Chapter J – Two Faces of Love

What truly connects two people?

"The true connection between a man and a woman lies in finding the shared spiritual goal that lies beyond them both."

In addition to all the spirituality, insights and hints in the film, it is perhaps possible to look at "The Matrix" as a love story. Love was both an important link in Neo's becoming "the One" and a tremendous source of strength from which Neo drew his power to fulfill his destiny.

The trilogy comes to teach us a few things about love – things we knew, but apparently not well enough.

Sub-chapters: Two faces of love · Love as a tool for inner work · Monk – monastery – a foreign kind · Persephone · The emotional nervous systems · The Merovingian

Two faces of love

Throughout the trilogy we go through, together with Neo and Trinity, a number of trials that reflect the dual nature of the love that flares up between them. On the one hand, their bond is the thread connecting the whole plot. Along the trilogy, their self-sacrifice for each other allowed them and the fighters of Zion to escape from almost hopeless situations, and even from mortal danger, on the way to carrying out their mission. On the other hand, and no less clearly, their bond is characterized as a stage toward a greater love – the love of truth. Both of them are aware that the glue connecting them is the desire to discover the truth. At the end of the film they are willing to set out together, knowingly, on a journey from which they will probably not return, in the faith that in this way they will fulfill their purpose and destiny. This relationship demonstrates the inner and deep beauty of the concept of love. The true connection between a man and a woman lies in finding the shared spiritual goal that lies beyond both of them – the whole that wraps them and joins them together. Mutual devotion toward this shared spiritual goal reveals powers of love that come to expression on every level of the personality, from the most physical to the most spiritual, without creating inner contradictions and clashes arising from the opposite nature and the difference embedded in them.

The Sages tell us that when the soul comes down into the world, it splits – half to the man and half to the woman. As long as the man or the woman is alone, each is called "palga de-gufa" – half a body. While alone they have no chance of attaining wholeness. Only when they join back together in holiness do they receive the title "adam" (human being). That is why at a wedding the blessing "Creator of man" (yotzer ha-adam) is said for the first time – and not at birth, as we might have thought. Only through the renewed connection with one's partner is it possible to touch the whole – a connection between complementary opposites that creates wholeness. "This is the book of the generations of Adam: on the day God created man, in the likeness of God He made him; male and female He created them, and He blessed them and called their name Adam."

Love as a tool for inner work

A very tangible message that emerges from the film, and especially from its "tragic" ending, is this: love is a means and not an end. Love in its various aspects – in its physical pleasure as well as in its emotional and intellectual essence – is a tool for joining the truth, wholeness, the Source. The fire of love supplies the heat needed to weld back together the two opposite halves that make up the essence of the complete human being – to weld the soul back together.

Whoever gets confused, forgets, and is drawn after the fire and the pleasure of physical and emotional love because he mistakenly thinks it has essence and purpose in itself, falls into the agents' trap and burns himself. The wise person understands that the woman in red (partial, physical love) is none other than Agent Smith in disguise – the greatest danger on his way to himself, on his way to the truth. The woman in red is a program, part of the world of illusion, the world of dreams, which hides the essential, the purpose. The woman in red – who for a man is all the women in the world except the one destined for him – is a counterfeit of true love. In the book Me'or Einayim, King Solomon's saying in Ecclesiastes is explained: "Enjoy life with the woman you love" (literally, "see life with the woman you love"). He explains there that physical love is a coarse reflection of the higher, spiritual love. When a person knows how to connect the physical act with its spiritual source, he brings down an abundance of "life"; but when a person narrows himself to the physical act alone and cuts himself off from the source of vitality, he is left with a dead love. Why dead? Because every fall from a high level to a low level is called death. And so King Solomon says: see to it that you turn the bond of the couple into a bond that draws life – "see life with the woman you love" – and not let it remain only on the dead, physical layer. Morpheus tries to teach this to Neo. Whoever goes down into the Matrix must constantly repeat his mission to himself, lest he fall into the pits of the imaginary temptations of the virtual world and forget why he came. He was sent here to work.

