![]() Have you ever noticed you can’t control your thoughts for very long? Have you ever wished you could, in the middle of night, when you’ve been rehearsing that upcoming meeting for the thirty-seventh time? Rather, it is your identification of yourself “as your mind.” In zen, the prison is not “for your mind,” as in the Matrix. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes… Remember, all I’m offering is the truth, nothing more… Follow me… You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. A prison for your mind… Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. ![]() It gets to encounter Itself, through you. It cannot be understood by the mind, because it is infinite, but it can be encountered, because there’s a part of It in you. Nonduality is the very fabric of existence. Now what’s the space in? Did that make you a little dizzy? Then you’re onto it. Now look at the space that the stuff is in. The nondual, in zen, is the canvas upon which our dualistic experience is painted. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.Īll of this applies to spirit, even though in content Morpheus is speaking about the machine construct. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. It is all around us, even now in this very room. Morpheus: Do you want to know what it is? The Matrix is everywhere. In some traditions, it’s called “spirit” or “awareness.” Some people call it God. In zen, we would say he’s talking about the essence of all things, the ground of ‘being’ itself: nonduality. We soon discover he’s referring to a digital construct of delusion. This is where the plot of the film departs from the zen allegory. Morpheus lures the seeker in Neo forward. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. That there’s something wrong with the world. He’s about to discover, as all seekers do, that you cannot have it both ways. Morpheus is exploring Neo’s internal division: his ego wants to be in control, but the seeker in him wants to know the truth. This is precisely why most people don’t push themselves beyond their comfort zone-they cannot bear feeling out of control. It is the ego’s desire to feel in control that is the very thing that perpetuates the delusion. He is about to learn that he has, in fact, never been in control. Neo is about to lose total control of himself and his reality. This is a brilliant and ironic statement about the ego’s resistance to losing control. Neo: Because I don’t like the idea that I’m not in control of my life. This universal impulse is the basis of every religion, philosophy, and spirituality in the history of our species. This is the part of us that senses we’re missing something, intuits some larger whole we’re disconnected from. Morpheus speaks to the “spiritual impulse” in Neo. Ironically, this is not far from the truth. You have the look of a man who accepts what he sees because he is expecting to wake up. The rabbit hole, and the fact that it leads to “Wonderland” represents the uncomfortable exploration of an uncertain future that frees Alice from the boredom of her ordinary life. Morpheus: I imagine that right now you’re feeling a bit like Alice, tumbling down the rabbit hole? Hm? The upholstered chair is styled after the infamous Mad Hatter’s decor, and the wooden table is where Alice found her “eat me” and “drink me” options-symbols of transformation-at the bottom of the rabbit hole. The checkerboard floor is an homage to Through the Looking Glass, which is set on a chess board the size of a county. Its details are unmistakably borrowed from Lewis Carroll’s Alice novels. It’s about waking up.įirst, let’s look at the set. Perhaps the most famous scene from The Matrix is when Morpheus asks Neo to choose between the red pill and the blue pill. If you haven’t already read Parts One and Two, you might want to review those first. ![]() This is part three of my series on the Matrix, which was released 20 years ago.
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