantasies about the
"woman in the red dress" which occupy him when he is
supposed to be standing alert.
[28] Whereas Cypher and Mouse represent what happens when one
gives in to samsara, the rest of the crew epitomize the restraint
and composure praised by the Buddha. The scene shifts abruptly
from the restaurant to the mess hall of the Nebuchadnezzar, where
instead of being offered brandy, cigars and steak, Neo is given
the "bowl of snot" which is to be his regular meal from
that point forward. In contrast to the pleasures which for Cypher
can only be fulfilled in the matrix, Neo and the crew must be
content with the "single-celled protein combined with
synthetic aminos, vitamins, and minerals" which Dozer claims
is "everything the body needs." Clad in threadbare
clothes, subsisting on gruel, and sleeping in bare cells, the
crew is depicted enacting the Middle Way taught by the Buddha,
allowing neither absolute asceticism nor indulgence to distract
them from their work.40
[29] The Solution of Knowledge/Enlightenment. This duality
between the matrix and the reality beyond it sets up the ultimate
goal of the rebels, which is to free all minds from the matrix
and allow humans to live out their lives in the real world
beyond. In making this point, the film-makers draw on both
Theravada and Mahayana Buddhist ideas.41 Alluding to the
Theravada ideal of the arhat, the film suggests that
enlightenment is achieved through individual effort.42 As his
initial guide, Morpheus makes it clear that Neo cannot depend
upon him for enlightenment. Morpheus explains, "no one can
be told what the matrix is. You have to see it for
yourself." Morpheus tells Neo he must make the final shift
in perception entirely on his own. He says: "I’m trying
to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door.
You’re the one that has to walk through it." For
Theravada Buddhists, "man’s emancipation depends on his
own realization of the Truth, and not on the benevolent grace of
a god or any external power as a reward for his obedient good
behavior."43 The Dhammapada urges the one seeking
enlightenment to "Free thyself from the past, free thyself
from the future, free thyself from the present. Crossing to the
farther shore of existence, with mind released everywhere, no
more shalt thou come to birth and decay."44 As Morpheus says
to Neo, "There’s a difference between knowing the path
and walking the path." And as the Buddha taught his
followers, "You yourselves should make the effort; the
Awakened Ones are only teachers."45 As one already on the
path to enlightenment, Morpheus is only a guide; ultimately Neo
must recognize the truth for himself.
[30] Yet The Matrix also embraces ideas found in Mahayana
Buddhism, especially in its particular concern for liberation for
all people through the guidance of those who remain in samsara
and postpone their own final enlightenment in order to help
others as bodhisattvas.46 The crew members of the Nebuchadnezzar
epitomize this compassion. Rather than remain outside of the
matrix where they are safer, they choose to re-enter it
repeatedly as ambassadors of knowledge with the ultimate goal of
freeing the minds and eventually also the bodies of those who are
trapped within the Matrix’s digital web. The film attempts
to blend the Theravada ideal of the arhat with the Mahayana ideal
of the bodhisattva, presenting the crew as concerned for those
still stuck in the matrix and willing to re-enter the matrix to
help them, while simultaneously arguing that final realization is
an individual process.
[31] Neo as the Buddha. Although the entire crew embodies the
ideals of the bodhisattva, the filmmakers set Neo apart as
unique, suggesting that while the crew may be looked at as arhats
and bodhisattvas, Neo can be seen as a Buddha. Neo’s
identity as the Buddha is reinforced not only through the anagram
of his name but also through the myth that surrounds him. The
oracle has foretold the return of one who has the ability to
manipulate the matrix. As Morpheus explains, the return of this
man "would hail the destruction of the matrix, end the war,
bring freedom to our people. That is why there are those of us
who have spent our entire lives searching the matrix, looking for
him." Neo, Morpheus believes, is a reincarnation of that man
and like the Buddha, he will be endowed with extraordinary powers
to aid in the enlightenment of all humanity.
[32] The idea that Neo can be seen as a reincarnation of the
Buddha is reinforced by the prevalence of birth imagery in the
film directly related to him. At least four incarnations are
perceptible in the film. The first birth took place in the
pre-history of the film, in the life and death of the first
enlightened one who was able to control the matrix from within.