This understanding of the fighters of Zion – that the purpose of their coming here is to work – puts all of life in a different light, and especially married life. Unlike an ordinary person (Cypher), who treats his partner as a means of fulfilling his needs, the true fighter of Zion understands that here too there is spiritual work. If the whole world is a mirror image showing a person where he is flawed so that he can repair it (as the Baal Shem Tov says, a person should learn something about himself from everything that happens), then the bond of a couple is a magnifying glass. You cannot hide from someone who truly knows you, and you cannot put on shows. Day after day you stand facing yourself and see your shortcomings, and sometimes that is not pleasant. It is not by chance that the woman is the man's opposite. "I will make him a helper against him" (ezer ke-negdo) – meaning: a person must understand that, to help him become complete and improve, he was given the mirror that shows him where he needs to work. The help lies in giving him his opposite. Elsewhere it is said: if he merits – a helper; if he does not merit – against him. What does this mean?

If he merits (zacha) in the sense of refinement (zikuch) – refining himself, his self-centered desires – she becomes a help to him. If he does not refine himself, she turns against him. In its essence, partnership is a mutual tool of work for refining egoism and growing in giving. Another, similar saying expresses the same idea: "A man and a woman – if they merit, the Divine Presence is between them; if not, fire consumes them." Ish (man) and isha (woman) both contain the letters of esh (fire). If both of them refine their self-centered desires – the fire – what remains from the man is the Yud and from the woman the Heh: together, the Name Yah, which is the name of the Divine Presence. If they do not refine themselves, the Divine Presence flees and what remains is fire, twice.

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Monk – monastery – a foreign kind

In contrast to the understanding of love's lofty root and of its being a tool for spiritual work, "Mouse" (who programmed the woman in red) warns Neo about the opposite danger. He warns him not to deny his physical drives, because they are what make him human. At this point he reminds us that although love at its root is something lofty and high, the destiny and greatness of man is that precisely through the most physical matters he can reach the most spiritual places. The fire and heat of physical desire are necessary for the welding process. One only has to observe the right safety rules when dealing with this heat and to know which are the right tools for this work. The woman in red is, of course, an example of the wrong tool. The trick is not to ignore the drives entirely and deny them, as monks in various religions do, but to know how to use them correctly and to turn precisely them into the strongest connection with the higher love and the higher Lover. The true and right bond is the one within which the physical can be tied to the spiritual, the body to the soul – connecting the extremes of physical pleasure with the spiritual purpose and destiny. A bond of holiness. "Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife, and they shall be one flesh."

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Persephone

One of the encounters most important for understanding the problem of earthly love is the meeting with the figure of Persephone, the Merovingian's partner. One of the problematic characteristics of the world of matter (matter / matrix) is that every material thing has an end. One gets used to every material pleasure. Habit turns even the strongest pleasures boring after a while. The relationship between Persephone and the Merovingian shows us the problem of a love shut inside the Matrix, inside the world of matter – a love that simply gets lost. Everyone experiences this in his life, and perhaps 90% of all the songs ever written about love speak of the heartbreak it causes both sides. The best-known way to overcome habit and routine is to change, to replace, to renew. There are people who, because of the absence of an emotional or spiritual element in the relationship, search high and low for novelties and ideas to keep up the sexual stimulation – which leads them to oddities within relationships and even to odd kinds of relationships. An interesting array of such types we meet in the Merovingian's underworld kingdom. The issue of novelty within a marriage is problematic in itself. While there are things in life that one can perhaps replace from time to time, such as a car, a job or hobbies, in the bond of a couple – wife and children – the option of replacement becomes much more complicated. Beyond the practical difficulties, let us not forget that the very essence of the bond and of love is a vessel for connecting to the spiritual world, and so it demands building, learning, investment and constancy. The physical wants something new; the spiritual wants something constant. The Merovingian, sunk in the physical, has simply got used to Persephone's presence and is looking for new thrills. She, for her part, tries to find in Neo the love she had at the beginning and lost; and when she finds it, she confesses to Trinity, from her own experience, that a love like this is not meant to last forever.

So what is the solution? How do we break routine and habit? How do we build constancy without being choked by dryness and boredom? How do we preserve the warmth of love?

