VR is as good as psychedelics at helping people reach transcendence

I was concerned about violating the other participants' personal space as we neared. I remembered that I was separated from them by the ocean and thousands of miles. I was trying to get into the relationship.

A PhD candidate at the Centre for Human Psychopharmacology in Australia says that the sense of completely forgetting about the outside world is what happens in virtual reality. There is a similarity to this feeling of being in an alternate reality under the influence of drugs.

There are differences between a virtual reality experience and a psychedelic experience. She appreciates that Isness-D charts a new path to transcendence instead of emulating one that existed before.

More research needs to be done on the effects of an Isness-D experience and virtual reality in general. The theory is that the effect of the drug on the brain is the main factor in improving clinical outcomes. The clinical benefit, which has yet to be rigorously tested, might not be as strong since it only mirrors the subjective experience.

Aday is a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco. The default mode network is a brain network that is active when our thoughts aren't directed at a specific task, and scientists theorize that this is what causes egodeath. The people shown awe-inspiring videos have been less active in this network. Isness-D might dial it down because of the benefits of virtual reality.

Anyone with a virtual reality headset can sign up for Isness sessions on a weekly basis. The startup sells a shortened version of Isness-D to companies for virtual retreats, and also provides a similar experience to help patients, their families, and their caregivers cope with terminal illness. Isness-D is being piloted in couples and family therapy by a co-author.

People are released from a lot of judgments and projections when they are represented as pure luminosity. Negative thoughts about their bodies and biases are included. He has personally helped cancer patients and their families. A woman with cancer died soon after. The last time she and her friends were together was in the middle of the night.

For one phase of my Isness-D experience, moving created a brief electric trail that marked where I’d just been. After a few moments of this, the narration prodded: “What does it feel like to see the past?” I started to think of people from my past who I missed or had hurt. In sloppy cursive, I used my finger to write their names in the air. Just as quickly as I scribbled them, I watched them vanish.