Mystical-type experience at the virtual reality interface: Technics, aesthetics, and theology in the search for cosmic connection

Abstract

In the context of a recent proliferation of Virtual Reality content that focusses on spiritual, religious or “mystical-type experiences” (MTEs), this article speculates on its cultural and subjective value, to ask if new immersive technologies might offer an enhanced interface to sensations of “cosmic connection”. Drawing issues of critical theology and media technology together with a consideration of the aesthetics of mystical or metaphysical experiences, the author asks what specific types of VR content might actually have a capacity to offer sensations that approximate mystical or transcendent experience. Can these then be deployed as healing or therapeutic experiences to (re-)connect people with something beyond, or bigger than, themselves? In reaching an understanding that even “authentic” mystical experience is essentially virtual and technological in a philosophical sense, and accepting that all such mystical “interfaces” are best understood as practices of ontological self-reflection, this article finally asks, what is the usefulness of this technical form (the VR head mounted display) at this specific time of social and environmental crisis? Could VR in its increased immersivity, interactivity and interfacial complexity potentially serve as a better medium for ontological reflexivity — as an enhanced “interface to the infinite” in the words of Laura U. Marks — or does it, by making space, objects, bodies, and information more material and operational, actually foreclose virtuality?.