At the end of the credits to The Matrix Resurrections, we see this beautiful sentiment expressed from the director, Lana Wachowski:
FOR MOM AND DAD
‘Love is the genesis of everything.’
This article has a two-fold purpose. One is to show how, as with everything else related to the Matrix movies, we can find profound ideas ‘hidden’ in these words. They in fact reflect a very deep kabbalistic concept. The other is to reveal how much can be derived from even a simple statement like the one above.
Back to the Source
As explained in our Introductory files, kabbalah presents a system of emanations (called ‘sefirot’) that are, in simple terms, the ‘divine energies’ that make up each World of Existence.
There is also the idea of pre-existence, to which the best description we have is a ‘transcendent’ aspect of what many would call the Creator or God.
These emanations are represented on what is called the Tree of Life diagram. The one below has the traditional Hebrew-language terms. We explain the pertinent ones as they come up.
As we show throughout our Knowledge Base, these emanations have specific correlation to aspects of the Matrix story.
This is the “top-down” view that reflects how the Matrix world came about:
- Keter/Crown is associated with the world of ‘pre-existence’ and the Source
- Chokhmah/Wisdom is connected to the beginning of ‘Existence’ and the Architect, the ‘father’
- Binah/Understanding relates to the ‘upper’ of three worlds within ‘Creation’ and the Oracle, the ‘mother’
- The next group of six emanations is associated with the ‘middle’ world of Creation and the program world
- The final emanation Malkhut/Kingdom with the ‘lowest’ world of Creation and the Matrix world
A key takeaway here is that this same “top-down” sequence of emanations, also created the “bottom-up” Path of the One. The latter begins in the Matrix and works its way through the program world, then to the three ‘upper’ realms, of the Oracle, then the Architect, and finally the Source.
Morpheus’ Trifecta
An interesting Matrix connection pertaining to these “top three” emanations is their connection to the concepts of trust, faith, and love.
- Trust is associated with ‘Understanding’ (Binah), which is what the Oracle (the ‘mother’) represents. It is detail-oriented, as in “we learn to trust.”
- Faith, connected to ‘Wisdom’ (Chokhmah), is more ‘binary’ in terms of a person coming to a ‘point’ where they go from not having faith to having it. It is associated with the Architect (the ‘father’).
Faith and trust, the “father and mother,” work together within existence – as the Architect and Oracle do. Note how he explained the Oracle’s multi-faceted nature to Neo, while she explained to him how the Architect is a “singular-minded” entity.
The third and most powerful element, “above and beyond” these (and the rest), is that of ‘love.’ This is love in an “eternal and perfect” sense. Something beyond our comprehension, yet it runs through everything “below it,” within existence.
This aspect of love is represented by the ‘Crown’ (Keter) which is associated with the related concepts of pre-existence, singularity, and eternity.
What’s interesting regarding these three upper emanations, are their ‘opposite’ negative traits – those that need to be ‘corrected.’
Morpheus expressed these to Neo regarding the challenge he would face:
“You have to let it all go, Neo, fear, doubt, and disbelief.”
As we can see, we have trust correlating to, and being the remedy, for doubt – and faith doing the same for disbelief.
What about love?
There is no room for fear when you’re operating from the realm of complete and total love. This was expressed in what Trinity said to Neo following the famous kiss at the end of the first movie:
“I’m not afraid anymore … because I love you.”
Interestingly, there is a verse from one of the New Testament books, that correlates to this:
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
1Corinthians 13:13
Here’s how all of this looks:
Returning to the quote from Lana Wachowski:
For mom and dad – love is the genesis of everything.
When we substitute the related terms, the corresponding kabbalistic ‘equation’ runs like this:
For Binah and Chokmah – Keter is the beginning of (their) existence.
What’s Love Got to do With It?
Having established this kabbalistic connection to, “love is the genesis of everything,” let’s go for a kabbalistic journey down the old rabbit hole — all the way to one of our deepest strengths and fears.
The act of something being the ‘genesis’ of something else implies creation and thus both a creator and purpose.
We find an amazing statement with regard to this idea, from Agent Smith, in the Matrix Reloaded:
“There’s no escaping reason, no denying purpose – because as we both know, without purpose, we would not exist. It is purpose that created us. Purpose that connects us. Purpose that pulls us. That guides us. That drives us. It is purpose that defines. Purpose that binds us.”
Smith makes clear that from ‘purpose’ came ‘existence’ and then ‘creation.’ Further, it is interesting how his words align with what was shown above:
- Purpose = the Source
- Existence = the Architect/father
- Creation = the Oracle/mother
Thus, the ‘genesis’ (=Keter/Love) of everything has purpose, and as it “connects, pulls, guides and binds us,” this includes our own purpose in life.
