The Matrix trilogy is the most successful cinematic venture of the past several decades. Together, The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded, and The Matrix Revolutions have grossed over three billion dollars worldwide, and the story continues with The Animatrix, The Matrix Comics, and The Matrix Online. The attention of audiences worldwide has been captured by the mind-bending storyline of these films and their phenomenal special effects, but the perennial question remains: What does it all mean?
Larry and Andy Wachowski, the writers and directors of The Matrix trilogy, have been reluctant to share their interpretation of the films from day one, fearing that whatever they said would turn into dogma. However, this did present a problem for Warner Brothers when producing The Matrix DVD boxed set (to be released this fall). How do you have a director's commentary—a must for any boxed set—when the directors refuse to comment?
What the Wachowskis did was to ask Ken Wilber and Cornel West to do the director's commentary on all 3 films. The following dialogue was recorded right before Ken flew to LA to meet with Larry and Cornel and do the recorded commentary. Ken and Cornel recorded 15 hours of commentary, which has been edited down to 6 hours to fit the 3 films, and the boxed set with all 3 films—and 6 hours of Ken and Cornel's commentary—will be released in October.
In the following dialogue, for the first time ever, we are lucky enough to hear Larry publicly comment on this situation. As he explains, the movies were in many ways designed not to give answers, but to introduce questions. What does it mean to be human? What is reality? Who is in control? Does God exist? and so on. If he was to explain what he thought the movies meant, he would be providing people with another concept of reality to either accept or reject—either way, the open space created by the question would vanish.
The Matrix injected mainstream culture with a straight shot of the surreal, where fact and fiction and truth and appearance are not grounded in a single pre-given "reality," because reality is simply what appears to be real. In a dream, the dream is real—until you wake up. In the Matrix, the Matrix is real—until you wake up. But what if you never woke up? It's questions like that that Larry wished to inspire, and he certainly succeeded.
As Ken points out, the first movie is fairly easy to grok: everything in the Matrix is bad, everything outside of the Matrix is good. Everyone inside the Matrix is trapped, everyone outside the Matrix is free, and so on. But twenty minutes into part 2, Reloaded, and the audience discovers that the Oracle is a machine program, at which point most people go: um, what?
What had begun as a simple good guy/bad guy movie had just become a complex piece of literature, with different levels of interpretation and a very sophisticated model of reality. Ken suggests that it's not until the last twenty minutes of part 3, Revolutions, that the key to the trilogy is revealed: although—and perhaps because—Neo is physically blind, he sees the machines as luminous, golden light—not quite how the "bad guys" are seen in most movies. And yet Neo is unmistakable in what he says to Trinity: "If you could see them as I see them, they are all made of Light...." Indeed, the machines represent Spirit, but Spirit as alienated and therefore attacking....
Thus, as Ken summarizes a more integral interpretation (that takes into account what is revealed in all three films), Zion represents body (filmed in blue tint), the Matrix represents mind (green tint), and the machines—this is the kicker revealed in part 3—represent spirit (golden tint). For those of you keeping track, this is indeed quite similar to the Great Nest of Being as taught by the world's wisdom traditions, a spectrum of being and consciousness reaching from body to mind to spirit.
Borrowing from the wisdom of Christian mysticism, "The flames of Hell are but God's love denied," and so an alienated and dissociated spirit manifests as an army of machines bent on destroying humankind. It is only in the integration of body, mind, and spirit that all three are redeemed and peace returns.
Ken and Larry go on to discuss their shared lifelong passion for philosophy. As Ken points out, Larry is just about as philosophically/spiritually well read as anyone you're likely to find, and The Matrix films are a stunning tribute to that fact. Larry said that when he found Ken's work, "It was like Schopenhauer discovering the Upanishads." Ken said that was grandiose enough to quote. Whereas Ken's books have been known to disrupt many a happy home (my spouse won't shut up about quadrants!), Larry's love of philosophy seems to run in the family: Larry and his father are reading Sex, Ecology, Spirituality together. Très cool!
This dialogue is meant to highlight what a more integral view of interpretation involves. In chapters 4 and 5 of The Eye of Spirit, Ken suggests that any work of art can be interpreted from at least four or five major perspectives, none of which is privileged, all of which are important. These include: the artist's original intent (what did the artist himself or herself mean by this artwork?); unconscious factors in the artist; the cultural background of the artist; and the viewer response (what does the artwork mean to different viewers of the artwork?). [If you would like to download a pdf of these two chapters, please click here.]
The Wachowskis did not want their own original intent to overpower the equally legitimate viewer response, and so they remained thunderously silent about their original intent. But, as this dialogue makes clear, Larry feels that perhaps the time is now ripe for some more integral interpretations of The Matrix trilogy that include all of those perspectives, which is why he and Ken have begun having these types of more public dialogues and commentaries. There is no single, definitive interpretation of The Matrix, because the sum total of perspectives is infinite. But there are more integral and less integral interpretations, and the integral interpretations—up to this point— have been getting the short end of the stick, something this dialogue is intended to end.
Once again, Integral Naked is proud to present a conversation you will truly hear nowhere else. We hope you enjoy the show....
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