Group VR experiences can produce ego attenuation and connectedness comparable to psychedelics
Scientific Reports May 30, 2022 David R. Glowacki, Rhoslyn Roebuck Williams, Mark Wonnacott et al. 44 citations
A virtual reality framework called Isness-distributed (Isness-D) enables groups of people in a shared virtual space to experience their bodies as luminous energetic essences with diffuse boundaries, allowing moments of 'energetic coalescence' where bodies fluidly merge and participants include multiple others within their self-representation. In a citizen science study with 58 participants across an international network of Isness-D nodes, scores on four self-report scales (inclusion of community in self, ego-dissolution inventory, communitas scale, and MEQ30 mystical experience questionnaire) were statistically indistinguishable from those reported in recent psychedelic drug studies. This demonstrates that distributed VR can design intersubjective self-transcendent experiences where people dissolve their sense of self in connection to others.