The Matrix Mythology – The Conscious And Subconscious Mind

Stories, dreams and your mind are all the same thing. Mythologist, Joseph Campbell, said that myths are public dreams. The Matrix is a modern myth.

Spoilers alert

The Matrix is an inspirational story – it has many elements that interest me and there is much in the story and how it is told that tells us about the mind. A primary theme of this story is the relationship between the conscious and subconscious mind.

Joseph Campbell teaches us that all stories are metaphors that instruct us about facing change in life. In the film, Neo gets a call to adventure and in following this call outside the parameters of familiarity he wakes up to an outside threat which means his life cannot continue as it is. Clues start to come to him, laying a trail to someone who literally wakes him up in the real world so that he realises that the world he has been living in was not real.

All this fits the world of the story just fine, but how does it fit in our world? You’ve got two key parts of your mind – your conscious and subconscious. The conscious mind just deals with the outside world and its capabilities are limited. The key role of the subconscious mind is to construct your inner world and maintain the status quo – to keep everything ticking along safely. When something happens in your external world, sometimes the only way to deal with it is to change your inner world in some way. In The Matrix, the contented part of Neo’s mind starts to wake up to the fact that something needs to change. In order to do that he surfaces into the real world to learn what the threat is and to give him some idea of what needs to change inside.

This is unusual for a fantasy story – Joseph Campbell points out that often the hero’s journey represents the ego’s journey down into the subconscious to face fears and find resources that it needs to bring back to the conscious world and conquer adversity. I feel The Matrix turns this on its head somewhat.

When life demands that you change, the conscious mind cannot do so without the subconscious mind acknowledging the fact. The subconscious needs to ‘surface’ to become aware of the outside world and accept the change.

When Neo awakes in the world of the real he has to learn many things and when he is ready he goes back into the Matrix – back into the subconscious – to find resources that he needs to deal with the change required in the conscious realm.

When he is in the matrix, he discovers abilities that help him face the threat –which is the machines digging towards Zion. Things must change in his inner world so that he can face the machines in his external world, but there is much resistance to that change when he is in the matrix. The resistance takes the form of agents.

Psychiatrist, Carl Jung, said everyone in a dream is you, and Joseph Campbell said the same about stories. While enjoying a story, you are the hero and every other character represents a different part of you. The agents are fear. As I said the role of the subconscious is to maintain the status quo, and fear is an agent of the subconscious to keep you in your comfort zone, to keep you from changing, to keep you from facing unnecessary risk. You have to defeat that fear in order to face life and to change and grow in the real world.

What you learn overcoming that fear is what you need to learn in order to face the change in the outside world. Neo learns all sorts of tricks in the matrix because the subconscious realm has no restrictions – you can do whatever you want in your mind and that can give you new strength and capabilities in the conscious realm which explains the things that Neo starts to be able to do even when he is not in The Matrix. Not that I am saying you can move things with your mind or fly, but if you can learn how to overcome your fear in your inner world, fear will not rule you in your external world. It’s all about imagination at the end of the day so notice what stories are telling you.

My novel, I Am You is only like The Matrix in that there are two worlds – The Realm Of Life and The Realm Of Death and what main character, Matt, learns in the Realm of Death helps him solve a problem in The Realm Of Life. So like The Matrix, the story is built on a metaphor for the conscious and subconscious mind.