The second consists of Neo’s life as Thomas Anderson. The
third begins when Neo emerges, gasping, from the gel of the
eerily stupa-like pod in which he has been encased, and is
unplugged and dropped through a large black tube which can easily
be seen as a birth canal.47 He emerges at the bottom bald, naked,
and confused, with eyes that Morpheus tells him have "never
been used" before. Having "died" to the world of
the matrix, Neo has been "reborn" into the world beyond
it. Neo’s fourth life begins after he dies and is
"reborn" again in the closing scenes of the film, as
Trinity resuscitates him with a kiss.48 At this point, Neo
perceives not only the limitations of the matrix, but also the
limitations of the world of the Nebuchadnezzar, since he
overcomes death in both realms. Like the Buddha, his
enlightenment grants him omniscience and he is no longer under
the power of the matrix, nor is he subject to birth, death, and
rebirth within A.I.’s mechanical construct.49
[33] Neo, like the Buddha, seeks to be free from the matrix and
to teach others how to free themselves from it as well, and any
use of superhuman powers are engaged to that end. As the only
human being since the first enlightened one who is able to freely
manipulate the software of the matrix from within its confines,
Neo represents the actualization of the Buddha-nature, one who
can not only recognize the "origin of pain in the world of
living beings," but who can also envision "the stopping
of the pain," enacting "that course which leads to its
stopping."51 In this sense, he is more than his bodhisattva
companions, and offers the hope of awakening and freedom for all
humans from the ignorance that binds them.
[34] The Problem of Nirvana. But what happens when the
matrix’s version of reality is dissolved? Buddhism teaches
that when samsara is transcended, nirvana is attained. The notion
of self is completely lost, so that conditional reality fades
away, and what remains, if anything, defies the ability of
language to describe. In his re-entry into the matrix, however,
Neo retains the "residual self-image" and the
"mental projection of [a] digital self." Upon
"enlightenment," he finds himself not in nirvana, or
no-where, but in a different place with an intact, if somewhat
confused, sense of self which strongly resembles his
"self" within the matrix. Trinity may be right that the
matrix "cannot tell you who you are," but who you are
seems to be at least in some sense related to who you think you
are in the matrix. In other words, there is enough continuity in
self-identity between the world of the matrix and "the
desert of the real" that it seems probable that the authors
are implying that full "enlightenment" has not yet been
reached and must lie beyond the reality of the Nebuchadnezzar and
the world it inhabits. If the Buddhist paradigm is followed to
its logical conclusions, then we have to expect at least one more
layer of "reality" beyond the world of the crew, since
even freed from the matrix they are still subject to suffering
and death and still exhibit individual egos.
[35] This idea is reinforced by what may be the most problematic
alteration which The Matrix makes to traditional Buddhist
teachings. The Buddhist doctrine of ahimsa, or non-injury to all
living beings, is overtly contradicted in the film.52 It appears
as if the filmmakers deliberately chose to link violence with
salvific knowledge, since there seems to be no way that the crew
could succeed without the help of weaponry. When Tank asks Neo
and Trinity what they need for their rescue of Morpheus
"besides a miracle," their reply is instantaneous:
"Guns -- lots of guns." The writers could easily have
presented the "deaths" of the agents as nothing more
than the ending of that particular part of the software program.
Instead, the Wachowski brothers have purposefully chosen to
portray humans as innocent victims of the violent deaths of the
agents.53 This outright violation of ahimsa stands at direct odds
with the Buddhist ideal of compassion.
[36] But why link knowledge so directly with violence? The
filmmakers portray violence as redemptive,54 and as absolutely
essential to the success of the rebels. The Matrix steers sharply
away at this point from the shared paradigms of Buddhism and
Gnostic Christianity. The "reality" of the matrix which
requires that some humans must die as victims of salvific
violence is not the ultimate reality to which Buddhism or Gnostic
Christianity points. Neither the "stillness" of the
pleroma nor the unchanging "nothingness" of nirvana are
characterized by the dependence on technology and the use of
force which so characterizes both of the worlds of the rebels in
The Matrix.
