The Gnostic and Buddhist influences of Serial Experiments Lain
Serial experiments Lain and its themes of transcending one's conditions is heavily influenced by both eastern and western doctrines, most notably the very similar beliefs of Gnosticism and Buddhism,
Gnosticism
Gnosticism is a belief system that is a slight alteration of the standard christian myth.
From this link:
"Gnostics believed that in order to acquire salvation one must possess a certain knowledge, or gnosis, which must be delivered to a person by a messenger of light. However, to receive this knowledge, one must be trying to reach beyond the evil, dark, material, physical earth and body toward that of the good, light, immaterial, and spiritual worlds. The indwelling spark must be awakened from its terrestrial slumber by the saving knowledge that comes "from without." Jesus is one of the most fundamental "awakeners" of this knowledge.
According to one Gnostic myth the shaping of the material world was the result of Sophia, who was often decribed as an emanation of eternal light, an "immaculate mirror of God's activity," and as "the spouse of the Lord." Through her desire to "know the Father", she was cast out of the Pleroma (the gnostic heaven) and her desire gave birth to the God who created the material world. Although she was eventually restored to the Pleroma, bits of her divinity remain in the material world.
The inferior God created by Sophia's desire, also referred to as the Demiurge, is the Creator God of the Old Testament. Due to his inferiority, he is not seen as good but rather an evil, angry, violent God. It is the fault of this God that the world is in the mess that it is, and due to the fact that he created it, the world is evil. The higher transcendent God is not a creator of the material world, and instead is a nurturer of the spiritual. The only hope for humankind, while locked in this evil shell of a body is to spiritually transcend this world and deny the body.
Therefore, although Gnostics, like other Christians, find salvation through the messages of Jesus, Gnostics seek salvation not from sin but from "the ignorance of which sin is a consequence." The gnostics believe that the evil creator God and his angels cause this ignorance. If one receives gnosis during this lifetime- a true realization of the spirit-body dichotomy and the true destiny of the soul, then at death, when the body releases the divine spark, the soul may be free of the evil world. On the other hand, if this realization is not reached, then the ignorant soul, when released from the body will be sent back by the Demiurge into the evil painful world.
Eventually Sophia was completely fused with Christ. Wisdom became Logos, and explicit associations between Sophia and Jesus disappeared from Christianity. Many Christian feminists describe her disappearance in the psychological language of repression. In her essay, "Wisdom Was Made Flesh," Elizabeth Johnson argues that the feminine Wisdom was replaced by the masculine Logos "as it became unseemly, given the developing patriarchal tendencies in the church, to interpret the male Jesus with a female symbol of God" (Johnson 105). The authors of Wisdom's Feast offer a very different theory. They suggest that in order to recognize Jesus as equal to God the Father, all explicit associations between Jesus and the weaker Sophia had to be abandoned.
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To the attentive viewer, the Gnostic doctrine is very similar to the beliefs of Eiri and the Knights. Human beings are locked in a false world, and the only means to attain salvation is through the rapture created by Lain.
Eiri is styled after Christ post-resurrection, even though he considers Lain Iwakura as the vehicle for his message, therefore making her his Christ as he considers himself God. Eiri also sees Lain as his betrothed wife, the unity of his spirit, as evidenced by when he asks her to "love me, for I am your creator" in Layer 10.
In this manner, Eiri can also be seen as the Anti-christ of christian myth, a false messiah who dooms the world to an apocalypse. The Anti-christ in christian myth is also referred to as "the Beast" of Armageddon, an apocalyptic final battle after which the world will end. Some Christians interpret this beast as Satan, the evil tempter of the human race that caused them to be banished from Paradise and fall into the world of suffering. Satan, in the final book of the bible, is symbolically represented to be a dragon (Revelation 20:2), a higher form of the Snake which tempted Eve to eat the forbidden fruit, the reason for banishment.
