Thursday 8 November 2007

Virtual reality

The second TV program (see One Life post earlier) of significance recently was Visions of the Future on BBC4. Part of it was about robotics and the other half concentrated on virtual reality. The illusion of reality is I believe caused by 'moving with' something (video games/ roller coasters). Separation and stillness, discloses it as illusion - hence meditation and dispassion (non-involvement: The most obvious case of this in recent years was when Christopher Reeve was in a film with Michael Caine and he had to kiss him - suddenly a member of the audience in an American cinema leapt up and shouted 'Don't do it Superman!'.

I remember coming out of Scientology and having this vision of future entertainment called Sensies (holograms that could be projected into mid-air - I don't know onto what medium but it may have been electro-magnetic vapour) and Feelies (again maybe electro-magnetic but creating the impression of something solid, through magnetic repulsion), that would unite one day to truly create the physical as well as visual illusions of reality. Holograms work through creating interference patterns (Scientology again has a similar idea but calls it a ridge of energy) and this is I believe partly what creates the illusion of physical reality as opposed to the point above about involvement and reality as a cognative effect. By this I mean think of four arrows pointing inwards to create concentration upon a single point in space and time versus pointing outwards and moving in that direction, to disperse energy/attention away from somewhere (expansive as opposed to contractive). As a concrete example think of a hand crushing a plastic bag up in its fist or relaxing into an outstretched palm and letting the bag grow again.

I also believe this ties into morality and ethics because conflict leads to crushing of reality (shrinking of perception) and peaceful co-existance to expansion of consciousness/conscience (Seeing interdependence of everything and it's survival interlinked with yours - good for us, good for it/ bad for us, bad for it (how anything works is how everything works at basic).

Your section on Jesus and Gnosticism in the book comes into this but I shall mention that in a later posting where it is more relevant and can be concentrated upon rather than lost in the reality angle.

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