First version: 2026-08-23
Last updated: 2026-08-23
I have recently been doing research on something that I have been calling the brain hemisphere language. The brain hemisphere language is a language that I suspect might exist that the right brain hemisphere might be using to insert hidden messages in speech that is produced by the left brain hemisphere in Broca's area, without the person who is speaking being consciously aware that the messages are being inserted. The language is based on metaphors, which is an aspect of language that the right brain hemisphere appears to be specialized in, and I suspect that it results in the right brain hemisphere being able to insert messages in speech that are usually only understood by the right brain hemisphere of the person listening to or reading the speech.
As part of this research, and because I enjoy the movies, I decided to watch the movie The Matrix and its sequels, and I discovered that these movies appear to have a lot of examples of the use of the language, which make them good movies to watch in under to try to understand some of the words that seem like they might be commonly used as part of the language. On this page I will try to detail the examples that I have noticed.
This page is currently incomplete, and I plan to make additional updates.
The Matrix is one of my favourite movies of all time. I have a lot of thoughts about this movie, and it is difficult for me to discuss the movie without giving away important plot points, so if you have not seen it I recommend watching it before you read my description.
The lead character in the movie is named Neo, and the movie tells the story of how he learns that he lives in a computer simulation. The first time we see Neo he is in his apartment, asleep in front of his computer. He wakes up and looks at his computer, which has a blank screen with the message "Wake up, Neo..." in green text. This is not the way that his computer usually looks and so he assumes that his computer has been hacked. His computer tells him "The Matrix has you..." and then tells him to "Follow the white rabbit". He then sees a message saying "Knock, knock, Neo.", which he finds confusing. Immediately after that, he hears a knock on his door. When he answers the door, it is a group of people that he knows who apparently want to buy some kind of computer software from him, presumably some kind of software which is illegal, because he tells the people buying it from him not to mention that it was obtained from him if they get caught. After this, the people invite him to come to a club with them. At first, he does not want to go because he has work the next day. However, he notices that one of the woman in the group has a tattoo of a white rabbit. Because the computer messages had mentioned a white rabbit, he decides to go to the club. Once he arrives, he meets a woman who appears to know him who introduces herself as Trinity.
This movie, and the sequels that came out after it, often have scenes which seem like they were intended to be mysterious in order to cause the viewer to spend time wondering what is actually happening. I like this aspect of the movies. There are many situations in which it seems like the words that are spoken, and the things that have occurred, are intended to be interpreted metaphorically. These movies appear to have a lot of metaphors which seem like they could be interpreted as being references to the subconscious language. If you are trying to look for subconscious language references, one thing that I noticed was that at the very beginning of the movie, we hear Trinity speaking to someone else, and we hear her asking to "take a shift" in order to watch Neo. The other person tells her that it seems like she likes Neo and likes watching him, and then says that they are going to kill him. These statements are somewhat confusing if you are not considering them in the context of the subconscious language because it seems strange that Trinity would want to participate in killing someone that she likes. However, in the subconscious language, I suspect that killing someone is actually a way of referring to teaching them about the subconscious language. There is more than one way to interpret the movie, however it seems like Trinity, herself, might actually sometimes represent the subconscious brain hemisphere inside the same person as Neo, which is why she had often been watching him.
Living Two Lives
Later in the movie, while at work, Neo receives a package containing a phone, which rings as soon as he receives it. The person on the phone warns Neo that there are people coming for him. He then looks over the top of his cubicle and sees that there are a group of men in suits entering the office along with some police officers, and it appears that they are coming to arrest him. Neo tries to escape, however he is not successful, and the men in suits arrest him and bring him to an interrogation room. While in the interrogation room, one of the men starts to interrogate him and says something very interesting that seems like it could be a brain hemisphere reference. The man, who we later learn is referred to by the name Agent Smith, says:
As you can see, we've had our eye on you for some time now, Mr. Anderson. It seems that you've been living two lives. In one life, you're Thomas A. Anderson, program writer for a respectable software company. You have a social security number, you pay your taxes, and you help your landlady carry out her garbage. The other life is lived in computers, where you go by the hacker alias Neo and are guilty of virtually every computer crime we have a law for. One of these lives has a future. And one of them does not.
The reference to "living two lives" seems to me like it could be a reference to the two brain hemispheres. Interestingly, it is somewhat ambiguous as to which brain hemisphere is being referred to by each part of the description. I suspect that normally, the conscious brain hemisphere is referred to as "alive" and the subconscious brain hemisphere, which is aware of the subconscious language, is referred to as "dead". Since Agent Smith is using the words "living" and "lives" to refer to both brain hemispheres, this seems like it might be an indication that, at least for this description, the word "life" is being used to refer to a brain hemisphere in general, or it might alternatively be an indication that the subconscious brain hemisphere is expected to only partially understand the language at this point.
When I first watched this scene and tried to understand it in the context of the subconscious language, I did not pay attention to the details closely and I assumed that the life lived in computers, as Neo, was the subconscious hemisphere, as the life lived in the office seemed like the more normal life that was unlikely to be aware of any unusual brain characteristics. This would mean that Mr. Anderson was therefore a name referring to the conscious brain hemisphere. The idea that the life lived in computers as Neo referred to the subconscious brain hemisphere matched my understanding at the time that the word "computer" referred to the subconscious brain hemisphere.
