Gregg Braden
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 Years ago, I remember seeing a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode that changed everything I believed about virtual reality. The story line begins with the crew of the Enterprise exploring an uncharted area of deep space. In this particular episode, they make the surprising discovery that a distant sun is about to explode into a supernova. What makes this event so significant is that it's happening in a solar system with an Earth-like planet that supports human life—people who are certain to be destroyed within a few short hours by the exploding sun. |
| In other words, are we living a virtual reality running on a really big computer made of quantum energy itself? This is clearly a huge question with implications that rattle everything from the ideas of life and evolution to the basis of religion itself. Also, it spawned the hugely popular 1999 film The Matrix.
Zuse was obviously a man ahead of his time. Thirty years later, he elaborated on these ideas in his book Calculating Space and set into motion the events that led to the revolution in our view of reality and everyday life. |
| When we die, do we simply leave our simulation and continue existing in a realm outside of our virtual reality?
While these are all good questions, they are also beyond the scope of what we can do justice to in this book. There is an additional question, however, the answer to which may solve the mysteries of the others as well. It is simply this: How does it all work?
As stated earlier, we could study the creation of the universe and how it got here for another hundred years and still not have all of the answers. |
| What makes virtual reality and dream-time ideas so appealing are the unmistakable similarities between what they say about the way reality works. As mentioned in Chapter 1, for example, John Wheeler of Princeton University suggests that we not only play a role in reality, but that we play a prime role in what he calls a "participatory universe." As participants, we find that the act of focusing our consciousness—of us looking somewhere and examining the world—is an act of creation in and of itself. We're the ones looking. We're the ones who are examining our world. |
| In his paper entitled "A Computer Scientist's View of Life, the Universe, and Everything," he offers a technical yet compelling argument, similar to Bostrom's analysis, proposing that it's more likely that we are living in a virtual reality than not.
So what do these analyses mean? If we're here in a world of infinite possibilities to master what it means to be in such a place, did anyone leave us the instructions? Did Schmidhuber's Great Programmer leave us a users' manual? If so, would we recognize it if we found it? |
| When we combine the evidence suggesting that we're already living in a state of virtual reality with the wisdom of indigenous traditions, which tell us that the universe is a dream that mirrors our beliefs, suddenly the whole idea of our power to change the world becomes more plausible. It's worth exploring the evidence that belief itself \s the language that brings joy or suffering to our lives—and with a new urgency!
All of this leads to even deeper questions. Who could be responsible for the virtual experience of an entire universe? Who put this all together, and who wrote the code? |
Michael J. Panzner
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 Many people will seek other diversions from the oppressive routine of everyday life, including virtual reality games and other escapist fare. The most popular forms of entertainment will either glorify the dark and seamy sides of life or will feature imagery that is at the polar opposite to a sad and somber existence. As during prior periods of economic turmoil, ruthless outlaws will vie with sweet heroines for the attentions of the masses. No small number of Americans will indulge in drugs or alcohol or other vices, or they will immerse themselves in a haze of partying and wild excess. |
Ray Dodd
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 Over time, we construct a matrix of beliefs that invades our dreams, awake or asleep, creating a virtual reality that sometimes resembles gold—glittering and precious—and that in other moments acts like lead—heavy and seemingly unchangeable.
In either case, to tune up your BeliefWorks so that it produces the dream of life you desire may require a little alchemy on the four essential elements of belief.
Air—The First Element of Belief
The ancient alchemists believed there were four base elements from which everything was made—Air, Water, Fire, and Earth. |
Gabriel Cousens, M.D.
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 That we Westerners - raised in a culture of sex, materialism and ego, in love with the images and projections of our virtual reality minds - can just easily pop into permanent, non-dual states is a cruel and misleading illusion. It may be convenient to think that we can do away with any physical and mental disciplines and simply be naturally Self-realized in an instant, but it is like believing we are going to win the lottery, giving up our job and waiting for the check in the mail! |
Ray Dodd
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| The lens of belief that filters your virtual reality always contains emotions in memory.
The stories that emanate from your beliefs always have an emotional point of view.
Anna's uncle came to live with her family when she was ten years old. He had just broken up with his wife, was surly and sarcastic, and whispered mean things under his breath. None of the kids felt safe while he was around. Late one night, he came home drunk and there was a loud argument between her mother, father, and her uncle. |
| Lucid living is directly experiencing the dreamlike nature of your personal virtual reality in this present moment. If you want to engage in lucid living and begin to put belief to work, it is enormously helpful to use the pattern presented by the gates of lucid dreaming: the passage from unconscious dreaming to conscious dreaming.
