“Simulation Theory” gives an AI twist on “The Matrix” to ideas that mystics and spiritual scholars have expressed for hundreds of years.

The most discussed film from the last yr of the twentieth century says: “The Matrix“A pc hacker named Neo discovers that the world during which he lives and works just isn’t real. It is a virtual reality created by artificial intelligence.

At the time, the concept seemed science fiction. However, within the years since, this idea has evolved into an increasingly credible theory: “the simulation hypothesis.” This theory assumes that creatures like Neo are characters inside a computer-generated simulation – or as I describe it my book 2025a massively multiplayer video game. In this hypothesis, the physical world around us is definitely like this Part of a virtual reality.

Simulation theory raises such questions once reserved for mystics and spiritual scholars: Why are we here? Is there more to reality than we are able to see? Is there a creator? Are we greater than our physical body?

The science and technology could also be modern, but in some ways this hypothesis reflects ideas which were explored in faith traditions for hundreds of years.

Live in a game?

Simulation theory became popular through the work from Philosopher Nick Bostromparticularly an article he published in 2003. The basic argument goes like this: As technology continues to enhance, humans will have the option to create virtual worlds which might be indistinguishable from physical reality and AI characters which might be indistinguishable from biological beings. This suggests that it is feasible that a more advanced civilization has already reached this point – and that we’re in certainly one of their simulations.

Physicist, mathematicianTechnologists and computer scientists have jumped into the sport. Opinions span a wide selection of probabilities. Columbia University astronomer David Kipping tried it Evaluate the opportunities We live in a simulation and got here to about 50/50. Some thinkers doubt that the query may even be answered, while others consider the speculation to be inconceivable – similar to: Paper 2025 on the grounds that no purely algorithmic system can explain the universe.

The simulation hypothesis doesn’t should mean that the people within the simulation are only soulless, calculated AI in another person's creation. In The Matrix, for instance, although Neo and other humans were characters throughout the simulation, in addition they existed outside of the virtual world.

Higher intelligence

Simulation theory proposes that there may be an intelligence greater than our own that exists beyond the physical world and could have created our universe – reflecting the core beliefs of many spiritual traditions. Transhumanist philosopher David Pearce actually called Bostrom's argument “the primary interesting one.” Argument for the existence of a creator in 2000 years.”

For example, the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all worship a single creator. The Bible Book of Genesis describes how God creates the world in six days, and there may be the same story within the Koran. According to those scriptures, God simply spoke and it happened.

Similarly, the simulation hypothesis argues that the world was created by commands – that’s, by code. Today, AI users issue verbal prompts to robotically create realistic images and videos which might be almost indistinguishable from real people and landscapes.

In fact, users may even prompt AI programs to create characters that insist they usually are not virtual, like some have done in the previous couple of months – a phenomenon called “immediate theory”..”

In August 2025, Google has released Genie 3which allows users to create realistic-looking worlds that they will navigate like in a video game. In the past, these virtual worlds needed to be created by hand by teams of designers, which limited their size and complexity. Nowadays, as AI advances, the concept that massive virtual worlds might be created that appear as large as our own isn’t any longer considered such a fantasy.

body and soul

A second way during which modern simulation theory reflects traditional religions is the concept of ​​the connection between soul and body.

A version of the hypothesis – what I call the RPG or “role playing” version – suggests simulation is sort of a multiplayer video game. Each character in the sport represents the external player who controls them, meaning that the characters show some free will.

The term for such a personality, an “avatar,” has its roots in Sanskrit. the language of many Hindu, Buddhist and Jain texts. In Hinduism, an “avatar” refers back to the incarnation of a divine being in the shape of a human body.

The idea of ​​incarnation, or the entry of a soul right into a body, is one of the vital mysterious elements of many spiritual traditions. The hadiths – the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad – describe the event of an unborn child and describe a moment when “the soul is breathed into him.” Also the Bible uses the metaphor of breath to explain the incarnation: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the bottom, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”

Another common metaphor is that the soul puts on the body, just because the body puts on clothes. Rumi, whose poems often cope with mystical Sufi themes, compared the body to a bit of clothing that might be removed or modified.

An identical metaphor was utilized in the Bhagavad Gitaa Hindu scripture: “Just as one throws away used clothes and puts on other clothes which might be latest, so the self throws off its used bodies and puts on others which might be latest.”

If we imagine the soul as a player in a virtual reality game and the body as merely its inner character that has forgotten the skin world, then the parallels between religion and simulation theory develop into clear. The game may end or the character may die, however the player continues to exist outside of the sport. Some religions teach that every soul could be reincarnated and has many lives – as if the player were playing the sport over and yet again, playing many alternative characters.

Embedded in a dream

There can be a good more fundamental way during which simulation theory reflects some religious teachings: the concept that the physical world just isn’t real, or that not the whole lot that belongs to reality is real.

This is obvious within the Hindu and Buddhist traditions, where the world is described as the results of “Maya,” or an illusion. This is commonly expressed through the metaphor that the world is sort of a dream from which one can awaken. In fact, a preferred definition of the term “Buddha” is someone who’s “woke up.”

The “Samadhiraja Sutra” or “King of the Samadhi Sutra“, teaches, for instance:

Know that each one things are like this:
A mirage, a cloud castle,
A dream, an apparition,
Without essence, but with qualities which might be price seeing.

Paramahansa Yoganandaa Hindu monk who died in 1952 wrote “Autobiography of a Yogi,” which introduced meditation and yoga to many within the West. He tried to clarify the concept of ​​“Maya,” often translated as “illusion,” and compared people’s perception of physical reality to actors who appear in a movie – relatively latest technology within the Twenties when he got here from India to settle within the United States.

As I wrote my book about Yogananda, published in 2023If the famous swami were alive today, he might update the metaphor to benefit from today's technology: video games.

In a critical scene in The Matrix, Neo's mentor tells Morpheus – named after the Greek god of dreams – that he lived in a dream world. The simulation hypothesis also suggests that individuals could also be living in a dream world, albeit a virtual one, created and maintained by AI.

Maybe the one response is to repeat Neo and say: Whoa.