The more we think about it, the more we become convinced that Alice did not choose to follow the white rabbit in Lewis Carroll's classic, Alice’s adventures in Wonderland. The white rabbit allowed itself to be chosen. He seduced the curious Alice, checking the time. It was not the fact that he was speaking loudly and alone, shouting, nor that he was wearing a vest or elegant gloves, what powerfully caught the attention of the girl who was bored of “…having nothing to do”, it was the seductive indifference with which he showed himself. The most interesting thing is what he shouts: “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!”. Ask, answer, affirm and reaffirm. Time flies, we often say. Time is money, we also acknowledge that. The white rabbit knows this, and so he runs and jumps into its burrow.

Once she has taken the bait, Alice follows him and launches forward without thinking, on time and without haste, looking around and ruminating as she falls through the deep burrow that will take an unchained Alice on a magical journey within herself. She will have an encounter with the wonders that live inside her, the wonders that she spontaneously imagines, her unconscious creativity has no limit. In the end, it is a journey where she discovers herself little by little. Follow the advice that the Oracle of Delphi once left for us, in Greece, written at the entrance to the temple of the god Apollo, around the 4th century BC: “know yourself”.

This emblematic message is an old human aspiration that is still valid. Metaphors about an inner journey of self-discovery are all around us. A very recent and massively popular example is The Matrix, a franchise created by the Wachowski sisters. Winner of four Academy Awards (Oscars); for best film editing, best sound, best sound editing and best visual effects in its first entry; It produced several sequels that conceptually complement and further expand upon the original.

In the first Matrix film, the main character Thomas Anderson, alias "Neo", played by Keanu Reeves, is awakened by the answer to a search he had started on his computer. He was trying to find Morpheus, the revolutionary leader of those who refused to accept the Matrix, a simulation of the world in its “end of the 20th century of Humanity” version. A virtual reality, which seeks to lull and keep all human beings immersed in a deep sleep to hide reality from them: that their energy is extracted in order to sustain the Artificial Intelligence machinery that controls them.

Although the plot of the story might seem basic or simplistic, authors such as Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson have recognized that it is scientifically possible for us to produce energy as if we were human batteries. Deep down, the film raises a question much more complex: in some way, do we live consciously or not, distant from our reality, constantly denying what surrounds us—including the people close to us—and with it, denying ourselves. Out of the four films in the saga, I want to pick only a few scenes, which concentrate on the true message of the story, and which have been widely analyzed by many authors.

These scenes are loaded with symbols and signs that point in one direction: doubt and search. Initially, we must be dissatisfied with what we have been told or taught, we must question this and more importantly, constantly question ourselves. Doubt is the beginning. The film begins with Neo’s search. What he seeks is not as important as the reason as to why he does it. Neo lives with a worry, his life is not entirely real nor does he own it; he knows it, feels it, and senses it. Neo's awakening occurs in the film, paradoxically, as Alice’s does when she removes her chains; she does so by following the white rabbit.

In the details of the scene, Neo has fallen asleep listening to Dissolved Girl by Massive Attack, while his computer was solving the search for Morpheus, which he himself had programmed. It is curious that the film exploits the metaphor that in order to find Morpheus, we must fall asleep. The question we must immediately ask ourselves is whether we should also stay in his arms, in the arms of Morpheus, of course; to get our response.

The computer finally responds: “Wake up, Neo…”. An image that we will inevitably return to at the end of the first film, with the famous song by Rage Against the Machine, which bears the same name: Wake up. In summary, from the opening images of the film, the first big message of the film is clear and powerful: we must wake up from the lethargy in which we find ourselves.

Then comes the second revelation: “The Matrix has you…”. Someone or something imprisons, controls, or directs us. The complex revelation is explored throughout the saga, but Neo confirms that something is not right in his life. Maybe his life is not his. The doubt is ratified. And finally, before a: “Knock, knock, Neo”, he receives an invitation, an instruction, or a request: “Follow the white rabbit”. But could it have been an order? The eternal conflict between free will and determinism will be present throughout history. Are we completely free?

When he knocks on the door, Neo's customers, who make “Knock, knock, Neo” disruptive and default, pay him and apologize for being two hours late. To make up for it, they invite him to go out with them. Neo doesn't feel like it, but he changes his mind when he sees the white rabbit tattoo on one of the girls' back. Should we pay attention to the coincidences of life? Or is it that these coincidences do not exist as such? Neo decides to follow his “instinct” and accompanies them, but; he had previously taken the disk for the client from a secret compartment inside a book titled Simulacra and Simulation and placed the money inside it.

This book is not simply his personal safe box or the hidden place for the cybernetically addictive products that Neo makes and sells to his illegal clients. The book: Simulacra and Simulation by French philosopher Jean Baudrilland, is a sharp analysis of postmodern society, questioning the impact that media and Pop culture have on our lives. The book was a required reading for the film's lead actors prior to filming. The book is an invitation to the concept of “The Desert of the Real.”