[37] The film’s explicit association of knowledge with
violence strongly implies that Neo and his comrades have not yet
realized the ultimate reality. According to the worldviews of
both Gnostic Christianity and Buddhism that the film evokes, the
realization of ultimate reality involves a complete freedom from
the material realm and offers peace of mind. The Wachowskis
themselves acknowledge that it is "ironic that Morpheus and
his crew are completely dependent upon technology and computers,
the very evils against which they are fighting."55 Indeed,
the film’s very existence depends upon both
technology’s capabilities and Hollywood’s hunger for
violence. Negating itself, The Matrix teaches that nirvana is
still beyond our reach.
Concluding Remarks
[38] Whether we view the film from a Gnostic Christian or
Buddhist perspective, the overwhelming message seems to be,
"Wake up!" The point is made explicit in the final song
of the film, Wake Up!, by, appropriately, Rage Against the
Machine. Gnosticism, Buddhism and the film all agree that
ignorance enslaves us in an illusory material world and that
liberation comes through enlightenment with the aid of a teacher
or guide figure. However, when we ask the question, "To what
do we awaken?", the film appears to diverge sharply from
Gnosticism and Buddhism. Both of these traditions maintain that
when humans awaken, they leave behind the material world. The
Gnostic ascends at death to the pleroma, the divine plane of
spiritual, non-material existence, and the enlightened one in
Buddhism achieves nirvana, a state which cannot be described in
language, but which is utterly non-material. By contrast, the
"desert of the real," is a wholly material,
technological world, in which robots grow humans for energy, Neo
can learn martial arts in seconds through a socket inserted into
the back of his brain, and technology battles technology
(Nebuchadnezzar vs. A.I., electromagnetic pulse vs. sentinels).
Moreover, the battle against the matrix is itself made possible
through technology - cell phones, computers, software training
programs. "Waking up" in the film is leaving behind the
matrix and awakening to a dismal cyber-world, which is the real
material world.
[39] Or perhaps not. There are several cinematic clues in the
scene of the construct loading program (represented by white
space) that suggest that the "desert of the real"
Morpheus shows Neo may not be the ultimate reality. After all,
Morpheus, whose name is taken from the god of dreams, shows the
"real" world to Neo, who never directly views the
surface world himself. Rather, he sees it on a television bearing
the logo "Deep Image." Throughout the film, reflections
in mirrors and Morpheus' glasses, as well as images on television
monitors point the viewer toward consideration of multiple levels
of illusion.56 As the camera zooms in to the picture on this
particular television and the viewer "enters" the
image, it "morphs" the way the surveillance screens do
early in the film, indicating its unreality. In addition, the
entire episode takes place while they stand in a construct
loading program in which Neo is warned not to be tricked by
appearances. Although sense perception is clearly not a reliable
source for establishing reality, Morpheus himself admits that
"For a long time I wouldn't believe it, and then I saw the
fields [of humans grown for energy] with my own eyes... And
standing there, I came to realize the obviousness of the
truth." We will have to await the sequel to find out whether
"the desert of the real" is itself real.57
[40] Even if the film series does not ultimately establish a
complete rejection of the material realm, The Matrix as it stands
still asserts the superiority of the human capacity for
imagination and realization over the limited
"intelligence" of technology. Whether stated in terms
of matter/ spirit, body/ mind, hardware/ software or illusion/
truth, the ultimate message of The Matrix seems to be that there
may be levels of metaphysical reality beyond what we can
ordinarily perceive, and the film urges us to open ourselves to
the possibility of awakening to them.
Notes
1. All unidentified quotes are from The Matrix (Warner Bros.
release, 1999).
2. In an online chat with viewers of the DVD, the Wachowskis
acknowledged that the Buddhist references in the film are
purposeful. However, when asked "Have you ever been told
that the Matrix has Gnostic overtones?", they gave a
tantalizingly ambiguous reply: "Do you consider that to be a
good thing?" From the Nov. 6, 1999 "Matrix Virtual
Theatre," at "Wachowski chat".
3. Elaine Pagels notes that the similarities between Gnosticism
and Buddhism have prompted some scholars to question their
interdependence and to wonder whether "...if the names were
changed, the 'living Buddha' appropriately could say what the
Gospel of Thomas attributes to the living Jesus. " Although
intriguing, she rightly maintains that the evidence is
inconclusive, since parallel traditions may emerge in different
cultures without direct influence. Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic
Gospels, (New York: Random House, 1979, repr. 1989), xx-xxi
.4. James Ford recently explored other Buddhist elements in The
Matrix, which he rightly calls a "modern myth," in his
article "Buddhism, Christianity and The Matrix: The
Dialectic of Myth-Making in Contemporary Cinema," for the
Journal of Religion and Film, vol.4 no. 2. See also Conrad
Ostwalt's focus on apocalyptic elements of the film in
"Armageddon at the Millennial Dawn," JRF vol. 4, no. 1.