The First Gate of Lucid Living
To begin to practice lucid living, start with the model presented in the first gate of lucid dreaming. Have the intention to recognize your dreaming world. |
| Without any recognition of how our beliefs project themselves into our virtual reality and modify our perception, there is little possibility of change. That's because we don't perceive things as they are; we perceive through our judgments.
Real awareness is simply perception without judgment.
Awareness is 90 percent of the process of changing old beliefs and their respective agreements. In fact, awareness is the solution you may be looking for. Real awareness of the way you perceive the world is worth a thousand mystical experiences. |
Win Wenger, Ph.D. and Richard Poe
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 Disney's vision is already taking shape in the new fields of virtual reality and digital special effects. Unfortunately, these advances came thirty years too late for Walt Disney. Like Moses, Disney spent his life journeying toward a Promised Land he was destined never to see. Should we pity him? Not according to Disney. While he was alive, he accepted with perfect grace the rules of the "mortality game."
"We, the last of the pioneers and the first of the moderns, will not live to see this future realized," he said. "We are happy in the job of building its foundations. |
Ray Dodd
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| In the cosmology of the Toltec, the human mind dreams 24 hours a day through a filter of all our beliefs and experiences, crafting a unique virtual reality, one that is different for every human being on the planet.
A belief is a living dream with an emotional signature populated by specific agreements that define and defend its point of view.
Have you ever met anyone who is nervous about things, can't trust anyone, and feels they have to watch their back? That outlook is a belief that knows, without a doubt, I'm not safe. |
| It starts with noticing how people live in a virtual reality that has nothing to do with you rather than reacting, taking things personally, and defending yourself. The art of living your dream is noticing that every mind dreams. Acting accordingly, you recognize the authentic power you have and deliberately begin using all the elements of belief.
What we believe is fdled with remarkable promise. There are six billion-plus virtual realities on our planet creating what the Toltec called The Dream of the Planet. |
James Trefil
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 This kind of disconnect between virtual reality and real reality abounds, and it's one reason I'm not going to expect big things from virtual reality anytime soon.
Why Do We Face a Continuing Software Crisis? you may remember that when the new Denver airport finally opened in February of 1995, it was a year and a half late and the better part of a billion dollars in the hole. Why? Because the automated baggage system just didn't work. Why not? |
| If all that's needed to produce an experience is a flow of information, then we can use virtual reality to take us where we can never go in person ?into an atom, for example, or the interior of a star. A familiar example of this idea is the modern flight simulator, in which a pilot can confront unusual situations and "crash" the airplane a dozen times while learning to get it right. An intriguing early use of virtual reality allowed chemists to grab virtual molecules and try to force them together. You could actually feel the forces the molecules exert on each other ? |
| If you realize that with enough information flow it would make absolutely no difference, you have grasped the promise of virtual reality.
If all that's needed to produce an experience is a flow of information, then we can use virtual reality to take us where we can never go in person ?into an atom, for example, or the interior of a star. A familiar example of this idea is the modern flight simulator, in which a pilot can confront unusual situations and "crash" the airplane a dozen times while learning to get it right. |
David Deutsch
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 So I want to consider virtual reality in as general a way as possible. What, if any, are its ultimate limits? What sorts of environment can in principle be artificially rendered, and with what accuracy? By 'in principle' I mean ignoring transient limitations of technology, but taking into account all limitations that may be imposed by the principles of logic and physics.
The way I have defined it, a virtual-reality generator is a machine that gives the user experiences of some real or imagined environment (such as an aircraft) which is, or seems to be, outside the user's mind. |
Bill Gottlieb
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 Is Imagery virtual reality?
How imagery works its wonders in the body is still a mystery. Some evidence suggests, however, that the brain reacts the same way to an imagined sensation as to a real one.
"Imagery is like reality in the sense that if you look at activity in the brain when you're imagining something, it is strikingly similar to the activity that occurs when you're perceiving reality," Dr. Sheikh says.
Remember the lemon described earlier and how it probably caused you to secrete saliva in your mouth? |
Doreen Virtue, Ph.D.
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 With Monica still under hypnosis, and with the potato chip image as real as a "virtual reality" experience, I told Monica to envision big, black cockroaches running all throughout the potato chips. Those bugs were scurrying over and contaminating every chip. In fact, she had just eaten a chip that cockroaches had walked upon. She just hadn't noticed those big repulsive bugs until now!
