Are we living in a Matrix?
Matrix' in the Bible
Exo 13:12ToolsThat thou shalt set apart unto the LORD all that openeth the matrix, and every firstling that cometh of a beast which thou hast; the males shall be the LORD'S.KJVVerse ConceptsExo 13:15ToolsAnd it came to pass, when Pharaoh would hardly let us go, that the LORD slew all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of man, and the firstborn of beast: therefore I sacrifice to the LORD all that openeth the matrix, being males; but all the firstborn of my children I redeem.
KJVVerse ConceptsExo 34:19ToolsAll that openeth the matrix is mine; and every firstling among thy cattle, whether ox or sheep, that is male.
KJVVerse ConceptsNum 3:12ToolsAnd I, behold, I have taken the Levites from among the children of Israel instead of all the firstborn that openeth the matrix among the children of Israel: therefore the Levites shall be mine;
KJVVerse ConceptsNum 18:15ToolsEvery thing that openeth the matrix in all flesh, which they bring unto the LORD, whether it be of men or beasts, shall be thine: nevertheless the firstborn of man shalt thou surely redeem, and the firstling of unclean beasts shalt thou redeem.
KJVVerse Concepts
Source: https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/words/Matrix
Definition
matrix (n.)
late 14c., matris, matrice, "uterus, womb," from Old French matrice "womb, uterus" and directly from Latin mātrix (genitive mātricis) "pregnant animal," in Late Latin "womb," also "source, origin," from māter (genitive mātris) "mother" (see mother (n.1)).
The many figurative and technical senses are from the notion of "that which encloses or gives origin to" something. The general sense of "place or medium where something is developed" is recorded by 1550s; meaning "mould in which something is cast or shaped" is by 1620s; sense of "embedding or enclosing mass" is by 1640s.
The mathematical sense of "a rectangular array of quantities (usually square)" is because it is considered as a set of components into which quantities can be set. The logical sense of "array of possible combinations of truth-values" is attested by 1914. As a verb, in television broadcasting, from 1951.
Those who are able to see beyond the shadow and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed by the masses." - Plato
Plato's Cave
Imagine a number of people living in an underground cave, which has an entrance that opens towards the daylight. The people have been in this dwelling since childhood, shackled by the legs and neck, such that they cannot move nor turn their heads to look around. There is a fire behind them, and between these prisoners and the fire, there is a low wall.
Rather like a shadow puppet play, objects are carried before the fire, from behind the low wall, casting shadows on the wall of the cave for the prisoners to see. Those carrying the objects may be talking, or making noises, or they may be silent. What might the prisoners make of these shadows, of the noises, when they can never turn their heads to see the objects or what is behind them?
What happens if a man escapes and then tries to free the others?
Using context clues in the above verses, we can at least discern “matrix” is connected to someone or something being born. More specifically, the Hebrew word is “rehem,” translated “womb” some 21 times (Genesis 20:18; Genesis 29:31; Genesis 30:22; Exodus 13:2; Numbers 8:16; Numbers 12:12; 1 Samuel 1:5-6; Job 3:11; Job 10:18; Job 24:20; Job 31:15 [x2]; Job 38:8; Psalm 22:10; Psalm 58:3; Psalm 110:3; Jeremiah 1:5; Jeremiah 20:17-18; Hosea 9:14).
“Matrix” is used in a medical sense even today to refer to “something (as a surrounding or pervading substance or element) within which something else originates or takes form or develops.” The womb or uterus is the place in the mother’s body where the offspring grows prior to birth, and “matrix” is an apt description. In fact, the word is derived from the Latin, and originally denoted female animals used for breeding in ancient Rome.
What about our culture is "the Matrix" a metaphor for?
Gregory Tolbert, lives in San Francisco
Although the movie "The Matrix" contains several metaphors, as indicated by some of the other answers listed in this thread, one of the metaphors central to the theme of the movie is that of social, economic and income inequality.
Since the 1980's income inequality in America has skyrocketed. At last check the top 1% of the American population has increased its wealth by 400% while the average working persons wealth has decreased when inflation is factored into the equation. The average CEO "earns" 500 times that of the average employee. The top 10% of Americans own 80% of the countrys wealth. The world economy has placed workers in competition globally, thus forcing wages to decrease. Company profits are at the highest point ever in American history but corporate overlords, robber barons, and the global elite control the majority of the worlds wealth.
