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

New digital immersive technologies like Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality are increasingly presented with spiritual or quasi-religious framing in tech media and events. The author attended a communal guided VR ritual called Isness at a psychedelic consciousness conference, which raised questions about whether these technologies offer genuine mystical connection or instead diminish authentic mystical experience by trying to manifest the ineffable. The article explores the ontological reflections VR and AR might enable and the cultural or existential needs they appear to address.

Study at a glance

Abstract

In recently received event invitations and articles in online tech publications such as Wired, Futurism and The 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 field 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 specific modes of ontological reflection that technologies such as VR and AR might be capable of offering, 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 offer an enhanced interface to sensations of cosmic or mystical connection, or do they, by attempting to manifest what is often understood as essentially ineffable, intangible, and not “actual” in a literal sense, actually in some ways demean the “authentic” mystical experience? Named Isness, the specific 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) Daniel Strutt (Goldsmiths, University of London)