Chapter B – The liberation war – Awakening from the dream
Sub chapters:
- A Cognitive dissonance – Bribery shall blind the wise
- Most people are not yet ready to "disconnect"
- Building the will – the question, In order to create an opening for the appearance of the guide.
- No one can free himself from prison – the need for a teacher
- The wisdom of being a disciple (Talmid Hacham)
- Summary – The courage to jump
Sub chapter – Cognitive dissonance – Bribery shall blind the wise
So what is it that makes the matrix, and how is the bubble which hides reality from so many people created? What seizes our minds? How does it work?
The main characteristic of everything we perceive in our world is finalism, or as the Oracle and Smith call it along the way: "Everything that has a beginning has an end". It is true that thoughts, emotions and everything else we are aware of has boundaries, but the main characteristic of our reality is matter, and so it is matter that ultimately hinders the light of truth more than anything else. The wise have made the analogy to someone holding a coin. The closer the coin is to the eye, the more it hinders the light of the sun. The metaphor is clear, the more man is dependent on the material world, the more his vision of the spiritual diminishes and eventually disappears. What is the cause for this?
The world is an endless collection of frequencies. Every frequency has a wavelength – boundaries which define it. Each sense perceives a certain relative part of the endless frequencies. For instance – the vision "senses" wavelengths from A to B values. An average bee can perceive up to C and so sees further than man. Hearing "senses" F to G frequencies. A dog can hear up to I and so on.
Thus our perception of reality lies on a limited number of resources creating a serious misconception arising from the fact that whatever is out of our senses' reach, we consider unreal. The senses give part of the picture, but when we consider this part as the whole picture, we get a very big and ugly lie.
Man is born into this world of frequencies and gets accustomed to perceiving reality through his senses. In fact, he gets accustomed to receiving all of his feeling of vitality from this limited system of senses. He then slowly becomes dependent on the pleasure and vitality he gets from his sense organs and so becomes enslaved to them. This slavery is expressed in every time a certain insight or thought is perceived as threatening his pleasure in its different levels; he simply pulls the plug on that thought. In the Torah's language this is called bribery. Physical or mental bribery blinding the mind from seeing what is. In modern psychology this is called a cognitive dissonance or as the architect explains it: "emotion was "designed" to overcome reason and logic. Many of the orient's methods are built on the silencing of the five senses (meditation) in order to cut off this constant bribery, so that one may be able to feel or hear an 'out of this world' experience (spiritual) without the hindrance of the physical body. The people of Israel also received a gift from God for being willing to leave the "pots of meat" – Egypt's material abundance and go to the desert – where they seemingly will have no vitality, so that later, as a reward for this trust, they will win a higher form of vitality:
'I remember the devotion of your youth,
how as a bride you loved me
and followed me through the desert,
through a land not sown.
This is the spell of Egypt which does not enable exodus.
This is why most people are not yet ready to disconnect.
Most people are not yet ready to disconnect
Morpheus: "most people are so hopelessly accustomed and dependent on the system , they will do anything in their power to defend it". Most of the world simply sees reality through their five senses, and if put against another picture, they will feel their lives threatened from the core. A threat against their "right" for unlimited sensory pleasure. Having built their whole existence on the basis of this reality, they will eventually persecute whoever will try to show them this alternative picture.
So we have two veils; one is the very essence of the material world, hindering us from seeing reality and the other are our friends, already enslaved to their senses and trying to keep us in prison with them.
Building the will – the question, In order to create an opening for the appearance of the guide.
The "Hazon Ish" (Rabbi Avraham Yeshaya Karlitz) wrote a book called "Belief and trust". In this
book he gives a very interesting definition of "Belief". He says that belief is a fine inclination in a man's mind, when free of desires and silent. Out of this silence arises a question… what is the riddle of the universe? the training (one of the roots of the Hebrew word Emuna = belief) of asking and enquiring is called belief.
When man suddenly stops the chase after the pleasures and shiny packaging of the system, when he manages to overcome the network of advertisement and commercials, designed to convince him to buy brands, for which he works so hard until he has hardly time to breathe, not to mention ask questions. When he manages to overcome all these, he then stands naked in front of the question, so powerfully simple that it embarrasses him. Out of this embarrassment he turns and dives back into the world of work and desires – The sharp edged sword protecting the opening of the garden…
Belief is not the answer, it is mainly the question.
Moses gave us a message from the chief programmer, that not only have we a chance to know, we are obligated to know . And if we are obligated then we also posses the ability.
"Know therefore today, and take it to your heart, that God, He is God in heaven above and on the earth below; there is no other.
In the chapter about knowledge, we will also discuss the paradox of knowing, and the difference between the knowing of man and the knowing beyond. What is clear though without doubt is that out of the depth of darkness a light of true knowing can be found.