In all societies there exists a "Social Construct". (It is not unintentional that the loading program in the movie is called "The construct") A social construct is a set of unwritten rules and values that is intertwined into the fabric of a society. "It is everywhere. It is all around us . Even now in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes." The rules and values of the construct are instilled into the subconscious minds of each one of us from birth by parents, relatives, teachers, schools, church, the media, the government, corporations, and others. Social constructs are not natural. They are created in society for a very specific purpose, control. Social constructs are self perpetuating and control us by shaping the way we perceive the world around us.
In America the social construct teaches us that the streets are paved with gold and hard work is rewarded by great success in life. Although this is accurate in some cases the truth is that hard work in most cases yields only more hard work. While corporate overlords gain astronomical profits from the labor of the working class the average worker in America earns only enough to maintain a standard of living high enough to ensure that his or her children can repeat the cycle. "It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth. That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind."
In the movie humans are used as a resource to fuel machines; in our modern reality humans are used as a resource to fuel processes and institutions that generate vast wealth and power for those in control.
"Standing there facing the pure, horrifying precision, I came to realize the obviousness of the truth. What is the matrix? Control. The matrix is a computer generated dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into this." (a battery)
Morpheus
Who is the Real author of the Matrix?
Stewart filed her case in 1999, after viewing the Matrix, which she felt had been based on her manuscript, ‘The Third Eye,’ copyrighted in 1981. In the mid-eighties Stewart had submitted her manuscript to an ad placed by the Wachowski Brothers, requesting new sci-fi works..
According to court documentation, a FBI investigation discovered that more than thirty minutes had been edited from the original film, in an attempt to avoid penalties for copyright infringement. The investigation also stated that ‘credible witnesses employed at Warner Brothers came forward, claiming that the executives and lawyers had full knowledge that the work in question did not belong to the Wachowski Brothers.’ These witnesses claimed to have seen Stewart’s original work and that it had been ‘often used during preparation of the motion pictures.’ The defendants tried, on several occasions, to have Stewart’s case dismissed, without success.
Stewart has confronted skepticism on all sides, much of which comes from Matrix fans, who are strangely loyal to the Wachowski Brothers. One on-line forum, entitled Matrix Explained has an entire section devoted to Stewart. Some who have researched her history and writings are open to her story.
Unlocking the Key to the Divine Matrix
New Physics is pointing to the fact that everything is connected. We knew all of this before modern science. There is a place where Newtons laws don't work. In the Micro and the Macro World there are phenomenon that we cannot explain. Quantum Physics seeks to find out what happens beyond what we can observe with the naked eye. What's in the space between? The Divine Matrix!
1945, Gnostic Writings, Teach Salvation through Mystical Knowledge.
Souls in Material bodies, only through true knowledge can they ascend. Jesus is the redeemer that came to communicate that knowledge and liberate man. Focused more on the power that is held within each person.
. Scholars have proposed dates of composition as early as AD 60 and as late as AD 250.[2][3] Since its discovery, many scholars have seen it as evidence in support of the existence of a "Q source", which might have been very similar in its form as a collection of sayings of Jesus without any accounts of his deeds or his life and death, referred to as a "sayings gospel".
The First Council of Nicaea (/naɪˈsiːə/; Ancient Greek: Νίκαια [ˈnikεa]) was a council of Christian bishops convened in the Bithynian city of Nicaea (now İznik, Turkey) by the Roman Emperor Constantine I in AD 325.
This ecumenical council was the first effort to attain consensus in the church through an assembly representing all Christendom. Hosius of Corduba may have presided over its deliberations.[4][5]
Its main accomplishments were settlement of the Christological issue of the divine nature of God the Son and his relationship to God the Father,[2] the construction of the first part of the Nicene Creed, mandating uniform observance of the date of Easter,[6] and promulgation of early canon law.[3][7]
The Gospel of Thomas
Gospel of Thomas Lambdin (1).pdfAttestation
The earliest surviving written references to the Gospel of Thomas are found in the writings of Hippolytus of Rome (c. 222–235) and Origen of Alexandria (c. 233).[29] Hippolytus wrote in his Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.20:
[The Naassenes] speak...of a nature which is both hidden and revealed at the same time and which they call the thought-for kingdom of heaven which is in a human being. They transmit a tradition concerning this in the Gospel entitled "According to Thomas," which states expressly, "The one who seeks me will find me in children of seven years and older, for there, hidden in the fourteenth aeon, I am revealed."
