WHAT IS THE RED PILL?
By Steve Beane 2015
I'm using the phrase Red Pill with this collection of writings as a reference to the 1999 movie The Matrix. For those who have seen the film will remember, the protagonist, Neo, is living two lives: one as an employee of a mainstream corporation and the other as a seeker; he knows something's not right about the world around him. And, as it is in real life, when he begins to search more deeply for the answers, more and more information was brought to him. In this case by a group with a higher state of consciousness concerning the operational and intentional illusion that goes on around us at all times. The more advanced person in the group, Morpheus, tells Neo that he sees in Neo's eyes the look of someone wanting to wake up. That he is in contact with the group "because you know something, what you know you can't explain; but you feel it, you've felt it your entire life." Morpheus then offers Neo the opportunity to wake up personally and spiritually thru a catalyst. Every personal awakening usually comes through some sort of jarring experience; it's just the way human life is set up. In the film, the catalyst for that jarring experience is metaphorically shown as an object: a Red Pill. And, as it is in real life, too, we have a choice: accept the solicited invitation to a deeper awareness and life, or, not accepting the invitation and we then continue to go our way living shallow, meaningless lives hopelessly lost in the illusion of the world, or, metaphorically, The Matrix. In the film this experience is allegorically shown by Morpheus offering two pills to choose from and swallow: take the Blue Pill and you go on living in a dream stupor never knowing what's really going on and you believe whatever you want to believe. Or: you choose the Red Pill and you go through a personal, on-going transformation where our awareness is raised and we can see how deep the illusion all around really is, along with gaining abilities to manage and navigate ourselves in and through it.
This whole idea is related in many schools of thought and teachings concerning the illusionary nature of this world. The two I'm going to discuss here are in Christianity (western) and Hinduism/Buddhism (eastern).
In Judeo-Christianity we see Jesus and the Apostles living and teaching under the influence of Jewish Apocalyptic thought. One the features of this philosophy is the idea that the earth is under the control of unseen, evil forces deceiving human beings into illusionary thinking and bad behaviors. The human struggle within this " is against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." (Ephesians 6:12).This idea is written through-out the New Testament Biblical text. This perceived nefarious reality in Bible-speak is simply expressed as The World; the word world in the original Greek text is Cosmos: meaning world system.
It's their way of expressing an awareness of "The Matrix."
Two of the main themes Jesus taught to those spiritual seekers who followed him are 1): How to free themselves from the illusions the World promotes, like the idea that wealth and the accumulation of wealth will bring true happiness, satisfaction and personal fulfillment (Matthew 6: 19-21, 24). Jesus warned to " avoid all forms of greed." and that human life wasn't about the accumulation of wealth; that avarice is in fact spiritually deceptive and destructive (Luke 12:14-21). And 2): The idea that obeying certain moral rules and ethical codes will make someone a righteous person and give them promotion in connection to their standing with God; a deeper relationship with God. What Jesus and the more advanced Apostles, or Messengers, taught was that this kind of self-generated righteousness actually makes people worse because it exacerbates the negative drives of human beings. That more intense obedience with the motive of producing more righteousness actually only results in producing deeper, more extreme primal, nefarious impulses within the human heart and mind. This is discussed in various places of the New Testament (Romans 7: 7-24). Paul, one of those Apostles, said that as far as self-generated "legalistic righteousness" went, he was champion; but then he had a personal, transforming spiritual experience that opened his eyes to the reality that that form of " righteousness" was an illusion. He discovered that performance based righteousness had it's source, and was dependent upon, what he and the others called "The Basic Principals of the World" (Colossians 2:8, 20-23) and realizing the power of legalistic fundamentalism to have adverse, unwanted effects. He wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:56: " The sting of death is sin and the strength of sin is the law." He's speaking of the Mosaic Law but the same principal stands with any religious code, whether it's Jewish Law, fundamentalist Christian church doctrine or the Koran.
Also, once we see that the urges and behaviors associated with materialism are an illusionary recipe for being fulfilled in life, and, that it puts us under the influence of self deception thus keeping us in a regressed state of consciousness, we can then begin to learn how to live a balanced life, where we can enjoy material gain and objects on a whole different transmuted level that isn't connected to the base impulse of greed: driven to own stuff and be rich just for the sake of that. The realization of these two illusions alone takes us far along toward our true developement as human beings by seeing what they really are. Once we free ourselves through spiritual faith and enlightened knowledge we can begin to see what the whole system really is.
In Buddhism and Hinduism we see an even deeper awareness of a global-wide illusion that humans are trapped in. In Buddhism this state of being is call Avidya and in Hinduism it is called Maya. It is a perceived reality that doesn't reveal the actual, hidden, nature and principles of the world. It is a limitation that is natural to human sensory and intellectual workings. It is the features of one thing that is super-imposed upon something else; one reality overlaid upon another reality. One reality is misleading and imprisoning; the other gives us freedom and true life. This illusion isn't simply a "normal" illusion, one that says the world is not real and is simply a figment of human imagination. The illusion I speak of is one where the world is not what it seems; the world one experiences is misleading in as far as its true nature is concerned. It's both real and unreal because it exists but is not what it appears to be.
It is a cognitive limitation that each individual can overcome; an entrenched false understanding about the world and ourselves, which is not the result of transgression, sin or failure on our part. Personal spiritual transmutation is completely about overcoming this cognitive limitation.
The Red Pill will have articles that address this subject matter.
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