What is the relationship of virtual reality to lucid dreaming, and how can both mediums be used alleviate suffering? This presentation will explore the phenomenology of non-lucidity (experiential fusion), and how virtual reality can help us understand the core teachings of emptiness in the Buddhist tradition. Reification is at the heart of human suffering. By reifying an alternate reality (VR and hyper-lucid dreams) we can dereify waking reality, and point the way to the end of suffering by discovering the empty nature of all appearance. VR can help us unearth the transfer of power that takes place constantly as we unwittingly imbue waking reality with an ontological status it does not inherently have. We then suffer when that power boomerangs and we’re assaulted by the seemingly external forces of our lives – victims of our own projections. This talk will explore how we’ve lost our mind in this non-lucid power play: how we continually lose the essence of the mind (emptiness) in the display of the mind (form), a process that we can discern by studying the “double delusion” of the nighttime dream and the captivating force of virtual reality. Finding the essence in the display (emptiness in form) results in the Great Equanimity of awareness across all states of consciousness as professed by the wisdom traditions. This democracy of cognition reinstates the proper distribution of power, ownership, and responsibility -- and the freedom that ensues from that restoration. Virtual reality is a “stem cell” technology; lucid dreaming is an inner analog. If placed in the proper holding environment and nourished with the right view, VR and lucid dreaming can evolve into healthy mediums for psychological and spiritual growth.