Molecular Physicist Visualised The Process of Dying | David Glowacki

David Glowacki is a cross-disciplinary researcher and artist who founded the ‘Intangible Realities Laboratory’ (IRL) in Spain, focusing on open-source research at the immersive frontiers of technology and science. One of Glowacki’s projects at IRL has been to translate his own near-death experience into an intersubjective VR experience. A 2020 study showed that the VR phenomenology Glowacki constructed induced peak mystical-type experiences similar to near-death and psychedelic experiences. In this conversation with Hans Busstra, Glowacki explains how his VR work induces mystical-type experiences and how it led him to develop fascinating new visual metaphors for non-duality. Central to Glowacki’s VR experience is the notion that our material bodies are mental models—models that may be more accurately visualized as energy. In doing so, Glowacki creates an aesthetic effect at the intersection of physics and spirituality, which conveys the fundamentally unbounded, non-local, and omnipresent nature of who we are. David Glowacki’s personal website: https://glow-wacky.com/ Intangible Realities Lab: https://www.intangiblerealitieslab.org Scientific publications on Glowacki’s VR phenomenology: Vidal, J., Andreu, C. I., Wrzesien, M., Colombo, D., Wall, J., Glowacki, D. R., Hardy, J. L., & Cebolla, A. (2025). Inducing selflessness through a numadelic virtual reality experience: A preliminary study. Virtual Reality, 30(1), 30. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-025-01293-z D. R. Glowacki, M. D. Wonnacott, R. Freire, B. R. Glowacki, E. M. Gale, J. E. Pike, T. de Haan, M. Chatziapostolou, O. Metatla, “Isness: Using Multi-Person VR to Design Peak Mystical-Type Experiences Comparable to Psychedelics”, Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.00940 0:00 Introduction 03:28 David on the near-death experience that led to the VR experience he created 09:02 The darkness is full of light 17:40 Matter is just frozen light 23:53 Analysing means “cutting up”: what science kills in this process 27:49 The spiritual definition of energy vs. the physics definition of energy 32:24 What is model fluidity and why is it important? 35:29 Comparing VR near-death experiences with psychedelic experiences 41:59 The difference between VR and psychedelics 47:25 Technology and transcendence 53:15 Is the numadelic experience already used in therapeutic settings? 1:01:26 Balancing oneness and separateness 1:06:18 Final words © 2026 Essentia Foundation. All rights on interview content reserved.