5. A viewer asked the Wachowski brothers, "Your movie has
many and varied connections to myths and philosophies,
Judeo-Christian, Egyptian, Arthurian, and Platonic, just to name
those I've noticed. How much of that was intentional?" They
replied, "All of it" (Wachowski chat).
6. Feminists critics can rejoice when Trinity first reveals her
name to Neo, as he pointedly responds, "The Trinity?...
Jesus, I thought you were a man." Her quick reply:
"Most men do."
7. The Wachowski brothers indicate that the names were "all
chosen carefully, and all of them have multiple meanings,"
and also note this applies to the numbers as well (Wachowski
chat).
8. In a recent interview in Time, the Wachowskis refer to
Nebuchadnezzar in this Danielic context,
(www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,22971,00.html ,
"Popular Metaphysics," by Richard Corliss, Time, April
19, 1999 Vol. 153, no. 15). Nebuchadnezzar is also the Babylonian
king who destroyed the Jerusalem Temple in 586 B.C.E., and who
exiled the elite of Judean society to Babylon. Did the Wachowski
brothers also intend the reference to point to the crew's
"exile" from Zion or from the surface world?
9. The film also suggests Zion is heaven, such as when Tank says,
"If the war was over tomorrow, Zion is where the party would
be," evoking the traditional Christian schema of an
apocalypse followed by life in heaven or paradise. Ironically,
the film locates Zion "underground, near the earth's core,
where it is still warm," which would seem to be a cinematic
code for hell. Is this a clue that Zion is not the
"heaven" we are led to believe it is?
10. Neo's apartment number is 101, symbolizing both computer code
(written in 1's and 0's) and his role as "the One."
Near the end of the film, 303 is the number of the apartment that
he enters and exits in his death / resurrection scene, evoking
the Trinity. This in turn raises questions about the character of
Trinity's relationship to Neo in terms of her cinematic
construction as divinity.
11. The traitor Cypher, who represents Judas Iscariot, among
other figures, ironically says to Neo, "Man, you scared the
B'Jesus outta me."
12. We would like to thank Donna Bowman, with whom we initially
explored the Gnostic elements of The Matrix during a public
lecture on film at Hendrix College in 2000.
13. Gnosticism may have had its origins in Judaism, despite its
denigration of the Israelite God, but the issue is complex and
still debated within scholarly circles. It is clear, however,
that Gnostic Christianity flourished from at least the 2nd -5th
c. C.E., with its own scriptures, and most likely also its own
distinctive rituals, entrance requirements and a creation story.
See Gershom Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and
Talmudic Tradition (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of
America, 1960), Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York:
Vintage Books, 1979, repr. 1989), Bentley Layton, The Gnostic
Scriptures (New York: Doubleday, 1995), Kurt Rudolph, Gnosis: The
Nature and History of Gnosticism (San Francisco:
HarperSanFrancisco, 1987).
14. This corpus lay dormant for nearly 2000 years until its
discovery in 1945 in Nag Hammadi, Egypt. The complete collection
of texts may be found in James M. Robinson, ed. The Nag Hammadi
Library, revised edition, (New York: HarperCollins, 1990; reprint
of original Brill edition, 1978). These documents are also
available on-line at The Nag Hammadi Library Section of The
Gnostic Society Library.
15. Gnostic texts are cryptic, and no single text clearly
explains this myth from beginning to end. The literature
presupposes familiarity with the myth, which must be
reconstructed by modern readers. The version of the myth
presented here relies on such texts as Gospel of Truth,
Apocryphon of John, On the Origin of the World and Gospel of
Thomas. See The Nag Hammadi Library, pp. 38-51, 104-123, 124-138,
170-189.
16. Since the divine beings are composed only of spiritual
substances and not matter, there are no physical gender
differences among the beings.
17. Depending on the text, a plethora of divine beings populate
the pleroma, many with Jewish, Christian or philosophical names,
e.g. the Spirit, forethought, thought, foreknowledge,
indestructibility, truth, Christ, Autogenes, understanding,
grace, perception, Pigera-Adamas (Apocryphon of John).
