Emily Eakin connects the film to philosopher Ken Wilber, who delivered the "philosophers’ commentary" on the Matrix trilogy's DVD set. How Eakin describes Wilber's Integral Theory:
In simplified form, it says something like this: reality is composed exclusively of holons, a term borrowed from Arthur Koestler to denote that which is simultaneously an autonomous whole and a part of something larger. Just as a brain cell is both a self-contained unit and part of a larger organ, so, too, a human being exists as a single individual and as part of a larger collective—a family, an ethnic group, the human race, all living things—in a pattern that extends indefinitely in both directions. It’s holons all the way up and all the way down.
Previous Dish on the film here.