It is evident that simulation surrounds us, according to the author of the book. Politicians, advertising, and the media manipulated with fake news constantly use it to communicate ideas and messages. An eternal cascade of codes of signs and symbols, according to Baudrilland. I add an example in the learning process also naturally loaded with simulations: since we are children, we learn to speak by copying our peers in the sounds and movements of our lips and mouth that we produce. In some way, babies' babbling is an imitation that aims to get closer to their perception of reality, which is nothing more than: the way human beings speak. But they never reach that alleged reality, since the way they end up speaking, as an adult, is totally different from the way the people they originally used as models speak. The reality of how the baby speaks when they complete their learning is unique and characteristic. It doesn't look like anyone else's. And that leads us to a big question, when learning and educating ourselves, do we end up being ourselves, imitating others by learning from them, or are we just a copy of them?

Excessive consumerism is a consequence of this, for Baudrilland. The supposed abundance and the Welfare State is a simulation of reality, which shows that such abundance does not exist or only exists for some, it is partial. The signs encode the simulation for us. We buy bottled water to drink it, since we do not recognize the drinking water that comes out of the pipe or tap as real. That's a fabricated reality, for example. It has been said that soon, we will recognize the air we breathe as a product. The simulation will be consummated when we buy it. In the future, will we work to breathe? Or, worse yet, are we already doing it?

We see it with the constant bombardment of advertising for products or services, tangible, or intangible, and how we recognize ourselves in need of them. Baudrilland says that today we reflect all these simulations as if we ourselves were screens of that pseudo-reality. A clear, paradoxical contradiction of the love that we have developed for screens and the simulated life that we live on social networks, television; in the ideology, or art that we follow, in the photos and avatars of the day and the use we give to other technologies: we live in a hyperreality. Culture is our reflection of reality.

The film mirrors this book so precisely that on the same page where the actor Keanu Reeves opens the book to remove the disc, the name of the title of the last chapter can be seen: ‘‘On Nihilism”. Here, the author warns us that we should not fall into nihilism or total denial of simulacra and hyperreality. Religious faith, spirituality in difficult times or the deterrent effect that a country produces by maintaining an army with a nuclear arsenal in the face of another that threatens, can be interesting simulations for the author to analyze. The reality is that you do not have to prepare for war when you seek peace. That need is another simulation sown throughout the centuries. We live in permanent simulation.

The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek in several of his accessible and interesting analyses has explored the conflict between reality and unreality that we experience and the acceptance of one or the other depending on how we live. Just to cite two examples: he focuses on cinema and the fabrication of fantasies and desires that we build from “what we see”, in The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema 1, 2 and 3 from 2006, and he tackles the ideology behind politics, marketing and sales strategies in advertising in The Pervert's Guide to Ideology from 2012.

In the second scene that I want to discuss from the first Matrix movie, it becomes clear to what extent the process of accepting The Matrix can be conscious or not. When Neo is finally in front of Morpheus, the latter offers the former the option to choose between discovering the truth of reality or continuing to live blissfully dreaming. He does it with a simple binary choice: the Blue Pill, the story ends and he will wake up in his bed believing what he wants to believe and probably that everything has been a dream; or the Red Pill, “stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes…”, says Morpheus, wonderfully brought to life by Laurence Fishburne.In the end, before Neo's choice, Morpheus insists and warns him: "Remember, all I am offering is The Truth, nothing more..."

Neo leans towards the Red Pill and the film saga becomes a series of events that make Neo constantly doubt his condition. However, he is "The Chosen One", who must save the 1% of the population who refuse to accept The Matrix. It turns out that 99% of humanity does accept, unconsciously, the program that produces the dreams they perceive as reality, but they do not seek to wake up, nor do they dream in an uncomfortable way, as happened to Neo. When he says this, “The Architect”, the father of The Matrix, perhaps is addressing us at the same time. In which of the two groups would we place ourselves?

Other human beings even consciously accept The Matrix, as happens to Cypher, played by Joe Pantoliano, who betrays the Resistance by handing over Morpheus, Neo, and Trinity, played by Carrie-Annie Moss. She represents Neo's true unconditional love, the love that always believes in him, the love that does not doubt or question, the love that answers even if there are no questions left, even in that extreme moment, the moment in which we accept the simulation of failure. Where there is love, defeat has no place. Trinity is a fundamental part of the answer.

Cypher, on the other hand, is the one who warns Neo, telling him in reference to be returning to The Matrix: “…It means: buckle your seatbelt Dorothy, because Kansas is going bye-bye,” in reference to the giant tornado described in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Frank Baum. Cypher delivers them to Agent Smith, representative of the Artificial Intelligence and creators of The Matrix, masterfully portrayed by Hugo Weaving. Cypher also asks not to remember anything when he is reinserted as someone famous in The Matrix. Upon negotiating his betrayal, Cypher states: "Ignorance is bliss."

