Chapter P – Da'at: Knowing

What is the difference between knowing a lot and truly knowing?

"The purpose of knowing is not that we know, but that we become one with the knowledge. Not to think – to be."

Over several meetings, the Oracle passes on to Neo, in hints, the secret of higher knowing. She tries to disconnect Neo from the concept of knowledge he was used to inside the Matrix, and to connect him with a concept of knowing that is different from it in its very essence, from end to end. She explains to him that inside the Matrix, knowledge is acquired knowledge – someone teaches it to you. But there is knowledge that no one can teach you: you simply know it with an inner knowing, in your bones. It is like knowing you are in love. No one can tell you that. You just know.

She reveals to him that knowledge in the Matrix is like property. You can buy a lot of knowledge. But however rich you may be, you are still inside the bubble of the Matrix. On the contrary – the more you believe that your greatness depends on the material or intellectual property you have acquired inside the world of illusion, the greater you become, the more disconnected you are from true existence, the world beyond. However huge you may be, you will always lack wholeness, because your material, digital self separates you from the rest of existence.

The only true knowledge is the knowledge that teaches you how to make yourself small – to the point of breaking the boundaries of your separate self and dissolving into the all-embracing existence, into the infinite light that fills the world. This merging with the Infinite – or, in New Age language, with "the treasury of cosmic knowledge" – makes possible a connection with infinite knowledge. In the film this is expressed in the way Neo learns after giving up his old self and joining the fighters of Zion in the world of truth. In the language of the Sages this is called ruach ha-kodesh (the holy spirit), or even prophecy, which is the highest level of connection. At this level a person simply knows things he never learned. He has simply lowered the boundaries and limitations of his self, and thereby made possible a connection to the source of knowledge. The purpose of knowing is not that we will know, but that we will be at one with knowledge, without a separate self. Not to think – to be.

In good times, the fighters of Zion had schools of prophecy with hundreds of thousands of prophets who reached these levels.

The study of the programming language today, too, is meant to teach a person not how to grow big, but how to become small. Of the giant of giants, Moses our teacher, it is said that he was the humblest of all men. Precisely – and perhaps because of – his humility, he reached the peak of human ability. He reached the level of the fiftieth gate, the place where he understands that he does not understand, where he knows that he does not know; and that is why it is said of him that he attained fifty gates less one.

But let us not misunderstand: the way to reach this place, which is beyond quantitative knowledge, is not by breaking the intellect, as all sorts of wanderers mistakenly think – those who have confused the mind with one of the Matrix's control agents. The way is not to sit with the babas in India and smoke chillums of ganja (a kind of drug) in order to disrupt the working of the intellect and supposedly escape from the great Maya (the illusion, in their language).

The way is to synchronize the perception of our intellect through studying the programming language, which shapes its workings according to the true logic that is beyond the world – precisely by training it in stages that begin with simple logic, and slowly change its way of perceiving and the character of its behavior. Study that, if done correctly, also gives a person the ability and the desire to be small – to understand that he is part of the whole. A small cell in a great body. A very great one.

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Translated from the Hebrew chapter "דעת" by Roni Ayalon-Hirsch.