source

The Kabbalist baby

My mother told me that I did not want to be born. The poor woman had four days of childbirth, because I had a very big head and did not pass through the door of life, and at that time, in the small town of San Juan de los Morros where we lived, there was no tradition of operating Caesarean section. The women gave birth naturally, four children, five children, six as in the case of my family.

I remember that at the age of two or three years old I had an astral trip. I began to think: "What happens when you fall asleep, why do not I ever remember that moment? Tonight, when I go to sleep, I will not fall asleep, I'll be awake to see how everything works. "

Indeed, I made a great effort, I did not allow the dream to overcome me, and in a certain moment I felt a powerful vibration that went up my feet, my legs, my chest, until it reached the head, and then, click! As if a little string were dropped on my neck, and I left the body, let's say, my conscience left the body, and I saw myself floating on the ceiling of my room, where I slept together with my brother Edgar.

Nothing special. I went around the room, played with several trolleys that I had, went to visit the turtle in the garden, and at one point I said to myself: "It's time to go back." I simply reversed the process, I felt the vibration upside down again, from the nape of my neck to my feet, I opened my eyes and got up for breakfast.

Someone like that could only be born to be a philosopher, and, I learned it 45 years later, to study Kabbalah.

The only constant that I keep from that experience and the rest of my life is that I can not stop seeing the world with amazement, every detail, every color of the day, every sound, every signal that the universe sends me. I feel that the cosmos speaks to me, and learning to speak those codes that surround us, in front and behind, above and below, from outside and inside, has been the work of my life as a philosopher, writer and student of Kabbalah .

But the individual does not differ from the species. Just as in a past post I was wondering about the possibility of a philosopher ending up being a great filmmaker, now I wonder if there are filmmakers who write their scripts in Kabbalah codes.

I found three films that I think do, films that are of cult ones, and that, in my opinion, put together the internal mechanics of their story using the keys of Kabbalah.

My patient readers will decide if there really is a connection between the wisdom of the desert elders and the splendid scripts of The Matrix, The Game and The Truman Show.

The game that a god plays with us

source

In The Game (1997) by David Fincher, screenwriters John Brancato and Michael Ferris develop the story of a banker successful in business but lonely (Michael Douglas) to whom his extravagant brother (Sean Penn) gives him during his birthday a game offered by a mysterious corporation. The game consists in accepting an adventure, which takes place in the world, and in which the reality versus the fiction of the game is not distinguished. Or, rather, the reality of the whole world is manipulated by the corporation so that the game operates its cathartic effects on the disillusioned banker.

The TV speaks to him, he receives messages from all sides, people he does not know in the street approach him, and submerge him in a vertigo of emotions, which seriously put his life at risk. He is a highly rational man, who is challenged by the first rushes of the game: is this real? Is it pure chance? Who is manipulating reality so that I see all this?

source

The question presupposes that under the reality that thanks to science and habit we believe is fact and believe that works by cause and effect, underly other movements more subtle, more powerful, capable of altering the course of the world before our own eyes, breaking the causality. In the eyes of such a sad rational person, this behavior of reality is a miracle. And the miracle calls him, "come play with us", but the character, superb as every successful rationalist, refuses to break himself, sees it as childish, and refuses for much of the beginning of the film, until that he has no choice but to accept and play. And what a game!

Kabbalists believe that reality works with cause and effect, and dialogue with science, they do not have prejudices against medicine, physics or chemistry because they are not religious fundamentalists. The big-bang and the parallel universes are subjects that have been exposed and prefigured by the Kabbalists in Spain and Safed in the XV and XVI centuries, as in the poem The Tree of Life by Isaac Luria, the ARI.

But the Kabbalists point out that, although the laws of the universe do not change because you ask them (the miracle does not exist from the prayer), there are deep, secret laws that, if you know and adapt to it, you can foresee the results of your actions and petitions in the world with much more success than by reason and cause-effect, so it would seem that you really do miracles.

And those laws are around us, they surround us, they send us messages constantly, which can be captured by our unconscious, by our body, by our cells, and that we must bring to consciousness, to practice by studying with the right books and the right teacher, through discipline and meditation, to rise in degrees and reach a connection with those "higher spheres" (the sefirot), with those lights and with those energies.

The secret order that underlies The Game, the little god who handles Michael Douglas at will until he learns to play with the secret rules, is like the secret order of the Kabbalah.

When we face that different, surprising order, we are terrified, we deny it, but once we accept that it comes from above, that it can even be for our good, life changes, illuminates. And the end can be a reconciliation not only with that strange brother, but also with life itself, with the cosmos, with the other human beings and with all living creatures.

It happens in the movie The Game. It happens to the Kabbalists.

The World that is created while you walk

source

Have you had the strange feeling that as you walk the world changes, it is altered, it adapts to your walk and what you do? If you turn right in the corner, the world will be one way, if you turn to the left, it will be otherwise, so that each step, each word you emit, each point where you direct your gaze, becomes a transcendental act. It's as if the world were re-creating in your path.

