Matrix and Vedanta – Morpheus
One of the the most obvious symbols to decipher in the movie is Morpheus. He represents a guru who enlightens the seeker on the nature of reality. There are so many scenes in the movie which indicate this.
There is a recurring question in our philosophy. How do you find a right Guru? If you have to evaluate a person you will have to have more knowledge than the person, which is not possible if you are looking for answers yourself. So, it is not possible for a seeker to evaluate a guru and decide whether he is qualified. What our religion says is that, when a seeker is ready, the Guru will find him, just like Morpheus finds Neo. In the beginning of the movie when Neo meets Trinity, she tells him “I know why you are here Neo, why you hardly sleep. Why night after night you sit at your computer. You are looking for him. Actually, you are looking for an answer. It is the question that drives us. You want to know what is a Matrix. The answer is out there Neo. It is looking for you. It will find you if you want it to”. Take the case of Krishna and Arjuna. Although they have known each other all their lives, Krishna becomes Arjuna’s guru as soon as he asks the right questions. When Arjuna seeks answers and surrenders to Krishna.
Another important quality of a Guru is seen in Morpheus. A guru is a realized soul. He understands the Matrix is maya and he has no personal motives to enter it. The only reason he enters the Matrix is because he wants to free others.
Another thing we learn from Neo & Moprheus interaction is the role of faith. Vedanta constantly reiterates that liberation is only possible through knowledge. All of us know, knowledge is opposite to faith. While knowledge requires understanding, faith requires us to believe and accept even if we don’t understanding. What role does faith play in Vedanta? We discussed in my previous post, that liberation is the knowledge of the ‘real you’. Since we know Matrix is everywhere we cannot physically escape it. So as long as we are in the Matrix, liberation is only a firm intellectual and emotional conviction about the unreality of the universe. Just as we strongly and instinctively believe that we are this body, mind and intellect we should believe that we are not these with the same conviction. This cannot be achieved with faith, because knowledge can only be got through clear understanding and proper analysis. Faith comes into play during the initial phase of spiritual growth when you have to deal with this radical subject matter. How is it possible to accept that the world that we experience tangibly, every moment is an illusion? So Vedanta says, have faith till you get a proper understanding. It is not possible to proceed to understanding without faith. In one of the early scenes, Morpheus asks Neo to jump from a tall building. Neo refuses to do it and gets caught by the agents. Our whole spiritual journey is like jumping off a building, because it means giving up all that we held dear, right from our possessions to our fundamental beliefs.
I will end this post with a question “Who is Trinity”. This is a tough one!
Clue : She leads him to Morpheus