Saturday, October 06, 2007
Reality, Illusion, and Death of Self
I was a big fan of the movie “The Matrix” when it first came out. The two sequels were horrible because they focused on the fighting scenes and ridiculous special effects, but I was drawn into the symbolism of reality vs. illusion in the original movie.
I have been reading “Mystics and Zen Masters”, by Thomas Merton on and off for about a month now. The book is much more than a description of contemplative prayer (Zen). It is a collection of writings that explain various ways in which men of different traditions have conceived the meaning and method of the “way” to the highest levels of religious/metaphysical awareness. The book discusses diverse religious concepts of early monasticism, Russian Orthodox spirituality, the Shakers, and Zen Buddhism with a directness that is not usually found when reading about such topics.
It becomes clear in Merton's discoveries that you cannot separate religion and psychology. Religious experience is deeply entangled with our human definition of "self" and that includes our self-consciousness, self-awareness, and notion of individual identity. Most importantly, I’ve realized that our self-identity as well as our religious belief is an illusion. Most of what we mean when we say “religious belief” is our descriptive symbolic language that we use to interpret and discuss our experiences. This description (the collection of our symbols and myths) is useful and helps us maintain our sanity as we live in constant tension between reality and illusion, but we can get lost as we replace one illusion with another illusion. Zen (the practice of meditation) is one way to wake up from our illusions. Our religious beliefs can at times feel more like the psychological caulking used to help fill the cracks in our incomplete understanding of the world. Zen gets right to the core of this problem, which is our flawed identity as something separate from God (and/or everything and everyone). I see this as the overarching theme of the Bible. The Bible is a story of how humanity combats our fixation on the preservation of our self-identity and separateness (sin) and then restores oneness with God (at-one-ment) through Christ (our message bearer and symbolic example of death to self and rebirth into the collective identity of God). Often the stories and symbolic language becomes dominate and we lose the realistic meaning. We need to return to the simple doctrine-less message about changing from a self-centered nature to an other-centered nature.
I'm not positive, but I think the movie's image of the Matrix is meant to be a negative portrayal of the illusions of religious naivety or maybe it is the hypnotic indoctrination of pop-culture. As with all symbolism, you can read into it what you want. If the movie's intention is to promote extreme individualism and a stronger development of self-identity then I feel it represents a less ideal western slant on reality. Western thinking views the process of "waking up" or enlightenment as a liberation away from a collective identity toward a more individualistic self sufficient state of being (unplugging from the illusion/matrix). I question that logic and suggest that maybe our worship of individualism is actually a destructive illusion and our solution may be to plug into the reality that we are all interconnected. This is not a pro-conformity mentality that devalues creativity and individual choice. It is a realization that as we celebrate our differences, we should wake up to the fact that we are all made of the same "stuff" and have the same problems, hopes, and dreams. You might even say we are made in the same image.
Either way, (by plugging into reality or unplugging from illusion) the main point is that the boundaries and differences between people, communities, and nations are merely the illusions created by our perspectives and self-conscious paranoia. If you view the planet Earth from space there are no visible dotted lines, political boundaries, or red and blue states. On the other hand, I may just be a person who has opted for the serenity of the Matrix.
3 comments:
Totally agree with you Mike. That is the chief thing I have learned from studying the Tao. My study of eastern philosophy began with Eckhart Tolle and then into the Tao. It's been "enlightening".
interesting, i like how your review of the matrix coincides with your statement of faith at the top of your blog
Someone has drawn a line in the sand. On one side of the line stands a man. On the other side stands a woman. They enter into a discussion, cordially at first, although each thinks the other's stance to be founded on faulty reasoning and therefore grossly in error. In time their talk warms up and they begin to debate, but this soon degenerates into a heated argument. Eventually they come to blows and without intervention from a third-party might have injured, maimed, even killed one another.
It makes no difference what they were disputing, whether it was Liberalism vs. Conservativism, Theism vs. Atheism, Creationism vs. Darwinism, Christianity vs. Islam, Good vs. Evil, Morality vs. Immorality, Lawfulness vs. Anarchy, and so on. What is important is that line in the sand and who—or what—first drew it, why and when it was drawn, and what it means by intention.
The line itself is an abstraction. It is a man-made symbol that does not exist in nature, a mental construction existing only in the mind. It is completely artificial and the dichotomy or duality it promotes also artificial. The two sides that make up the divided halves of the line are brought into existence only because the line has been endowed with imaginary existence and the purpose of the line is to divide, to generate confrontation and conflict. Both sides of the line hinge upon people accepting this division as real since neither side of the line could exist without it. In other words, if the line were to be swept away the notion of 'sides' would instantly disappear.
Of course, this begs these questions: Where did the line come from? Who or what empowers it? Why is the line permitted to exist and thrive for all the destruction it causes?
To understand these questions is to awaken to the very nature of the game, because empowering the line and its sides is the game. The line is not real, its two sides are merely imaginary constructs, and the sand simply sand. To argue otherwise is to succumb to unreality, to be flim-flammed and bedazzled by the artifice of words.
Basically, it's all owed to symbolatry.
Now, symbolatry is a curious term and means the idolization/idealization of words and ideas in contradiction, denial, or rejection of the basic processes of nature. To commit an error of Symbolatry is to empower words with values that occur nowhere in nature, then defend these values as if they were real. While some contend this is especially true of religious terms like 'god', 'heaven', 'soul', 'afterlife', and 'sin', the argument should not stop there. All words—including scientific, technical, political, critical, even the words of this web site—are abstract and artificial constructs of the inner mind.
Being such, words cannot exist outside this mental abstraction and are not real. All religious doctrines, political ideologies, and scientific theories—because they are word based—are quite artificial. Reality begins and ends in the absence of language, and anything dependent on words and symbols to make itself known is artificial. Anything that exists only by means of definition is unnatural.
Reality is not something that is quoted, cited, practiced, taught, or discussed. Reality is an unmediated and wordless experience, prior to the invention of language, papyri, scrolls, paper, and books. Reality is what remains when all words have been removed, which makes for a remarkably easy test. If you can experience a thing without first having to refer to words, then it is real; if you cannot, then it is artificial. All language is counterfeit, all writings are fictional.
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