An Invitation to the Metaverse

Technology is not all bad, but it is not all praiseworthy, either. Upon one recent technological product in particular, the television, St Lawrence of Chernigov lays a heavy judgment:

‘The God-pleasing Holy Elder used to say, "Blessed, and thrice-blessed is the man who does not desire, and who will not see the abominable face of the Antichrist. He who sees him and hears his blasphemous words, his promises of all earthly treasures, he will be deceived and will go to meet him and bow down to him. He will perish together with him and will burn in the eternal fire."

‘They asked the Elder, "How will all this come to pass?" The holy Elder said with tears, "In the holy place, the abomination of desolation will stand. And it will show the foul seducers of the world. And they will be deceiving the people who have fallen away from God, and will perform false miracles. And after them, the Antichrist will appear. And the whole world will see him at the same time."

‘Then the fathers asked the Elder, "Where in the holy place? In the church?" The Venerable one answered, "Not in the church, but in every house. In the corner, where the holy icons now stand and hang, there will stand captivating devices which will delude the people. Many will say, 'We need to watch and listen to the news.' And behold, in the news the Antichrist will appear. He will mark his people with the seal, and he will hate Christians. The last persecutions of the Christian soul who will refuse to receive the mark of Satan will begin. A Christian will not be able to neither buy nor sell anything. But despair not, the Lord will not abandon His children. There is no need to fear.’

If that is how negatively he viewed TVs, we can only imagine what he would think of current technology – smart phones and the like that have made screens omnipresent.

The metaverse, the idea of a 3D, immersive, internet-connected, virtual world introduced by Mark Zuckerberg recently, will only amplify the deceptive and destructive effects of our screens.

Separation from Reality

. . . Which is to say, separation from God. The creation, as Fr Dumitru Staniloae would say, is meant to draw us into dialogue with God. Every creating thing – a person, a tree, a horse, a cabbage – has a mystical depth at its center (St Maximus the Confessor called it the logos), which makes it what it really is. This logos is filled with the energies of Christ, by Whom they were spoken into existence. This is why we feel a certain awe and joy when we are in the natural world: God is near us then, speaking to us through the logoi of his creatures. The Saints who have purified themselves are able to see these logoi, and to experience a deep union with and knowledge of God.

But things like movies, augmented reality, video games, and so on, take us out of the creation filled with God’s words and Presence and place us in a world created in the image of fallen man, where the Presence of God is greatly diminished. The Holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church draw a sharp distinction between the images one experiences at the advanced stages of a healthy spiritual life and those seen in the realm of fantasy:

‘One of the goals of the spiritual life is indeed the attainment of a spiritual knowledge (q.v.) which transcends both the ordinary level of consciousness and the subconscious; and it is true that images, especially when the recipient is in an advanced spiritual state, may well be projections on the plane of the imagination of celestial archetypes, and that in this case they can be used creatively, to form the images of sacred art and iconography. But more often than not they will simply derive from a middle or lower sphere, and will have nothing spiritual or creative about them. Hence they correspond to the world of fantasy and not to the world of the imagination in the proper sense. It is on this account that the hesychastic masters on the whole take a negative attitude towards them. They emphasize the grave dangers involved in this kind of experience, especially as the very production of these images may be the consequence of demonic or diabolic activity; and they admonish those still in the early stages and not yet possessing spiritual discrimination (q.v.) not to be enticed and led captive by these illusory appearances, whose tumult may well overwhelm the mind. Their advice is to pay no attention to them, but to continue with prayer and invocation, dispelling them with the name of Jesus Christ’ (Philokalia, Glossary, entry for ‘Fantasy’).

The more mankind immerses himself in fantasy worlds crafted by the Zuckerbergs of the world, the more he will find himself the literal companion of demons, who will be very much at home flitting about the deceptive digital images conjured up, which draw a veil between us and God, which weaken our discernment of what is real and what is not.

It is not too difficult to see how the spread of this form of technology will help make possible the deception necessary to bring about the enthronement of Antichrist: by creating a people hypnotized by diabolically inspired images (this process will also likely be aided by the use of psychedelic drugs that are being legalized and encouraged in more and more places).

Alienation from Other People

The ‘new media’, as some call it (like Dr Jean-Claude Larchet in The New Media Epidemic), has another powerfully harmful effect: It alienates people from one another. No true communion and friendship is possible through them, through a screen or a hologram or a Twitter post. Person to person, face to face – that is true communion, and especially the communion experienced when we all receive together in the church the Precious Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, which unites us with one another and with God in a way that transcends words and reason.

What to Do?

The answer to these problems is easy to state, but hard to implement, considering the drift of the world at the present moment. In order to live the human life as it was meant to be lived, we must stay connected as much as possible to the creation God has given us to live within and limit our use of harmful forms of technology by, amongst other things, cultivating the earth – growing flowers, herbs, trees, vegetables, etc.; walking in the woods; reading old-fashioned paper books; playing a musical instrument; learning a craft; meeting with people in person; working together on a common project; and, preeminently, attending the services of the Orthodox Church.

Gates, Bezos, et al., our demonically guided overlords, want our attention fixed within their virtual domains as much as possible. We should strive to give it to God and neighbor and to the world God has given us instead.