Similarly, Christ has been historically represented as a phoenix, that of a spiritual presence born again and again, and we see Lain be alluded to as Christ. Therefore, we see that Eiri sees the relationship between him and Lain as between Christ and his bride, when in actuality it between Christ and the dragon.
However, in eastern myth, we see a totally new symbolism arise between the Phoenix and the Dragon, the Feng huan and the dragon to be exact. The phoenix and the dragon acquires the status of great marriage of opposing concepts, the very core of the Chinese philosophy of duality coming to unity, Ying and Yang, or the Tao/Dao to be exact. This tumblr blog explains this parallelism to be exact.
I believe that ultimately, up to Layer 10, Eiri truly believed that he was god, and that Lain was his vessel that would save all human beings on Earth. However, in Layer 12, Lain flips the dynamic and reveals to Eiri that in actuality, Eiri was the Christ that was sacrificed for Lain to complete her purpose, and in actuality, Lain was Sophia who belonged to the higher realm of Pleroma. Eiri, in making the Wired and achieving his goals, still failed to realize that the Wired was held back by by being a physical construct, and in doing so Eiri becomes the Demiurge that traps human souls on earth.
Thus, Eiri in the end was doomed to be a sacrificial lamb. As Hegel would ask in The Philosophy of history:
“But even regarding History as the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimised — the question involuntarily arises — to what principle, to what final aim these enormous sacrifices have been offered?”
If we consider the events of the show to be the development of history towards the formation of the Absolute, then Eiri was the True God's christ that was sentenced to die so that Sophia (Lain as wisdom) could return to earth. Lain embodies the crow, the Messenger from the other side bringing the gospel of connection.
Fun fact, the originators of the Illuminati seem to have been Gnostics.
Zen Buddhism
On the opposite side, we have Lain iwakura embody the concept of the Bodhisattva.
Sunyata, or emptiness, is a fundamental concept in Buddhist philosophy. It refers to the idea that all phenomena, including ourselves, are empty of inherent existence or independent self-nature. This means that everything is interdependent and that all things arise in dependence upon other things. This theme of interdependence underlying the unity of all things is the core of interpreting SEL, as all components are interlinked. The best example of this is Layer 9, where independent documentary footages were connected by an underlying thread of unity.
According to the Buddhist view, understanding the nature of emptiness is essential to achieving liberation from suffering. In the end, the non self or the essential self is found in all things
Non-duality is another important concept in Buddhist metaphysics. It refers to the idea that all dualities, such as self and other, subject and object, are ultimately illusory and do not exist in an ultimate sense. Non-duality suggests that all things are interconnected and interdependent, and that there is no absolute separation between self and other.
Becoming a Bodhisattva refers to the goal of achieving enlightenment not only for oneself but for the benefit of all sentient beings. A Bodhisattva is someone who has dedicated their life to the pursuit of enlightenment and the liberation of all beings from suffering. In Buddhist metaphysics, becoming a Bodhisattva is seen as the ultimate expression of compassion and wisdom. It is the Bodhisattva's universal compassion that has them sent back to Earth before freedom from Samsara, in order to continue the enlightenment and spiritual growth of the human race. This is just like how the true God sends Lain Iwakura back to Earth to be the gatekeeper of the Wired after she meted out compassion and mercy to all humans on earth, even the ones directly responsible for her suffering.
The distinction between higher and lower reality is another concept in Buddhist metaphysics. The lower reality refers to the mundane world of suffering and impermanence, while the higher reality refers to the ultimate reality of emptiness, non-duality, and the nature of mind. The Buddhist path is often seen as a journey from the lower reality of samsara to the higher reality of nirvana or enlightenment.
We see these differences pan out between Lain and Eiri. Eiri was self absorbed and saw himself as separate from all things, and only recognized his own self. In his own words, "I am different!"
Essentially, Eiri is doomed to death not only due to his bad karma, but because he is fooled into a dualistic mode of thinking of himself as separate from everything else. Lain defeats Eiri despite his meticulous planning and high intelligence because she had one thing a selfish narcissistic person like Eiri could never truly have: A true friend. A true, human connection.
