New VR Tech Emulates Breakthrough Psychedelic Experience Keegan Williams - High Times
go to original August 20, 2022

The psychedelic renaissance is upon us, with myriad research showing how substances like psilocybin, LSD, and more aid in mental health conditions like treatment-resistant depression and PTSD. More and more, the curiosity around psychedelics is increasing, with individuals seeing the potential of these mind-bending medicines to overcome perceived limits of the self.

At the same time, technology continues to evolve at a rapid pace, posing the question: Could tech like virtual reality provide comparable benefits that psychedelics offer? Evidently the answer is yes, according to a recent study of a new VR experience, Isness-D, made to mirror specific transcendent psychedelic effects.

It all started with creator David Glowacki, who took a steep fall while walking in the mountains 15 years ago. After hitting the ground, he laid there suffocating as blood began leaking into his lungs. During this experience, Glowacki’s field of perception began to shift, peering down at his own body and finding he was made up of balled-up light, MIT Technology Review reports.

He said the intensity of the light was related to the extent in which he inhabited his body, though watching the light slowly dim wasn’t frightening—It was transformative, leaking out of his body and around his environment. He took the experience as a signal that his awareness could outlast and transcend his physical body, ultimately bringing him peace.

The Nature study introduction brings up similar sensations from brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor following a left-hemisphere stroke. Taylor said, “I could no longer define the boundaries of my body. I can’t define where I begin and where I end, because the atoms and molecules of my arm blend with the atoms and molecules of the wall, and all I could detect was this energy… I was immediately captivated by the magnificence of the energy around me. And because I could no longer identify the boundaries of my body, I felt enormous and expansive. I felt at one with all the energy that was, and it was beautiful.”

After his accident, Glowacki approached the experience, which he related to death, with curiosity, attempting to recapture that transcendence.

The new technology is designed for groups of four to five, based anywhere in the world. The participants are represented as a cloud of smoke with a ball of light around the location of their heart. The experience features energetic coalescence, meaning that participants can gather in the same VR landscape and overlap their bodies, making it impossible to tell where one starts and another ends, contributing to a sense of connectedness and ego reduction that psychedelic experiences commonly bring.

In real life, the study notes that humans often default to conceptual relationships of ourselves and others and separate objects, rather than connected or coupled concepts. Authors define the term “self-transcendent experiences,” or the transient mental states in which “the subjective sense of one’s self as an isolated entity can temporarily fade into an experience of unity with other people or one’s surroundings, involving the dissolution of boundaries between the sense of self and ‘other,’” essentially what Glowacki is chasing with this new VR technology.

So, can people really achieve some of these same breakthroughs psychedelics, or intense life experiences can provide, simply with the help of VR?

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