Mystical-Type Experience at The Virtual Reality Interface. Technics, Aesthetics, and Theology in the Search for Cosmic Connection

Abstract

In recently received event invitations and articles in online tech publications such as Wired, Futurism and Th e Verge, 1) I have noticed an interesting pattern of a kind of "spiritual" attention being paid towards new digital immersive technologies like Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). I attended one such event (in which an acquaintance, a "ritual designer", was involved) and my experience there deepened my interest in this fi eld of what I would call quasi-religious, mystical or metaphysical themed experience in mixed reality. It has also raised some questions that I hope to address in this article regarding the specifi c modes of ontological refl ection that technologies such as VR and AR might be capable of off ering, and the cultural or existential needs or crises that they seem to address. Moreover, I am led to speculate on the value of such experiences -do new immersive technologies really off er an enhanced interface to sensations of cosmic or mystical connection, or do they, by attempting to manifest what is oft en understood as essentially ineff able, intangible, and not "actual" in a literal sense, actually in some ways demean the "authentic" mystical experience?Named Isness, the specifi c experience I had was a communal guided "ritual" experience in VR, presented as a workshop within the biennial "Breaking Convention: Conference of Psychedelic Consciousness" at the University of Greenwich in London in 2019. 2)

Mystical experiences in virtual reality.

“…Indeed, these subjective states exhibit high conceptual overlap with Stace’s (1960) and James’ (1902) definitions of the mystical experience as involving nonduality (oneness), a transcendence of normal space–time (presence), a sense that the encounter is spiritually significant (reverence) and has a “noetic quality” (insight), and engenders both high (rapture) and lower arousal (love) positive emotions. Coupled to the phenomenological responses that were rated highest for VR-P, which included awe, beauty, mindful observing, novelty, interest, contentment, and joy (Figure 6) as well as presence, vividness, and absorption (Figure 4), the current empirical results also appear to support the philosophical and media research framework of Strutt (2020) who emphasized that technological (e.g., immersive, interactive), metaphysical (e.g., transcendence), esthetic (e.g., awe, beauty), and theological (e.g., reverence) elements may combine and interact to bring about mystical experiences in VR-P. It should be noted that comparison between the correlations observed with VR-P versus EC-I was rendered difficult in the current research, however, in considering the mean differences observed between the two conditions.…”