7 Minutes to See The Matrix

Seeing The Matrix is considered a big deal. I mean philosophically, of course, not finding a link to stream that iconic late-90s sci-fi-cyberpunk movie. The planet’s smartest people discuss it on the popular podcasts: Do we live in a simulation? If so, can you see the real world behind the simulation? Are you blue-pilled or red-pilled? Don’t worry; this article isn’t about politics. Instead, I’m going to teach you how to see The Matrix. As in I offer you the red pill. Let’s go.

Table of Contents

Umbilical Cables

Let’s revisit the cinematic Matrix paradigm to refresh our memory. In the film, machines trap humans in a simulated reality. Neo, a computer programmer, discovers that his world is actually an elaborate computer program—The Matrix. Humans exist in pod-like containers, immobilized in fetal positions within liquid-filled chambers, connected to The Matrix via umbilical cables. The Matrix is designed to pacify the humans while the sentient machines harvest their energy.

When a group of rebel hackers led by the enigmatic Morpheus offers Neo a choice between a blue pill (continued blissful ignorance) and a red pill (brutal truth), he chooses to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. Guided by Morpheus and Trinity, Neo learns he might be “The One” who can manipulate this digital reality and potentially free humanity from machine control. Alongside fierce warrior Trinity and philosophical rebel leader Morpheus, Neo battles against Agent Smith and the system’s oppressive programs in groundbreaking action sequences that revolutionized cinema’s visual effects.

The movie’s plot has been analyzed to the bone, and I won’t add yet another interpretation. This article merely explores the provocative question prompted by the movie: What truly gives rise to our conscious experience? The answer might surprise you, as it completely differs from the “reality is a projection” story. Read on, and the identity of The Matrix will be revealed to you.

Matrix: the Mother of All Patterns

The words you’re reading right now—on a screen or paper—were digitally captured. Computers arrange data into rows and columns. This rectangular structure is called a matrix. Etymologically, the word matrix comes from the Latin mater, meaning mother or womb—a place where something develops or forms. In mathematics, a matrix is a grid of numbers, symbols, or expressions used to organize, store, and manipulate data.

James Sylvester coined the mathematical use of the word matrix in 1850, drawing on this metaphor. A matrix, much like a womb, generates something new. It’s a structured grid generating or producing new mathematical information through various operations like addition, multiplication, and transformation. Today, computers use matrices to create virtual realities—projecting patterns that shape our perceptions. And you don’t even need a VR headset: The words VR headset, or tree, or dog alone may conjure vivid images in your mind—all triggered by this computer-rendered text—a matrix.

Words and images—digital or analog—are powerful tools of deception: They can make you believe things that aren’t true. So, the interesting philosophical question concerning “living in a simulation” isn’t whether we can be deceived by computers giving false but credible impressions: We certainly can and probably often are. The more essential question is whether we can be deceived by computers (or something else) into believing we’re conscious while we’re actually not.

Can You Be Tricked Out of Experience?

When you wake from a dream, experiencing the dream-world illusion gives way to experiencing the “reality” of your bedroom: the pillow under your head and the warmth of the bed. Sensory experience fills your mind. One thing remains unchanged: You are still experiencing. Philosophers call this consciousness: the state of experiencing anything at all. The philosophical definition of consciousness is different from the one used in medicine, but let’s not overcomplicate.

So, can we be deceived by computers into “experiencing experience” while we’re actually “not experiencing experience”? The answer is simple: No. You can only be deceived into misconceiving what you experience, not into experiencing itself because simultaneously experiencing and not experiencing something is a contradiction.

This is one of many ways of demonstrating that experience (consciousness) is undeniable. Yet, ironically, consciousness cannot ever be proven beyond the first person having it because, technically, anyone or anything claiming to be conscious could be a sophisticated robot. Or a projection by a computer program. Consciousness cannot be conceived or communicated. It is completely private. Consciousness defies “third-person” empirical science.