18. Humanity's characterization also resonates with the Tower of
Babel story in Genesis 11:1-9; in both we admire the work of our
own hands.
19. The bulk of the following excerpt from the Gnostic
"Gospel of Truth" might just as well be taken from the
scenes in The Matrix in which Morpheus explains the nature of
reality to Neo:
Thus they [ humans] were ignorant of the Father, he being the one
whom they did not see... there were many illusions at work... and
(there were) empty fictions, as if they were sunk in sleep and
found themselves in disturbing dreams. Either (there is) a place
to which they are fleeing, or without strength they come (from)
having chased after others, or they are involved in striking
blows, or they are receiving blows themselves, or they have
fallen from high places, or they take off into the air though
they do not even have wings. Again, sometimes (it is as) if
people were murdering them, though there is no one even pursuing
them, or they themselves are killing their neighbors...(but) When
those who are going through all these things wake up, they see
nothing, they who were in the midst of all these disturbances,
for they are nothing. Such is the way of those who have cast
ignorance aside from them like sleep, not esteeming it as
anything, nor do they esteem its works as solid things either,
but they leave them behind like a dream in the night... This is
the way each one has acted, as though asleep at the time when he
was ignorant. And this is the way he has [come to knowledge], as
if he had awakened.
(Gospel of Truth, 29-30)
20. This is perhaps most evident in the subway fight between Neo
and Agent Smith. At a point in the film when Morpheus says of
Neo, "He is just beginning to believe," Agent Smith
calls him "Mr. Anderson," and while fighting he
replies, "My name is Neo." The Wachowskis confirm this
interpretation when they state "Neo is Thomas Anderson's
potential self" (Wachowski chat).
21. This twin tradition was especially popular in Syrian
Christianity. See also Pagels, p. xxi, where she wonders if the
tradition that Thomas, Jesus' twin, went to India points to any
historical connection between Buddhism and Hinduism on the one
hand and with Gnosticism on the other.
22. See the online chat with the special effects creators in the
"Matrix Virtual Theater" from March 23, 2000.
23. Nag Hammadi Library, pp. 490-500. Compare the Gnostic idea of
stillness with these Buddhist sayings from the Dhammapada:
"The bhikku [monk], who abides in loving-kindness, who is
delighted in the Teaching of the Buddha, attains the State of
Calm, the happiness of stilling the conditioned things" and
"Calm is the thought, calm the word and deed of him who,
rightly knowing, is wholly freed, perfectly peaceful and
equipoised. " Quoted in Walpola Sri Rahula, What the Buddha
Taught (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1974) p.128, 136.
24. See Nag Hammadi Library, pp. 256-59. We are grateful to Brock
Bakke for the initial equation of agents with archons.
25. In Gnosticism "Mind" or the Greek "nous"
is a deity, such as in the text "Thunder, Perfect
Mind," Nag Hammadi Library, 295-303.
26. Note that as Morpheus and Neo enter the elevator of the
apartment building of the Oracle, images of "seeing"
symbolize prophecy and knowledge: a blind man (evoking blind
prophets such as Tiresias) sits in the lobby beneath some
graffiti depicting a pair of eyes. Interestingly, the Oracle - a
sibyl / seer - wears glasses to look at Neo's palm.
27. Note too the metonymic use of color to convey this dualism:
black and white clothing, floors, furniture, etc.
28. Ostwalt, "Armageddon" in JRF Vol. 4, no. 1. The
parallel with apocalypticism does not work quite as well as one
with Gnosticism because like Gnosticism, the film understands
salvation to be individual (rather than collective and occurring
all at once), to be attained through knowledge, and most
importantly to entail leaving behind the material earth (that is,
not resulting in a kingdom of God made manifest on the earth).
http://www.viewfromthewall.com/matrixscreenplay.htm
29. The original screenplay is available online at
www.geocities.com/Area51/Capsule/8448/. In its description, the
Temple of Zion evokes both the Oracle of Delphi (three legged
stool, priestesses) and the Jerusalem Temple (polished marble,
empty throne which is the mercy seat or throne of the invisible
God).
