Virtual Reality for Non-Ordinary Consciousness

Virtual reality (VR) technology is currently seeing a surge of interest in industry, academia, and the public. Myriad developments are already underway, aiming to bring the technology directly to users in ways that offer access to rich virtual multisensory experiences. The immersivity that VR offers is enabled by the brain’s constraints on processing bodily self-consciousness (BSC), which anchors self-identity and -location to the physical body. Current developments are focused on leveraging the face-value constraints of BSC to craft immersive VR experiences that are plausible to the human user; i.e., most VR applications today take advantage of BSC as a “trick” or illusion that the body plays on the mind. However, the malleability of BSC can be more powerfully approached as an asset for enhancing the repertoire of body representations and plasticity available to everyday human experience. By manipulating the boundaries of self-local experience, VR can be used as a tool for the cultivation of non-ordinary consciousness (NOC). Such an approach would have the potential to equip society with novel pathways for studying the farther reaches of consciousness and providing opportunities for access to enhanced conscious experiences in everyday life, with far-reaching philosophical and ethical implications.