I make an assumption about what is desirable in life, and I should state it explicitly. I assume that a robust life is a life of variety and wide options, and that an impoverished life is a life with few options and little variety. Life naturally contains limits and limits help to restrain chaos and thus to free a certain kind of energy. Although there are many people of the opinion that all limits are bad, I feel that limits alone are not bad, in fact, limits are necessary to empower creativity. However, certain types of strict limits in life seem to imply the presence of a pathological state or at least delusions about lack of personal power. There is a delicate balance between the limits which empower personal growth and the limits which crush human spirit.
One way to find this balance is to realize that within any personal psychological reality there is a set of changing stimuli and response potentials. A behavior is a pair of specific stimulus with its response and a behavior results in a new stimulus which joins other stimuli in creating the personal psychological reality. Theoretically, the responses that may exist for a given set of stimuli can be counted. The number of such potential responses is often thought of as the "richness" of a person's life. A relatively low number of potential responses or options indicates a relatively impoverished reality.
A healthy, normal psychological life seems to be one in which there is a rich set of stimuli and a rich set of responses. Furthermore, the pattern of behavior tends not to be rigidly repetitive and this rich variety seems to allow both personal growth and to stimulate others in their own search for variety and richness in life. On the other hand, an addictive personality could be characterized as one in which there are few responses and the pattern of behavior is generally repetitive.
What I find to be interesting is to apply the principles of trance theory to a wide variety of individual and institutional behaviors that appear to be rigid or repetitive _ that is, presumable trances _ and try to determine what the trance generating loops are and what the characteristics of the dissociated trance planes are and how one might describe any created trance forces.
A person has the potential to be in a normal trance as soon as their attention is limited. Ordinary concentration, when the mind is focused on a specific problem or thought, sets one of the conditions for a normal trance to occur. Intense pleasure, when the mind is engaged in joyful or exciting repetitive activity, sets a condition for trance and may, for many people, become a trance. When one is daydreaming, with no specific direction of the thoughts, with a certain repetition of thoughts, one is in a normal trance. The general characteristic of these normal trance states seems to be that thoughts repeat and there is a limiting of attention; however, they can be easily interrupted. What makes a normal trance normal is primarily that it is easily interrupted. That is, specifically, disturbing the trance generating loop makes the dissociated trance plane collapse. Depending on many factors, such as the presence of secondary trance generating loops, or if the dissociated trance plane h so that disturbing the trance generating loop only makes more or different dissociated trance planes _ hallucinations _ such trances would appear less normal and more weird. Certain of them we can term pathological and we can describe them in terms of trance theory.
We share trances for the effects of trance; that is, for the effects brought about by an altered cognition space.
With less awareness of pain whether it is emotional, physical or ontological, and with less awareness of the wide variety of choices that exist in an enabled reality, the person in trance happily chooses among an impoverished and smaller set of options.
Life, perhaps, would be too difficult if people were always aware of their bodies, always had a perfect memory and always made perfect judgements and were always aware of the infinite possibilities of life. Because most people cannot stand pain, because most people fear chaos, uncertainty and death, most people enter into social, institutional and mutual personal trances in order to reduce awareness. Perhaps, in the not too distant past, life was uncertain _ in times of war, or in hunger, poverty, fear and abuse situations _ and it made sense to hide and to create trance by singing ourselves songs, or saying prayers, or by putting our minds on certain constant images or visions. This is indeed how natural trances are created; and the usual reason is to hide from something.
By a mutual trance, I mean that each of us in various ways and by social behavior supports an impoverished awareness in others. Our purposes in supporting impoverished awareness are: to be able to have some peace ourselves, to reduce the noise and the pain. Again, the reason for this is to reduce our awareness of the reality of chaos and escape the pain of the human condition. There is also some pleasure in entering trance in spite of the fact that trance reduces awareness.
If we speak of degrees of trance, it is my opinion that there is only a difference in degree between passively watching TV, ordinary rational thought and rigorous scientific thought, religious fervor, addictive states, and the states of mind belonging to mass murderers. All of the mind states above represent differing degrees of trance states.
