Chapter E – The Programming Code
What if reality is written, letter by letter, like code?
"The illusion is not just a trick of the eyes. The illusion is structured. There is a structure. There is a system. There is a plan."
Chapter E – The Programming Code
One of the Matrix trilogy's most wonderful innovations is the fact that our reality, just like the reality of the Matrix, is based on software – made from a programming code language of words and letters.
We have witnessed many spiritual methods, cultures and nations who know and understand that the reality we live in is an illusion. All young Israelis traveling through India have seen the “Babas” – smoking Chillums filled with Ganja (Marijuana) all day long to overcome the “Maya” – the great illusion of the world. All ancient nations realized that the reality we live in is a partial, very coarse reflection of higher spiritual realms and that man's actions in this world are supposed to correlate with the structure and “will” of these realms. Different nations have different methods used to transcend and touch the will of the “Great Spirit” (Native Americans) including certain rituals and ceremonies meant to alter the state of consciousness in such a way that the reality beyond is seen. For example, Don Juan and Carlos Castaneda used a drug called peyote and various other techniques in order to reach this liberating state of consciousness.
This is also the reason why the film speaks in every language. All nations, before they were ruined by the Greek mind, knew that reality is imagination. The truth is not here. The work is. The mission is to find the "Whole", present somewhere beyond the Alpha waves of the mind.
However, beyond all the simple conceptions of the world – the film explains that the illusion is not merely a deception of the eye. The illusion is structured. There is a structure. There is a system. There is planning. There is a plan that arranges the complexity of the illusion, and there is a language in which this plan is written – the programming code.
This is the key to understanding the message of the film.
The warriors of Zion are standing beyond the Matrix, watching letters dropping on green screens. But they see more. They see the picture of the “reality” that these letters create in the Matrix. The world of computers and the metaphor of the Matrix succeeded at this point in expressing one of the most important foundations of the hidden Torah (Kabbalah) – an insight that runs like a common thread through the teachings of all the great spiritual giants, the Kabbalists and the masters of Hassidism. The world is built of letters that create and sustain it at every single moment. “Forever, O Lord, Your word stands in the heavens” (לעולם ה' דברך ניצב בשמיים). The world was created by speech, by letters and words.
The word language in Hebrew (Safa) also means edge (the seashore, the hem of a garment). The language – speech, is the boundary, the edge of the spiritual world and the beginning of the material world – the world of doing. Through letters, words, language, the world transformed from a spiritual reality to a physical one. It was not created in the distant past but is being created every moment. The Greeks searched for the Atom – the smallest unit composing reality, but they were looking in the wrong dimension. Even the Atom they found is nowadays being broken down into smaller and smaller particles, until today it is said that the proton is made of 4 two-dimensional strings of energy (string theory). If we closely examine the findings of science itself we will discover that what we call actual matter is in fact protons and electrons – two miniscule particles revolving around themselves at immense speed and creating an illusion of volume. In fact, most of the Atom – the building block of all reality – is empty – a deception of the eye. Add to this the discovery that even these two tiny units are not material – but two-dimensional energy – and we reach the conclusion that everything truly is an illusion, produced by a force that has 4 forms, spinning the whole of reality in a way that makes it seem real (the 4 letters of the Name י-ה-ו-ה).
The 22 letters, the basic units of existence, that exist in the passage between the spiritual and physical dimension, in their different combinations also constitute an expression of the original will standing behind existence. A wonderful example of this is presented at the beginning of the second film, where we see worlds upon worlds of letters eventually constituting the physical clock on the wall of the guards' room. Just as every child knows that behind the beautiful picture he sees on a computer there is software creating it now, and this software is written in words and letters, in the same way every spiritual child discovers that the “back stage” of our reality is also written in a special language which sustains it at this very moment. The “Zohar” says that in order to create the world, God used the Torah (the code) that existed before creation: “He looked into the Torah and created the world” (הסתכל באורייתא וברא עלמא).
When Neo is resurrected, and the power of the “One” is awakened within him, he receives a special sight with which he can see, despite being in the Matrix, reality not in its external form but in its internal form – the letters which constitute it. He discovers an ability to live in the world with a point of reference beyond it. He sees only letters – and then he can stop time.
If the letters are what turned the spiritual into the physical (we will soon find out exactly how), then they must be the key to turning the physical back into spiritual. One of Hassidism's greatest teachers once said that the world was created as something from nothing (יש מאין – from the spiritual to the physical), and man's task is to turn the something back into nothing (to turn the physical back into spiritual) – the fulfillment of the “Alchemists'” dream.
In the conversation between Neo and the Indian about love, the Indian tells him that a word is a kind of connection, a kind of bond. Different words are simply different connections/links. The significance of different phenomena lies in a person's will to preserve the connection that is created by their names. In the “Zohar” it is said that the initials of the word “Mila” (מ-י-ל-ה, word in Hebrew) begin the verse “Who will go up for us to Heaven” (מי יעלה לנו השמימה). This verse expresses the role of the word in creating the connection, the bond with the upper world. The final letters of the words in this verse (י-ה-ו-ה, the holy Name) point to the object of the connection – the essence with which we seek to connect.
Many nations around the world have understood the power of letters and words. In the Torah portion “Chayei Sarah” (The life of Sarah), it is told that Abraham our forefather gave gifts to the sons of the concubines and sent them eastward, to the land of Kedem (to the east of the eastern land). The great commentator Rashi asks what kind of gifts Abraham gave them – for he left all of his property to his son Isaac (and the meaning is of course not merely physical property). Rashi answers that he gave them names of impurity (names that may be pronounced while the body is in a state of impurity). We know these names as “Mantras”, which are widely used in the East to alter states of consciousness. (By the way – all 11 mantras used in the technique of “Transcendental Meditation”, which are “supposedly” matched personally to each and every one, are taken from the “Ayin-Bet” – the 72 three-letter combinations that appear in the Kabbalah.) As Seraph said: every name is a code opening a different door. The words are the keys opening the doors of the spiritual palaces.