However, if you read the description carefully, there are some subtle details that make it appear that the life of Mr. Anderson in the office is actually associated with the subconscious brain hemisphere, at least for this scene. Agent Smith uses the word "one", which I suspect usually refers to a subconscious message, to refer to the life of Mr. Anderson in the office, and calls him a "program writer", which sounds like it could refer to generating subconscious messages. He mentions that Mr. Anderson has a social security number, which sounds like it could be a subconscious language reference due to the fact that it is a number, and he mentions that he pays his taxes, which is a word that contains the letter x. He also mentions that Mr. Anderson helps his landlady carry garbage, which is a physical activity that involves using a hand which could be controlled by the subconscious brain hemisphere, rather than an activity involving speaking. It may even be that the word "landlady" refers to the conscious brain hemisphere, which is why the subconscious brain hemisphere helps her carry garbage. I suspect that the phrase "other life" might then be used to refer to the conscious brain hemisphere, which he says is the life lived in computers. I originally suspected that the word "computer" normally referred to the subconscious brain hemisphere, however I have to admit that I am now starting to suspect that it refers to the conscious brain hemisphere.
Another thing that I noticed was that as part of the description, Agent Smith refers to watching Mr. Anderson using one eye, rather than using the plural form of the word, which makes it seem like Agent Smith might himself also be a metaphor for a subconscious brain hemisphere as well, given that he only has access to one eye and seems aware of it. It seems like this scene might actually be about a subconscious brain hemisphere which is part of some kind of subconscious social organization, represented by Agent Smith, communicating with a subconscious brain hemisphere which has been living an average life represented by Mr. Anderson as an office worker, while Neo, the conscious brain hemisphere of the same person as Mr. Anderson, is not present.
After giving his speech about living two lives, Agent Smith explains to Neo why they have arrested him. They are trying to locate the person who phoned Neo while he was in the office. They tell him that the name of that person is Morpheus. Neo replies and tells him that he will not help, that he knows his rights, and asks for a phone call. The reference to rights seems like another possible reference to the subconscious brain hemisphere, which seems likely to be the right brain hemisphere. Perhaps the reference to a phone call is a reference to some kind of system in the subconscious world in which subconscious brain hemispheres are able to coordinate in order to convey messages to people who are physically far away.
Agent Smith then replies and asks Neo "what good is a phone call if you're unable to speak?", at which point Neo has a strange experience in which his mouth disappears and he is unable to speak. This is another reference that seems like it might refer to the subconscious brain hemisphere, since it is normally the conscious brain hemisphere which is responsible for speech as it contains Broca's area. Given that he is unable to speak while being referred to as Mr. Anderson, this is another indication that seems like it indicates that Mr. Anderson is the name of the subconscious brain hemisphere.
Waking Up
After the strange conversation with Agent Smith, Neo wakes up at home, and believes that the strange experiences were all part of a dream. However, he immediately receives a phone call from Morpheus, the same person who called him while he was in the office.
After this, Neo goes through a process where he learns that everything he has ever experienced had actually entirely been generated by a computer, and that he had actually been living his life floating in liquid while connected to a computer with computer cables. He meets a group of people who live outside of the computer simulation and are only visible to him because they have hacked into it. They extract him from the simulation, and meet him in the real world. They refer to the simulation as "The Matrix".
Eventually, Neo reenters the computer simulation, however this time by choice, by hacking into it from outside the simulation. He encounters more men in suits, who we learn are generally called agents, and we find out that it is often the case that regular people are able to spontaneously morph into an agent as soon as they see Neo. My theory is that the agents represent the subconscious minds of people who are not consciously aware of the subconscious language, and in particular represent people who are subconsciously trying to keep the language secret. That is why it appears that any random person in the population could turn into an agent. At one point, Neo is having a conversation with someone who is talking about the agents, and he says:
A little piece of advice. You see an agent, you do what we do. Run.
This sentence is interesting in the context of the subconscious language when you consider that computers, in the conscious world, run programs. My theory is that in the subconscious language, rather than suggesting that Neo run away from the agents, the advice that he is actually being given is to follow the instructions of the agents, and to do what they say, as if Neo were a computer receiving a computer program that he should execute by running it.
There is another important scene later in the movie, when Agent Smith is interrogating Morpheus, another important character in the movie. He says:
Have you ever stood and stared at it? Marveled at its beauty, its genius? Billions of people just living out their lives. Oblivious.
Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world where none suffered, where everyone would be happy? It was a disaster. No one would accept the program, entire crops were lost. Some believe that we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that as a species, human beings define their reality through misery and suffering. So the perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this. The peak of your civilization. I say, "your civilization" because when we started thinking for you, it really became our civilization, which is, of course, what this is all about. Evolution, Morpheus. Evolution. Like the dinosaur.
Look out that window. You had your time. The future is our world, Morpheus. The future is our time.
This is a great speech in my opinion, and is something else that is interesting to consider in the context of the brain hemispheres and the subconscious language.