»Did Wilber get it backwards?«

We've all read/heard this whole business of Wilber's with the idea that the Matrix represents three levels of existence-

Blue-Zion-Body
Green-Matrix-Mind
Gold-Machine City-Spirit

But doesn't it seem that he got it backwards. Wouldn't machines represent the body (the mechanized world) and the rebels in Zion represent spirit (those living free in the promised land)?

Zionists=Spirit
Machines=Body

So then, things click together better, don't they? Neo is the spirit which has rejected the body and sprung free from the realm of carnal reality. The body (Smith), having been imbued with a piece of the spirit, then seeks to reclaim what it has lost. To bring back to itself purpose beyond survival.

That is what Neo is seeing after he is blinded. He comes to see the spirit in the machines which previously he only saw as mechanical forms, just as he sees the soul of Smith in the body of Bane.

Ultimately the spirit realizes that it can not fight the body any more than it can fight itself. It must realize that it (Zion) and the body (the Machines) make one whole, bringing them both into perfection...

Interesting.

But you should keep it for the Matrix Explained commentary.

Where is the Mind?

th3 p4th wrote:

Where is the Mind?

Same place it was previously (that's the fun of the center of things when viewed in a mirror, it's still the center). The mind is still the Matrix (Mega City), the place where body and soul unite.

Ok.

CaptPostMod wrote:

Wouldn't machines represent the body (the mechanized world)

I don't get it.

th3 p4th wrote:

Ok. CaptPostMod wrote: Wouldn't machines represent the body (the mechanized world) I don't get it.

We often refer to our bodies as machines. They are mechanical devices. Muscles, bones, organs, all work together to accomplish the necessary tasks of survival.

So if a dichotomy is placed on the spirit and body and represented in the form of Zion and the Machine city, wouldn't it follow that the Machine city is body? Our bodies are machines.

And equally, those living in Zion are people who have "freed their minds." They pulled out of the machine body of their RSIs and were freed from those bodies they knew all their lives. They see for the first time with the truer eyes which had lain dormant behind the RSI body eyes the entire time.

This then makes those free in Zion, spirits. They are the beings that lay with-in the RSI bodies.

The Matrix, then, is the meeting ground of body and spirit. "Mind" if you want to call it that (though that might be a little off in this model as the "Free your Mind" Morpheus espouses seems to more mean "Free your Spirit" in this context). Normally in the Matrix things work well. The mind (or spirit) makes it real and imbues it with life. The machines (or body) make it real and imbue it with structure.

But there is the extreme. The Zionites are spirits who reject the body completely. And the Machines are bodies who seek to dominate their spirits completely. So a war ensues. But only when body and spirit understand that they are not fundamentally seperate but constitute a greater whole can the path of peace be achieved.

Ken Wilber talking about the Matrix: trueredpill.googlepages.com...

(file type: mp3, size: 500kb, source: The Roots of the Matrix DVD)

th3 p4th wrote:

Ken Wilber talking about the Matrix: trueredpill.googlepages.com...

It's also really helpful if you are familiar with Larry's summary of the final moments between Smith and Neo in Revolutions--"You see at this point in the story Neo stands on the verge of Satori, ready to resolve the paradox of Choice and Choicelessness, of Free Will versus Fate. But that can only be achieved through an act of surrender, which occurs after he has abandoned the perspectival nature of Truth, accepting the Totality of Present Consciousness which ultimately allows an evolutionary transition, transcending the Cartesian dilemma through the emergence of the de-limited spirit, which then provides the world with the choice of a third path, the path of Neo, the path of the peace."

And read this en.wikipedia.org..., which brings one to understand that the Cartesian dilema is a split of spirit and body. I just think that Wilber got it backwards. It should be

Zionites-Spirit
Mega City-The experienced World
Machines-Body

CaptPostMod wrote:

And equally, those living in Zion are people who have "freed their minds." They pulled out of the machine body of their RSIs and were freed from those bodies they knew all their lives. They see for the first time with the truer eyes which had lain dormant behind the RSI body eyes the entire time.

Hm,... of what quality is their "truer eyes"?
This is two excerpts from Vanexel's and my essay part 2 (click on the image to enlarge it):

tozy! You are back, we really missed you!

