VR Tripping: A Mind Expanding Stroll Through Digital Dreamscapes

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Recently, I once again had occasion to trip in the Oculus Rift. It's not something I do very often as it's an overwhelming experience which leaves me satisfied, but also drained. Sort of like how, after a huge feast, you swear that you don't want to eat anything ever again.

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Of course you eventually recover and hunger once more. So it is with psychedelics, and more particularly with psychedelic assisted VR. My usual "lighter" option is a weed edible, which does a great deal to diminish my self-consciousness. I don't forget I am in VR but I do forget I have the headset on, and focus entirely on having fun.

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Each time I do this, I like to buy some VR apps I've never tried, then go in blind. It's a mesmerizing experience to launch myself into the unknown while in that frame of mind. This time, I bought Kismet for that purpose. It proved short and simple enough that I returned to games with more meat to them afterward.

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Kismet was really interesting and artsy. Essentially a stylized simulation of visiting a Gypsy who actually does possess magical powers, you sit before her and choose between a tarot reading, an astrological reading, or playing a game. The game, interestingly, is an ancient board game called Ur which was apparently enjoyed by Egyptian royalty.

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While playing this, my mind began to wander in strange directions. Having written here and here about Futurism, the philosophy and mindset which inspired fascist movements of the 20th century, I thought about how Hitler made an enemy out of Gypsies early on.

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Realize, gypsies were the carnies of that era. Often unscrupulous, making their living by bamboozling the naive out of their money. But not for nothing. While they could of course not tell your future, they would entertain you. They'd mystify and excite you. If you came away with a much lighter wallet and nothing to show for it, that's life. Sometimes you're the one who draws the longer straw, sometimes it's the other guy. Letting stuff like that slide serves as a sort of social lubricant. Sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug.

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But then there are the uptight assholes of the world. Pointy nosed bean counters. People who don't let anything slide. Who can't trust that things will balance out in the long run, but instead insist that the score be settled here and now. I have been dissecting this mindset to better understand it in recent years, as well as to more completely overcome that element of myself.

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Life has a seedy side it would be incomplete without. Is gambling a ripoff? Statistically yes, but it's fun. There are people who become addicted, but we can't protect individuals from themselves to that extent. Is that rickety old wooden rollercoaster dangerous? Undoubtedly, but the possibility of death only adds to the excitement. Would a gypsy try to con you? Probably, but roll with it. You've gotten the upper hand before and will again with someone else.

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Sadly, even beggars who say they are in a desperate situation and need money are often not entirely on the up and up, taking advantage of the common man's altruistic nature. But I suspect strongly that when I am on my death bed, I would regret it much more if I had opportunities to help people but didn't, than I would if some of those times it turned out I was being taken advantage of.

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Next I loaded up the Vanishing of Ethan Carter. What a good decision. I had no intention to actually play through it again, I just wanted to wander around the gorgeously realized natural landscape. On plenty of occasions, I've gone out into the actual woods to trip. It tickled me that I was now doing so virtually.

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When on psychs, it's common to see "texture drift". The surface texture of objects will sort of drift and swim around like it's just a loose outer skin. I saw a really strong example of that effect on the ashes in a burned down house in this game only to realize later, when sober, that it wasn't because of the psychs. It's an actual ingame effect meant to look like ashes being blown around by the wind.

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Boy did that throw me for a loop. It was the first time I confused something in the game for being a hallucination resulting from the substance I was on, so powerfully that I didn't even catch it until I came down and visited that same spot in the game a second time. That sort of confusion between VR and reality is the sort of thing that's only supposed to happen in corny scifi. Enough psychedelics can make it happen for real though.

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The next game I loaded up was Albino Lullaby. Man what a weird feeling. I mean it's already an aesthetically and tonally bizarre game, set in a subterranean dimension patterned after childhood memories of grandma's house. But the psychs made me feel the tone more viscerally and directly. The bright colors soaked into my retinas, I could pick out every individual note of every distinct instrument in the music.

