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Movie: The Matrix: Neo as the
missing link and messiah; Christ's body as the red pill
The Matrix themes, Mythic Godman,
The Chosen One
>>>Like
McKenna liked to point out as archaic revival or re-evolution, this shift in
understanding *and* shift in experiencing will in fact be *the* essential
"missing link", more important than the familiar idea of the
"missing link" in the Theory of Evolution. When you look at the forces lined up against this thoroughly
entheogenic reconception of religion happening, the conflicts of Church vs.
Galileo, or of the right wing against evolution seem almost picayune --
trifling, paltry, and petty.
As a key
theorist of the maximal entheogen theory of religion, I am the missing link,
the Neo, the one, the savior, the Jewish messiah. You were right, Agent Smith: everything was destined.
I suspect
Christianity was largely a later invention based on the Renaissance-era Jewish
idea of the messiah. So I am reading
not on "Kabbalah" (yawn) but on broader Jewish mysticism including
the "messiah" metaphor. The
movie The Matrix isn't an allusion to Christianity; rather, The Matrix and
Christianity are both systems of allusion to entheogenic mystic altered state
experiential insight.
Matrix
resonates with Christian themes and takes advantage of the resonance but Matrix
does not point to Christianity; it points beyond the Christian system of
allegory to that which Christianity itself points to: transcendent experiential
insight resulting from swallowing the medicine of awakening. The blue pill is the placebo sacrament used
in today's fallen and apostate so-called 'churches'.
http://www.arrod.co.uk/essays/matrix.php
>>Morpheus
contacts Neo just as the machines (posing as sinister 'agents') are trying to
keep Neo from finding out any more. When Morpheus and Neo meet, Morpheus offers
Neo two pills. The red pill will answer the question "what is the
Matrix?" (by removing him from it) and the blue pill simply for life to
carry on as before. As Neo reaches for the red pill Morpheus warns Neo
"Remember, all I'm offering is the truth. Nothing more."
>>The
film as a whole and especially the choosing scene is deeply compelling. Why is
the choice between what you believe you know and an unknown 'real' truth so
fascinating? How could a choice possibly be made? On the one hand everyone you
love and everything that you have built you life upon. One the other the
promise only of truth.
>>The
question then is not about pills, but what they stand for in these
circumstances. The question is asking us whether reality, truth, is worth
pursuing. The blue pill will leave us as we are, in a life consisting of habit,
of things we believe we know. We are comfortable, we do need truth to live. The
blue pill symbolises commuting to work every day, or brushing your teeth.
>>The
red pill is an unknown quantity. We are told that it can help us to find the
truth. We don't know what that truth is, or even that the pill will help us to
find it. The red pill symbolises risk, doubt and questioning. In order to
answer the question, you can gamble your whole life and world on a reality you
have never experienced.
>>However,
in order to investigate which course of action to take we need to investigate
why the choice is faced. Why should we even have to decide whether to pursue
truth?
>>The
answer in short, is inquisitiveness. Many people throughout human existence
have questioned and enquired. Most of them have not been scientists or doctors
or philosophers, but simply ordinary people asking 'what if?' or 'why?' Asking
these questions ultimately leads us to a choice. Do you continue to ask and
investigate, or do you stop and never ask again? This in essence, is the
question posed to Neo in the film.
>>So
what are the advantages of taking the blue pill? As one of the characters in
the film says, "ignorance is bliss" Essentially, if the truth is
unknown, or you believe that you know the truth, what is there to question or
worry about?
The
question was written too garbled to answer:
"Can
anyone see an allegory of a different kind in the two films ( ... ) choice and
free will,symbolism and perhaps drug psychosis,.
Allegory
for Christian themes is not different than allegory for choice and free will
and allegory for psychotomimetic hallucinogenic drugs.
Choice and
freewill is perhaps the central philosophical issue of the Matrix movie
series. Many religionists and
philosophers agree that there is no issue more important and central than
freewill and determinism.
Regarding
allegory for drug psychosis, an ancient metaphor is that that ordinary
consciousness is unreal, dreaming, and inebriation/drunkenness; whereas the
sacred food and drink brings reality, awakening, and sobriety.
Sacred
food and drink, metaphorized as 'mixed
wine', means visionary plants such as opium, datura, cannabis, mushrooms,
henbane, thornapple, scopolamine, and salvia.
The Matrix
contains metaphorical allusions to the full standard set of themes, including
so-called "religious" or "Christian" themes, freewill vs.
determinism themes (which are actually core for religion), and entheogenic drug
themes.
The
meeting with the Architect is a variation of the ego death experiential
realization and insight.
A
description of this experience styled in the form of meeting the Architect: the
person takes entheogens, walks through a maze while thinking about the nature
of self-controllership and the power to make a choice, and feels drawn to an
inner room (compare the child-eating Minotaur in the labyrinth) as serious
doubts about self-controllership power arise, and the feeling of
self-controllership is gradually suspended and examined consciously.
The
Architect isn't clearly conscious, isn't clearly human, isn't clearly
carbon-based -- in fact the chair on which the Architect sits is empty except
for a mysterious glow. Thoughts about
self-control arise in your mind of their own accord -- your thinking is seized
and blinded with perceptual and conceptual feedback. Thoughts arise as from a spring from a hidden source outside the
room of your mind -- thoughts about the relationship between time, change,
freedom, will, control, and world.