30. A viewer asked the Wachowski brothers, "What is the role
or {sic} faith in the movie? Faith in oneself first and foremost
– or in something else?" They answered,
"Hmmmmžthat is a tough question! Faith in one's self, how's
that for an answer?" This reply hardly settles the issue
(Wachowski chat).
31. Specifically, these humans are Neo (the Gnostic Redeemer /
Messiah) and Morpheus and Trinity, both of whom are named for
gods. As a godhead, this trio does not quite make sense in terms
of traditional Christianity. However, the trio is quite
interesting in the context of Gnosticism, which portrays God as
Father, Mother and Son, a trinity in which the Holy Spirit is
identified as female, e.g. Apocryphon of John 2:9-14. For further
reading on female divinities in Gnosticism, see Pagels, pp.
48-69.
32. The brothers explain, "There's something uniquely
interesting about Buddhism and mathematics, particularly about
quantum physics, and where they meet. That has fascinated us for
a long time" (Wachowski chat). In the Time interview with
Richard Corliss (see note 8), Larry Wachowski adds that they
became fascinated "by the idea that math and theology are
almost the same. They begin with a supposition you can derive a
whole host of laws or rules from. And when you take all of them
to the infinity point, you wind up at the same place: these
unanswerable mysteries really become about personal perception.
Neo's journey is affected by all these rules, all these people
trying to tell him what the truth is. He doesn't accept anything
until he gets to his own end point, his own rebirth." The
film’s presentation of the matrix as a corporate network of
human conceptions (or samsara) which are translated into software
codes that reinforce one another illustrates this close
relationship.
33. Stupa: a hemispherical or cylindrical mound or tower serving
as a Buddhist shrine.
34. Of course, the most transparent reference to Buddhist ideas
occurs in the waiting room at the oracle’s apartment, where
Neo is introduced to the "Potentials." The screenplay
describes the waiting room as "at once like a Buddhist
temple and a kindergarten class." One of the children, clad
in the garb of a Buddhist monk, explains to Neo the nature of
ultimate reality: "There is no spoon." One cannot help
wondering if this dictum only holds within the matrix or if there
is in fact "no spoon" even in the real world beyond it.
35. Samyutta-nikaya IV, 54. In Edward Conze, ed. Buddhist Texts
Through the Ages (New York: Philosophical Library, 1954), p. 91.
36. Samyutta-nikaya II, 64-65. Ibid.
37. The entire process depends upon human ignorance, so that
almost all who are born into the matrix are doomed to be born, to
die, and to re-enter the cycle again. When asked about the
film’s depiction of the liquefaction of humans, the
Wachowskis reply that this black ooze is "what they feed the
people in the pods, the dead people are liquefied and fed to the
living people in the pods." Tongue in Buddhist cheek, the
brothers explain this re-embodiment: "Always recycle! It's a
statement on recycling."38 Even in the "real
world" beyond the matrix, the human plight is depicted as a
relative and inter-dependent cycle of birth, death, and
"recycling."
38. Wachowski chat.
39. This dialogue also points to the "reality" (or the
"matrix") which we ourselves inhabit. In our world, and
in the world of Joe Pantoliano, he is an actor. Therefore, the
world of which both the actor Joe Pantoliano and we are now a
part may be seen as the "matrix" into which he has been
successfully re-inserted, and thus the film itself may be seen as
a part of the software program of our own "matrix." The
argument, of course, is seductively circular.
40. Take, for example, this quote from the Sabbasava-sutta:
"A bhikku [monk], considering wisely, lives with his eyes
restrained . . . Considering wisely, he lives with his ears
restrained . . . with his nose restrained . . . with his tongue .
. . with his body . . . with his mind restrained . . . a bhikku,
considering wisely, makes use of his robes -- only to keep off
cold, to keep off heat . . and to cover himself decently.
Considering wisely, he makes use of food – neither for
pleasure nor for excess . . . but only to support and sustain
this body . . ." (Quoted in Rahula 103).