Here the film comes again and tells us: we must break through the veil of the Matrix – and touch the "beyond." There must be a vision. There must be a goal, a destiny, a purpose. Combining spirituality and purpose in the relationship compensates for the loss of physical pleasure and revives the bond.

(A passage from Chapter D, on Cypher:)

The fighters of Zion work according to a program designed to educate and teach a person how to turn physical pleasures into emotional and spiritual pleasures – to convert the physical-pleasure file, bound inside the reality of a finite, mortal world, into a spiritual-pleasure file that is not limited by finitude, and therefore has a long lifespan and the capacity to accumulate. Through this conversion the spiritual person can accumulate his pleasures and be filled with each one. It is different for the physical person, for whom the memory of his pleasures only arouses a greater lack, since in order to get back to the same pleasure he must look for a stronger physical stimulus. So for the physical person every pleasure brings lack, disappointment and breakdown instead of fullness and wholeness.

Combining the higher centers of pleasure not only converts and elevates the forms of pleasure, but also compensates for habit, boredom and the loss of excitement. For example, a Maccabi fan will prefer to watch his team's game over an NBA game, even though the physical game in the NBA is more beautiful, because Maccabi's game also involves a higher emotional center connected with his identity. The emotional pleasure connected with his identity compensates for the lost physical pleasure. In the same way, the love (soul) between partners and the understanding (spirit) of the enormous influence their union has on the whole world – if it is alive and real – compensates for the loss of physical stimulation that comes from the length of their acquaintance and the force of habit. Indeed, the program by which the fighters of Zion work deals with this aspect too, in the form of a regular physical separation designed, among other things, to intensify physical longing and strengthen the power of the stimulus. Paradoxically, it is precisely the use of pleasures according to the limits and dosage set out in the program that also brings a greater physical pleasure, because it is measured and combined in the right proportion with the whole. It is like the difference between drinking a whole bottle of wine in one gulp and drinking the wine slowly, in measure and together with other foods, which raise the pleasure of the wine to another level.

During Neo's training, Morpheus shows him the enormous danger of going down into the Matrix, into the world of tests. On arriving in the physical world with its temptations and sensual pleasures, Neo forgets why he came and is diverted by his urges toward the woman in red. Morpheus stops the "world" and explains to him that the woman in red is an illusion meant to divert him from his path – the woman in red is really a dangerous enemy waiting for him at every corner, who wants to kill him. Frightening. After all, he only looked! Morpheus understands that a "negligible" deviation of a small angle here grows into a huge miss over great distances. "Do not stray after your eyes." He teaches Neo that pleasures are a mighty tool of spiritual work if they are used to activate the spiritual centers in a person. They are a bridge connecting to the Source if their activation is regulated according to the higher program. But if there is no control over them, they become enemy number one, endangering the path – the spiritual life – of the fighter of Zion. (End of the passage from Chapter D.)

The more one combines higher emotional and spiritual centers of pleasure, the more complete and longer-lasting the pleasure one reaches. (For example: 1. The meal I eat on Passover rises from an animal pleasure to become part of a spiritual celebration of the exodus from slavery to freedom – a liberation of perception that I am meant to go through today as well. 2. The union of a man with his wife is an expression of a higher, heavenly union that gives birth to spiritual and physical life in the world.) Combining is the name of the game. The meaning of combining is that love is not only nice and enjoyable. Love is also a spiritual value that is important to me and to which I am committed. The bond of a man and his wife becomes a three-storey bond. Slowly, thanks to constancy and trust, they build harmony in three octaves: body – soul – spirit. For the building to be stable over time, they must insulate the lowest storey from destructive outside influences – namely, competition. This greenhouse is called a covenant. The meaning of the covenant is that I do not compare the lowest (physical) storey to other external objects, because I am aware of the wholeness of the bond on all three levels. Such a bond takes time and investment to build, and it cannot be compared in passing glances.

