Virtual Reality Bondage: Blue vs. Red Pill Matrix Dilemma
Posted by MadPole on 18th October 2007
[...] you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, born inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind.
–Morpheus
We can live in our thoughts, we can live our thoughts, we can be our thoughts, caught up in dramas generated by our minds, thinking, analysing, obsessing, re-living, agonizing, shortly: digesting the thought food supplied to us by our brain - that’s the Blue Pill, Virtual Reality, Bondage we were all born into.
Luckily, as creatures equipped with consciousness, we also possess a seemingly hidden from us ability to distance ourselves from our thoughts, ability to allow them to exist without actually us paying too much attention to them, without us acting upon them, without us reacting to them - that’s the Red Pill, Quantum Reality, being the Observer of the Experiment called “life” rather than laboratory animal being experimented on by our very own mind.
The choice is ours but it is important to consider Morpheus’ words here:
I didn’t say it would be easy, Neo. I just said it would be the truth
–Morpheus
Those words are absolutely critical: many of us bravely decided to take the Red Pill, but in a wrong arrogant belief that it would somehow give us an advantage, improve quality of our lives, enable us to have more control over Virtual Reality we have to deal with every day, free us from the bondage we were born into. What Morpheus is trying to emphasise then, and many of us had a pleasure of painfully learning that lesson themselves, is that taking the Red Pill does not automatically “make things better” - it is often, in fact, that taking the Red Pill makes things seemingly worse, to start with anyway - so it is vital that we understand our choice and the reasons behind it if we are determined to stand by it.
Why would anybody want to take the Red Pill then? Because, IMHO, that is the only choice we have, even though Blue Pill not only sounds more attractive, but also seems to make much more sense.
The reason why Blue Pill does not represent any choice is simple:
“everything we pay attention to grows”
If we chose to live our thoughts, listen to them, pay respect and cultivate them, effectively becoming their slaves - then they will just grow larger, hungrier, more demanding, and haunting, knowing that we have become dependant on them, until we will get totally trapped in them, unable to escape, stuck in a Virtual World of our own anguish which, over time, will become more and more unbearable, a living Hell.
Blue Pill is like any drug addiction - sooner or later it will start to bring in increasing misery, agony and suffering - its original purpose and attraction lost. Our investment in Blue Pill will cease to pay off and our losses will just keep mounting up over time.
The reason why Red Pill is the only choice is simple, for the very same reason:
“everything we pay attention to grows”
If we stop paying attention to our thoughts so deeply and passionately, particularly to unwanted ones, they will stop growing and slowly start to wither away, for they won’t feel needed anymore and there won’t be anything they can cling, hang on to. Our investment in Red Pill will start to pay off and our profits will just keep mounting up over time.
But the choice of becoming an Observer is not an easy one - some parts of us will still be deeply locked in Virtual Reality Bondage and therefore we will have to maintain the state of “dual reality” - being an Observer as well as a person trapped in his/her own Virtual Reality. And how will we know which is which?
One also has to accept the fact that one will never be able to fully free oneself from the Blue Pill Birth Bondage - Red Pill is not an absolute, guaranteed solution - it is an “every little helps” remedy.
Being a Prisoner of one’s own thoughts is a Living Hell
Being an Observer of one’s own thoughts is a Good Laugh
One single negative thought we managed to eradicate from our mind is one single improvement in quality of our lives, and therefore lives of others and the Universe as a whole. “Old habits die hard” implies that any newly learnt habit becomes more and more permanent over time. “Practise makes it permanent” as they say.
Harmony naturally results in a deep silence, joy, delight.
Conflict results in anxiety, anguish, stress, tension.
The EGO is nothing but all the tensions that you have created around
yourself.–Osho
Posted in Journey, Movie Reviews, Thoughts about Thoughts | 1 Comment »



