Living in an Illusory World
The Matrix is one of my favorite movies of all time. There’s a lot to love about the film, but one reason I am such a fan is that the movie brings to the mainstream the idea that the world is an illusion. The main character, played by Keanu Reeves, is known as, “Thomas Anderson,” by day, a programmer at a lackluster job. By night, when he seems to come alive, he is known as, “Neo,” and spends hours on his computer hacking. Neo has the feeling that something is wrong with the world, and sure enough, he comes to find out that this is true. With the help of a renegade group working outside the confines of the entire system, Neo is given a choice between a blue pill and a red pill. He chooses the red one and by taking it he is “woken up” to the nature of reality. The world that Neo knew before he woke up is actually a sophisticated virtual reality. Neo’s body, meanwhile, is in reality connected to a vast neuroelectrical system along with millions of other bodies. The whole setup was created by intelligent machines. With the help of his new comrades, Neo is freed from the machines and goes on to do great things in this film and in the two sequels.
It’s no surprise to me that the real world in The Matrix is a horrific dystopia. A portrayal of waking up to a real world of pure love and peace wouldn’t sell a lot of movie tickets. The reason for this is the same as the reason that “bad news sells.” We believe that life and the body are intimately intertwined which means we must protect our bodies to preserve life. We are therefore “wired” to pay particular attention to danger. As a result, we track the negative and overrepresent it in our minds. By knowing what to fear, we believe that we can keep our bodies safe and thereby preserve our very existence. Without recognition of the compelling nature of the negative, along with active steps to change these automatic patterns, there is a great deal of inertia carrying each of us along the same roads of fear, together with the perceived need to defend and protect ourselves.
But back to the first part of The Matrix… we are all Neos, living in a world that seems real. And, like Neo, the world as we perceive it is not reality. In this regard, A Course in Miracles is more Buddhist or Hindu than Christian. It teaches that the world we believe we live in is a vast illusion of space and time. However, A Course in Miracles goes still further “behind the scenes” and provides an answer to the question of what led to the illusion in the first place. It teaches that the universe came into being as a great projection spurred by an original event: taking seriously the idea that we could separate from our Source, namely from God.
The belief in separation is the Course’s equivalent of original sin, and in using terms like “sin”, “guilt” and “fear”, the Course draws on Christian language while giving the familiar concepts radically different meanings. The seeming original split of the one mind from God induced a volume of guilt as great as the universe and an equally great volume of fear of punishment for the sin of separating from God. Propelled onwards by the consequences of the belief in separation, the mind split again and again into smaller and smaller fragments. The physical universe exists as an escape from God’s wrath, a place for each fragment of the mind, seemingly encased in a body, to hide among billions of other bodies. The world is a place where God cannot find us.
The message of great hope that the Course brings is that the separation from God never happened. The Course refers to this belief as “a tiny, mad idea” (T-27.VIII.6), an idea so preposterous that it is laughable. But because “[a]ll thinking produces form at some level” (T-2.VI.9), taking the idea seriously projected the physical universe. This world is upside down. What seems real—what we can apparently feel and touch and taste—is all illusion, much like the intricate virtual reality of The Matrix. What seems intangible, and even the subject of doubt and suspicion, namely the mind, is much closer to what is real.
The guilt that we all feel at some level, whether conscious or not, gets in the way of knowing God. The Course explains, “For it is guilt that has obscured the Father to you, and it is guilt that has driven you insane.” (T-13.in.1). Rather than being a sin, our belief in our separation from God is simply a mistake. It is impossible to separate from a Oneness that encompasses all that there is. There is nothing for God to be angry at us about, because there is nothing that has actually happened. The Course says, “You are at home in God, dreaming of exile but perfectly capable of awakening to reality. Is it your decision to do so?” (T-10.I.2). Our power to choose how we look at the supposed reality in which we think that we are living is the greatest power there is.
We all long for enduring peace and yet the idea of waking up to the reality of our oneness with God is also terrifying. It means that our individual identity would be gone, and without that, what would we be? Fortunately, we don’t have to be afraid that like Neo we will swallow the red pill and wake up all at once. The training program of A Course in Miracles is gradual, a set of choices unfolding over time that slowly change how we view and experience the world that we seem to reside in. Along the road, there are many way stations of peace and rest, until we encounter the next bumpy segment in our life’s ride. All that is required for this journey is what the Course calls, “a little willingness” (e.g., T-18.V) to look at things differently, as well as learning to lean into our inner Guide for help in making a choice for peace.
The metaphysics of A Course in Miracles is a big topic and future blog posts will fill in more aspects. For answers to questions now, go to the Resources page linked below for the work of Course scholars.
All quotes are from A Course in Miracles, copyright ©1992, 1999, 2007 by the Foundation for Inner Peace, 448 Ignacio Blvd., #306, Novato, CA 94949, www.acim.org and info@acim.org, used with permission.
The Matrix (1999) is a movie produced by Joel Silver, directed by the Wachowskis, and distributed by Warner Bros.