Everyday life is rapidly going virtual, and we are experiencing the vaporization of physical reality as technology rapidly evolves. Apps are displacing shopping malls, and crude single-player video games have morphed into massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). This rapid virtualization of physical reality leads MIT computer scientist Rizwan Virk to suggest in The Simulation Hypothesis that we may be living in an MMORPG without knowing it.

If we are living in a hypnotic simulation controlled by beings greater than us but unknown by us, can we develop a powerful video game to break through to reality? Perhaps, but we would remain dependent upon machinery to awaken—like always needing a meditation app to meditate. Humanity’s mystical traditions teach that we are master simulators of our own experience—with or without machinery—and that it is our choice to sleep or to wake up.

In this course, we will unfold the classic Panchakosha, or Five-Bodies Teaching, from the Upaniṣads to realize the mystical depth in human life. This ancient teaching shows us how to perceive the multiple subtle or virtual bodies that cover up our ordinary consciousness. As we enter more deeply into this teaching over the four weeks of this course, we will also learn how to dismantle these virtual bodies and return to our inborn standpoint of natural enlightenment.