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In a way it reminds me of being engrossed in reading, in that there's an almost complete suspension of awareness of the outside world in favour of the fictional one. The fact that RS users report writing detailed scripts seems to support this:
> Before I plan on shifting, I write myself a script in the notes app on my phone, in which I plan exactly what happens in the desired reality. This makes it easier to visualize exactly what I want to happen
I suppose one difference is that in reading, you (or I, at least) tend to also dissociate the self somewhat in favour of the main character in the novel, whereas RS users seem to retain their sense of self.
Following this train of thought, I wonder if reading could itself be considered a kind of meditation?
This sort of thing is so interesting from a psychological perspective, is a shame it has to come laden with bogus rationalisations via the occult or pop-quantum physics, which just provides an avenue for easy dismissal of the effect.
Exactly this.
Just after I read the abstract, it reminded me of reading a long, engrossing novel (like War and Peace, LOTR, etc.), or watching a similar TV/Web series (like The Wire, Breaking Bad, etc.)
To a large extent I read long novels for this effect.
It gives you momentary escape from your reality, and when you "come back", you come back better.
I also want to point out that novels can be addictive in a bad way.
Long art forms suspends reality for a time period.
>is a shame it has to come laden with bogus rationalisations via the occult or pop-quantum physics
I'm guessing those help them though. The more you believe in it the better it works so having plausible (to laymen) explanations and talking as if the characters are real people improves the experience.
I think that's largely what it is. Reading goes out of fashion, only to emerge from it's ashes with a new, Matrix-y name.
Speaking of daydreaming, 2013 wasn't a great year for movies, so I was out of options when I went to see "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" [1], and boy it turned out to be a great one.
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Life_of_Walter_Mi...
Interesting phenomenon.
I'm not super well versed on quantum physics, but I'm not sure that a system that includes travel between universes should be described as 'rooted in extrapolations of modern cosmology, quantum theory,[...,],' so much based on fictional systems lightly inspired by quantum physics.
Anyway, given the state of the world it isn't that surprising that people would like to indulge in a bit more daydreaming nowadays. Especially young adults missing formative early events (a happy and relatively free first couple years of independence in college, for example). Perhaps there's an 'alternate universe' in which we really isolated college campuses and the students there could have had their Hogwarts. We failed them miserably.
The concept of living simultaneously in multiple universes (other "Narratives") is explored in Neal Stephenson's _Anathem_. Within the novel, a key assumption shared by those that practice this feat is that our brains' predictive power relies on simultaneously traversing the many worlds created at any juncture in the Narrative.
You can see any quantum event, such that is only described by a probability, as a fork. It produces two universes, in one if which the event has occurred, in another has not, otherwise identical.
Using this model, it is easy to imagine "parallel realities" which are very close to ours and thus amenable to fantasizing, but different enough to contain whatever makes the fantasies attractive.
This just sounds like lucid dreaming awake imo. Kind of scary some of these people believe they're actually jumping dimensions or something. Wonder how much control they can exert compared to a lucid dreaming.
I've not managed LD awake/meditating yet , but I can fall asleep awake if my body is tired enough but I'm mentally awake, though it requires a lot of concentration. And doing it does not feel nice (you can feel your body paralyzing, feels like you can't breathe and you have to avoid reacting).
Every once in a while there are posts on r/LucidDreaming from people who are beginning to believe they’re time traveling or dimension hopping or the like.
That sounds like hypnagogia. Have you gotten checked for sleep apnea?
> Kind of scary some of these people believe they're actually jumping dimensions or something
Every time I have thoughts like this about <insert whatever> anymore, I find myself coming back to “well, there are actual Nazi wannabes still, so I guess <insert whatever> isn’t too bad” - let them live their life.
Once Nazis are out of the picture… then maybe we can justify cracking down on others things we don’t like :P
Also known as having an imagination. I remember doing this on bus rides to better understand quake levels.
I’m thinking being able to replay worlds or map geometry like your brain is rendering it live is more rare and maybe this is teaching it a bit. No one’s ever quizzed me on how many details (big and small) I could get right though.
