Cyberspace as an Out of Body Experience by Elizabeth Barrette
I wrote this piece in response to some questions posed by one of my students. It turned into a discussion of how sufficiently advanced technology can produce some of the same effects and opportunities as magic. Revised for reprinting online, this remains one of my favorite techno-witch presentations.
Cyberspace is good practice for dealing with other levels of reality. It's special because it has such a tight link to "everyday" reality but it is very different from that. Personal interactions aren't the same there. Some of the skills you gain there will stand you in good stead when dealing with spirits and other noncorporeal beings, while traveling other planes/dimensions, and so forth.
Now, most folks don't think of cyberspace that way. To me, it feels familiar because of my experience traveling from reality to reality (and also from other lives) in places where cyberspace is much more advanced and therefore more real. The first thing you learn, if you pay attention, is what defines you as "you" -- because in cyberspace, you are what you type (or otherwise transmit). You can practice being other people; you can change your gender, age, social class, race, physical description -- anything you can pull off the attitude and reality tunnel for online. It makes you think about your definitives. How much can you change and still be recognizably you?
Also, cyberspace reveals new aspects of your personality. Some folks come across completely different online than they do in person. This has a downside with people falling in love online and then discovering they can't stand each other face-to-face, but for the exact same reason it has an upside in allowing people to interact and enjoy each other's company online when they could never do so otherwise. For instance, many people have noted that my patience comes through eloquently online, yet in facetime interactions I have a harder time sustaining it -- the circumstances (like dealing with novices) when I can do so (as opposed to when I can't, like dealing with small annoying children) are more restricted. But because I work online a lot, and deal with people, I get to practice my patience skills, and I think that is gradually improving my patience offline as well.
Next, you learn the same type of things about other people that you do about yourself -- what their most important recognition tags are. You learn to read between the lines, depending on other things besides voice tone, body language, and physical clues like body shape or skin color or clothing. (Emoticons don't do all the work for you, although they are a fascinating exercise in linguistic evolution and a great convenience at times.) Some folks come across as more truly "themselves" online than in person.
The atmosphere of cyberspace affects your perceptions, too. You can pick up "danger signals" that steer you away from sickos online even though you are not in physical proximity. You come to view knowledge as something that yearns to be free; as a medium in its own right, like an ocean in which you can swim; as a means of trade or barter; as a necessary and integral part of life no less essential than oxygen. The connections between different bits of data become clear and meaningful; you can see how the web effect works and how everything ties into something else. Individual tidbits of data no longer exist as discontiguous fragments in their own little boxes; instead they all link together and you can follow those links freely from one idea to another, often discovering things you would never have found otherwise. Unless you are just a die-hard bigot with a mind like an airtight seal, you quickly shed a lot of prejudices because cyberspace acts as a great equalizer -- people don't have to tell you they are black or female or so poor they have to use the access terminal in a public library. You just take them at face value. You put much more emphasis on intelligence, conversation skills, and personality than you do on irrelevant physical trivia. Some people don't see this or believe in it, but I have seen it in action and it is truly beautiful when people don't actively try to quash it.
You also figure out how to navigate without using your body as a vehicle. Just think of that -- cyberspace activity is out-of-body travel! You park your body in a chair and use your hands to type, but your body stays right in that chair while your mind and personality go zipping off to Switzerland or New Guinea or wherever. Once we get our L-5 and lunar and Martian settlements going, we will have hookups there too and be able to visit other places in the solar system from the comfort of our own homes. ("Excuse me, my coffee bulb is leaking; I need to go find a hand-vac right NOW before it floats all over the room! TTYL!")
This is very much like traveling between the worlds where a thought is a thing and your intent determines your direction. Most of the time, when you want to go somewhere, you move your body to a car or other conveyance which then carries you bodily to your chosen destination (barring snow delays and other calamities). In cyberspace, though, you decide where you want to go and just send your thoughts; your fingers are still communicating your intent to the medium through which you move, but your body stays put. You are no longer navigating on a gross physical level but on a mental level. Your travel medium responds to your wishes, not to the weight of your body in a seat. This type of "travel by intent" stands you in good stead after death or in other realities when you do not have a physical body to use as a vehicle. If you already have some experience in moving without one, then you have a much easier time adapting.
The receptivity of cyberspace also teaches you control over your thoughts and desires -- if you go wandering off to chase butterflies, you will never get through your original search for needed information. This becomes even more true once technology advances to a point where you can link your mind directly with a computer, rather than interfacing through your fingers on a keyboard or a mouse button. Then you really have to learn control, or you get totally lost and distracted. It takes practice, but the skills overlap even more closely with the ones used in magical and spiritual work.
In these ways, cyberspace also closely resembles the "Underhill" realms of Faery, which are loosely organized chaos fields and hence highly responsive to suggestion -- any suggestion at all, conscious or subconscious. It reminds me of a favorite filk song about hackers that includes the line "where symbols have the power / to become the things they name." That's true, too; it remains one of the best descriptions of electronic reality inside computers or in the "group mind" of cyberspace that I have ever heard. What could be more magical than a world where words -- in esoteric symbolic languages, no less! -- actually become what they describe? You tell a computer, "Take me to this Website," and there you are. How is this different from a Portal or Scrying spell? You describe what you want and it happens, just like that. Of course this is technology rather than magic, but in sufficiently advanced forms the two become indistinguishable, because at that point they both work on the same levels.
In fact, cyberspace teaches you just how much of an illusion physical matter really is. You can already do a great many important things online, purely through energy exchange. You can deposit your paycheck, go shopping, pay your bills, and manage your finances. You can meet new people, make friends, conduct business meetings and deals, fall in love, set a date, even propose marriage. You can read the news or a story or a whole book, look at artwork, listen to music. You can't vote yet, but you can send messages to every politician at their governmental e-mail address to tell them which of their actions you approve or disapprove of and why, or to urge them to vote for or against upcoming proposals. This does not obviate the need for physical reality, but it does demonstrate unmistakably that actions taken in a nonphysical reality can have direct and profound effects on physical reality. If you shop online and find a Website selling the perfect hot tub, you can key in your credit card number (assuming your credit line permits) and that hot tub will arrive at your door. This kind of profound link between two very different but intricately intertwined realities provides a wonderful example of how things like magic, ritual, and prayer can work.
Like anything else, cyberspace provides a unique set of challenges and opportunities. You need to balance it with the other activities in your life, just as you would any other mental pursuit. People often argue that if you spend too much time online you lose touch with the rest of your life -- but if you spend too much time meditating or praying, or even working at the office, the exact same thing can happen. The idea is to explore different modes of existence in different realities, because each of them can teach you special things not readily learned elsewhere. By balancing your time among the various reality tunnels, you gain greater control over your life and its path; you can switch tracks like a controller at a busy train station. The skills and flexibility gained provide you with more options for relaxation, recharge, learning experiences, contact with other people ... all the important things. What you make of the resultant opportunities is up to you. When wishes are horses, even beggars can ride. * * *
Recommended Reading List
Angel Tech: A Modern Shaman's Guide to Reality Selection by Antero Alli.
Out of Body Experiences: How to Have Them and What to Expect by Robert Peterson.
PsyberMagick: Advanced Ideas in Chaos Magick by Peter J. Carroll.
Resisting the Virtual Life: The Culture and Politics of Information edited by James Brook and Iain A. Boal. This last book is included as a counterpoint.
"Cyberspace as an Out Of Body Experience" copyright 1996 Elizabeth Barrette. Revised for web publication July, 1998 and June 2011.