VR Models Of What It’s Like To Die: The Aesthetics Of Infinite Potential – Berkeley, CA

Learn how research in matter-energy ideas from physics are combined with predictive coding ideas from neuroscience to create immersive VR experiences that enable contemplation of boundless awareness beyond the physical body.

Death has a kind of fundamental significance owing to its universal inevitability. Over the last few decades there has been increasing interest aimed at understanding what it is like to die. Much research has focused on NDEers — those who have come back from near death experiences (NDEs). Many NDErs report a sense that awareness can persist beyond the physical body — that the end of the physical body is not the end, but more of a state change. The dramatic benefits associated with NDEs in transforming attitudes toward death have inspired researchers to explore other types of mystical experiences that evoke non-dual or self-transcendent states. 

Over the last years, David Glowacki and colleagues have developed approaches for designing immersive digital experiences within a ‘numadelic’ aesthetic — from the Greek words pneuma, meaning ‘breath’, ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’, and delein, meaning ‘to reveal’ or ‘to manifest’. Numadelic approaches represent bodies as light energy rather than material objects, based on the phenomenology reported by those who have undergone NDEs, which Glowacki himself has experienced. Recent research shows that multi-person numadelic VR experiences can elicit psychometric results comparable to moderate-dose psychedelic drug experiences. Ongoing research is focused on the development of a multi-session numadelic VR program called ‘Clear Light’ that enables those facing life threatening illness to join together in VR and experience aspects of NDEs, including the  contemplative possibility that awareness persists beyond the physical body. ‘Clear Light’ aims to alleviate the fear, depression, anxiety, social isolation, and loneliness often faced by such patients, along with their families and loved ones. 

This talk and discussion will present the ‘numadelic’ aesthetic, the technology and philosophy behind it, and explore its potential for enabling profound and transformative experiences for the benefit of all beings.

David Glowacki is a cross-disciplinary researcher, artist, and author whose interests span computer science, nanoscience, aesthetics, cultural theory, and spirituality. He has worked extensively in scientific simulation, particularly in VR applications. He is the founder of the ‘Intangible Realities Laboratory’, a group working at the immersive frontiers of scientific, aesthetic, computational, and technological practice, and the co-founder of ‘aNUma’, a startup which is developing the technology to support numadelic experiences. His immersive digital artworks have been experienced by more than 200,000 people on three continents. They are designed to dissolve our sense of separated individual identity by re-imagining our interconnectedness to the complex networks of relationships in which we are embedded.