Right, lots of people have ongoing fantasies, which is basically the same thing, imagination. The only difference here is people are talking in public about their fantasies and enlisting others to help create and maintain them. And even that is not uncommon, people have used prostitutes this way forever. Perhaps video games have made sharing alternate imaginary realities more socially acceptable. These days you can imagine a fantasy world and actually create it in software and make it an actual reality.
Interesting how occult concepts like astral travel (reality shifting) and familiars & daemons (tulpamancy) are getting recycled without the Victorian baggage.
It's funny because those things were couching certain phenomena (chiefly, being able to imagine things and, perhaps to an extent, hallucination due to external factors) into terms compatible with the dominant beliefs of the time (magicks of all sorts) while this is somewhat couched in the ideas of rationality and science, at least "reality shifting."
i think in the last 5-6 years we've seen in western/anglosphere culture a growing surge of interest in both occult stuff, like you say, or occultish New Age stuff (astrology) as well as renewed interest in the old organised religions among younger people. at the very least there is a willingness to hold a "live and let live" attitude toward the spiritual beliefs of others.
of course this is just a hunch and other people's anecdata might say otherwise, but i tend to think it could be a swing of the pendulum or "backlash" from New Atheist influence in the discourse in the 2000s and early 2010s.
Except now they're picking up pseudo scientific baggage. I'm not sure there's a net gain in that.
It seems natural for our generations who grew up with 3D worlds (from games or online communities) to be able to navigate the mind's eye version of it, the same way you can mentally walk in a familiar store in order to plan your route ahead of time.
This idea seems remarkably similar to an idea that was popular in Russia about 15 years ago - "reality transurfing" popularized by Vadim Zeland.
The same sort of shaky quantum physics justification is used for it.
It might be reaching but I'd say the Russians that grew up 90's were captivated by this idea perhaps because of the similar desire to escape a bad reality. That time was awful for a lot of them and covid restrictions have a similar sort of hopelessness and helplessness. When you do not feel you can have an affect on the world, it's best to focus on changing your perception of it.
The reality creation in Russia's version notably lacked the application of simply going to some commercialized fictional world. Instead it simply focused on creating your reality - whatever that may be.
Interesting to see them mention tulpas here. It's always been a bit of a meme online, but I knew a pretty tenured hypnotist who was utterly terrified of the things. He'd seen tulpas cause irreversible psychological damage to the people who adopted them, where many people would become completely attached to a character or particular fiction in their head. This could cause them to act out involuntarily, induce constant paranoia or even completely alter their perception of reality. He figures the human brain is simply not meant for multiple inhabitants, and I'm inclined to agree. Hearing the occasional story of a person who's gotten in too far with tulpas just makes me sad, particularly because there's no real easy "fix" for it. Oftentimes, people wall themselves in to an altered reality and refuse to leave, be it by their own volition, or even another's.
I lost one of my friends to the tulpa crap a few years ago. It's self-induced schizophrenia and it ruined his life. He lost his job, all of his friends, and last I heard was living on the street.
This is interesting, because my (more literary than scientific) understanding of ego development includes becoming aware of an 'inner tribe' or 'multiple voices' inside one's mind which simultaneously are and aren't the self, to differing degrees. Integrating these voices, allowing them to discuss with each other, et cetera has been a method which allows great insight into problems where reaching a solution was blocked by a limited perspective.
Accessing these voices is invaluable for writing fiction, perhaps the difference with a tulpa is the level of reality and influence ascribed to a single 'not-me' voice?
I also see the ability to have an internal Socratic dialogue as requiring a kind of ego-splitting, in a way that could be conceptualized as a tulpa asking (often surprising) questions.
Very abstract and hard to talk about stuff, I hope that makes sense.
What's interesting about this stuff is that it seems to support interpretation through multiple cognitive frameworks. There could be a mystical/esoteric explanation for why those people became so attached to the characters or fictions. Or it could be that they were already vulnerable to schizophrenic or depersonalization/derealization-type disorders.
It's like how you'll sometimes hear/read people say that tantra/mediation stuff like Kundalini can be dangerous because it results in an energy imbalance that could potentially be irreparable and/or lead to lasting damage.