Lain however, from the very beginning of the show, was motivated not by the false ego such as Eiri, but to truly find and know her self. Lain started off as a clone comprised of innate genetic characteristics, but through her adventures on the Wired as well as the compassion she was shown by Arisu, Lain eventually accepts her reality of death, and in an act of pure love for Arisu, sacrifices herself.
Lain didn't know her true self in the beginning of the show, but once she did understand, it caused her great suffering. Arisu's touch signified that you don't need to be understood in your entirety to connect with others and to love one another. Arisu (and many of us) will probably never understand Lain iwakura, but that doesn't stop us from loving her as a character, and most of us (not even me at this point) didn't understand SEL on the first watch, but that never stopped us from deeply appreciating and loving this show.
In Layer 13 (appropriately titled "Ego"), Lain achieves enlightenment by reaching a nondual state where both her mind and body and have fully integrated (as indicated by the voice acing of both Lains speaking as one unique personality) and by acquiring a true, healthy sense of self. Lain's actions of deleting herself from both the Wired and the Real world have returned her to the true state of the universe Sunyata i.e Total nonreality, making Lain one of the few people to attain Nirvana.
Lain's compassion that she shows even to Eiri and the Knights upholds her status as a higher being who truly deserves it. And she has Arisu to thank for it, as Arisu is the one who shows her the best that a human can be. Lain's acquired humanity is what gives her enlightenment, as opposed to Eiri's denial of his human nature.
In this essence, Lain is Guanyin, the female Boddhisattva embodying the principle of compassion.
Similarities and differences between both ideas
Serial experiments Lain and its themes of transcending one's conditions is heavily influenced by both eastern and western doctrines, most notably the very similar beliefs of Gnosticism and Buddhism. According to Wikipedia, the similarities can be observed as follows:
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Liberation or salvation can be achieved by a liberating insight, namely Gnosis or jnana
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Ignorance, or a lack of insight, called agnosis or avidyā, is the root cause of entrapment in this world
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Liberating insight can be achieved by interior revelation, not by external knowledge
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Wisdom, as the feminine principle personified in Sophia and prajna, plays an important role in both religions
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Myth is preferred over historical fact; Christ and Buddha are not mere historical figures, but archetypal primordial beings
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Both systems have antinomian tendencies, that is, a disregard for rules and social conventions in higher spiritual attainment
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Both systems are intended for spiritual elites, not for the masses, and have hidden meanings and teachings
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Both systems are monistic, aiming at a metaphysical oneness beyond the multiplicity of the phenomenal world.
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Both have a method to move from the suffering material plane to the higher spiritual plane, i.e transcendence of the self
To add to this, we see both and Buddhism and Christianity have similar stories of the temptation. In the Bible, Christ is tempted by the devil to let go of his mission while he is wandering the desert for 40 days and 40 nights, before he begins his preaching mission.
In a very eerily similar tale of events, the Buddha is tempted by the Deva of a lower dimension called Mara, the demon of death and illusion, just before he attains his enlightenment. Both have second coming stories at the end of the world, with Christ returning to bring his kingdom and the final boddhisattva called Maitreya coming down to bring the age of enlightenment.
However, it is important to note some stark differences. Buddhism doesn't recognize a moral doctrine or a creator god, while the Gnostics heavily depend on their end-of-the-world mythology as the basis of their faith. Moreover, Gnosticism is strangely very individualist with the way Gnosis is not meant for everyone.
We see the common point of femininity as enlightenment come to play a role as the meeting point of these two parallel faiths. Lain,both Sophia and Guanyin, symbolizes the wisdom of compassion as the ideal vehicle towards the future. And this is why Lain becomes the only one, in denial of the self, to acquire transcendence.
Note: There's a great tumblr blog on this subject that I've linked here. Do give it a read!
Next: SEL's cultural rebellion