I see that Part 2 is on its way!

tozy wrote:

But to know about a "collective" Maya and to (more or less) be able to transcend some of it (some rules can be bent, some can be broken) doesn't overcome the "personal" Maya, no longer "collective" as in memes, but still collective as in (material/body) "human", as expressed - as I believe - in Zion (think of the very "earthy" (-> material) Zion rave scene... and the engeneering level, the "organs" of the body Zion)

Nice to see you writing again.

th3 p4th wrote:

tozy! You are back, we really missed you! I see that Part 2 is on its way!

I'm of the opinion that she never went away. Just back to the drawing board.

And, as far as the OP goes, Wilber's opinions are his own. Like he said in the LWKW interview, (paraphrasing), "I know Larry agrees with me on this." Meaning there's a discrepancy between what Larry's and Ken's opinions.

This post was edited by its own author to be consistent with all the changes Apocryphe made to the previous posts.

I, too, look eagerly forward to that essay by Tozy. Now, we're making some progress.

intell wrote:

So I should post on 7/7 the fact that I think THIS thread is going to be interesting?

Ok you are right BUT remember how many times this happened.
If I let this continue we will talk again about 7/7 or who has the best matrix essay here!


I wish I had the ability to merge threads, then everything would be in place. But I don't!

Tozy, I think your essay excerpts very much speak to my point. When Neo awakens to Zion, it is an awakening from Maya into a world where his Third or Spiritual eyes are open, right? He is able to see Samsara from a higher vantage point and look at the mechanics behind the Maya he has existed in. This sounds to me like a person who has become spirit, not one who has fully embraced carnality.

Wilber's just a launching point for what I'm driving at here, and perhaps a confining one. What I am more interested in is the Cartesian Dilema. That is (according to Larry Wachowski) what Neo must resolve, and that is the split between spirit and body.

The world of the real does look very much like the inside of a body, as you point out. But as you've also pointed out, this is a world built by the machines! Zion and the desert of the real are the Machine world, not the Zionist one! Alagorically we are seeing spirits who inhabit a body, a set of mechanical tunnels and simple tentacled creatures with simple purposes. The machine world is the world of the body, and the machines are the side of the body.

Zionists are the side of the spirit. Those who have woken up from the world where body and spirit meet and become almost pure spirits in the promised land, living with only the simplest of machines (the kidneys, the heart, aka the water processing machine, the generator).

It is the Zionists, the spirits, who must find a way to work with the body, the machines. Neo transcends Maya with-in the first 40 minutes of the first film. But it is not Brahma he achieves, it is Satori, the transcending of Samsara. To do that, body and soul must be one. That's what a Buddhist would say of transcending Samsara.

It also sheds a lot of light on Hamann's speach. Destroying the machines is not controlling them just as Buddha slowly learned that destroying the body is not controlling it.

intell wrote:

So I should post on 7/7 the fact that I think THIS thread is going to be interesting? On Topic: I, too, look eagerly forward to that essay by Tozy. Now, we're making some progress.

It is interesting to me because Maya isn't the beginning "step"...It is in the middle of a line of thinking and has several parts to it of which I didn't catch in the movie manifestations.

An aside:

Does he know there's a Brahma and a Brahman? And, when crossing religions and philosophies sometimes there aren't objective equivalents?

Gina Rink wrote:

Does he know there's a Brahma and a Brahman?

Who "he"? Me?

Neo, like Buddha, is a Kshatriya. So he couldn't become a Brahmin, though through Vedic tradition he could achieve Brahma, or unite with Brahman. Though, ultimately, this is pointless, as is shown in Morpheus.

Buddha rejected that path too.

Gina Rink wrote:

It is interesting to me because Maya isn't the beginning "step"...It is in the middle of a line of thinking and has several parts to it of which I didn't catch in the movie manifestations.

So either there is some prelude to M1 regarding Neo's path...

Or, Neo doesn't realise Maya until some point in Reloaded?

intell wrote:

So either there is some prelude to M1 regarding Neo's path...

"Your life is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of the Matrix."

As in the entirety of it. But that is also pointless.

Gina Rink wrote:

It is in the middle of a line of thinking and has several parts to it of which I didn't catch in the movie manifestations.

I think Gina actually gets it here. It's about Samsara, not Maya. Which is what she just described.

Satori, not the realm of Brahman.

What this model leads me towards is away from Wilber's statement that the difference from the first film and the sequels is that the sequels take the dynamics of the story out of simple good and evil terms. This model leads to viewing a different difference.

