The virtual sanctuary

 

 

A virtual sanctuary is the one the pilgrim creates in her brain as an image. In other words, an imaginary sanctuary (or a real one yet to be reached) is virtual.

 

The pilgrim creates that image (and which is a virtual reality) from:-

 

1.      data provided by the visual sense (i.e. refracted from an actual sanctuary)

2.      data acquired during stopovers in sanctuaries (to wit. hospices) on her path

3.      data supplied by returned pilgrims, successful and unsuccessful

4.      data supplied from memory and shaped to provide both (the degree of) fulfilment and the particular way to it she desires or needs.

 

However, since all brain activity is fundamentally physical (because resulting from real electrons firing across real synaptic gaps), hence real making, all virtual sanctuaries are already real, though the intensity of their realness is minimal (i.e. below the threshold of ordinary awareness).

 

Moreover, and following Emile Coué, the image (or idea) held in the brain determines and regulates the whole body-mind’s responses, thereby not only making the image (or idea) an experiential reality but also guiding the body-mind to fully realize that image (or idea).

 

It’s the facts, namely that even the virtual (i.e. imagined) reality (read: sanctuary) is already (experienced as) real, that allows some pilgrims to fake it. They turn a virtual (i.e. imagined) sanctuary into an actual one simply by pumping energy into it, thereby filling it to the full. Such (mostly religious) pilgrims (because they do not reality test their sanctuaries) are called psychotics.

 

 

SANCTUM