There is also a strong similarity between addictions, hypnotic trance and "altered states of consciousness." All of these "non-normal" states come about first by the progressive narrowing of perception and the limiting of awareness to a single, or at most very few objects of attention. The narrowing of attention can be induced by drugs, chanting, television, etc. Second, an association must be made which connects every attempt to make the attention wider to an effort to make the attention more narrow. This association will serve to concentrate attention on the objects of attention. Third, when the association is strong enough, the original impulse to narrow attention can be removed. The reason is that the strong association already created will continue the attention toward the few objects.
Tribes, cults, societies and nations inculcate restricted social behaviors through trance, training, customs and laws because it requires simply too much cognitive processing to understand the unusual. In the abysmal past, the unusual were simply killed. Nowadays trance helps to limit awareness and therefore the more unusual have more of a chance to exist. This in itself is probably a positive evolutionary phenomenon.
It may seem bizarre to advocate the development of more intense trances and limited awareness and more impoverished realities as a global solution to social ills, yet, with drug addiction, religions and television isn't that precisely what seems to be happening? Let's understand what it is we are really doing and do it more efficiently! In America, where more than 95% of the homes have television and the daily average time spent in front of a television is in excess of five hours, people may believe themselves to be informed, but their realities are impoverished.
When people walk around with their virtual reality helmets, trance music reverberating in the vacuum of inner space, they may believe themselves to be 'connected' to the Host and King of the information mountain, but they will be only aware of a certain limited class of toxic atmospheric discharges, and social inequities. They will be unaware of their own abuse.
In lieu of a fearless awareness of an enriched life, most people have chosen the way of trance. Let it be. Tranceless awareness is not for everyone.
A habit usually is a long and complex trance generating loop and therefore when done only a few times represents a weak trance, that is, a trance with an unstable dissociated trance plane. Yet, when the habit is done hundreds or thousands of times, the behavior may become compulsive and appear like an addiction. In such a case, there is a more stabile trance force with constructive trance generating loops.
Socially or economically reinforced habits such as shaking hands, smoking cigarettes, having sex in the missionary position, wearing clothes when in society, answering the telephone when it rings, flushing the toilet after it is used, coming home after work and turning the TV on, all represent habits that are socially or economically supported in most countries of this world. Often the individual effort needed to break such trances is more than is possible to do. Such social habits or trances represent deep trances with trance force components and secondary order constructive trance generating loops.
To break such trances increases the awareness of individual chaos, uncertainty, and pain. The sense of chaos, or fear, uncertainty and pain is the reaction that is caused by attempting to change or modify the trance force.
One could characterize this situation as an entrancement by magic.
One must be quite courageous to attempt to modify a trance force. In addition, the trance analysis needed to break a trance is often a complicated and difficult undertaking. There is also no guarantee that even if the underlying trance generating loops were known it would be possible to break the trance easily.
Love is a human emotion which is created socially often through a period of courtship and intimacy, desire and fantasy, physical contact and orgasm.
The courtship, when it exists, often or typically occurs during primary trance inductive social situation such as dancing, listening to music, etc. These primary inductive social trance situations may produce many of the disabled cognitive conditions characteristic of trance, including faulty or failed memory, hallucinations, fixed attention, lack of volition, inability to make judgements, increased self-observation, dissociation, etc.
Love also has secondary inductive characteristics, insofar as courting individuals often speak of family, feelings, etc. These subjects often contain triggers to prior trance states. For example, when two people speak of personal experiences within their own family experiences, they may use words which trigger prior trance states. Courting and petting also may trigger somatic trances. Heavy petting will trigger prior somatic trance states including dissociation, lack of volition, fixed attention, etc.
When petting is coupled with physical release or relaxation such as orgasm, there is established a secondary order trance generating loop to enable these trance states.
The trance generating loop of love is characteristic of an addictive or hypnotic trance in the sense that the pathway of the secondary trance generating loop contains some external or physical component, and the dissociated trance plane leads back to the physical component.
There are many types of love trances. Some love trances may also have high components of the trance force but usually there are secondary order trance generating loops present.
Wise people have known that things don't last, that "all is vanity." The pain and disappointments of life tend to teach a receptive mind that "all that glitters is not gold." Maybe it is simply radioactive and it is killing you.