Gen Z is using TikTok to teleport to Hogwarts? Is this parody?
Wow, and here I am dropping cash on weed and shrooms like a chump. I’ll be honest, this strikes me as similar to the whole binaural sounds thing…I tried that way back in high school and got nothing from it but my friend swore it was elevating. I won’t knock it, I’m sure some people really do get something out of it and who and I to say otherwise. I might even try it some time. But shrooms haven’t ever let me down. So at least I’ve got a backup
This reminds me of when I was in high school, depressed, and desperately wanting to lucid dream. I understand the appeal. The blur between "worlds" gets into some wild sci-fi morality situations though.
Is it really anything new, or just newly noticed by these select researchers?
I used to meditate/imagine natural environments in the 1980s and while in them, I'd move my perception through, looking for entities to talk to. I didn't know the term tulpa, but the notion of a spirit guide or totem is similar enough. It was better than full on dreaming, but wasn't lucid dreaming either.
Some of my friends had the shared waking fantasy that they could do things like mentally cause the traffic lights to change. I don't remember what they called it, but being public about it seems to be wrapped up in notions of membership and the ingroup.
I wouldn't be surprised if variations of what we did in teen culture then and what the authors are writing about are somewhat universal to adolescent minds. It might be a cognitive development stage, like how young kids go through a nightmare stage.
Many young females report joining Draco Malfoy as his girlfriend. Draco is a fictional character from the Harry Potter series, characterized as a cowardly bully who tricks and hurts people to get what he wants, a cunning user of magic.
Were people paid to write this paper?
It sounds like their research was browsing wattpad and reddit for an afternoon.
What a fascinating paper!
Somewhat sad that one of the top fantasies for young women is to be partnered to a cruel and abusive Draco Malfoy. I'm guessing it is an extension of bad boy syndrome.
Interesting. I have been doing this for decades but I absolutely started to get more intentional and in depth during the pandemic.
I’ve never been good in social situations and I generally avoid them, and I used this kind of day dreaming to play out various scenarios like a decision tree to “workshop” how to interact with specific people, and it has served me well for practical purposes, but I started using it more for “fun” since the pandemic.
This paper is worth reading, the whole reality shifting thing (and related concepts like tulpamancy) is a very interesting psychological phenomenon.
There is an huge area of possibility in exercises like Hypnosis but involving intense emotions.
We discovered ‘rewriting personal history’ to be a useful tactic for addressing pain in the past. I am right now thinking of when and if I want to make myself fall in love with another person. Another one is the deliberate flooding of the self with sadness (e.g. read the names at war memorial) to drown out feelings of anger to (i) never even in the face of provocation and (ii) intensely influence the other party.
Sometimes I get a download from the ‘Department of Emergency Psychology’ such as the above techniques, a phoenix visualization, etc.
Escapism ? + self hypnotizing to the max.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escapism
> Escapism is mental diversion from unpleasant or boring aspects of daily life, typically through activities involving imagination or entertainment. Escapism may be used to occupy one's self away from persistent feelings of depression or general sadness.
The only novel part of this is the particular way that kids talk about it with each other on the internet. The activity itself is the same old stuff.
i think it can be healthy. visionaries are people who see the future using existing constructs, here is a way to look at it, before you do anything you typically think or envision yourself doing that action before you do it, the way it works best is breaking it down into steps instead of staying at the final image. in all actuality if you write each step down and give possible ways to accomplish each step and add a date you have what many planning books call micro goals that lead to the end goal or overall goal. never let the internet stop you from dreaming, a lot more is possible if we allow our minds to think of possible outcomes.
plus, mostly everyone dreams, even a nightmare is a dream, might as well think of alternatives to get yourself out of mental gridlock.
imagination is where abundance exist because abundance is the mindset of how we think about what we have in front of us. scarcity is the limiting of beliefs about the world around us. if we thought the cave was the only shelter none of us would be here sipping on lattes inside of a coffee shop scrolling yc
It's interesting to see a new generational take on lucid dreaming. For me, it was always more exploratory -- discovering the power of the human brain to construct reality out of nothing. There was no desire to play out an entirely scripted event.
See also: lucid dreaming
Not if you have aphantasia.
