“The Matrix”– the film versus the real matrix

I saw a posting with a caption beneath Keanu Reeves photo reading: “Truth is the Matrix was a documentary” Of course the film “The Matrix” was a brilliant and yet simplistic metaphor for how humans are slaves, but not enslaved by AI — we did it to ourselves.

We Are Tools

Truth be told, we have lived in a matrix of our own making since the tech of language evolved or was created — spoken and subsequently written language. It’s likely that ego and language evolved in tandem. While computer/internet/VR is a good metaphor for our slavery it is not the cause as AI versus Humans was the cause in the film The Matrix.

The technology of language and a driving ego enabled all of civilization and subsequent technologies to be formed. The process of becoming the tools we were using happened with greater subtlety over millennia. Probably ego was once an acknowledged tool of the self to interface with other humans building agrarian systems and villages, cities and civilizations. Somewhere along the way the self was abandoned for a more exciting life based on ego titillation, a stronger identity and separation from the other — which includes the natural world — like Earth.

This allowed humans to look at plants, animals and the elements of Earth as objects to be manipulated. Humans using the tool of language and ego became objects and tools themselves. As tools within a system of tools — especially this hierarchical system we find ourselves within, namely the patriarchy which in and of itself is a tool.

Slaves to The System

Current power-possessors within the patriarchy are tools of a system of one-upmanship. There are always individuals within this system that are above you and below you. There is no one person at the top because almost everyone is competing for the next top spot no one can stay on-top for very long especially with burgeoning populations. The top tier of power possessors seeks to keep people of the bottom tiers where they are of which some are slaves either overtly or covertly. While the top tier may seem to be free they are slaves to the system and keeping the system in place. The system itself is based on oppression — currently white highly educated males at the top, white educated males in the middle and white males at the bottom tiers of civilization. In. each tier the while male is on top. The system itself reshuffles the oppressed with the oppressors. For instance, the oppressed stage an uprising that becomes a revolution and take power. The oppressed become the oppressors and the cycles resets itself.

The Comforts of Slavery and the Tech of Disconnection

The underlying slavery that goes beyond the hierarchical system is a slave to habit and the mechanization that the ego likes so much. It gives us the luxury of sleep and “to go on automatic”. In this state of near constant sleep is disconnection from others. We take this to mean that in order to connect with another we must use a tool or tools to forge a connection. The proliferation of connection technology is vast. At the most disconnected end of tech for connection could be social media or platforms for writing for example. The most connected way of connecting could be making-love: love without words combined with a biological / sexual release is shared with another. The next tier in connection is 1 to 1 / in-person activity combined with verbal communication. Between making love without words and face to face verbal communication are light-years from one another in terms of connection. Connection without the tech of words may be connection to Being as practiced through meditation for example. “Going within” to discover a connection with “all there is” that has always been there — but has been forgotten by fragmented ego parts. Perhaps in the course of human history in a time before language and ego there wasn’t any problem in feeling connected to others.

Past Advanced Civilizations

It has often been said by spiritualists such as Gurdjieff and Madame Blavatsky that the high point of human civilization was the Lemurian and Atlantean times. The Sanskrit texts of the Yuga cycles of time indicate that the Satya Yuga was a golden age for human kind that last occurred during the Lemurian and Atlantean era. This may have been a time — in its beginning stages where spoken/written language and ego did not exist, where people communicated through empathy and telepathy. Technology as we would perceive it today was much more advanced because it was intrinsic to person and not separated via language and ego.

Modern peoples look at archeological evidence and judge prior humans as being primitive based on recognizable technologies. If they didn’t have computers they were not as advanced as we are today — kind of thinking. That may be a prejudicial judgement based on a narcissistic insular fragmented ego point of view that can not show a larger picture. In other words, our forms of thinking may be a jail in which we are trapped can’t see beyond our current circumstances. We are so trapped we don’t even see the bars in the jail.

A Way to be Free

A 19th century metaphor is sometimes used to describe the slavery of an individual:

This is the story of the horse, carriage, driver and passenger inside the carriage. The horse represents the whim of the ego (or uncontrolled emotion or desire). The carriage which is in disrepair, rusting and generally not well maintained is the physical body. The driver is the ego and they are drunk, letting the horse go wherever it wants to go. The passenger inside the carriage is the sleeping Master. The passenger needs to be awakened. The Master helps the driver get sober. The driver attends to the horse — putting blinders on, repairs the carriage and brings it into working order making sure the reigns work to guide the horse. Slowly the driver becomes the steward of the carriage and the Master within. And the work continues…

• By acknowledging that we are slaves to habit and past belief systems (See: “Free Will Does Not Exist”
• Finding a teacher to assist on the path to Mastery
• A willingness to work on oneself daily and face all the aspects of one self dispassionately, without mercy and judgement towards freedom.

These are the beginning steps. Many people will say that this is what they want and some will try for a short time but cannot maintain the work. They fall back into the comfort of illusion thinking they are free.