In order to make wise decisions, it is necessary to have a wider state of awareness and consciousness, and not a narrow one. It is necessary to have an overview of the long-range consequences of our decisions and not the narrow ones which come from the immediate satisfaction of personal desire. With so many desirable objects in the world, and so much new information, how do we increase our awareness and wisdom?
Many kinds of consciousness raising activities try to promote the possibility that there are other ways to see or to understand life. In a larger field of awareness of possibilities, a more mature and integrated awareness can develop, resulting in less fear of chaos as well as a more open potential of being.
Psychologists and psychiatrists try to widen the perceptions of their clients, to promote new ways of handling stress and uncomfortable feelings without escape or denial. It is these wider perceptions, with more robust psychological options of action in life which enriches life, and not necessarily more material possessions in life.
Psychically, the narrowing of perception and the limiting of options or making an object of the sources of personal happiness, personal salvation and personal betterment gives rise to ideas such as heaven, God, a Saviour, a cult of personality, brand loyalty and patriotism. Generally, the narrowing of perception produces hypnotic trance. In severe or pathological cases, the narrowing of perception produces paranoia, schizophrenia, violence, and addictions of all sorts.
Making an object out of our perceived source of happiness, salvation and betterment also promotes the idea that there are "good", "moral", or "ethical" things and behaviors. That is, there is the perception that some 'things' are better than other 'things'. And therefore some things are worse, or even "sinful." It is often believed by some people that dope is bad, guns are bad and money is "the root of all evil". These beliefs about dope, guns and money come naturally from the idea that "things could be better, and the world would be a whole lot better if (dope, guns, or money) didn't exist." There is really no justification for empowering an object or a thing with the qualities of good or evil, except in the case of a narrowed perception and hallucinated projections. But it is precisely this narrowed perception or the hallucinated projections from the dissociated trance plane on to the object which causes dysfunction to arise in the psyche, in the individual, and in all nstitutions and in the environment itself.
Learning something new utilizes dissociation as abstraction, but employing the hallucinated projections from the dissociated trance plane is not learning.
Sometimes it is argued that calling a thing "good" is merely a shorthand way of saying something more complex and a shorthand way of providing a sort of synopsis, saving time and avoiding a detailed description. The "good/bad" judgement is merely a way that an experienced authority can communicate the bottom line to someone, without needing to go through a tedious list of conditions, and assumptions that underlie the ultimate judgement. Of course, the experienced authority can have false experience, or have a hidden agenda which makes any judgements coming from such an authority immediately suspicious. Furthermore, the conditions may be falsely enumerated, and the logic supporting the "good" judgement may also be faulty. Usually, people find themselves arguing the "goodness" of a thing on precisely these terms: that one or the other has faulty assumptions or faulty logic, or has a hidden agenda which biases perception. Someone may ultimately admit that they only hat the thing is "good," or that their judgement is merely a personal opinion which cannot be supported by the facts. When there are multiple hallucinated projections on to objects, people and situations, one belief will compete with all other beliefs, arguments will abound between one group with the Holy Writ against another group that is divinely inspired. It is quite simply lunatics arguing among delusions.
The self-searching individuals naturally wish to escape this madness. Some will evolve to new forms. Many will escape by dropping out. Dropping out often takes an addictive form. Alcohol, drugs, religion, work, overconsumption, and TV are only a few of the more obvious forms of addictions. In many cases the dropping out takes the form of a desire to be in a trance which is induced or supported by substances like alcohol and drugs, or by social forms such as religion, work, consumption, or by more individual forms such as TV, love, overeating, violence etc.
When the individual suffers, the family suffers. Dysfunctional, dropped-out, individuals in addictive trances place tremendous pressures on their families. As individuals experiencing the results of family members going through addictive behaviors are themselves stressed, it is no wonder that families disintegrate. When families don't disintegrate, there is often the side effects of child and spouse abuse or more serious social crimes. Disintegrated families result in homeless or nomadic gangs. Nomadic gangs are common in cities and are symptomatic of the underlying dysfunction. Cities become more difficult to manage when family and individual dysfunction become widespread and affects social institutions. After all, the social institutions can only reflect the individuals that run them.