Is this not just describing a community of people who have vivid imaginations? How is this an "uninvestigated emerging phenomenon"?
Isn't this what every fiction writer does? (Which doesn't make it any less fascinating)
The only frustrating thing is that you need mind's eye here
Whether the phenomenon is of any interest psychologically (imo) hinges on the question of whether Reality Shifters are in a sleeping state during the activity or not (of course it's interesting socially that it's such a big trend in either case).
In the section where they compare to Lucid Dreaming it sounds identical to my mind (aside from certain trends in preferences for how the LD is set up—but a new trend in preferences for LD induction techniques is hardly headline-worthy).
Did I miss it or have they done any measurement of brain activity of reality shifters doing their thing?
Spent a month going down rabbit holes like this. I'm a very logical 42 year old, but I saw what I'd call a "glitch in the matrix" really it was just a common mandela effect but the kicker was it flipped.
Scenario:
Read on reddit about the flip flop. Check current status.
Movie Apollo 13: Calm and collected Tom Hanks says: uh Houston we've had a problem.
My childhood memory of this is more Frantic Tom Hanks: "Houston we have a problem".
I discussed this w/ my wife, and she watched it as well. She remembered the same as me.
Two days later, I'm reading a list of mandela effects one of which said: Apollo 13 Movie: Previous: Houston we've had a problem, current: Houston we have a problem.
I do a double take, and think that's a typo. Off to youtube to verify. It's now Houston we have a problem.
I wake my wife up at 6am to ask her what it said the other day and she tells me: Houston we've had a problem.
this disrupted my entire view of reality as at least somewhat 'solid/stable'. Led me down lots of research into quantum mechanics, physics, etc... as well as topics on what consciousness even is, or the possibility of living in a simulation.
I'm thinking simulation makes the most sense, and that reality is some sort of consensus mechanism like blockchain. What the majority 'remembers' becomes reality for all... though, it seems when polled a majority of people remember Fruit of the Loom having a cornucopia, and other than a trademark file from 1974, there was never any cornucopia associated w/ the company....
Tandem aside, that made me try /r/castaneda (dark room gazing), meditation, mindfulness, neville goddard/law of attraction, reality shifting, tulpamancy, etc.. just to see if I could maybe find a 'chink' in the armor of reality. Only thing I found was obsessing over that was ruining my life, and mental abilities except for the meditation practices, but I think the acts that supposedly bring on those scenarios (lucid dreaming/meditation) instead brought me to a realization I don't need those things to find happiness - except meditation maybe I still do that from time to time, and binaural sleep music occasionally for a deeper sleep.
I found the oddest stuff with /r/castaneda doing darkroom gazing where you spend 4 hours every night in pitch blackness, and try to see energy and eventually you do. Though I saw a huge spider while practicing this crawl up my leg and dissipate and I quickly stopped. I was awake, and it wasn't dark but it was after a week of practicing.
I think there's still stuff to find out, and I'd like to still pick around the edges of reality, but I don't want to be homeless either, and we still need to and deserve to have happiness here, and to do that we must be present.
Donald Hoffman who's done a number of talks/interviews on his theories and proofs that we are living in a simulation basically says that those who 'win' at life are those who don't 'know' we're in a simulation or speculate, something to do w/ evolution. Makes sense that you'd be happiest in a fake world if you didn't know it was fake, once you figure that out, how can you just go back to life as normal, or want to? Since, I have to live here, and have kids and a family I figure it's best to just keep trying to 'win' than focus too much on odd side effects of reality.
Interested in Mandela Effects or reality changing? I'd suggest /r/retconned for some interesting takes. There's a weird venn diagram of people who believe in ME's that includes religionists and less-theistic more-scientific people there's very weird fringe theories based on the bible, and then a bunch of people discussing quantum eraser experiments and how to run experiments to track changes to reality over time, some results that use md5 hashes on images that represent the change have actually seems somewhat interesting.
tldr: I know what I saw, and my wife saw it too, and it drove me mad, but I came back from madness to realize we can't just dissociate from reality even if reality is not 'true', because it's the only thing we have in life, and it's still a miracle even if it's fake.