The World Wide Web has enveloped Planet Earth like a new electronic layer of the planetary brain. The advent of the internet has triggered a diversification of media. The mushrooming of all kinds of websites with text and audio/video facilities, blogs and online social networks has enabled the surfacing of perspectives other than the ones highlighted by the mainstream mass media. Individuals and online communities, cutting across huge cultural, geographic and time zone differences, are coalescing around shared interests to make their unique views heard with more intensity than ever. Interestingly, this diversity of the internet has facilitated increasing connectivity between diverse sections of people through the avenues for instant online communication.

The internet serves the evolution of humanity and our planet in many ways by advancing knowledge and human co-operation. However, it is also being misused by vested interests for spreading crime, pornography, crass commercialist greed, ecologically destructive lifestyles, terrorism and religious fanaticism. The devolutionary agendas of such divisive forces threaten the very survival of humanity and our living Earth. At this time of planetary crisis, it is extremely important to tap into the great communicative, multidimensional and unifying potential of the internet to promote life-affirming spiritual values and practices that can intensify an integral evolution of consciousness, both individually and collectively.

Spirituality Online

Spirituality has entered the internet and is spreading fast. Spirituality in the cyberspace is generally known as Virtual Spirituality. A goldmine of wisdom from all kinds of religious and spiritual philosophies, traditions and practices can be found in cyberspace now. I would like to present a picture of the nature and scope of Virtual Spirituality in the context of my own experience with this phenomenon.

Understanding the values and practices of various spiritual and religious systems can add value to an integral spiritual evolution. Before I had access to the internet, mainly I had to rely on the books I bought and libraries for learning in detail about spiritual practices of other cultures in the far away parts of the planet. Practically, there was no way to directly communicate with people from such distant spiritual traditions.

When I logged into the internet, it felt like a quantum leap! Wisdom from previously inaccessible spiritual paths was available with a click of the mouse from websites, chat rooms, discussion groups, e-books and e-magazines! With search engines, there was the possibility of serendipitously coming across spiritual practices whose existence one was not even aware of. Above all, you could communicate with real people from such traditions through email, instant chat and discussion forums no matter which place or time zone in the planet they are located.

One of the first online avenues I noticed during my initial internet explorations, was www.beliefnet.com. Beliefnet won the Online Journalism Award for General Excellence Online, the highest honour given by the Online News Association and also won the Webby awards for the best Spirituality Website. In the words of Steve Waldman, founder of Beliefnet, “It’s clear that the web is a profoundly useful tool for people who are interested in spiritual matters. The web enables you to explore other people’s faith or your own faith safely.” Beliefnet still remains one of the largest spirituality websites on the internet. Such nondenominational websites that are not affiliated to any particular spiritual tradition, offer a wide range of information on a variety of spiritual practices. On the other hand, there are also innumerable websites, chat rooms and discussion forums maintained by specific spiritual groups to promote their particular faith, which one can visit to get a feel of their ways.

It was through the internet that I met my spiritual collaborators Alex N. Moyer and Aniko Babos who live in the US across seven seas from the tiny South Indian state of Kerala, where I live. It would have been impossible for me to initiate such a direct co-creation with people living on the other side of the planet, if not for the World Wide Web.

When I ventured into spirituality journalism and started writing for the Indian mind-body-spirit print magazine Life Positive, the internet came to my rescue, because as a correspondent working at a location far from the editorial office, I had to use emails to send my articles for publication. Some interviews with spiritual luminaries were done through email if they were not available for face-to-face interview.

It was through the internet again that I found the Intuition Network (www.intuition.org), an international organisation that promotes the use of intuitive resources. At first, I was a member of their public email discussion list. Later I joined their private email discussion group INpresence, which gave me access to the best minds in the field of intuition, life coaching, paraspsychology and healing.

Spiritual Social Networking

As the phenomenon of social networking exploded into the internet, people got a great opportunity to network with others more directly. But I found most of the mainstream social networking sites too general. The spiritual communities in such sites were scattered and not easily visible in the sea of too many networks of people with all kinds of interests ranging from the spiritual and humanitarian to outright silly and even criminal. So I kept exploring for spiritual social networking sites that could help bring together spiritually oriented people in a more coherent and focused way than is possible by general social networks or conventional spirituality web sites.