The essence of the difference between the various spiritual methods and Judaism is that there is no other method in the world that so much as claims it has the code language from which reality is formed. Most of the world simply tries different techniques to overcome the slavery to the body, the slavery to the mind, the slavery to the emotions etc. The sages tell us that he who knows the code language does not have to suppress his different powers – but can use these very powers, with the direction of the code, in order to transcend them. Not through avoidance, but through a measured and precise use of his different powers and by creating harmony between them. He does not have to be celibate/a monk (like in Christianity), does not have to stop eating meat and drinking wine (like the Indians), does not have to toss his mind aside (no-mind). On the contrary, the right use of these powers, in the right measure and at the right time, can draw him nearer to the freedom of the soul.
The word “Koreh” (קורא) in the Holy Tongue has two meanings: Read and Call. A simple understanding of these two meanings reveals the secret of engaging with the code language: the simplest READ of the text in its original form CALLS the spiritual powers standing behind the physical words. The understanding of the texts, and the activation of emotion through them, activates other very powerful forces that can change man's entire essence and connect him with the infinite source of creation.
A deeper look:
Every letter is a different form of contraction (Tzimtzum) of the infinite light of unity, until the 22 letters together create the complete cover over the heavenly unity, which enables the reality of the physical world of separation – the world of phenomena.
In the book “Noam Elimelech” it is said that the “Gvil” (the white space between the letters in a Torah scroll) holds more holiness than the letters themselves. Why is this? Because the empty parchment – the Gvil – represents the simple infinite light filling the entire universe. Since it has no end – it has no finiteness – we cannot grasp it, as we can only grasp things that have limits. In order for us to understand, there must be a filter/aperture over this light, which limits it into boundaries. Every letter written on the parchment conceals the parchment in its special form. There are 22 letters representing 22 different forms of concealment. After we have concealed the light a little by means of the letters, we can suddenly begin to read and understand. This is in fact the story of creation. Before creation there was one infinite oneness, inconceivable and incomprehensible. In order to create and reveal itself to finite creatures, this oneness dressed itself in a finite garment – contracted itself, as it were, from its oneness, so that there would be a place where multiplicity and separation are possible. The Infinite concealed itself in a finite garment so that we will be able to discover it. Just as you need a filter to look at the sun, or as a camera needs its aperture adjusted, limiting the amount of light entering so that the light will not burn the film and a clear, beautiful picture is received.
The letters, then, are the divine WINZIP program. The code language is what compressed the infinite file into a finite format that minds with weak processors such as ours can contain. The world is the compressed file of infinity. Just as the letters are what created the compression, through the same letters we can reopen the file and discover the heavenly attributes hidden behind every single thing in this world (Me'or Einayim). Everything depends on the knowledge of the right letter combinations – the codes that open the doors on the road to wholeness. The whole matter of blessings in Judaism revolves around this release of the spiritual energy hidden in the physical objects we enjoy, in order to enable its correct assimilation in our souls.
Because the code is an intermediary between the “Source” and the world, it constitutes a kind of mirror image of both. Since it is the program of the world from beginning to end, it contains within it all the events that ever happened and will happen until the end of time. With the help of computers we can nowadays find encodings written in the text as letter skips (dilugim). Finding these encodings is verified by checking events from the past, and it enables prediction of events in the future. This is not the place to elaborate, but leading researchers and mathematicians from around the globe have already managed to predict a number of important events in recent years by using software which decodes the letter skips, and articles on this wondrous phenomenon have been written in some of the world's leading statistics journals. See link – letter skips.
Another matter is the study of the code language and the recognition that it is built differently from all the conventional languages in the world. All conventional languages attempt to describe objects in creation, and then agree on a certain name for each object. The Holy Tongue is built the opposite way. It is built like a chemical formula, which determines the essence and character of the object by the different letters of which its name is made. Just as water is made of H2O – two hydrogen and one oxygen – so is “Shemesh” (sun in Hebrew) made of two “Shin” letters (whose essence is fire) and an internal “Mem” letter (whose essence is water). Each letter has a unique force, which in combination with two more letters constitutes a root – a formula of forces with a specific meaning. For instance: the letter Pe – externality, face (Panim). The letter Resh – diminishing (Rash in Hebrew means poor). The combination Pe+Resh = an essence that breaks down/diminishes in its externality. Adding a third letter to create a root gives different meanings, all fitting the basic meaning of Pe+Resh. For example: Parak (dismantled), Paratz (burst out), Param (unraveled), Parash (separated from a group), Pered (split apart), Parach (crushed), Parat (broke a whole into details), Paras (sliced), Para (disheveled), Porer (crumbled). Amazing!!! This is how the understanding of the meaning of the letters and their different combinations allows us an understanding of the phenomena in the world through their names. See link – the Holy Tongue – the code language.
From this we can see that while all other languages in the world were created after the phenomena they describe came into being, the Holy Tongue was not only made before them – it is in fact what created them.
We will end this chapter by looking at the word Neshama (soul in Hebrew – נ-ש-מ-ה). The inner part of the soul is the two middle letters of its name: Shin-Mem – SHEM, meaning NAME. The names of the different phenomena in creation constitute their essence – the inner core of their soul.
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