And yet, as you are probably certain of your loved ones being conscious, so am I certain you are conscious as you read this—using rational induction instead of scientific experiment to corroborate this in my mind. Nondual awareness and rational thought are close allies: Reason can solve numerous issues that empirical science cannot. In this case, it gave me certainty of something unprovable. But again, let’s not get sidetracked.

There’s only one person who doubtlessly knows you’re conscious: you. With consciousness being both unprovable and certain, your utterly private experience is precisely “your” essence. (Why I put “your” between brackets will also fall into place.)

Many people aren’t satisfied with our conclusions so far: It feels so darned lonely to be the only one who knows to be conscious! So we want to understand more. Where did we come from? Who or what ultimately provided us with our conscious experience—beyond the mere biological understanding of our parents, the birds and the bees, and evolution? Surely we can discover more and talk about it in a way that’s valid for everyone?

The Search for the Source

All conscious minds have evolved to find ways to influence their conscious experience. What can I do to feel better and avoid unpleasant feelings? Evolution has selected us, as representatives of the human species, such that following these feelings preserves our genetic material. Taken to the extreme—which is something humans, compared to other species, are particularly fond of doing—this leads to the ultimate question: What causes experience?

Does The Matrix, a computer program, project an illusion into our mind’s eye?
Did a spiritual medium—a “divine higher truth”—inspire us with consciousness?
Does the physical brain matter generate consciousness, as widely believed by modern-day neuroscientists and many others?

Matrix. Medium. Matter. Three words etymologically rooted in concepts indicating womb, creator, center, mother. The human conscious experience sometimes desperately searches for its metaphorical mother. We conceive something separate from our conscious experience and are mentally chasing after it. But that something separate, that external or higher truth, is an illusion. Eight years ago, I experienced a world-shattering awakening to this fact—only to find out that this wisdom had already been enshrined for thousands of years in Eastern philosophy.

All conscious minds are born with the illusion of duality (“maya”), as Krishna explains to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. In this Hindu scripture and profound philosophical discourse, Krishna describes how our minds perceive separation—good and bad, pleasure and pain, self and other—preventing us from understanding the ultimate unity of existence.

The essence of Krishna’s teaching is that this illusion of duality is a fundamental misconception that prevents individuals from recognizing the underlying oneness of reality. By believing in separateness, humans create suffering and limit their understanding of the true nature of consciousness. Krishna suggests that spiritual awakening comes from transcending these mental constructs and recognizing that “beneath” the apparent differences and divisions, there is a unified consciousness that equals true existence.

Consciousness Is an Orphan

But even the Bhagavad Gita may still leave people wondering: What causes our conscious experience? How can we “see The Matrix”? Here comes the twist: Since you are the only one who knows your private consciousness, only you know the answer! Please be patient with me while I search for the best words, knowing all too well that they are destined to remain inadequate because words alone cannot give you nondual awareness.

When do you experience consciousness? In the present, now. The present, and your conscious experience in it, has no duration. It just is “all the time.” The conscious experience is immediate—it has no medium. It wasn’t born from a womb or a mother or a matrix or matter. Your conscious experience is an orphan.

But please don’t feel abandoned and alone because your conscious being is not separate from that of all other beings, including your family, friends, yours truly, and all other conscious beings. The present is undivided consciousness—the separation between “consciousnesses” only exists in the past and the future. But the past and the future aren’t real. They aren’t immediate but mediated, conceived by conscious minds from memory. And whatever is in memory, is repetition, something old reproduced, remembered.

The present isn’t a memory. The present cannot be repeated. The present is always new because the present is change itself. Change is real, but what changes is imagined only. Consciousness is real, but what consciousness conceives not. You are consciousness. You are always new. You are Neo, which happens to be the Latin word for new. Your experience is not separate from The Matrix but one with it.

You are The One.

Marcel Eschauzier enjoys sharing nondual awareness and building bridges between nonduality and reason. Discover his books and more at simplynondual.com.