Former Governor Lamb of Colorado has identified the dysfunctional institution in his own state and recognizes the same institutional dysfunctions on all levels of government. Widespread individual and institutional dysfunction destroys social assets. Dysfunction destroys people, jobs, the connectivity of the social fabric and the pertinence of institutions. Institutions cease to be efficient and themselves become dysfunctional. While social resources and government assets can support dysfunctional institutions in times of chaos, in extreme cases and over the long term, these resources and assets eventually are depleted, worn out, used up and become useless or self-destructive. This characteristic of extremely dysfunctional institutions is more common in third-world countries.
Social dysfunctions can all be traced back to the pernicious effects of hypnotic and addictive trance at the individual level.
Addiction can be better understood if we think of it not merely as "substance abuse," or performance addiction, but as a form of an impoverished reality that is maintained by a trance. Limited awareness, tunnel vision, the special characteristic that identifies a dysfunctional, impoverished reality, also identifies a type of trance state that may be also a characteristic of all addictions.
While pathological trances are not at all desirable, most people nearly all of the time are either in a pathological trance or are engaged in trying to get others into trance. It is precisely pathological trance, not the yogic trance, that permeates most of our waking social reality. It seems to me that once we can identify these pathological trances on a personal and social level we can take steps to avoid them.
Perhaps the most important aspect of pathological trance is that it creates an unawareness or a "sleeping state". When your thoughts are limited in variety and your attention becomes fixed, the fixation alters perceptions, can create dream states, visions and hallucinations. In this sleeping state you are unaware of new information. Entranced by the street magician, you are unaware that the pickpocket has removed your wallet. The pathological trance state can create illusions which do not exist and cause the failure to perceive what does exist. Not all trances are pathological; the trance state of a yogi can be a tool to illuminate what is not normally perceived.
It is estimated that over 95% of the American population have one or more "addictions." Such addictions include drug and alcohol addictions (now termed "substance abuse" to include cocaine, psychedelics, caffeine, nicotine, as well as alcohol, sugar, chocolate and junk-food), TV addiction, work-related addictions, sex and love addictions, food related addictions, computer addictions and other behavioral or performance addictions. Addictions commonly share the characteristic that a socially dysfunctional behavior is present and the addict has progressively fewer and fewer performance options resulting in an impoverished reality. High percentages of addiction are found not only in America. The ex-Soviet Union has its problems with vodka. India and the Middle East have their opium addicts and Switzerland and Japan have their work junkies. The personal life disruption and social costs are well-documented and the costs are probably well underestimated.
Alcohol addiction is a worldwide phenomenon. Even strict Islamic and Hindu cultures have their share of alcoholics. Alcohol is widely available in all industrial nations and cultures, including the ex-Soviet Union and Japan. Alcohol addiction is merely one way that addiction manifests, yet the social costs of alcohol addiction alone are immense.
Drug addiction too is a worldwide phenomenon. The drugs may change depending on the culture, the law and the severity of punishment. In the case of tobacco, it has been shown that nicotine is more addictive than heroin, yet in many parts of the world the consumption of nicotine is not only tolerated, but actually encouraged. The long-term health effects of tobacco use, while widely known, are ignored. The use of drugs, whether nicotine, caffeine, heroin, cocaine, marijuana, designer drugs or sugar has, like alcohol, long-term, immense social costs.
The fact that addictions can be substituted somewhat easily may give a clue as to a therapeutic approach to addictions in general. Bandler and Grinder have shown that a process of pacing and leading can, over time, limit awareness and induce trance. With appropriate conditions, it may be possible to pace and lead addictive personalities into a wider and richer reality. In this sense, addicts can be "deprogrammed," without programming them into another addiction. The general goal is to program them in a rich type of reality where the subject of a past addiction exists, but along with a much more numerous set of attractive possibilities. When this occurs, it would be quite impossible to distinguish a prior addict from a "normal" person by behavior alone. It is certainly not desirable to negatively reinforce addictive syndromes. To do so runs the risk of modeling "drug switching" which is not a true cure.
