THE QUESTION
“I know a lot about you,” says Trinity when she meets Neo. Neo has just followed a white rabbit down a hole and has met Trinity for the first time― so he’s surprised she knows anything about him.
She leans closer to him and speaks softly into his ear.
“I know why you’re here, Neo. I know what you’ve been doing. I know that you hardly sleep. And why you live alone, and why night after night you sit at your computer. You’re looking for Him. I know because I was once looking for the same thing. And when He found me, he told me I wasn’t really looking for Him. I was looking for an answer. It’s the Question that drives us, Neo. It’s the Question that brought you here. You know the Question?”
What is The Question?
Neo has the look on his face of a man who has been caught thinking forbidden thoughts. He is completely disarmed when Trinity asks, “What is The Question?”
He answers without hesitation, “What is the Matrix?”
Trinity affirms his answer with her eyes.
“The answer is out there, Neo. It’s looking for you, and it will find you. If you want it to.”
What is The Question? For Neo it was “What is the Matrix?”
Now, you and I know that “The Matrix” is a fantastic computer simulation, a “virtual reality” concocted and sustained by a world-dominating supercomputer (“AI”) which has total control of the entire human race. (More about this later on).
Neo has stumbled upon the Matrix but doesn’t really know what it is. All he knows is that there are some inexplicable things “out there” which don’t add up. He is bothered by the sense that there must be an explanation to reality beyond what he can see. His uneasiness is as Morpheus later explains, “like a splinter in your mind.”
Now what is the equivalent question for you and me? We both know that the MATRIX is a science fiction film concept. But is there a similar question we could ask?
There is indeed. You may have already asked it, but most likely have relegated it to some corner of your mind, most likely because you have decided that there isn’t a way of finding an answer. What is the question? The equivalent question to “What is the Matrix?” is “what is Reality?”
What is Reality?
Now most of us immediately respond by saying, “why, reality is the world in which we live and move and act, what we see and hear and feel and taste and smell. It’s the world and everything in it.” But that’s an easy answer, and it doesn’t pull the splinter out of your mind. It’s not really an answer, anyway, because it is not really the question you are asking deep down inside. On the surface the question is “What is reality?” but deep down inside it’s really “where did “reality” come from? Why? Where is it going? Why am I here in it? Where am I going? What is the purpose of it all?” If you have asked such questions, then it’s clear you are really searching for an answer, a real answer. And just like with Neo searching for the answer to his question, there is an answer, but you’ve got to ask the right question first!
YOU HAVE TO ASK THE RIGHT THE QUESTION
BEFORE YOU CAN GET THE RIGHT ANSWER
You see there are really two kinds of people in this world. Those who are seeking for an answer, and those who are not. What does this mean? Well, a great number of people accept the world exactly as it is. They do not question anything. They are content to live, and by living they mean enjoy life, the beauty, the pleasures, the distractions, the challenges, and the opportunities. They do not ask why they are here, or where they came from, or where they are going― and they are content with the simple explanation: that it really doesn’t matter where we came from or where we’re going, the trick is to live for today, and enjoy life to the full.
For such people reality is all there is…but for others they think, “there has to be a reason!”
Especially those who look a little further ahead and see that life is not forever. If life has a beginning, it also has an end― and some of us find it hard to just live for today until we have figured out how it ends!
Now the film The Matrix provides a wonderful opportunity to actually illustrate how both kinds of people could actually live in the same world. Everybody in Neo’s old world is completely oblivious to the truth. The truth is that the human race is in a virtual reality prison created by an artificial intelligence, the Matrix Supercomputer. Those who have been woken up to this truth by Morpheus interact with this old world but actually live in a new world, a “separate reality”.
WHICH IS THE REAL REALITY?
Now the question becomes, “which is the real reality?” What about it? Which is the real reality? Is it the world that you live in, and what it has to say about itself? Do you unquestioningly believe everything you’re told? Do you believe what the program wants you to believe, or are you willing to go one step further and find out who wrote the program?
What do you mean? Who wrote the program? Well, let me introduce you to a strange thought from the Bible, from a strange book in the Old Testament, a statement written almost three thousand years ago in the book of Ecclesiates, in the third chapter, the eleventh verse:
“ He hath made every thing beautiful in his time:
also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no
man can find out the work that God maketh from
the beginning to the end.”
I guess in modern English you could say, “He wrote the reality program and made it so real― down to the tiniest little detail― that everybody thinks it’s really real! He’s even added a subprogram that prevents men from figuring out what he’s done ― and how he’s done it!”
In other words, the real world was created. Things are the way they are because they were pre-programmed to be that way. Reality is a construct― a creation― not the result of “billions of years of evolution” as we are told, but an actual creation like the Matrix was the creation of AI.
Now you see that you are in the same predicament as Neo. He thought he was living in the real world, but he had some nagging doubts. Then he was contacted by Morpheus and only then did he realize that the “real world” was not only what he could see and hear and taste and touch and smell and feel― the real world included this strange thing called the Matrix.
He had been awakened to the realization that reality is never really real until we add in the dimension of the Creator of that reality.
So― are you now ready to explore the answer to the question, “what is reality?” by exploring the questions, “who is the creator of reality?” and “why?”
Yes, I’m ready to go on to PART 4
analogyman 