Abstract
With a growing body of research highlighting the therapeutic potential of experiential phenomenology which diminishes egoic identity and increases one's sense of connectedness, there is significant interest in how to elicit such 'self-transcendent experiences' (STEs) in laboratory contexts. Psychedelic drugs (YDs) have proven particularly effective in this respect, producing subjective phenomenology which reliably elicits intense STEs. With virtual reality (VR) emerging as a powerful tool for constructing new perceptual environments, we describe a VR framework called 'Isness-distributed' (Isness-D) which harnesses the unique affordances of distributed multi-person VR to blur conventional self-other boundaries. Within Isness-D, groups of participants co-habit a shared virtual space, collectively experiencing their bodies as luminous energetic essences with diffuse spatial boundaries. It enables moments of 'energetic coalescence', a new class of embodied intersubjective experience where bodies can fluidly merge, enabling participants to include multiple others within their self-representation. To evaluate Isness-D, we adopted a citizen science approach, coordinating an international network of Isness-D 'nodes'. We analyzed the results (N = 58) using 4 different self-report scales previously applied to analyze subjective YD phenomenology (the inclusion of community in self scale, ego-dissolution inventory, communitas scale, and the MEQ30 mystical experience questionnaire). Despite the complexities associated with a distributed experiment like this, the Isness-D scores on all 4 scales were statistically indistinguishable from recently published YD studies, demonstrating that distributed VR can be used to design intersubjective STEs where people dissolve their sense of self in the connection to others.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 8995 |
| Pages (from-to) | 8995 |
| Journal | Scientific Reports |
| Volume | 12 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Early online date | 30 May 2022 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 30 May 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This project was supported by the Leverhulme Trust (Philip Leverhulme Prize) and the Axencia Galega de Innovacion through the Oportunius Program. Funding for RRW has been provided by the Xunta de Galicia (Centro de investigación de Galicia accreditation 2019–2022, ED431G-2019/04) and the European Union (European Regional Development Fund—ERDF) and EPSRC TMCS CDT (EP/L015722/1); funding for MDW has been provided by the Royal Society (RGF/EA/181,075); funding for JEP, MC, & RF by the non-profit ArtSci International Foundation. Thanks: We would like to thank the network of Isness participants, node hosts, and citizen science volunteers around the world who donated thousands of hours to this project, and without whom we could not have accomplished this work. We specifically acknowledge the following: Greg Roufa and Joe Hardy ran Isness nodes and helped to organize the node network; Matt Rojo, Justin Wall, Harrison Blum, Steph Suddel, Owen Williams, Vadmin Zhuk, William Zhuk, and Jeremy Lam all helped to run Isness nodes; Kara de los Reyes and Manda Baynes helped with various aspects of the organization along the way; and Oussama Metatla made valuable comments on the paper structure. Isolde Freeth-Hale performed, recorded, and co-designed the audio component of Isness-D. The VR software used to run Isness has been developed and maintained by various members and collaborators of the Intangible Realities Laboratory (IRL) over the years. The ability to run cloud-mounted instances of the Isness-D server was made possible through work by Dr. Jonathan Barnoud and Mark Pope, along with a grant of cloud computing credits from Oracle through their University Partnership Cloud Program.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s).
Keywords
- Ego
- Hallucinogens
- Humans
- Surveys and Questionnaires
- Virtual Reality