The emotional nervous systems

Society's counterfeit romanticism, which relies on love to win out and pushes couples into endless competition, does not understand something very simple. The body has two nervous systems – the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. One system operates during rest and is responsible for digestion, absorption and so on; the second operates in wartime and pumps out strength to fight or to flee. All the methods of complementary medicine explain that a person in our society lives in a very stressful environment, and so the body constantly feels at war. Since in such a reality only the war system is activated, he slowly weakens until he breaks and falls. The emotional systems are very similar. When a person lives in an environment in which his partnership is constantly attacked by strong external stimuli, he can cope up to a certain limit. In the end he will weaken and fall. Homeopathy, too, explains that mild external stimuli can strengthen a system that is in balance, but strong external stimuli can upset the balance and bring it down. Love must be protected and guarded.

We have learned three things: 1. The low bodily layer (the woman in red) is a strong fire needed to awaken the emotional centers, but when it works alone it can burn, and any pleasure from it alone only creates greater lack and disappointment. 2. The combination of the physical with the emotional and the spiritual gives the complete, accumulating pleasure. 3. To build this triple bond over time, competition on the lowest storey must be neutralized.

Whoever does not understand this is caught in a destructive cycle of disappointment with life and with himself. With life – because nothing lasts for him and in the end everything bores him. With himself – because he does not understand why he does not succeed in loving, why it always goes wrong for him. His lack of faith in himself, in his ability to love, frightens him from entering a committed relationship. What will happen if it passes again like the previous six times? The fear does not let him love truly, with all his heart, and so from the outset this love does not have much of a chance.

The heart of the problem is that a person feels controlled and captive to the whirlpools of emotion that sweep him away, instead of being the master over love – which brings us to our acquaintance, the Merovingian.

The Merovingian

The meeting with the Merovingian deals with the question of causality that we touched on in the chapter on choice. The line of thought the Merovingian speaks of is that man is completely without control, and is therefore a victim of the drives acting on him. Man merely reacts to the stimuli that happen to him according to the animal instinct embedded in him. According to this deterministic view, life is simply the collection of stimuli acting on a person, who responds to them with little alternative or choice, according to the forces embedded in him. Life happens, and we are swept along. Cause and effect – the law of the universe.

The implication of this view for married life and love gives birth to one of the most basic distortions, which claims many victims in family life and partnership. Around the world this distortion was given a name: Cupid. A person walks down the street and suddenly Cupid's arrow hits him. He falls in love. It happens to him; he is not in control. In English this is called "to fall in love" – one falls into it unawares. For a fighter of Zion, such a fall is called falling into a "lav" – the transgression of a negative commandment. The problem is that Cupid does not stop shooting arrows. After he fell in love, only a month passed and Cupid has already shot him again. He fell in love again. It happened to him again – only with another woman. And so he lives a life of daily fear of the terrible causality that rules him in the form of Cupid – or, even worse, he thinks he likes it.

Here the Sages present a Kabbalistic concept called MeLeCh (king): Mo'ach – Lev – Kaved, brain – heart – liver. Thought rules the emotions, and then the drives. I direct my emotions, and not they me. I am the master of the house. I decide whom I love and how much I love. Sounds strange, right? How can there be control over something as uncontrollable as love? The fighters of Zion have methods. For whoever understands that love is a value, there are techniques for increasing love. Whoever cares about love must also invest in good shields to protect against Cupid's arrows. I control love; it does not control me.

If I think I do not control love, then in the ups and downs of every normal relationship I may feel that love is decreasing; as a result I will of course invest less, which will make my partner feel the same sense of decline and coldness, and he will invest less – and then, like a house of cards, the partnership will collapse. Whoever understands that love is a spiritual responsibility knows, when he feels it weakening, that he must take actions to strengthen it. Love depends on him, and it is his duty to keep it alive and breathing. If it weakens, a red light goes on that demands attention and investment. Only in this way is it possible both to live and to enjoy.

To sum up: love is a means, not an end. It is a force of connection that joins opposites in order to create a whole, to create wholeness. Physical pleasure is the heat needed to weld together the higher centers of the partnership, of the bond. Unwise use of this fire usually burns and consumes the partnership, the love, and the ability to love. To enjoy over time, one must learn to combine and connect the physical with the emotional and the spiritual within a protective framework – within a covenant – in a greenhouse of holiness and purity.

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Translated from the Hebrew chapter "שתי פנים לאהבה" by Roni Ayalon-Hirsch.