Matrix OR Bhagvad Geeta? Belief and Choice!

The lesser, non-Einstein, daft and dippy breed of men(like me) would have viewed the movie ‘The Matrix’(trilogy) for the sheer visual delight it was. But, over the years, watching it frequently, I have realised that it isn’t anything more than ‘The Bhagvad Geeta’ translated into an assortment of contemporary woes and perplexed English. Morpheus, the apt and apposite modern day Lord Krishna with Neo playing the befuddled Arjun, entailing the help of Morpheus in finding himself. However, all through the trilogy the prominence has been on two very elaborate lexis – Belief and Choice(apart from the other major preaching of Bhagvad Geeta like Karma and Moksha ).  Let’s take the two, successively.

 

Belief – Faith, Conviction, Trust, Confidence, Certainty, Idea,  Principle…These are the synonyms that will surface when you look up the Oxford dictionary for the word ‘belief’. Each of them, although seemingly very analogous, define a whole new realm of the diverse chattels a Man/Woman should have to pilot his/her living. I believe the ‘belief’ we have or develop, cannot be contributed to singled out factors like somebody’s preaching, your experience, somebody else’s experience. It is not formed just because you say something to yourself repeatedly. I believe, your ‘belief’ is a very meticulous assimilation and blend of the surfeit of transactions you go through, carried out by our super scholarly brain, in the subliminal; with you having a single deterministic accountability of letting that ensue. Your ‘belief’ is what you are, what you posses. In a nous, it stands for you, when everything else seemingly absconds leaving you amidst soreness and lament, it is your ‘belief’ that makes you stand tall. Some, however, rename that belief into ‘Faith in God’ and ‘Religion’ . I do not have any issues with that as long as it helps you fight, but please, do not put down any tenets in paper, for the generations to follow and suppress their knack of forming their own beliefs on their own. Your belief is yours, very unlike, disparate, individual. Take pride in it. Let it be that way. Only the degree of its vigour is similar or dissimilar in all of us. If your belief tells you you’re a looser, then nobody can stop you from losing. But, if it tells you that you are special, if it says you can fight there is again no stopping you. All I was trying to suggest through all this mystified  natter was to say  ‘Believe in what you believe!’…Don’t let any other circumstance or situation impede it.

 

Now, Choice – Alternative, Preference, Variety… Again, very akin terms having a utterly different connotations depending upon the perception of your belief. If your ‘belief’ is a cause the ‘choice’ you make is its effect. If your belief tells you something is wrong, the choice of acting in opposition to it or standing and merely scrutinizing is the effect of how strapping the ‘belief’ is. We may not comprehend this fact, but intuitively all the choices we make are the upshot of our beliefs. We only need to understand the choice we make and how does it adhere to our beliefs or non-beliefs. If today I am an Engineer/Doctor/Service Men/Artist, how and when did I make the choice of becoming so, and most vitally Why did I make the choice. Every time we make a choice, and do no question the rationale for making that choice, the belief in the milieu which made us make that choice wanes. Choices are in attendance at every moment, some for a lesser cause, some very deterministic. We just need to understand the causality.

But again, while this is being discussed, we may come to a conjecture which in itself is a corollary of Faith and the choices we make out of ‘free will’. That will be taken up in a separate chapter, as I feel I have made this quite flummoxing right now.

I can recall this famous quote by Anonymous at this moment which is quite befitting for the explanation I was trying to make:

I chose and my world was shaken.
So what?
The choice may have been mistaken;
the choosing was not.
You have to move on.