This aligns with the kabbalistic view of purpose in existence:
The outer aspect of the Keter of any particular world (world of existence) is the expression of God’s will and purpose in creating that world … to unfold the level of Infinite Light appropriate for that plane of reality, all the way through the various stages of development (i.e. through the various sefirot) to the final revelation and manifestation of that light in the sefirah of Malkhut … the end-point which fulfills the purpose of the entire emanation.
“Keter: The Highest Sefirah – The Crown of the Will,” Moshe Miller
In Matrix-language, the ultimate pupose for humanity, and reason for why the humans are in the Matrix (Malkhut), is found in “the Source” – more specifically, a “return to the Source,” (the tagline to The Matrix Resurrections).
This presents us with a seeming contradiction.
If love, genesis, and purpose are all equivalent in this ‘equation,’ that means ‘the Source’ in the Matrix is too. But how can the Source be equated to something like ‘love’ when the humans are enslaved in the Matrix world, and there are all sorts of barriers in place, making it difficult to be freed?
The answer to this will require examining what occurred originally between pre-existence and the beginning of existence … between the Source and the level of the Architect.
The Anomaly
“While the others experienced this in a very general way, your experience is far more specific – vis a vis love.”
The Architect
As discussed, before existence there was the pure singularity, a divine seamless transparent consciousness, which correlates to the concept of “the Source.”
Several of the characters express different ‘ideas’ about the Source, but no one knows what it is precisely, as this is reality “before and beyond” the existence of the Architect, Oracle, programs, and Matrix world.
Returning to the diagram we use for these Matrix Resurrections articles for a visual aid:
Kabbalah explains that this first ‘act’ of the pre-existent singularity was that of “constricting of itself,” so that a separate consciousness could have existence. This concept of constriction, to enable ‘room’ for something ‘else,’ is called tsimtsum in kabbalah.
What came about from this initial ‘separation’ included the concept of ‘differences’ between things.
The Architect experiences the concepts of separation and differentiation, but as he cannot “look back into pre-existence” (none of us can) he has no way of understanding them.
Being the ‘closest level’ to the Source, the purpose and ‘drive’ of the Architect is to unify — yet there is nothing he can do to alter the reality that his own existence came about by way of separation.
The Oracle expressed it this way in The Matrix Resurrections:
Oracle: You and I may not be able to see beyond our own choices, but that man can’t see past any choices.
Neo: Why not?
Oracle: He doesn’t understand them – he can’t. To him, they are variables in an equation. One at a time each variable must be solved and countered. That’s his purpose: to balance an equation.
Nowhere does this frustrate the Architect more than with his desire to “balance the equation,” and the continual appearance of an ‘anomaly’ that prevents this.
The Architect related his vexation with this to Neo:
“You are the eventuality of an anomaly, which, despite my sincerest efforts, I have been unable to eliminate from what is otherwise a harmony of mathematical precision. While it remains a burden assiduously avoided, it is not unexpected, and thus not beyond a measure of control. … As you are undoubtedly gathering, the anomaly is systemic – creating fluctuations in even the most simplistic equations.”
This force of tsimtsum, creating separation and distinction, causes anomalies through every world of existence. Each subsequent world (see chart above) is a “lesser reflection” of the one before it.
The Architect referred to the emanation of the Oracle in this manner:
I have since come to understand that the answer eluded me because it required a lesser mind, or perhaps a mind less bound by the parameters of perfection.
The Oracle’s domain, in turn, is ‘above’ the program world, which is directly ‘above’ the Matrix world.
The concept of separation is most evident in the ‘lowest’ world of the Matrix (our own world) giving us opposites, and a ‘binary’ sense of reality.
Interestingly, it is Agent Smith that raises this issue in The Matrix Resurrections:
“I’ve been thinking about us, Tom. Look how binary is the form, the nature of things. Ones and zeros. – Light and dark. Choice and its absence. Anderson and Smith.”
This sense of separation also gives us a sense that fulfilling our own selfish desires is what matters. It’s what got the humans into the Matrix and caused the fracture in their existence:
“Where is the lowest of worlds? You’re in it. This is the world of total otherness, a world where there dwell creatures that have no sense of anything else other than this world. Some even sense that they themselves are the masters of this world, or even that nothing else exists other than themselves. It is a material world: Things couldn’t get more discretely tangible, more self-absorbed, more otherly, than they are down here.”