41. James Ford has argued that the film embodies in particular
the Yogacara school of Buddhism. Instead of pointing to that
which is absolutely different than the world as nirvana,
Yogacarins point to the world itself, and through the processes
enacted in meditation, come to the realization that "all
things and thought are but Mind-only. The basis of all our
illusions consists in that we regard the objectifications of our
own mind as a world independent of that mind, which is really its
source and substance" (Edward Conze, Buddhism. New York:
Philosophical Library, 1959), p. 167. The matrix exists only in
the minds of the human beings which inhabit it, so that in The
Matrix, as in Yogacara, "The external world is really Mind
itself" (p. 168). Yet a problem arises when one realizes
that for the Yogacara school, the Mind is the ultimate reality,
and therefore samsara and nirvana become identified. By contrast,
the film insists on a distinction between samsara (the matrix)
and nirvana (that which lies beyond it). Because The Matrix
maintains a duality between the matrix and the realm beyond it,
Yogacara is of limited help in making sense of the Buddhist
elements in the film, nor is it helpful in supporting the idea
that beyond the matrix and beyond the Nebuchadnezzar there is an
ultimate reality not yet realized by humans (see note 4).
42. According to Theravada teachings, arhat ("Worthy
One")is a title applied to those who achieve enlightenment.
Because according to Theravada beliefs enlightenment can only be
achieved through individual effort, an arhat is of limited aid in
helping those not yet enlightened and so would not necessarily
choose to re-enter samsara to aid others still enmeshed within
it.
43. Rahula, p. 2.
44. Quoted in Rahula, 135.
45. Quoted in Rahula, 133.
46. A bodhisattva is one who postpones final entry into nirvana
and willingly re-enters or remains in samsara in order to guide
others along the path to enlightenment. The Buddha’s
compassion serves as their primary model for Mahayana Buddhists,
since they point out that he too remained in samsara in order to
help others achieve enlightenment through his teachings and
example.
47. The screenplay describes Neo as "floating in a womb-red
amnion" in the power plant.
48. In the screenplay, Trinity does not kiss him but instead
"pounds on his chest," precipitating his resuscitation.
The screenplay states directly: "It is a miracle." This
fourth "life" can be viewed as the one to which the
oracle refers in her predictions that Neo was "waiting for
something" and that he might be ready in his "next
life, maybe." This certainly appears to be the case, since
Neo rises from the dead and defeats the agents.
49. These four "lives" suggest that Neo is nothing
other than the "One" foretold by the oracle, the
reincarnation of the first "enlightened one," or
Buddha, who "had the ability to change whatever he wanted,
to remake the matrix as he saw fit." Buddhist teaching
allows that those who have been enlightened are endowed with
magical powers, since they recognize the world as illusory and so
can manipulate it at will. Yet supernatural powers are incidental
to the primary goal, which is explained in the very first sermon
spoken by the Buddha: "The Noble Truth of the cessation of
suffering is this: It is the complete cessation of that very
thirst, giving it up, renouncing it, emancipating oneself from
it, detaching oneself from it"50
50. Dhammacakkappavattana-sutta. Quoted in Rahula, 93.
51. Buddhacarita 1:65. E. B. Cowell, trans., Buddhist Mahayana
Texts, Sacred Books of the East, vol. 49 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1894).
52. See, for example, in the Dhammapada: "Of death are all
afraid. Having made oneself the example, one should neither slay
nor cause to slay" (Verse 129) (Dhammapada, trans. John Ross
Carter and Mahinda Palihawadana. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1987), p. 35.
53. The idea that violence as salvific is made explicit by the
writers. Whereas they could have chosen to present the
"deaths" of the agents as of the same illusory quality
as other elements within the software program, instead, they
choose to depict actual humans really dying through the
inhabitation of their "bodies" by the agents. This
addition is completely unnecessary to the overall plot line;
indeed, the "violence" which takes place in the Niko
Hotel could still be portrayed, with the reassuring belief that
any "deaths" which occur there are simply computer
blips. The fact that the writers so purposefully insist that
actual human beings die (i.e. die also within the power plant)
while serving as involuntary "vessels" for the agents
strongly argues for The Matrix’s direct association of
violence with the knowledge required for salvation.
54. See the article by Bryan P. Stone, "Religion and
Violence in Popular Film," JRF Vol. 3, no. 1.
55. When asked whether this irony were present, the Wachowskis
reply abruptly but enthusiastically "Yes!" (Wachowski
chat).
56. This is especially true in the "red pill/blue pill"
scene where Neo first meets Morpheus, and Neo is reflected
differently in each lens of Morpheus' glasses. The Wachowskis
note that one reflection represents Thomas Anderson, and one
represents Neo (Wachowski chat).