Monica lightly screamed with a start, and her eyes jerked open. She got up and went to the bathroom, because she felt ill. Monica didn't get sick, but she did develop a one-trial aversion toward potato chips. |
James Trefil, Joseph F. Kett, and E. D. Hirsch
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 See virtual reality. astronaut A crew member of a space mission launched by the United States. (See Apollo program and Mercury program.)
Bathyscaph. A blueprint of a bathyscaph (above), and a photograph of the exterior (right). atom smasher Colloquial term for a particle accelerator. atomic bomb A bomb that is powered by nuclear fission, and therefore produces a quick release of energy and great destruction. automation Replacement of human workers by machines for particular jobs. bacteriological warfare See germ warfare. |
| Viking spacecraft A spacecraft launched by NASA that landed on Mars in the late 1970s, sending back photographs and experimental reports about the planet's surface. virtual reality The creation of images and tactile sensations by means of a computer, producing the illusion of reality. Images are often projected onto special goggles to strengthen the illusion. (See cyberspace.) volt (vohlt) The unit of electromotive force, the volt measures how much "pressure" there is in an electrical circuit. The higher the voltage, the more electrical current will flow in the circuit. |
| A term used in conjunction with virtual reality, designating the imaginary place where virtual objects exist. For example, if a computer produces a picture of a building that allows the architect to "walk" through and see what his design would look like, the builing is said to exist in cyberspace. data processing Either the preparation of data for processing by a computer, or the storage and processing of raw data by the computet itself.
DC See direct current.
DDT A colorless insecticide that kills on contact. It is poisonous to humans and animals when swallowed or absorbed through the skin. |
James Trefil
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| I have never seen a virtual reality display that a child couldn't tell from the real thing. Let's face it: our brains are pretty good at dealing with visual fields, and we're going to have to work pretty hard to fool them. Take three-dimensional displays as an example. Inside a computer, they are represented by lots of little polygons ?some 80 million are required for a realistic image. You require a minimum of ten changes per second to perceive realistic motion (TV normally uses thirty). |
Larry Dossey
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 When I turned it back on, the screen brightened, then instantly became black, and I experienced that feeling of dread known to all writers who fear their material has evaporated into virtual reality. Then, in the center of the screen, an image appeared that I had never seen before—a computer icon with an unhappy face and a down-turned smile. My wife, Barbara, who was in my office at the time, glanced at the icon and remarked, "Your computer isn't very happy. |
David Deutsch
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| They will require quite different technology and will raise quite different philosophical issues, which is why I have excluded them from my definition of virtual reality.
Another type of experience which certainly cannot be artificially rendered is a logically impossible one. I have said that a flight simulator can create the experience of a physically impossible flight through a mountain. But nothing can create the experience of factorizing the number 181, because that is logically impossible: 181 is a prime number. |
| One can conceive of a technology beyond virtual reality, which could also induce specified internal experiences. A few internal experiences, such as moods induced by certain drugs, can already be artificially rendered, and no doubt in future it will be possible to extend that repertoire. But a generator of specifiable internal experiences would in general have to be able to override the normal functioning of the user's mind as well as the senses. In other words, it would be replacing the user by a different person. |
Robert Anton Wilson
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 Zen and virtual reality Hardware
?Japanese plans for hotel in space
?832 PSI tests validated
?Nanotechnology and the Hillis Connection Machine
?Walt Disney as futurist
?The electromagnetic 'V Effect and the 'Paranormal'
?The Immortalist Party
?Father Fox and Creation Spirituality
?Extraterrestrial theories of evolution
?'Mind-Body' Relations and Recent Neurochemical Discoveries
?Psychic Smites CSICOP
?Mind Machines and Head Hardware
?Bucky Fuller's Global Energy Grid in Russia, Central America and Germany
?Cyber-Terrorism and Computer Pathologies
?Notes on longevity research
? |
James Trefil
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| Simple virtual reality systems allow scientists to sit in their laboratories and control robots descending to the ocean floor or into a volcano. The commercial market for virtual realities begins with games, but you can imagine all sorts of other uses ?virtual business meetings indistinguishable from the real thing, travel to exotic places (or even to work) without leaving your home, and so on. The possibilities are endless.
But if that's true, why did I start these remarks on a cautionary note? |
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