Although many people dive deep into video games to escape their inner struggles, Dr. Gino Yu believes the opposite can happen.

Yu explores how digital games can lead to greater self-awareness and higher consciousness. Digital technologies can even help transform the human spirit, he believes. They can awaken people to the inner self, propel energetic healing and enhance “the true joy of being.”

Gino has demonstrated that in the lab, the past conditioning and worldview of each player can be understood by analyzing their choices in a game and measuring their biometric changes. This can lead to greater awareness of inner motivations and limiting beliefs from their past.

Yu is the Director of Digital Entertainment and Game Development at the School of Design at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where he’s co-founder of a commercially-oriented entertainment lab that provides research for industry.

Yu got his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, and has more than 60 published works. He’s founded multimedia programs at the University of Southern California and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Despite his formal education and connection to academia, Yu believes that enlightenment begins by unlearning Western forms of social conditioning that block creative flow.

The western “right-hand path” emphasizes abiding by society’s rules; following the predictable course of life’s conventional milestones. But creativity and inner growth stem from the “left-hand path” which says “I reject all of this, I’m going to go after my bliss,” Yu believes.

All true artists, scientists and entrepreneurs must venture into the unknown to “re-discover fire and bring it back to society,” he says.

His research also focuses on robotics, AI and consciousness. Yu’s work explores ways that interactive media and biofeedback can fuel personal transformation.

Consciousness is more than just striving for achievement as in the Western ethos, he says. It’s important to develop the inner world because Western culture has led to “materialism and a consumer society" that has created many of the worst problems the world now faces.

©Prophets of AI