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I really felt a part of this world. An inhabitant of it, for whom its impossible dream logic was just an every day matter of course. I've felt that way about paintings before at an art gallery, and will probably recount that trip in a post one of these days. It's the feeling of being drawn into a fictional work. Becoming a character within it, and just living in that world for what feels like a lifetime.

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Albino Lullaby left a sour taste in my brain. I needed a palette cleanser. Dimensional Intersection was just the ticket, a 3D fractal visualizer set to music. What lovely music too, the inbuilt track being the only one possible to select at the moment, a curious choice for a visualizer. I've heard support for your own tracks will be added in soon. Anyway there's at least a high degree of freedom to tweak the variables which control the fractal generation, using a controller.

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It felt really warm, welcoming and homey. Not unlike some closed eye visuals I've had on 25C. I kept struggling to make sense of the material properties of whatever it was all made out of though. Slightly shiny and black like obsidian. But constantly morphing and flowing like a fluid. Even so, eventually I found myself frustrated that I couldn't "go" anywhere. After a while I had enough, and fired up Senza Peso.

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Not without difficulty though. I was sufficiently fucked up by this point that it was a chore just to navigate the extremely simple Oculus Home menu system. When I managed it, Senza Peso blew me the fuck away right out of the gate. The imagery, the sound, it evoked within me that nameless mixture of awe and terror often written about in a theological context.

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It provoked thought about how many of the feelings and visions described in the Abrahamic religious tradition match up extremely closely with what one experiences during a potent psychedelic trip. There's ample evidence of this connection, like early church paintings depicting Jesus with Amanita Muscaria mushrooms, or Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden eating of a giant mushroom with a snake wrapped around it instead of a tree.

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That's to say nothing of the numerological imagery, like the holy beasts with seven heads, ten horns, ten crowns upon those horns as well as human eyes. Just like the many arms of Hindu gods seem inspired by tracers commonly seen under the influence of psychedelics, many elements of the visions recounted in the book of Revelations and elsewhere in scripture sound exactly like effects I've seen on mushrooms.

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All the while, I noticed the field of view seemed to be growing larger. On psychs, elements in front of you are often copied and pasted repetitively out into your peripheral vision. Something the visual cortex also does when you're sober, it's just easier to spot on psychs I think. This effect served to extend what I was seeing outside the limits of the oval shaped "border" normally present in VR, making it considerably more immersive.

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By this point I was well and truly overloaded. I took off the headset, and was immediately overwhelmed again by the transition from VR to reality. You know that feeling, on acid in particular, of entering a new space? Like going from indoors to outdoors, or the reverse. It's even stronger going from VR to reality. I went and took a hot bath, listened to music and savored some closed eye visuals. Neon rainbow Buddhist and Thai symbology for the most part.

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I emerged from the bath feeling totally refreshed, and emotionally tender as fuck. I felt like this soft, warm marshmallow blob creature with only good will towards everybody. I began to wonder if maybe there were people outside who needed a hug, encouragement or some help. "I should straight up just go outside looking for people to help" I told myself. So I did (after getting dressed as otherwise it would have constituted a serious crime), walking around for about an hour without finding anybody in apparent distress.

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Every little thing was cute to me. Every leaf. Every insect, every bird. Nature is adorable sometimes. I listened to some of my usual stuff like Carbon Based Lifeforms and Solar Fields. Then somehow some really harsh metal came on. I was distraught. "NO!" I insisted. "I am TOO TENDER for this right now! I just want to be a cozy little bro." Like a caterpillar chillin in his cocoon.

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When I got back I was sufficiently exhausted that I fell asleep. A waste sort of, as I had a good hour or two of visual effects remaining before I would've begun to properly come down. I've long wondered what effects psychs might have on dreams, but did not get to find out this time as my sleep was dreamless (albeit profoundly restful).

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I came away from this trip feeling fascinated, appreciative and renewed. My constructive, altruistic, exploratory energies in particular were replenished by the experience. Psychedelics and VR are both excellent tools for inward exploration, and as usual I found many useful answers inside of myself that I'll endeavor to "take with me" and apply in my every day life.