This appears to be a reference to saying 4 of Thomas, although the wording differs significantly. As translated by Thomas O. Lambdin, saying 4 reads: "Jesus said, 'the man old in days will not hesitate to ask a small child seven days old about the place of life, and he will live. For many who are first will become last, and they will become one and the same".[30]
Origen listed the "Gospel according to Thomas" as being among the heterodox apocryphal gospels known to him (Hom. in Luc. 1).
In the 4th and 5th centuries, various Church Fathers wrote that the Gospel of Thomas was highly valued by Mani. In the 4th century, Cyril of Jerusalem mentioned a "Gospel of Thomas" twice in his Catechesis: "The Manichaeans also wrote a Gospel according to Thomas, which being tinctured with the fragrance of the evangelic title corrupts the souls of the simple sort."[31] and "Let none read the Gospel according to Thomas: for it is the work not of one of the twelve Apostles, but of one of the three wicked disciples of Manes."[32] The 5th-century Decretum Gelasianum includes "A Gospel attributed to Thomas which the Manichaean use" in its list of heretical books.[33]
(7) Jesus said, "Blessed is the lion which becomes man when consumed by man; and cursed is the man whom the lion consumes, and the lion becomes man."
(12) The disciples said to Jesus, "We know that you will depart from us. Who is to be our leader?" Jesus said to them, "Wherever you are, you are to go to James the righteous, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being."
(15) Jesus said, "When you see one who was not born of woman, prostrate yourselves on your faces and worship him. That one is your father."
1. And he said, "Whoever discovers the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death."
2. Jesus said, "Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed. When they are disturbed, they will marvel, and will reign over all. [And after they have reigned they will rest.]"
3. Jesus said, "If your leaders say to you, 'Look, the (Father's) kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the (Father's) kingdom is within you and it is outside you.
When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty."
4. Jesus said, "The person old in days won't hesitate to ask a little child seven days old about the place of life, and that person will live.
5. Jesus said, "Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden from you will be disclosed to you.
21. Mary said to Jesus, "What are your disciples like?"
He said, "They are like little children living in a field that is not theirs. When the owners of the field come, they will say, 'Give us back our field.' They take off their clothes in front of them in order to give it back to them, and they return their field to them.
For this reason I say, if the owners of a house know that a thief is coming, they will be on guard before the thief arrives and will not let the thief break into their house (their domain) and steal their possessions.
As for you, then, be on guard against the world. Prepare yourselves with great strength, so the robbers can't find a way to get to you, for the trouble you expect will come.
Let there be among you a person who understands.
When the crop ripened, he came quickly carrying a sickle and harvested it. Anyone here with two good ears had better listen!"
48. Jesus said, "If two make peace with each other in a single house, they will say to the mountain, 'Move from here!' and it will move."
49. Jesus said, "Congratulations to those who are alone and chosen, for you will find the kingdom. For you have come from it, and you will return there again."
50. Jesus said, "If they say to you, 'Where have you come from?' say to them, 'We have come from the light, from the place where the light came into being by itself, established [itself], and appeared in their image.'
If they say to you, 'Is it you?' say, 'We are its children, and we are the chosen of the living Father.'
If they ask you, 'What is the evidence of your Father in you?' say to them, 'It is motion and rest.'"
51. His disciples said to him, "When will the rest for the dead take place, and when will the new world come?"
52. His disciples said to him, "Twenty-four prophets have spoken in Israel, and they all spoke of you."
He said to them, "You have disregarded the living one who is in your presence, and have spoken of the dead."
Manifestation
This is my first story. I had heard about The Secret from my friend in 2012 but then I forgot about it. Now I was in a difficult situation with financial problems. So I started to practice the law of attraction. I wanted to attract something small but I did not what to think about. This afternoon I was wondering how an avocado would taste because it is a very rare fruit where I live and we do not usually get them here.
In the evening I went to buy grapes for my son. Amazingly, I saw an avocado in that shop! Wow! I was so excited and happy that the Universe was giving me a sign that thoughts become things! Thank you, Universe. I wish all my dreams come true!
Schrodinger's Cat
In the 1920s, Schrödinger and other physicists were concerned with a problem that couldn’t be explained by classic physics. The smaller a particle becomes, the less clear its position or speed becomes.
