matrix and spirtuality

the matrix movies are chock full of religious undertones... ranging from the quest to find yourself to neo being compared to jesus (he must die to save mankind) to buddhism.

i don't want to turn this into a religious debate... but i see this movie as a quest to know one's self. neo is trying to find out what his purpose, is he is essentially trying to reach enlightenment. along the way many of the characters realize everything they believe is not so. when neo get into the real world he is in disbelief... when morpheus fins out at the end of the second movie

Spoiler:
he learns that everything he believed about the one is false

i would very much like to discuss the religious undertones in the movie.

NOT A RELIGIOUS DEBATE!! i don't care what religon you are or support!

I also think there are strong religous paralles. I think this is because of what religon is at its heart. It is a primitive way of explaining our world. It trys to answer questions like why, how, and when in a way that is understandeable to us.

So when you have a movie like the matrix that has so many big questions you have to have a way to explain it. It is really like a religon unto itself. It has its own messiahs, creators, prophets, and believers.

Anything that is not known to us or poses to much a question will create a religous type feel. Just so that we can explain it to ourselves.

It reminds me of a bit of dialogue from M1. When Neo is going to meet the Oracle, they drive through a street, and he notices a Chinese restaurant, that he used to visit, that had really good noodles, and he muses about what “it” means.
Trinity “It means, the Matrix cannot tell you who you are.”

No amounts of Oracles or prophecies can tell Neo who he is. And in the end, the religion based around The One turns out to be just another system of control. There is no such thing as “meant to be”. Because what does that mean? Really?
If an Oracle tells me I’ll meet a circus-clown tomorrow, what happens to my CHOICES? To my FREE WILL? Will it be so, that no matter what I do, there is no escaping the circus-clown?
What is faith? Believing in something that can’t be proven?

“Anything that is not known to us or poses to much a question will create a religous type feel. Just so that we can explain it to ourselves.”

But today, when science can explain how the sun, Moon and Earth came into being, you still have people believing some sort of deity op deities created it. All that is missing is PURPOSE. Exactly the thing Smith, now free from the system in M2, bounces around and is looking for. Perhaps the greatest paradox of our existence is our need for it to MEAN something, to be MORE than it just is. That’s something I really ponder upon. Why is it, that some people have a need for the world and their existence to be part of a bigger scheme, a plan of some kind, when that essentially means they surrender their free will?

Spirituality is one thing - but mystery is a matter of perception rather than faith. We choose to believe things independent of how much or how little evidence we have, and that is the lesson which makes the M1 conversation with the oracle 10x better than just about any other prophetic oracle speech ever in any movie - the oracle is honest about its own place - its own priority within Neo's mind. At the same time, it knows the conditions of the story - the functionality of it and what the story will accomplish.

The details are non-essential. She tells Neo not to worry about the vase. What vase? He happens to knock over the vase... 'That vase' as if to say that was just one example of the details that are irrelevant... Then she mocks the idea that he will try to figure out if he would have still done it had she said nothing... AGAIN the details for her are unimportant - but what Neo 'knows' is the answer, regardless of what she were to tell him.

This is one matter of M1 which was not carried through in M2... in M1 the story becomes the essential reality and drives all of the characters along. Believing that one is part of a story is the first part of exiting the Matrix. The second part is perceiving that perception - acknowledging that fate and what we believe is a creation of our own mind that is STILL not the real world. Thus these details are unimportant because they serve simply to achieve a particular function which remains unexplained. There is no spoon. And yet there is a function which someone knows. Self-perception guides Neo towards a function which cannot be recognized by its details, but by its results. Appearances are accidental - but peace, according to the story, will be the result.

My favorite... the fact that all three of her oracles come true...

1. "You're going to have to make a choice."

He does so audibly - he sees himself as being the active party in fulfillig this one.

2. "On the one hand you'll have Morpheus' life, in the other hand you'll have your own."

Examine the helicopter scene carefully, and you'll see this is also true.

3. "One of you is going to die. Which one... is up to you."

The subway scene - 'I'm going to enjoy watching you die, Mr. Anderson' and that is when Neo chooses which one of his personalities will live, and which will die. 'My name... is Neo.'

In M2, it seems that we are expected to believe that this foundation which fuels the first movie is simply not present in the second. I never would have expected Neo to be so jaded about his own position, especially after already being jaded in the first movie and finally proving to himself that he WAS Neo!

The story - the oracle - which provides the medium of interaction in a tangible world achieves an abstract determinable purpose. In M2, this appears to be too deep a concept to be fleshed out, as we sink into philosophy 101 causality arguments and suddenly we are back trying to figure out the details and struggle with them. Does Neo love Trinity or not? Who cares! Does Link think that Neo is really cool? Who cares! Does the oracle really have a grip on the matrix? She shouldn't have to, but even her speeches do not match up to M1 - she is not self-realized in M2 - she has gone from transcendence to condescension.

As for the architect sketch (snicker), Neo is inside of his own mind - it seems clear that it is a double entry... remember that one accesses the Matrix through the back of one's head - a backdoor, so to speak. Thus the monitor images reflect his own internal thoughts, while the architect is merely his own attempt to put the world together. He is facing his own projection from the inside... in M1, he faced his choice without being self-aware. In M2, he faces the same selective mechanism from the inside of his own mind - or at least, that what I'd like to think. It is post-modernism facing his own cloaked structuralist tendencies - a pointless less choice regarding the future into which 'Neo' must inject an aim while coming from past devoid of tangible truth. Chaos faces its own order, which seemingly leads to more chaos one way or the other!