In the first film, Neo is like the Buddha before his enlightenment. His goal is a simpler one. He is searching for a path out of illusion. And when he finds it, he then goes on to claim a godhood (as the One). That's where the first film leaves us. Neo is a being whose spirit has been fully realized and he has become a deva.

But in the sequels, Neo begins to realize what Buddha also realized... being a deva (or god) is no different than being a person. You are still caught up in the cycle of karma (Samsara). You have freed yourself not 1 iota.

It is not the freedom from illusion that brings peace (if it were, the movies would have ended with M1). It is the resolution of karma that brings peace (which is why the movies end at M3 with Neo resolving his causation and termination).

Larry sees the resolution of the Cartesian Dilema as integral in this resolution of Karma. So Neo must bring his freed god spirit back to carnality, and reunite it with the body (Smith), so that he can learn to forgive the body its sins by taking them on himself...

Hey wait, haven't we heard that story somewhere else? biblegateway.com...

CaptPostMod wrote:

Gina Rink wrote: It is in the middle of a line of thinking and has several parts to it of which I didn't catch in the movie manifestations. I think Gina actually gets it here. It's about Samsara, not Maya. Which is what she just described. Satori, not the realm of Brahman.

Reading your fringe always puts a smile on my face.

The core of the system of the One is a western concept, but as these people try to achieve perfection, they attempt to find different ways of expressing it. The term Second Renaissance says it all. As they see these things changing in the world around them, they assimilate them so they "fit". The change follows changes in society as their system has been around as long as many other now popular systems...only suppressed to the "elite".

So, as one asks themselves, how can the Wachowskis get away with a making these movies. It is simple: Great minds think alike in more ways than most people can and will figure out in their youth.

The biggest problems arise when people begin to make highly subjective value judgments about perfection (first one has to define what perfection is...which is a problem in itself...not to mention the subsequent conclusions based on that conclusion). The thing is...people who are searching for perfection generally have a "leg up" on everyone else. So, they make claims that "fit" better than ordinary joes'. Generally, those claims go against Joe's wishes... Edit:..or what Joe understands as the true context. A popular sentiment now (and mostly an ignorant one) is there no context and therefore, no message. However, a little thought should get you past that one.

But I digress...

Anyway, the ciphers in the 7/7 thread give you a glimpse into their line of thinking. How important fit is. Nothing more.

Gina Rink wrote:

Reading your fringe always puts a smile on my face.

Laughing at or with?

Since I don't mention perfection, I'm at a loss to understand your commentary on my model regarding it.

Are you disagreeing with the assertion that the Cartesian Dilema is resolved by the uniting of Neo as Spirit and Smith as Body or supporting it?

CaptPostMod wrote:

Gina Rink wrote: Reading your fringe always puts a smile on my face. Laughing at or with? Since I don't mention perfection, I'm at a loss to understand your commentary on my model regarding it. Are you disagreeing with the assertion that the Cartesian Dilema is resolved by the uniting of Neo as Spirit and Smith as Body or supporting it?

Think, Capt. After that first sentence you quoted, Gina Rink's comments no longer apply to your model in particular. "Micro examination should lead to macro examination."

intell wrote:

Think, Capt. After that first sentence you quoted, Gina Rink's comments no longer apply to your model...

Then why make them? Are you two just polluting my thread, or would you like to discuss my ideas? If you dislike them, or want me to further explain some portion of them, please let me know. Or if you like some part of them and/or would like me to further explain, please ask.

Otherwise, why pollute my thread? As I said to her--

Are you disagreeing with the assertion that the Cartesian Dilema is resolved by the uniting of Neo as Spirit and Smith as Body or supporting it?

CaptPostMod, not th3 p4th, wrote:

Then why make them? Are you two just polluting my thread, or would you like to discuss my ideas? If you dislike them, or want me to further explain some portion of them, please let me know. Or if you like some part of them and/or would like me to further explain, please ask.

You know what, you're absolutely right. But neither of us meant for that to appear here. SEE th3 p4th for this one.

And for the record, I like your post.

(Edited by Apocryphe : please let's avoid all this unnecessary chit-chat, thanks )

Sorry, Capt. Tell us more about whether Maya is realised in M1 or Reloaded (as I was thinking).