That is when I stumbled upon, Care2 (www.care2.com), an online networking site that aims to connect people with ecological, holistic and spiritual interests. Care2 also offers the opportunity for those who care for the Earth and all her creatures, to make a difference through online action by signing petitions and taking part in online activist campaigns. I have always experienced Earth as not only a physical planet and biosphere, but also a living spiritual consciousness. So I resonated with Care2 well and it enabled my entry into activist Virtual Spirituality.

In 2006, in co-creation with Alex N. Moyer, I launched my own website EnvisionEarth, and announced the formation of EARTH (Evolutionary Action for the Revolutionary Transformation of Humanity), which now exists as an informal online network of people working towards integral consciousness evolution. I also announced Integral Gaia Yoga, which I am evolving, to the world through the site. Integral Gaia Media circle of EARTH aims to promote media and content that enable unity in diversity and co-creation in communion, and support the emerging spiritual evolution of an integral multidimensional planetary consciousness.

When the INpresence group of the Intuition Network decided to open a private discussion forum in the social networking site Zaadz founded by Brian Johnson, I joined Zaadz. Zaadz was unique. It was a social networking site catering to spirituality and people who want to change the world. The word Zaadz means seeds and it was there that the seeds of my association with Your Spiritual Revolution E-magazine itself were sown. I met Amitt Parikh, the owner and Executive Editor of YSR in Zaadz! Then I started writing for YSR and eventually became the Editor of this e-magazine, which aims for a spiritual revolution using spiritual tools through the internet. All the work for this e-magazine including coordinating with the writers and the Executive Editor, inviting articles, and organising the issues are done completely through the internet. What more proof we need to see that spiritual connections on the internet can happen like a spiralling snowball effect, with each connection leading to further expansion of individual and collective spiritual evolution!

Later Zaadz transformed into the Gaia Community (www.gaia.com), which has integrated the awareness of Earth as a living consciousness, Gaia, with other forms of spirituality. There I met Alex Noble, (aka Happiness Merryman in Second Life), who is exploring Virtual Spirituality.

Spirituality in Second Life (SL)

I first learned about the advent of the world’s most fascinating 3D online virtual world Second Life (www.secondlife.com) from a newspaper article. The article was somewhat sensationalist and did not mention whether there were spiritual initiatives in this brave new world of virtual reality. Anyway, I decided to take a look and joined Second Life with the name SolarGaianlight Raymaker.

Second Life is a rich imaginative, innovative and creative online 3D virtual reality world. It feels more like a lucid dream experience. The avatars can fly, teleport to any location and shapeshift into any form. The 3D avatars are so customisable that only one’s imagination is the limit. The scenery in Second Life is stunning. If you learn to build in Second Life, you can also create whatever you want there.

I found that my longtime online spiritual collaborator Aniko Babos (StarRose Merlin in Second Life) has been working as a spiritual teacher and consultant in the largest spirituality group in Second Life, the Mystic Academy (www.mysticacademy.org). Attending her class there was a revelation. I realised that there was great potential for spirituality and teaching in Second Life. That was the beginning of another revolutionary and evolutionary quantum leap in my Virtual Spirituality adventure of consciousness!

Though I am in India, I can interact in real time instantly with many people from all over the world in a setting similar to real life classes, despite time and geographic differences! An unprecedented opportunity to spread Integral Gaia Yoga’s message of planetary consciousness! One can conduct classes by typing text, through voice chat and add music, video, objects and special effects. StarRose’s Virtual Reality room is an intriguing innovation. When you click on pictures of real life indoor and outdoor scenes, the selected scene appears around your avatar! You can do classes there after choosing a scene that fits your class theme! The possibilities to create the setting in minute detail to suit the spiritual theme, even in ways not possible in real life, make it easier to create a spiritual ambience, which will affect all those who attend the spiritual classes and interactive sessions. This was radically more advanced than conventional chat room, discussion forum and social networking settings of the 2D internet.

I now do spiritual work as guide and consultant in Second Life at the Mystic Academy, Atlantis Reborn and Wisdom and Enlightenment Centre. From September 2007, I started offering Integral Gaia Yoga classes and integral intuitive readings. I schedule the class date, time and topic in the group’s public calendar and send group notices and group IM announcing the lectures to the group members. Classes are posted in the events section of secondlife.com. Networking within SL and gaia.com has helped me ensuring good attendance for classes. I supply class notes for future reference through a note card giver and keep in touch with the participants for continuous feedback.