“Exile of the Shechinah and Descent of the Soul,” Tzvi Freeman
And Yet … Here We Are
Tsimtsum places a contradiction before us. How can this force which conceals the higher worlds of reality from us (higher levels of consciousness), and our goal to advance toward that higher reality, emanate from the same Source and a singular ‘purpose?’
They seem to be in absolute opposition.
To resolve this, we return to the discussion around the Oracle’s Temet Nosce sign. As she explains to Neo, his ‘success’ is dependent upon understanding and overcoming the barriers along that path in order to advance.
Some of these barriers are internal (fear, doubt, disbelief) while others are (or at least seem to be) more external, such as Smith, the Merovingian, Cypher, Lock, and even the Architect.
This is part of the ‘mystery’ to Neo’s path and our existence. These “negative forces” work to conceal the “true reality,” yet are also the key to revealing it.
“They are the gatekeepers. They are guarding all the doors. They are holding all the keys.”
Morpheus
In order to resolve and overcome barriers, and progress to a higher level of consciousness, we have to set aside our own personal desires that are rooted in the negative, self-centered materialism, associated with this lowest world of existence. (See Tzvi Freeman quote above.)
One of the best examples of this is how Neo came to view and deal with Agent Smith. By the end of The Matrix Revolutions, Neo understood that Smith was not his ‘enemy’ but was simply a “means to an end” – playing an ‘inevitable’ role in bringing a critical level of repair into the Matrix. (As The Matrix Resurrections explains.)
Here is a key takeaway from this:
The ability for us to ‘constrict’ the false reality around us, and “make room” for the truth, is the same constriction (tsimtsum) that created the pseudo-reality of ‘separateness’ in the first place.
This is the meaning behind the “red pill” through the films, something explicitly stated by the ‘new’ Morpheus in The Matrix Resurrections:
Bugs: The choice is an illusion. You already know what you have to do.
Morpheus (holding up the red pill): Truth.
You Would Know, Mom
As we’ve shown, the Oracle is Binah/Understanding, the emanation at the head of the left side of the Tree of life – the side of restriction.
We see the two seemingly opposites aspects of constriction, in how she relates to the humans who connect with her:
- She guides each person toward their own individual path – creating a ‘constriction’ that they then function within. As Morpheus related to Neo after the latter’s first meeting with her, “What was said was for you and for you alone.”
- She also ‘inspires’ them to use this force of constriction to find their way within their path, as when she told Morpheus: “I expect just what I’ve always expected. For you to make up your own damn mind.”
We see in the function of the Oracle, how constriction/tsimtsum functions to create our sense of individuality, which is what enables us to find our way back to the Source where our ‘purpose’ emanated from.
The Analyst and Unity
As with other things in existence, there is a ‘flipside’ to this. The same tsimtsum enabling individuality creates the possibility for isolation and loneliness. We see this through the first three movies with Neo. He experiences these difficulties, the further he goes along the “Path of the One.”
There is a fine line between these things. The Analyst dropped a clue to this in The Matrix Resurrections:
Did you know hope and despair are nearly identical in code?
The Analyst
We’re all familiar with the expression, “two sides of the same coin.” The experience of ‘opposites’ in this world, though ‘real’ to us, is not reflective of the unity of the greater (hidden) reality. As we’ve written about in several articles, including Analyst and Architect, Everything That Has a Beginning Has an End, and our Introductory article on the Sefirot, the Matrix world (our own) is the only world where the ‘opposites’ of our ‘binary’ existence can be resolved.
Tzvi Freeman
As with the Analyst’s comment on “hope and despair,” individuality and isolation also share “almost identical code” -because the code for each comes from the same Source, where there is no aspect of differentiation.
Coming Full Circle
We conclude with these excerpts from a lecture, “Feeling Alone: What It Tells You About Your Spirituality,” by Rabbi Simon Jacobson. This speaks directly to many of these themes in the Matrix and takes us back to the Source:
In this hostile world, the tsimstum begins to do its work. This insidious force. Its intention is for us to discover the underlying unity, but it can also create the illusion, the delusion that we’re separate – you’re not me, I’m not you. And loneliness is born. If it goes to its extreme, it becomes very unhealthy and demoralizing. everyone is going to experience some of it because we live in a world that was intentionally made to feel lonely, with a goal of us not being deceived and us overcoming that and connecting and finding love … that’s the purpose.
“Connecting and finding love.” We make a full circle back to the genesis of everything.
In the end, we find just how connected we are to everyone else. As the Oracle said in a “cut scene” from the Matrix Revolutions:
“The path of the One, is made of the many.”
There is still a bit more to go with this Matrix tale.
