VR Mystery School
The Virtual Reality resource, event venue and community for personal development, spirituality and mysticism
VR Mystery School News update, January 17th 2021
Since the last post in November, a lot has happened. Let’s go over it
the VR Mystery School world in VRChat
The VRChat world has received more critical updates over the past months.
In preparation of VRCON2020, the VRChat convention that took place in December, major overhauls and optimizations were rolled out. Besides the usual goal of further developing features, this also meant a lot in regard the goal of making the world run even on Quest 1 and older Windows systems. In our tests this has shown effective. A major role was played in recent optimization by one of our new volunteers, Ain, who teaches 3D related subjects as university professor. With his expertise in creating and optimizing assets, we are striking a fantastic new balance between visual quality and professional optimization.
The Lectorium, our main room for lectures and watching videos, has received several usability updates aimed at making the experience more comfortable. This includes sound proofing in more than one way. The Lectorium is lately taking the center state, in some of our most interesting community activities. As such work will continue to try and develop its features.
The lounge of the Virtual Reality Mystery School was recently installed with a very cozy coffee bar. This new addition makes for a great place to gather and chat with friends. It offers a comfortable break from the usually quite serious subject matter that VRM is concerned with. Other rooms were also expanded with useful features for group activities and now also include some usability features like world SFX and other toggles.
Previously, some artworks that originated from manuscripts were shown as large paintings. The art collection has been updated to more accurately reflect the original media in which the art pieces were produced. This also cleared up space for many new works to be added. Which they are, you can find out by paying a visit! After some research into how real-world art galleries deal with this, special lighting was also set up. It should let the artworks in our collection truly come to life.
The work is ever ongoing, and as more of the major goals are being striped off the list, and volunteers join the effort, the pace of work is picking up and the impact of the updates becomes more major.
The VR Mystery School Community
Activities within the community have also picked up a lot! Besides the usual activity on Sunday, watching and discussing pre-recorded lectures and documentary material, VRM is growing more comfortable doing live in-VR lecture and reading activities.
This started with our first of these experiences surrounding new years. On the winter solstice, TarotReaderFrog gave a lecture on the esoteric and mystical themes of the winter solstice, and the Great Conjunction in Aquarius which happened on the same day. (The long-read article is available to patreon supporters). This tradition will continue on every equinox and solstice, the next one being March 21st.
Subsequently, on January the 3rd, our first guest speaker, Ingurdiz, gave a lecture on the fundamentals of the Hermetic Philosophy. The study into the Hermetica is continued with a now weekly activity (every Wednesday. See the Event Schedule for more info). During this activity, Ingurdiz reads chapters from the book, and the attendees discuss their intepretation of the text. In our first time through the text, we are using the Gandy Freke translation of the Corpus Hermeticum, called “The Hermetica”. It includes great commentary which gives extra illumination in these sessions.
View our recordings on YouTube if you were not able to attend!
The long awaited classes on Buddhist meditation, in Anapanasati and Vippasana style, have also fully crystalized and will be put on the agenda shortly, so make sure to either keep an eye on our event calendar, or even better, join the discord! Discord allows for direct engagement with the community, while outside VRChat. It’s our main channel of communication!
