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I taught the first film in a course on religion and science fiction last year, and one of the questions that I posed to my students was whether or not the Matrix was necessary for the human race in the larger sense of overall human evolution/enlightenment. I curious what people think. What I'm getting at deals largely with the gnostic and buddhist ideas of freeing our minds from the artificial construct that currently binds us. At that point, Reloaded hadn't yet come out and there were no trailers of Revolutions to look at, so I was simply speculating (as were many people) that the real world might end up being simply another level of a matrix. If that proved to be true (as it certainly seems to be) and Neo ends up being the gnostic savior/boddhisatva (sp?) could he (or anyone in the human race) have ever ended up reaching this state in the real world if he hadn't first gotten practiced at freeing his mind in the Matrix? The Matrix ends up being not such a bad thing in that case--a sort of puzzle or zen koan that needs to be experienced in order to gain enlightenment. And if the Matrix is necessary, was it allowed to come about in the "real" world by the "architect" of the higher order matrix (God, for lack of a better term) in order to help us poor ignorant souls better ourselves?

interesting question

u can come and teach at my school any day!!

wow...thats interesting, and assuming they are HUMANS, which, some things seem to point against, it would be very interesting if that were true.

yup

Who is to define what "human" is. It's just a convenient label for what we perceive in the "real" world if you look at it from a gnostic perspective. What we are seeing isn't our "true" self. Morpheus calls it "residual self image" within the Matrix. In the gnostic/buddhist world, it's similar, although from my understanding, in gnostic beliefs, our physical self is a creation of the demented/evil creator god while in buddhism we are a bit more responsible for creating the world around us (a sort of mass delusion that exists because we all believe it does)

Sorry, the Real World isn't another level of the Matrix.

I don't the "The Matrix" as created by machines. I mean it in a larger sense of what we perceive as reality being simply another construct (in this case constructed by God, or whatever term you prefer). That's essentially what Gnosticism believes, and the fact that Neo is manifesting powers in the "real" world, and is able to see the "code" in the real world (the golden images of the sentinel we see in the trailer) argue that there is indeed something above and beyond this reality.

Yeah, exactly what I was saying in another thread of mine called "3 Worlds...", BUT it is NOT another Matrix. Go have a read of the thread located here:

http://www.killermovies.com/forums/f42/t15392.html

To each his own opinion, and I'm not saying it actually "is" another matrix, because until we see Revolutions we can't do anything but spectulate (and even then it may be something that is up for debate). I'm putting it out as an idea to talk about.

MWAM has actually been disproven for real:

http://www.aintitcoolnews.com/display.cgi?id=16340

*gasp*

sifer> link dont work for me

aint it cool has a crap host.
anyway, theres a review of the matrix there and the guy, without using any other spoilers, says, definitevly, matrix within a matrix is not the case.

You mean this, I take it:

"What is the Matrix?" is finally revealed here. A Matrix inside of a Matrix? Luckily for us the Wachowski's are better than that.

That's up for interpretation, since he may simply be referring to it as just another level of computer control. That would be disappointing, and I've always believed the Wachowskis were better than that. I'm talking about another metaphysical level of existence, and that site doesn't give us enough to go on to be certain.

The desert of the real in the films may be every bit as real as our world. I've always believed we were supposed to see it that way. The big question is, how real is "our" world.

ha!! i just noticed your signature (not to get off-topic again )

yea that link also doesnt work for me.. i even tried just going to the main page for them and it didnt work.. any ideas?