The story of The Matrix is ​​a classic “hero's journey”, as mythologized by Joseph Campbell. But I think it was inspired in part by the episode “Dreams for Sale” of the 1985 television series, The New Twilight Zone, a continuation of the original from 1959, a pioneering entry in fiction and which remained on the air in different versions during 11 seasons and 285 episodes. Written by Joe Cannon, Meg Foster, the protagonist, lives a dream life with her family and is abruptly awakened by glitches, repetitions, and short circuits in the sequence. In some way, The Matrix explains the same concept differently but similarly. Meg, upon opening her eyes, faces the reality of being in a chamber with thousands of human beings, one next to the other, all asleep, consuming dreams of life like her life. Suddenly, her reality becomes her waking nightmare. Immediately, she is attended to by the maintenance staff who repair her bed, so she can continue “living” her dream for the remaining 6 minutes she has left of the Virtual Reality she hired from the seller. Upon returning to that dream, her bed catches fire and is irreparably damaged, leaving the woman trapped in her dream forever and believing that what she experienced when she woke up was a dream.

A topic that has been discussed throughout History. We dream while asleep or awake. We are living a real life or a fictitious one that someone has created for us or by ourselves. In the brilliant play of 1635 Life is a Dream, by the Spanish writer Pedro Calderón de la Barca, these questions had already been raised. In it, Sigismund has been a prisoner since he was a child in medieval Poland. It turns out that he had been locked in a tower by his own father, King Basil, to prevent him from being recognized as heir, since when he was born it was foretold that he would be a terrible monarch, ruthless and cruel to the people. Sigismund, who is unaware of all this, has believed all his life that his crime was "being born". When he reaches adulthood, his father decides to try him as regent and, to do so, he sedates him into unconsciousness with a sleeping potion. The King's plan is that when Sigismund wakes up, he is told that he is the King and that everything that had happened to him was a dream. When Sigismund wakes up and hears this, he is in doubt, but he finally believes it, since the entire court acts like this was so. Sigismund behaves cruelly and ruthlessly with the court as well as with his father, the true King. Basil later threatens that he can put him to sleep again and make him believe that his short reign had been a dream too.

Sigismund is locked up again and once more believes that his precarious reign was a dream. He reflects on what has happened while in prison and he comes to understand that he must be a good person and utters:

You’re right, ... My fierce nature must be restrained. I’ve seen the effect now, myself, and it is a tyrannical force. I only wish I had the chance to try it again, this time, with knowledge. Patience. Well, maybe when I dream again, I’ll have the chance. The king dreams that he’s king, and lives in that deception, giving orders, making decisions, and that acclaim, which he receives as a loan, is written on the wind and changed into ashes by death. Perhaps I’m dreaming that I’m here, laden with these shackles, as I dreamt that I found myself in another, more flattering position. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a fiction. Our greatest good is but small... for all of life is a dream... even dreams are dreams.”

Sigismund is finally freed to reign Poland, albeit confused since he no longer distinguishes what is real from what is fictitious, but he accepts his duty and just in case his life is a dream, he reigns with justice and mercy, forgiving those who wronged him. The Polish people admire King Sigismund, and the play acknowledges that human happiness passes by as fast as a dream, and thus we must make it worthwhile.

It is evident that The Matrix and Life is a Dream are modern representations of the popular Allegory of the Cave described by Plato in The Republic. In the case of The Matrix, it has been identified by practically all critics and analysts of the film, as such. Prisoners in an underground cavern can only see the shadows of figures cast on the wall by the light of the fire. The prisoners have been there for so many years that they understand and accept that those shadowy figures are the only reality they know. When one of the prisoners frees himself and reaches the surface, his eyes are hurt by the radiant sunlight. Discovering the truth hurts. As he adapts, he begins to see the reality outside and understands that the shadows he saw in the cave were not reality but only a manipulation.

The former prisoner, now free in almost every way, immediately returns to the cave, to the darkness. He intends to inform the rest of his companions who are still prisoners of what he has learned from his experience. When they hear him, some believe him, but many mock him and call him crazy or a liar. In fact, the majority do not want to be freed and prefer to remain chained to their chosen and fictitious reality. Sunlight represents knowledge. It is no coincidence that birth is some kind of illumination. The one who acquires wisdom naturally wants to share it, otherwise he has only been informed. As Pablo Neruda recognized: “I was born to be born”. People who lack knowledge, also ignore that they need it.

Following the white rabbit is the call, beckoning or opportunity, however we want to see it, to begin that inner journey of meditation and self-knowledge, mystical, creative, deep, and robust in evidence and science, which can free us. Follow the white rabbit or not, it is always our choice. With the light of knowledge, fear dwindles. Without fear, we will have the opportunity to be happy. Following the white rabbit is a way to be free via achieving wisdom. Don't forget to seize the opportunity when it presents itself…

And it presents itself all the time.

Time is scarce.

Follow the white rabbit.