The Sacred and the Virtual

4 min readDec 19, 2016

The urge to find altered or elevated states of being is a universal for us humans that extends to some of our earliest archaeological records. The tried and true methods include: drugs, religion, more drugs, sweat lodges, meditation and, now, VR. The latter option is still gaining momentum and enthusiasts choosing to treat VR “holistically” are starting to use it in combination with older mediums, adding to their transcendental cocktail. I’ll look at some of them here.

Religion

While I personally would like nothing more than a Job Simulator extension that allows to perform an exorcism, perform last rites or perform a Sunday mass, there is almost certainly an audience of people who would sincerely want to augment their church going experience by doing it in HTC. On Scholar, I stumbled across an article called The Sacred and the Virtual, already 19 years old, about people’s behavior in a mutli-user VR church environment and resultant ethical dilemmas. Meanwhile, there are also iconoclasts who would prefer to glare the most attractive choir member or engage in holy, eternal struggle against a legion of demons, or host of angels. But that’s as the good book says, to each his/her own.

Even without religious services, there are a number of 360 cathedral tours, in and out of VR, if motivated to appreciate the religious structures for their artistic and architectural value.

Drugs and Religion

It seems there is a surplus of developers wanting to recreate psychedelic, Shanti-esque experiences which take better advantage of its potential for stunning visuals to the point of sensory overload. Just take a trip to YouTube and search psychedelic VR for examples. This mind expansion through tech is more in keeping with the hippie roots of the industry than perhaps traditional faiths of the Occident (see below).

A prime example of the so-called spiritual journey is called Samskara, an experience in which one travels from a place of light to dark and light again. This is a project of VR developers at Microdose. In an interview with the Voices of VR podcast, artist Android Jones described the origins of the project, largely drugs and Hinduism. He describes a chance meetings with obscurely located gurus and how drugs can be used to inform the virtual experience. Through the conversation, he brings up the “just a screen” observation of VR and seems to believe that one could bridge the gap between the screen and elevated states through psychedelics. While in VR, the user may never suspend disbelief and fully accept the virtual reality as its presented, but the proper drug could cause a reassessment of the dizzying visuals, allowing one to attribute the scene with greater relevance or even literalness.

Mediation

In previous blogs, I’ve mentioned that AltspaceVR had a mediation area. When I visited, it was ahead of the first presidential debate, but they regularly run meditation events for the promotion of calm and focus. Even without a guide, one may visit their zen garden, resting upon small gray stones while flower petals fall and a Japanese fountain bubbles in the background.

There are other programs available on mobile VR, such as Guided Meditation VR that are well suited for your quick serenity fix. However, this and programs like it only involve your pre-recorded guide talking over a virtual setting. Perhaps, holistic snobs will claim this blurs the lines between meditation and relaxation, but the lay person might find it a source of release or a happy place they might disappear to.

Provata VR is a meditation app that goes a step further by providing heart rate sensors alongside the sights and calming sounds of the others. In theory, one would know that the experience is having the desired effect as the user’s heart loses a few Beats Per Minute.