You're here because you know something. What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Neo: The Matrix.

Morpheus: Do you want to know what it is?

Neo: Yes.

Morpheus: The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work… when you go to church… when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

Neo: What truth?

Morpheus: [leans in closer to Neo] That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind.

Simulated Reality

Holodeck

The Experience Machine 

 

The Telesterion

 A great hall in Eleusis, Telesterion ("Initiation Hall" from Gr. τελείω, to complete, to fulfill, to consecrate, to initiate) was one of the primary centers of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Devoted to Demeter and Persephone, these initiation ceremonies were the most sacred and ancient of all the religious rites celebrated in Greece.

  

A world within the world. Stories within the story.

Truman Burbank is the unsuspecting star of The Truman Show, a reality television program in which his entire life, since before birth, is filmed by thousands of hidden cameras, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and broadcast live around the world. The show's creator and executive producer Christof is able to capture Truman's real emotion and human behavior when put in certain situations. Truman's hometown of Seahaven is a complete set built under a giant arcological dome in the Los Angeles area. 

Simulated reality is a theme that pre-dates science fiction. In Medieval and Renaissance religious theater, the concept of the "world as theater" is frequent. In the United States the science fiction/action media franchise that began with the 1999 film, The Matrix, features characters who are mostly unaware that they are living in a simulated reality.^[25][26] Simulated reality in fiction has been explored by many authors, game designers, and film directors. It is a prominent theme in the works of Philip K. Dick."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_reality

MAYA 
:  the sense-world of manifold phenomena held in Vedanta to conceal the unity of absolute being; broadly ILLUSION

noun, Hinduism.

1.

the power, as of a god, to produce illusions.

2.

the production of an illusion.

3.

(in Vedantic philosophy) the illusion of the reality of sensory experience and of the experienced qualities and attributes of oneself.

4. (initial capital letter). Also called Mahamaya. a goddess personifying the power that creates phenomena.


ILLUSION
:  

noun, Hinduism.

1.

the power, as of a god, to produce illusions.

2.

the production of an illusion.

3.

(in Vedantic philosophy) the illusion of the reality of sensory experience and of the experienced qualities and attributes of oneself.

4. (initial capital letter). Also called Mahamaya. a goddess personifying the power that creates phenomena

Illusion/Eleusion

Eleusis
:  Town, with ruins of an ancient city, eastern Greece. Famous as the site of the Eleusinian Mysteries, it is about 14 mi (23 km) west of Athens. It was independent until the 7th century BC, when Athens annexed the city and made the Eleusinian Mysteries a major Athenian religious festival. The Gothic leader Alaric destroyed Eleusis in AD 395. Deserted until the 18th century, it was revived as the modern town of Eleusis (Greek Lepsina), now a suburb of Athens. Some of the ruins have been excavated, including the Hall of Initiation, which dates back some 3,000 years to late Mycenaean times.

ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES

 The Eleusinian Mysteries (Greek: Ἐλευσίνια Μυστήρια) were initiation ceremonies held every year for the cult of Demeter and Persephone based at Eleusis in ancient Greece.They are the "most famous of the secret religious rites of ancient Greece.


" The mysteries represented the myth of the abduction of Persephone from her mother Demeter by the king of the underworld Hades, in a cycle with three phases, the "descent" (loss), the "search" and the "ascent", with the main theme the "ascent" of Persephone and the reunion with her mother."

1. The Descent (Loss) - The idea of Birth, emerging from the womb into the Matrix (The Underworld)
Loss of Memory - you become a blank slate.  Forget that you are an immortal being with powers of manifestation.

I also think of it as The Sacrifice. You know how people were always having to make a sacrifice of some sort of meat (symbolic of the good stuff, knowledge) to the gods?

2. The Search -  Trying to navigate and understand  the World you seem to be inhabiting, playing the game, school, work, relationships, etc...
 Why am I here? Society, Morality, Religion, Science, and Philosophy,

3. The Ascent - The lifting of the veil, Revelation, Remembrance,  Ah ha.
Winning the Game.  Usually requires a "death" experience first but it's not a necessity. 



To participate in these mysteries one had to swear a vow of secrecy.
Four categories of people participated in the Eleusinian Mysteries:

1. Priests, priestesses, and hierophants.
2. Initiates, undergoing the ceremony for the first time.
3. Others who had already participated at least once*. They were eligible for the fourth category. 

*(Déjà vu is a French expression that literally translates into “already seen”. Contrary to what the name says, Déjà vu is an intriguing feeling and not exactly a visual memory. Statistics show that almost 70 percent of people experience some sort of Déjà vu, at least once in their lifetime. Those who have experienced the feeling describe it as “an overwhelming sense of familiarity with something that shouldn't be familiar at all”.)

1. Those who had attained épopteia (Greek: ἐποπτεία) (English: "contemplation"), who had learned the secrets of the greatest mysteries of Demeter. 

Demeter = Mother Nature,  The Fertility Goddess. 

The One Who Makes the Seeds (Ideas, Thoughts) Grow (Materialize).

Meter = Matter

Our opponent in this game/reality show. The one who is always listening and creating what you expect to get. 

What do you want to happen today?  Miracles? Wonderful surprises and fun experiences? Or do you believe that's just wishful thinking 'cause you're only going to get another day older and deeper in debt?

 What do you believe is possible?

"But Jesus said, "Let the children come to me. Don't stop them! For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like these children."
~Matthew 19:14



 

Anamnesis

an·am·ne·sis

ˌanəmˈnēsis/

noun

      recollection, in particular.

the remembering of things from a supposed previous existence (often used with reference to Platonic philosophy).

 

Forgetting to Forget

 

Loss of amnesia

Lifting of the veil

Revelation 

 

 

 αναμνησις

 

• According to Socrates and Plato, the most important forms of knowledge come not from instruction, but by a re-awakening of already existing dormant or latent knowledge. This is called anamnesis (an- = un-, amnesis = forgetting, as in amnesia; ).
• Anamnesis comes in the form of "aha!" experiences -- insights, moments of unusual clarity, peak experiences

 

 http://www.john-uebersax.com/plato/words/anamnesis.htm

 

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts.

As You Like It,  Act II, Scene VII
Shakespeare