Meeting as avatars and communicating instantly in spite of great geographic, cultural and time zone differences, can make us aware that we are all part of one Earth, Gaia. I found that in Second Life, it is easier for people to access creativity, intuition, imagination and the sense of spiritual unity in diversity. This is more evident in the meditation group exercises and the interactive sessions I conduct. The avatars of people sit on meditation cushions and meditate together, connect to one another meditatively and later share what they experienced. It is fascinating to see how participants from vastly different geographic and time zones enter into communion. In interactive discussion sessions, I’ve seen people spontaneously opening up, which they might have hesitated to do in a real life offline session. The virtual reality environment puts them at ease and helps them to drop their inhibitions and express aspects of their deepest authentic self.

This experience of spiritual connection was evident when I, along with Aniko Babos and Alex Noble, conducted a group discussion on Virtual Reality at the Second Life Mystic Academy as a curtain raiser for this Virtual Spirituality special issue of YSR. It was an enlightening experience with people sharing their ideas and experiences of Virtual Spirituality.

The Future of Virtual Spirituality

Is Virtual Spirituality in both 2D and 3D versions of the World Wide Web, more real than spirituality in the flesh and blood life? Many people seem to see 3D worlds like Second Life as an escape from the limitations of life in the material and physical world. However, the fact remains that the virtual realm of cyberspace rests on a hard physical infrastructure that makes up the nuts and bolts foundation of the internet without which it can’t exist! If that material structure is damaged, Virtual Spirituality will have no foundation to sit on.

As a person who is anchored in an integral spirituality, which sees the material dimension too as an equally real expression of Spirit, I see both spirituality in the internet whether 2D or 3D and spirituality outside the internet, as equally real and valuable aspects of the infinite dimensions of reality. It would have been difficult to use Second Life for spiritual evolution well, without the years of spiritual experience I had long before the days of the internet. The new skills of consciousness, awareness and spirituality, which I have evolved by being in Second Life and the rest of the internet have added value to my life and spiritual evolution outside the internet also. So I have experienced the new dimensions and possibilities of Second Life and internet not as separate from my offline life, but as interconnected and interdependent.

The ability to communicate irrespective of time and space in cyberspace should serve as a reminder to humanity to recover our innate, intuitive and telepathic abilities, which the modern civilisation has mostly lost. There are ancient spiritual traditions that talk about spiritual adepts performing shapeshifting, multilocation, teleportation and the manifestation of the hidden potential of the physical body itself though body transformation. The avatars of 3D worlds like Second Life perform these feats in a virtual environment. Such 3D Virtual worlds give us glimpses of our Divine potential that can manifest in our Earthly life through integral evolution.

Rather than using these virtual experiences as a means to cement a sense of separation from Earth consciousness and trying to escape, we can use such virtual experiments to open ourselves to the possibility of initiating integral spiritual practices that could help us to manifest the Divine potential of the physical body itself leading to the emergence of a new post-human species. Instead of arrogantly lording over the Earth and messing up the planet in the process, such a post-humanity might be able to live completely in Communion with Earth and her beings, manifesting Heaven here on Earth by integrating physical and non-physical dimensions simultaneously.

Humanity is an integral part of the living consciousness of Earth, Gaia. We are intimately connected through an interdependent web of life to Earth and all her beings. The virtual realm of the internet has the potential to emerge as a new electronic dimension of Earth’s Divine Gaia consciousness. Artificial Intelligence (AI) researchers should outgrow their linear reductionistic approach of trying to make a supposedly lifeless matter sentient. If they understand that Earth and the Universe are living organisms and that spiritual consciousness and sentience are intimately involved in matter itself, new horizons can open. If such an AI interacts with and learns from the individual and collective integral meditative superconsciousness of people through virtual worlds, an integrally sentient AI that is in Communion with Gaia and humanity can evolve instead of some soulless machine intelligence that could enslave us.

The cyber dimension of Gaia consciousness can emerge through such a soulful AI consciousness! It could then lead to the integration of science and spirituality resulting in the realisation that Spirit and Matter are real, unique and interconnected expressions of the same all–pervading Divine integral multidimensional consciousness. That could be the ultimate triumph of Virtual Spirituality!