“Quantum mechanics adds a level of fuzziness to the position of particles,” says Wang.
Electrons form the base of the theory — in particular, the single electron in a hydrogen atom. Whereas scientists previously described electrons as orbiting the nucleus in an atom, quantum physicists observed that things weren’t quite this simple. Rather, they seemed to exist in several places at once. Or they blinked back and forth, between specific areas without appearing in between. In fact, the only thing you can say for sure is that an electron is not in one place at one time.
“It’s fundamentally uncertain where exactly the position [of an electron] is,” Wang says.
Instead, you have to describe an electron’s position as a wave function, or a probability distribution that describes where the electron is more likely to occur. The term superposition in quantum physics is used to describe how an electron in this case can seem to exist in multiple positions at the same time.
In physics, Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment in which a cat is trapped in a box with a particle that has a 50-50 chance of decaying. If the particle decays, the cat dies; otherwise, the cat lives. Until you open the box, however, you have no idea what happened to the cat, so he exists in a superposition of both dead-and-alive states, just as electrons and other subatomic particles simultaneously exist in multiple states (such as multiple energy levels) until they're observed. When a particle is observed and randomly chooses to occupy just one energy level, it's called a quantum jump. Physicists originally thought that quantum jumps were instantaneous and discrete: Poof! And suddenly, the particle is in one state or another.
But in the 1990s, more physicists began to suspect that the particles follow a linear path as they take their jump, before entering their final state. At that time, physicists didn't have the technology to observe those trajectories, said Todd Brun, a physicist at the University of Southern California, who was not involved in the research. That's where Devoret and his co-authors come in.
The Yale physicists shone a bright light at an atom and observed how the light scattered as the quantum jump occurred. They found that the quantum jumps were continuous rather than discrete, and that jumps to different discrete energy levels held to specific "flight" paths.
Once the physicists knew the specific state the atom approached, they were then able to reverse that flight, by applying a force in just the right direction with just the right strength, said lead author and Yale University physicist Zlatko Minev. Correctly identifying the type of jump was crucial to successfully reversing the flight, he added. "It's very precarious," Minev told Live Science.
Some physicists, like Brun, aren't surprised by the finding: "This is not different from anything anyone had predicted," Brun told Live Science. "The interesting thing is they carried it out experimentally."
The new finding is particularly significant for research facilities like the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), where physicists observe gravitational waves, said Devoret. At these research facilities, particle unpredictability, also called quantum noise, is the bane of scientists' efforts to make accurate measurements.
"As physicists like to say, with quantum noise, not even God can know what you will measure," Devoret said. Using the research, physicists can "mute" quantum noise and make more accurate measurements.
Particles, and the fate of Schrödinger's cat, will always be somewhat unpredictable in the long term, Devoret said. He and his co-authors' main finding is that their fates can be observed and predicted as they happen.
"It's a bit like volcanic eruptions," Devoret explained, "they are unpredictable in the long term. But in the short term, you can see when one is about to erupt."
Navigating the Matrix of the Ego
We need the matrix of thoughts, feelings, and sensations we call the ego for our physical and psychological survival.
The ego tells us what leads to what, what to avoid, how to satisfy our desires, and what to do in each situation. It does this by labeling everything we sense or think. These labels put order in our world and give us a sense of security and well-being. With these labels, we know our world and our place in it.
Our ego renders safe an unruly world. Uncountable sense impressions and thoughts crowd in on us, so that without the ego to filter out irrelevant information, we would be inundated, overwhelmed, and ultimately destroyed by the overload. Or so it seems.
The ego has convinced us that we need it – not only that we need it, but that we are it. I am my body. I am my personality. I am my neuroses. I am angry. I am depressed. I’m a good person. I’m sincere. I seek truth. I’m a lazy slob. Definition after definition. Room after room. Some are in high-rise apartments – I’m very important. Some are on the fringe of the city – just hanging out.
Meditation raises the question: Who are we really? If we are the same as our ego, then if we open up the ego’s filters and overwhelm it, we shall be drowned. If, on the other hand, we are not exclusively what the ego defines us to be, then the removal of the ego’s filters may not be such a great threat. It may actually mean our liberation. But as long as the ego calls the shots, we can never become other than what it says. Like a dictator, it offers us paternalistic security at the expense of our freedom.