You can call it synchronicity, following Carl G. Jung. But I assure you, there is nothing more cabalistic than that feeling, that the world is connected with every step you take. That is why I include this film within the scripts that, I believe, have a deep connection with the codes of Kabbalah.

In The Truman Show (1998) by Peter Weir, the screenwriter Andrew Niccol offers us the story of a naive character (Jim Carrey), who lives in a perfect world, which is by the way a reality show, like those who are so fashion currently.

The cameras follow him everywhere, at home, at work, when he is shopping, he has a beautiful wife, an ideal job, the world around him it's a caramel, there does not seem to be any illness, it's paradise.

However, at a certain moment the character discovers not only that they observe him, but that his life is a fiction set up to entertain others, those who are behind the cameras.

There is an army of people who go to his side, foreseeing each step, if he turns right in the corner, the group of cameras must go there hurried, and wait without him noticing. If he goes to the bathroom, the hidden cameras are activated. Even when he's going to see and interact with his beautiful and perfect wife, we feel that there is a preparation.

The character will discover that he lives in a fictional world, made of papier-mâché, and that he lives enclosed in this small cosmos, that the life created for him has been a scenario on which he must act. He reaches the limits of that scenario, breaks the fourth wall and awakens to the true reality. Everything has been a lie. He has to learn to live the real life.

Something similar happens at the end of The Game. Something very similar is felt when you study Kabbalah.

You feel that divine foresight accompanies you everywhere. According to Kabbalah, at your side constantly walk myriads of angels (disembodied energy entities), which pave the way for you, or put obstacles in your way, according to your degree of connection with the deity, to your degree of reach in the ascent towards the upper lights.

God, according to Kabbalah, watches you all the time, and foresees every step of your way, even if you change your mind and decide at the last second. The study from where they control all the steps of Jim Carrey is a transfiguration of the omniscience of the creator, according to the Kabbalists. And reach the limit, discover the edges of the scenery of this television studio we call reality, life, is the beginning of a break to continue towards other deeper and denser realities, with other rules of the game, with another way to structure life.

It is already a normal scheme in films like Maze Runner or The Hunger Games, but at the time, this film was a break, it was a pioneer (the scriptwriter had already given us another cult piece, Gattaca), in the double game between an apparent and evident reality before our eyes, and an underlying reality that is much richer, more interesting, more dynamic, for which life is worth risking.

source

The Wachowsky, the confessed Kabbalists

In one of his classes, the Argentine Kabbalist Javier Wolcoff said that he began studying Kabbalah in the United States, at the insistence of a Venezuelan friend who took him to the Kabbalah Center, the Rav Berg school where Hollywood celebrities go. In his class, there were two brother filmmakers who, he later learned, had a script written in Kabbalah keys that they were trying to sell in Hollywood.

The Wachowsky brothers sold the idea, and that was how the Matrix was born.

Much has been written about the Kabbalistic cues of The Matrix, so I will just sketch three, to conclude this post.

There is a reality that underlies appearances, and which can be accessed after a process of initiation, study and sacrifice.

This appears in the film, and is common not only to Kabbalah, but to many other spiritual disciplines throughout the world, and it would function as an archetype (Jung) or a monomite (Campbell).

The reality that underlies, is ordered and moves through a matrix of digits that could be perfectly like the Hebrew Bible (the Torah), whose letters have a numerical value, and are permuted, studied, to alter the apparent reality and act species of miracles at the level of the student's conscience, or, using the Abraham Abulafia meditation techniques, to alter the world and even create living beings, as in the legend of the Golem.

A group of Israeli mathematicians created a computer program, submitted the letters of the Torah to scrutiny, and discovered that behind the letters and words there was a secret code that allows predicting events (prophecy) and finding the characters and events of the History encrypted. As the Kabbalists of all times have said, in the Bible the entire plan of creation is encrypted, from the beginning of time to the end of the universe. That is what is recreated in the algorithms of the matrix.

The last element is the energy. Upon discovering the final reality, Neo learns that humans who do not wake up are like larvae, raised by malefic beings, that suck their energy to be able to live. If you wake up, you will stop being a larva, but if you stay happy and calm within your simulation (remember The Truman Show), your world will be perfect, a false paradise. But, why risk it? Why wake up if that will generate pain and struggle?

It is the philosophical question that I leave you. Kabbalah tells you that those who are happy with their simple life should not be awakened, you should not alter their little paradise. But there are beings like you and me, who since childhood have seen the world in a different way, who have realized the seams of this reality that is offered to us, that perhaps we have glimpsed that there is another reality beyond, more deep, that it is worth going out to look for, whether within ourselves or in the entire universe.

That deep reality, that matrix, this divine provision, is what has made me write this post, that made you read it in Steemit, and that you say "Yes, it's true, I've felt it."

Óscar Reyes-Matute
(Samuel Ibn Motot / שמואל אבן מתת)

Video recommended
The Game, trailer