Another
perspective arises and is felt: frozen timeless block-universe determinism,
with thoughts injected into the room of your mind, thoughts that logically must
be laid out, according to this elegant, beautiful, harmonious conception,
already in the future. TV scenario
images play out all around, and you are drawn toward the exit door. You don't know what scenario is there, and
you realize you cannot change it -- it is given to you timelessly by the
Architect.
You
realize that because you never could have coherently had any metaphysically
free will, you are exempt from freewill moral agency ethics, and everyone else
is exempt too, with only the Architect to praise or blame. But isn't the Architect morally liable? Perhaps, but how could the Architect be
subject to ethics, when the Architect runs the whole world and conventional
ethical agency is an illusory logical contradiction?
To
"balance the cosmic accounts" upon eliminating at a sweep all the
world's metaphysical freewill moral culpability, the only reward and punishment
would have to happen on the mythic plane, and it would have to be the Architect
himself, who doesn't even really have a body, and is outside spacetime.
Your will
is being led toward the door and you know you cannot but follow it; your hands
are tied with respect to originating your own control-thoughts. Fear and distrust, apprehension arises from
the hidden spring of thoughts: how can you trust the Architect? The Architect injects thoughts showing you
his ability to make you will things that directly and emphatically,
specifically contradict your accustomed will.
Looking
closer at your thoughts or mental constructs than before, even your
control-thoughts and feeling-thoughts, they are labelled "authored by the
Architect -- legal property of the Architect -- part of the
Architect". You are made to
genuflect in acknowledgement of your relationship as control-agent to the
Architect. You are sent out to tell
others your experiences, knowing some will be made to understand.
You were
injected with excited ecstatic trembling fear, realization of your precarious
situation out of your apparent control, but you find that as soon as you are
made to genuflect in acknowledgement of your controllership relationship to the
Architect, the fear is replaced by joy and calm and amazement.
As you are
led by your mysteriously arising will-movements to the exit door, your
accustomed natural degree of self-confidence in your controllership returns,
though now you are able to remember the other, timeless perspective as well.
The movie series The Matrix is much more mystic and gnostic than the movie series Lord of the Rings. I like Matrix and dislike Rings. Are there any Matrix philosophy books yet that include coverage of the final part of the trilogy?
My
egodeath-related selections from
http://thereisno-spoon12.blogspot.com/
Inevitability
-- with a more linear accent than timeless frozen block-universe determinism --
is a common theme here. Spiritual
cybernetic self-controllership ego death through realizing inevitability.
Neo:
You’re programs.
Rama: Oh
yes. I am the power plant systems manager for recycling operations. My wife is
an interactive software programmer. She is highly creative.
...
R: No, I
don’t mind. The answer is simple…I love my daughter very much. I find her to be
the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. But where we are from, that is not
enough. Every program that is created must have a purpose…if it does not, it is
deleted. I went to the Frenchman to save my daughter….You do not understand.
N: I’ve
just have never…
R: Heard
of programs speak of love.
N: It is a
human emotion.
R: No, it
is a word. What matters is the connection the word implies…I see that you are
in love. Can you tell me what you would give to hold on to that connection?
N:
Anything.
R: Then
perhaps the reason you are here is not so different from the reason that I am
here.
Merv: The
eyes of The Oracle. I have told you before there is no escaping the natrue of
the universe. It is that nature that has again brought you to me. Where some
see coincidence, I see consequence. Where others see chance, I see…cost. Bring
me the eyes of The Oracle…and I will give you back your savior. It seems a
perfectly fair and reasonable deal to me. Yes…no?
...
Trinity:
You want to make a deal? How about this…you give me Neo or we all die right
here, right now.
Merv:
Interesting deal. You are really ready to die for this man.
T: Believe
it.
Persephone:
She’ll do it. If she has to she’ll kill every one of us. She’s in love…
Merv: It
is remarkable how similar the pattern of love is to the pattern of insanity.
T: Times
up. What’s it going to be Merv?
Smith: The
great and powerful oracle. We meet at last. I suppose you’ve been expecting me.
The all knowing oracle is never surprised. How can she be…she knows everything.
But if that’s true then why is she here, if she knew I was coming why wouldn’t
she leave. (Smith throws cookies from the table) Maybe you knew I was going to
do that, maybe you didn’t. If you did that means you baked those cookies and
set that plate right there deliberately, purposefully…which means that you’re
sitting there also deliberately, purposefully.
...
Oracle: Do
what you’re here to do.
Smith: Yes
ma’am.
Smith
changes The Oracle into a Smith, gaining the eyes of The Oracle.
Smith:
This is my world! My world!
Fight, Neo
on ground not moving.
Smith:
Wait…I’ve seen this is it, this is the end. Yes…you were laying right there,
just like that. And I…I…I stand here, right here…and I’m suppose to say
something. I say…everything that has a beginning has an end, Neo.
Neo starts
to get up.
Smith:
What? What’d I just say? No…no, this isn’t right, this can’t be right. Get away
from me!
Neo: What
are you afraid of?
Smith:
It’s a trick.
Neo: You
were right Smith…you were always right…it was inevitable.
Smith puts
hand into Neo, changing him into a Smith.
Smith: Is
it over?
The newly
transformed Smith shakes his head “yes.”
Neo is
then “crucified” in the real world, there is the appearance of a cross on his
chest during this. All the Smiths disappear.
The
Source: It is done.
Neo’s body
is dragged toward the machine and there is the appearance that Neo’s
consciousness still percieves the machine’s light energy.
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