How to travel to a parallel universe without leaving your room
In 'The Best of Impossible Worlds', Gabriel Ventura delves into the practice of 'reality shifting', which became fashionable among many young people during the 2020 lockdown.
BarcelonaYou can try it lying in bed, in front of a mirror, or even from inside a bathtub full of water. To achieve this, he explains Gabriel Ventura in the essay The best of impossible worlds (Anagram, 2025), "it requires a bit of concentration and following a few steps." The most popular method is the one known as the crow. To try it you have to be "very tired or in a state of deep relaxation." Believe, slightly bent - emulating the wings of a crow - and legs apart, you close your eyes, and while counting to one hundred, as many times as necessary, you repeat to yourself: "I can move to any universe I want." If you start to hear a tingling in your hands and feet it is a good sign: the head is showing its head.
"Some shifters experience an abysmal sensation of falling, as if they had left the body or crossed a membrane of light," writes Ventura in the book. Once everyday reality (ER) is abandoned and the desired reality (DR) is reached, a split occurs between the self that continues to inhabit our world and what has moved to the universe. (Barcelona, 1988), who has previously written books of poems such as Notes for a fire of the eyes (Documenta Documents, 2020) and The Portuguese night (Contra, 2021), diary of filming of Freedom, by Albert Serra, dedicated The best of impossible worlds to analyze a phenomenon that became popular, especially among young TikTokers, during the pandemic lockdown. "I don't feel like I'm researching anything in real time, but rather just getting behind the times," he admits. reality shifting It was at its peak in 2020, especially among people from Generation Z, and two years later it started to become outdated." shifters They had the habit of recording and sharing on social networks "the experiences lived outside of this world".
Unlike what other procedures propose to abandon tangible reality, including transcendental meditation, hypnosis or lucid dreams, reality shifting He often travels to "pre-existing fictional universes." "The most popular is, without a doubt, Hogwarts, the Harry Potter school," Ventura admits. There are also travelers who choose to live among dinosaurs—inspired by Jurassic World–, to cross the space –inheritance of Star Wars– or delve into Middle Earth – motivated by The Lord of the Rings.
A method of evasion typical of capitalism
The best of impossible worlds raises, beyond the detailed description of the shifting, a "suspension of judgment before this community, without deciding whether they bring a promise of redemption or if they are a group of alienated people," commented the writer Xavier Nueno a few days ago at the presentation of the book Ventura has the good sense of connecting this method of evasion typical of capitalist realism - "they flee from our world to connect to the panoramic view that focuses on the quantum theory of the multiverse, reminds us how spirituality new age of the 70s – spurred by bestsellers such as The Tao of Physics, by Fritjof Capra – was able to convey to the general public, with pertinent modifications, elements of Eastern religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism, and claims "the visionary mind" of Philip K. Dick, who from a certain point in his life explained that he lived simultaneously in two parallel universes, that of California in the second half of the 20th century and that of the 1st century AD, where he was a Christian persecuted by the Roman authorities. "You're free to believe me or not, but at least believe this: I'm not joking," the writer said at a science fiction convention in 1977. shifters more convinced would subscribe to these words.