(And yet, if we recall from M1 - what 'seems to be' is not as important - it is the function, and the path, which is essential.)

Otherwise, if I were to take it at face value - mathematical doublespeak - and unusual Euro campiness, I much prefer Python's sketch.

This is important because the Matrix itself is good and evil - it is still a nurturer - it is a womb/mother. It IS the mother of everything inside - whether abusive or not. Smith was trapped by it in M1, because he was never supposed to exist - he existed because of human beings, and thus he hates human beings... however, once Neo severed him from the Matrix mainframe, he is still trapped inside... that is, until he energizes into the real world. I would expect Smith to equally show disdain for the Matrix itself.

And yet, on the other hand, one would think that would make Smith happy... to be free from the Matrix.

>sigh< the logic is breaking down. Time to reprogram the Matrix in number 3 and save all those poor human beings.

oh yes, the six matrices before ours... ask a rabbi about that one.

another line that is fabulous... before this 'anomaly' language, the architect points out that the mathematics created a remainder which Neo represents. A 'remnant' if you will - theologians out there probably got one nice chuckle out of the movie there... despite the rest

Zion... a raver nightclub? Go back to M1 where tank is talking to Neo about Zion... you're telling me, he's talking about THAT? Hah... all I could think of was that it looked more like Babylon to me... In which case following from the idiom they have placed themselves in by using such biblical names, Zion really NEEDS to be destroyed in order to usher in a new era. Why not look at the woman in the red dress? Why not look at pinups while the windows are bricked in and you find yourself unable to escape? I'd expect Zion to be brutally awoken in M3, but somehow I just don't think Hollywood has the balls to do something like that, after showing everyone how 'cool' Zion is by connecting it to popular youth culture.

Morpheus is so easily jaded in M2. He faced his own sure death on account of his belief that Neo was the one in M1 by fighting an agent, and now in M2 he wusses out because the ship is destroyed? Because other people don't believe as he does?

I hope the W Bros. surprise me with M3. I loved M1... I thought M2 had great action scenes... but the plot and philsophy were so sub-M1 it was painful to watch... especially Keanu's butt and the Trinity/Neo dialog that surrounded it.

JaG

Jag216> From the first part of your post, I really did get the impression you’d viewed M1 the way I myself had. But then you loose sight of the points in M2.
Which one of us didn’t watch M1, hoping, wishing or foreseeing that Neo would indeed turn out to be the One? But to choose it he had to surrender his free will. Again, I point to choices and free will as being pivotal to the story, as WELL as what distinguishes humans from machines – such as love, sex and parties. Things that have been with us since our forefathers crawled out of their caves, became conscious and started to ask questions.
The Oracle is no longer transcendent in M2, and that is a good path. As long as she can foresee the future, it will be at the expense of free will. If something is bound to happen, prophesised to happen, how can anyone have choice and free will?
The boundaries of the system, the anomaly and what could otherwise be endless loops, endless repetition are broken in M2.
And about the five matrices before. One could ask a rabbi or a hindi. They’ll each give their own interpretation.
I’ve been accused of prudence in my life, but reading how some people view the party in Zion and the love-making between Neo and Trinity does make me wonder if we’re still in the Victorian Era. Tank and Zee serve to show, that it is NOT an orgy going on, but the last humans having a last party before the war, just like our predecessors did in days of old, before marching off to battle.
Strangely enough some people then proceed to interpret the dance and love-making as jaded behaviour, without going on to say why that should be so.
If humans just walk around in cool clothes, “kick some ass”, and do funky kung-fu, they’re just like the agents in the VR world.
And what us wrong with popular pop-culture? It’s a stroke of genius on behalf of the W-brothers, to weave into their tale a few minutes of human happiness and pleasure, and get this kind of medieval response. Like Mouse says in M1 “To deny our impulses, is to deny what makes us human.”

Omega: I must have missed something. How did Neo surrender his free will in M1 because of the Oracle? How can a choice you make eliminate free will?

I thought the spirituality in the Matrix helped make a good movie great. Like the StarWars movies, the philosophy and spirituality makes me think, makes me want to see it again to see if I could catch more of the artists concepts. It's a great, mind expanding experience when a movie touches more than your ears and eyeballs. When it touches your mind and your heart, then it has a chance to be a great movie.

Prophecies eliminate free will if they are true. But choosing to become the One, Neo essentially surrenders his free will, and choose a set path. One that is laid out from the Oracle, through the Keymaker to the Source. How else, is he able to dream of the future, of what will happen?
That is what i mean by loss of free will 🙂

And I agree with you on all the philosophical and spiritual concepts.

neo must give his life to save Morpheus.. Now he did so in part one.. but what im wondering is if that was the fulfilling of what the oracle said.. or will he have to fulfill it later on....

Omega>"Prophecies eliminate free will if they are true". First off you should leave out the "if they are true" part. A prophecy is not a prophecy unless it is realised. Second I don't agree with you when you say a prophecy eliminates free will. Suppose I secertly predict that you will be the first one to reply to this post, (now remember you are not aware that I have made this prediction). If you are the first one to reply has my prediction in any way affected your free will. You may then say that it is the awareness of what is to come that eliminates free will. That would mean it's all subjective to each unique situation, scenario. As with the vase breaking scene in M1. The Oracle tells him not to worry about it . . . but what's gonna really bake his noddle later on is if he would have still broken it if she had not told him.