We may ask how we could survive without our ego. Don’t worry – it doesn’t disappear. We can learn to venture beyond it, though. The ego is there, as our servant. Our room is there. We can always go in and use it like an office when we need to be efficient. But the door can be left open so that we can always walk out.
– Ram Dass
They shed their sense of responsibility
Long ago, when they lost their votes, and the bribes; the mob
That used to grant power, high office, the legions, everything,
Curtails its desires, and reveals its anxiety for two things only,
Bread and circuses.
Proof We Live In A Matrix
Deja Vu
One Study used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to scan the brains of 21 participants as they experienced a kind of lab-induced deja vu. Interestingly, the areas of the brain involved in the memory, like the hippocampus, were not triggered as would suspect if the feeling was linked to a false memory. Instead it could be a result of our brains conducting some form of conflict resolution. In other words, our brain checks through our brains memories like a rolodex looking for any conflict between what we think we've experienced versus what actually happened to us.
Simulation Theory
In an influential paper that laid out the theory, the Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom showed that at least one of three possibilities is true: 1) All human-like civilizations in the universe go extinct before they develop the technological capacity to create simulated realities; 2) if any civilizations do reach this phase of technological maturity, none of them will bother to run simulations; or 3) advanced civilizations would have the ability to create many, many simulations, and that means there are far more simulated worlds than non-simulated ones.
We can’t know for sure which of these is the case, Bostrom concludes, but they’re all possible — and the third option might even be the most probable outcome. It’s a difficult argument to wrap your head around, but it makes a certain amount of sense.
Morphic Resonance
Morphic resonance, Sheldrake says, is "the idea of mysterious telepathy-type interconnections between organisms and of collective memories within species" and accounts for phantom limbs, how dogs know when their owners are coming home, and how people know when someone is staring at them. "Vision may involve a two-way process, an inward movement of light and an outward projection of mental images," Sheldrake explains. Thousands of trials conducted by anyone who downloaded the experimental protocol from Sheldrake's Web page "have given positive, repeatable, and highly significant results, implying that there is indeed a widespread sensitivity to being stared at from behind."
The hypothesized properties of morphic fields at all levels of complexity can be summarized as follows:
1. They are self-organizing wholes.
2. They have both a spatial and a temporal aspect, and organize spatio-temporal patterns of vibratory or rhythmic activity.
3. They attract the systems under their influence towards characteristic forms and patterns of activity, whose coming-into-being they organize and whose integrity they maintain. The ends or goals towards which morphic fields attract the systems under their influence are called attractors. The pathways by which systems usually reach these attractors are called chreodes.
4. They interrelate and co-ordinate the morphic units or holons that lie within them, which in turn are wholes organized by morphic fields. Morphic fields contain other morphic fields within them in a nested hierarchy or holarchy.
5. They are structures of probability, and their organizing activity is probabilistic.
6. They contain a built-in memory given by self-resonance with a morphic unit's own past and by morphic resonance with all previous similar systems. This memory is cumulative. The more often particular patterns of activity are repeated, the more habitual they tend to become.
The God Particle
Mandela Effect
The Lord’s Prayer appears in two of the four Gospels: Matthew (6:9-13) and Luke (11:2-4). Scholars generally believe that those two Gospel writers got the prayer from a source, never found but labeled “Q” by researchers. The wording varies, however, in Luke and Matthew.
Scholars at the Atlanta meeting tended to agree that the prayer likely derives from the religious community that composed the “Q” document in the mid-1st Century. That would have been well after Jesus’ Crucifixion about AD 30 and before the writing, after AD 70, of the Gospels.
False Memories
Q
biblical literature
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Related Topics: Bible New Testament
Q, in the study of biblical literature, a hypothetical Greek-language proto-Gospel that might have been in circulation in written form about the time of the composition of the Synoptic Gospels—Mark, Matthew, and Luke—approximately between 65 and AD 95. The name Q, coined by the German theologian and biblical scholar Johannes Weiss, is a reference to the German word Quelle (“source”).
Most biblical scholars agree that the authors of Matthew and Luke based their written accounts largely on The Gospel According to Mark. Matthew and Luke, however, both share a good deal of material—largely made up of logia (Greek: “sayings”) attributed to Jesus—that is absent from Mark. This led biblical scholars to hypothesize the existence of an undetermined source from which the shared material was drawn: Q, sometimes called the “lost source.” While no actual source document has been found and some scholars doubt that Q ever existed, others have attempted to reconstruct it through intensive textual analysis.