The Adjustment Bureau

In the sci-fi movie “The Adjustment Bureau”, Matt Damon plays a politician who strays from ‘The Plan’, a kind of divine plan, so is pursued by angelic beings who try to put him back on track. He is told that ‘Free Will’ is just an illusion ,and that you can’t outrun your destiny. To me, this hints of ‘the Rebel’ who I think is trying to escape its karma using the human race to take on board its’ karmic debts. I do think that we have free will, but not to escape karma forever.

The movie is based on a short story, “Adjustment Team” (1954) by sci-fi legend Philip K. Dick, who believed that humans are manipulated by outside forces.

Matt Damon’s surname sounds like “Demon” or “Daemon”, appropriately enough, because his most well-known roles are maverick or criminal characters. In “Dogma”, he plays LOKI, a fallen angel trying to get back into heaven.

As Tom Ripley he is an orphan who becomes a con-artist. No parents=no God?

As Will Hunting he is a self-taught genius with a photographic memory.

As Jason Bourne he is a lone agent with severe amnesia. IMO, the Rebel’s Great Work involves us humans having little or no memory of who we are and why we exist. We are the ‘Lotus eaters’ of Greek legend who are blissfully forgetful. Amnesia and confused identity feature in the sci-fi movie “Total Recall”, based on another P. K. Dick novel.

The lotus flower is also associated with Buddha, who sits on one and who wants to get rid of his karma. The lotus flower floats on water, as do the following:
Noah’s ark; the Spirit of God; Aten on his mound; the baby Moses in his basket; Jesus walking on water; the lily that floats on water and that Jesus asks us to consider. Moses parts the Red sea (or sea of reeds) to escape his captors.

This floating above water, IMO, signifies the Rebel detaching from karma/God/time. Buddha is protected from rain by a snake. A snake/serpent initiates Adam and Eve’s expulsion by God from the Garden of Eden. Egyptian pharaohs wanting immortality are pictured with snakes on their heads or coming out of their ‘3rd eye’ area on the forehead. The serpent Satan is depicted wrapped around both a tree in the Garden of Eden, and the T-shaped cross upon which Jesus is crucified.

Immortality is to live without the metaphorical ‘death’ and change that karma brings.

Matt Damon plays another lone character in the film “The Martian” (2015), about a NASA astronaut who is stranded alone on the planet Mars, initially unable to contact Earth and presumed dead. The Rebel is also isolated from the rest of Creation – ‘exiled from God’ you might say. ET the extraterrestrial is also stranded from his home planet.

The mistaken belief that the astronaut is dead is a recurring theme in fictional books/films/TV, e.g. James Bond; the Incredible Hulk; Jesus; Voldemort; Sleeping Beauty; Snow White; et al. The Incredible Hulk story is a variation of the Jekyll-and-Hyde theme (good and evil separated; The ‘tree of good and evil’).

Mars doesn’t have plants, so the astronaut has to improvise and be resourceful in order to survive. Likewise, the Rebel has to rely on its own inner resources in order to maintain its karma-less, god-less existence. It survives by recycling its karma to create the physical fabric of this universe.