Rabbi Dessler in his book "The chase for truth" says: we will never loose the point of truth. Even after the desire of one's heart drives him away from the right way, in the depth of his heart he knows that the right way is more real. He accepts the lie as a substitute for truth but not as truth itself. Each man has the ability to find out in his own heart where truth lies.
The road to knowing starts with a small step – A Question.
Although we have learned that with regular tools (scientific logic) it is not possible, one of the most important recognitions in a man's life is that he has in his depth other tools. He has an inner embassy of the world beyond, of the spiritual essence. The road is to follow the soul. Before it entered the world, the soul had seen all its life to be and has freely chosen it. It knows. So when we taste different ways we recognize whether they fit what we already know deep inside.
No one can free himself from the prison – the need for a teacher
Belief in its primary stage comes from a place of complete darkness. The wise tell us that man alone cannot find his way through darkness: "No one can free himself from prison", he must have help from the outside.
Another role of the guides is to support us when the agents start their attack. As long as someone is a soldier of the "system", the agents don’t disturb him. It is only when his loyalty and commitment to the system loosens that the agents feel him beginning to awaken – they then tighten the ring of control around him. When Moses came to Pharoe and asked him to let his people go, Pharoe commanded that the Hebrews be loaded with yet more work because it appears they have too much free time. The role of the guide is to inform the disciple why is it that just when he is beginning to awaken, the reality of his life becomes harder and more challenging. This is where a conceptual change appears compared with the eastern conciseness claiming that if you feel difficulty, it means you're on the wrong path. The right path, to their method, should be effortless – smooth. This of course, is not true. Any change of state, even in physics, requires energetic investment. One of man's natures is laziness, lack of will to make an effort even when one knows he will eventually benefit from it. We all know this from the world of physical exercise. The journey to truth passing through change of concepts is hard and full of challenges. The film and the wise teach us that man's reality in his world is one of war! War against our own nature, war against the agents. "And you shall go to war against thy enemies".
However, there is also a danger to the spiritual warrior here. We have seen in the first chapter that the consciousness which have captured human kind is the consciousness that grew when man transferred the relating point to the "Self". When the "Self" became the center. In the chapter about Smith we will see that pride (the ego) is the big screen hiding infinity. The danger is that the warrior will believe in himself and trust only his own powers – "My hands and power have made this bravery", both in the physical and spiritual war, who are in fact one and the same. The wise tell us that Satan/ The angel of death/ Smith – is so incredibly strong that man has no chance to defeat him alone. The only possibility to overpower him is by recognition that one cannot do it by himself. He must draw his power through a connection with something beyond. Through connection with the "Source".
The wisdom in being a disciple (Talmid Hacham)
One of man's main problems is that he often sticks with his primary opinions. He already knows. He controls. It is hard for him to accept that he actually doesn’t have a clue, and so he lives with a self conviction that he understands. A nice parable describing this is the one about the man who traveled the east and visited many Teachers and felt he is already "enlightened". He decided to visit one more teacher. When he arrived, the teacher asked him to sit down and poured him a cup of tea. He began to pour the tea into the cup and even though the cup became full he continued to pour until the cup was overflowed and the tea spilled all around it. The disciple was sorry to think he made all this way to visit a teacher which was old and senile. To his surprise, when he finished pouring the tea, the old man told him the lesson was over. The embarrassed disciple didn’t even feel it started and to his question the teacher replied that the lesson was that one cannot fill a cup which is already full! A man who thinks he already knows has no room for new understandings. Only he who can empty himself can receive and learn. All of life's processes are built on this movement of filling up and emptying out. Just as only when the lungs can empty they can fill up with new air. The heart also fills and empties incessantly. In spirituality also – man has to learn this truth and consent to be small. Consent to release and receive. To consent to become a disciple. In Judaism this position is called a wise pupil (Talmid Chacham). Who is a wise pupil? It is only the wise who knows to always remain a pupil.
Summary
Many travel the world desperately seeking remains of authenticity. Traces of something real. Traces of originality in a world of plastic, falseness, imitation and packaging. Many are willing to pass through significant dangers on this road, to walk on the edge, to confront even death, just in order to maybe draw a trace of inner meaning.
The truth is that the greatest challenge is to confront the edges of our self definition. For this, one does not need to travel to the end of the world. It is really the end of the world we define ourselves in, and it is here. Trinity tells Neo that "the Matrix cannot tell you who you really are" . Morpheus tells us that our self definition out of the world is only a mental projection of our digital (material) body . The true "Self" lies way beyond this definition. Mostly, the fear of the unknown stops us from growing. The seed is afraid to change because he likes himself as he is. It is only when he is willing to give up his seedy nature that he can change and grow into a huge tree. The biggest challenge is to have the courage to give up who I think I am in order to find the true "Self". To give myself up and jump towards truth .
"