Page - 163 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 03/01

Bridging Real and Virtual: A Spiritual Challenge | 163www.jrfm.eu 2017, 3/1, 159–181 book Techgnosis12 is cited by Kraus on her first pages, and her essay refers us to Davis’s notion of techno-spirituality as a gnostic variation of spirituality. Davis coined the hybrid term “techgnosis” to identify technologies like Vr that pro- vide a transcendent experience or ineffable ecstasy, a sensation akin to “elec- tronic LsD”. here Davis follows early twentieth-century scholars, such as hans Jonas, who theorized that passive intoxication was a goal for ancient Christian Gnostics. Intoxication is a flight from feeling alienated in an unfriendly mate- rialistic universe. ecclesiastical literalists took this kind of Gnosticism as their polemical archenemy throughout early Christian history. Literalist ecclesiastics sometimes caricatured their Gnostic brethren as transcendental spiritualists who cultivated fantasies devoid of concrete practical morality. this supposedly Gnostic spirituality inclined toward an intellectualism more appropriate for an- gels than for humans. Davis recognizes that this view of Christian Gnosticism has been outmoded since the discovery of the Nag hammadi texts, which be- came widely available at the turn of the twenty-first century, but he still ties this image of spirituality to Vr enthusiasts while disclaiming historical accura- cy regarding the ancient Gnostic movement. Davis writes, “the authenticity of spiritual ideas and religious experiences does not really concern me here; rather i am attempting to understand the often unconscious metaphysics of informa- tion culture by looking at it through the archetypal lens of religious and occult myth”, and continues, Gnosticism is such a fragmentary and suggestive patchwork of texts, hearsay, myth, and rumor that you can call almost any contemporary phenomenon “gnostic” and get away with it ... i admit that by teasing out the gnostic threads from the webwork of technoculture, i am perhaps only making a further mess of things, and it seems best to remind the reader that we are dealing with psychological patterns and arche- typal echoes, not some secret lore handed down through ages.13 in contrast to Davis’s casual treatment, if we want to make a serious connection between virtuality and spirituality – as Kraus does in the title of her essay – we need to remove the notion of spirituality from a passive, inebriated, and un- critical experience. instead we should conceive a spirituality that is active, alert, and sober. As the archetypal psychologist thomas Moore points out, a spiritu- ality embedded in today’s complex secular world requires critical thinking and patient cultivation.14 such spirituality needs deliberate rituals to connect con- scious life with the deeper psychological levels of soul-making. Passive reliance on technology, especially a hallucinatory technology, is unlikely to integrate and order the obligations and distractions of everyday life. While an imaginary Gnos- 12 Davis 2015. 13 Davis 2015, 80 and 93. 14 Moore 2015.