57. A viewer asked the pertinent question of the Wachowskis:
"Do you believe that our world is in some way similar to
"The Matrix," that there is a larger world outside of
this existence?" They replied: "That is a larger
question than you actually might think. We think the most
important sort of fiction attempts to answer some of the big
questions. One of the things that we had talked about when we
first had the idea of The Matrix was an idea that I believe
philosophy and religion and mathematics all try to answer. Which
is, a reconciling between a natural world and another world that
is perceived by our intellect" (Wachowski chat).
JR & F
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Within the prison of your
world appears a man who tells you that the
world of painful contradictions, which you have created, is
neither
continuous nor permanent and is based on a misapprehension. He
pleads with you to get out of it, by the same way by which you
got
into it. You got into it by forgetting what you are and you will
get
out of it by knowing yourself as you are.
I'm sure many have noticed
the similarity between Eastern Sprituality, particularly
"Advaita" (nonduality)
and the movie Matrix.
In Sanskrit language Advaita means "not two." For
example, the above quote by the Advaita Vedanta Master
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj could have easily been used in the
script by Neo's mentor Morpheus.
According to an interpretation of Advaita, the mind whether awake
or dreaming moves through the illusion (maya=matrix?). Only
consciousness is real. You are consciousness.
Nisargadatta's student Ramesh Balsekar explains the core of his
Guru's teachings as "the knowledge of one's
identity."Then how do you find out who you are?
The seeker is he who is in
search of himself.
Give up all questions except one: "Who am I?" After
all, the only fact you are sure of is that you are. The "I
am" is certain. The "I am this" is not. Struggle
to find out what you are in reality. To know what you are, you
must first investigate and know what you are not. Discover all
that you are not--body, feelings, thoughts, time, space, this or
that--nothing, concrete or abstract, which you perceive can be
you. The very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you
perceive. The clearer you understand that on the level of mind
you can be described in negative terms only, the quicker will you
come to the end of your search and realize that you are the
limitless being.
When I met my Guru, he told
me: "You are not what you take yourself to be. Find out what
you are. Watch the sense 'I am', find your real Self." I
obeyed him, because I trusted him. I did as he told me. All my
spare time I would spend looking at myself in silence. And what a
difference it made, and how soon! My teacher told me to hold on
to the sense 'I am' tenaciously and not to swerve from it even
for a moment. I did my best to follow his advice and in a
comparatively short time I realized within myself the truth of
his teaching. All I did was to remember his teaching, his face,
his words constantly. This brought an end to the mind; in the
stillness of the mind I saw myself as I am -- unbound.
I simply followed (my teacher's) instruction which was to focus
the mind on pure being 'I am', and stay in it. I used to sit for
hours together, with nothing but the 'I am' in my mind and soon
peace and joy and a deep all-embracing love became my normal
state. In it all disappeared -- myself, my Guru, the life I
lived, the world around me. Only peace remained and unfathomable
silence. My Guru ordered me to attend to the sense 'I am' and to
give attention to nothing else. I just obeyed. I did not follow
any particular course of breathing, or meditation, or study of
scriptures. Whatever happened, I would turn away my attention
from it and remain with the sense 'I am', it may look too simple,
even crude. My only reason for doing it was that my Guru told me
so. Yet it worked! Obedience is a powerful solvent of all desires
and fears...
I find that somehow, by shifting the focus of attention, I become the very thing I look at, and experience the kind of consciousness it has; I become the inner witness of the thing. I call this capacity of entering other focal points of consciousness, love; you may give it any name you like. Love says "I am everything". Wisdom says "I am nothing". Between the two, my life flows. Since at any point of time and space I can be both the subject and the object of experience, I express it by saying that I am both, and neither, and beyond both. --Nisargadatta Maharaj
Two monks were watching a
flag flapping in the wind. One said to the other, "The flag
is moving."
The other replied, "The wind is moving."
Huineng overheard this. He said, "Not the flag, not the
wind; mind is moving."
Of the two monks, Wumen says they were trying to buy iron;
Huineng, out of compassion, gave them gold instead. This koan
demonstrates the idea that in naming an object, one clouds one's
understanding of its true nature. Fans of The Matrix may note the
parallel here to the saying "there is no spoon ".