It is known that one addiction can be substituted for another. For example, alcoholics can be induced to trade their alcohol addictions for a type of quasi-religious addiction (Alcoholics Anonymous). Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) programs are also "successful" with sex and love addicts, overeaters, Synanon, etc. Some heroin addicts can be induced to swap their heroin for methadone treatment. Therapists know that addictions are often found together, such as cigarettes and alcohol, and that the personality which is addicted to one substance or practice can be induced to either add other addictions or to swap them for others.
It is often thought that addictions come about through the stress of modern life, through childhood experiences, through trauma and disability, or that they may be genetically influenced. No one seems to know for certain, perhaps because addictions are so prevalent it is not possible to know what a nonaddictive state is like.
A great deal of inconsistent social, religious, personal, economic and political energy is spent in attempting to rid the world of the substance of an addiction. Except for societies which employ ruthless and absolute methods, the energy spent in riding the world of the "sinful substances" does not seem either very successful nor cost-effective. There are arguments that the anti-sinful substance zealots may themselves be dysfunctional in addictive and pathological ways.
Religious addictions seem harmless enough. A 1990 study of 113,000 people around the United States by the Graduate School of the City University of New York found that 90% of Americans identify themselves as religious. Born-again Christians, Scientologists, Islamic fundamentalists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Masons, Baptists, Buddhists, Hindus, Methodists, Lutherans, Catholics, Jews, and Mormons usually have no other bad habits than occasionally beating on a book or selling something. Since the religious have fewer other "bad" habits, and seem to promote a certain tribal social adhesion, religions are not usually thought of as being symptomatic of problems, but rather, perhaps, as part of the solution. On the other hand, religious addiction often carries with it an intransigence and intolerance of different points of view that can be as dangerous as a drug addict with a loaded gun. When religious fervor is combined with the rule of law and armed with deadly force, ctively prevent the evolution of a better type of human being.
Religious cults often use methods that will induce trance. Peer pressure, confessional types of testimonials, sense deprivation, lack of contradicting testimony, hysteria, hyper-emotionalism all contribute to constrain awareness and to increase suggestibility. Repetition continued over time will give rise to trance states, which with second order trance loops can certainly become addictive. Confession, for example, used as a catharsis, is a second order stress-relieving trance loop which reinforces the belief trance state.
Addiction can be better understood if we think of it not merely as "substance abuse," or performance addiction, but as a form of hypnotic trance that is maintained by a second order trance loop. Limited awareness, tunnel vision, the special characteristic that identifies a dysfunctional, impoverished reality, also identifies these types of pathological trance states that may be also a characteristic of all addictions.
Meditative trance states, related to hypnotic trance states, can also be termed as addictive if they are an end in themselves. Religious fervor, as a state which feeds upon itself without end, is also quite definitely an addiction in the definition of the model. Certain political and power syndromes also may be termed addictive if they have the characteristic that results in an impoverished reality.
The trance aspect of addiction deserves some comment.
In extreme addictions there may be no other awareness except the desire for the addictive substance and how to get it. Presumably, it is because of the limited awareness on a "substance" that got such substances such a bad name. It is not easy or convenient to blame a pattern or a process, since patterns and processes are so hard to identify, and don't occupy either space have weight or can be taxed.
The trance-induction potential of television is well-known and is used commercially for manipulating consumer tastes as well as other ideas. However useful television is for commercial and control reasons, it cannot be reasonably argued that promoting an impoverished reality is, in the end, really socially beneficial. Or can it?
The addiction to TV, for example, comes about first by having a mild interest in a specific TV program, and the narrowing of perception to the TV screen and listening to the voices and music, watching the scenes as they develop. Second, pleasurable associations through the use of triggers within the program should stimulate fantasies, hallucinations and dreams as a means of escape from everyday responsibilities or stress. In general, if a viewer likes a specific program, this association is easily made. TV producers spend a lot of effort to make TV productions pleasurable and escapist. Third, when there is no more stress and no more everyday responsibilities the pleasure that can be derived from watching TV must be high enough so that it is immaterial whether the use of TV is specific to stress removal or not. The addiction to TV will then be established.
The person who can put long, continuous hours at a difficult job may only be capable to doing this if in a trance. The pleasures of an engaging job can produce feelings of timeless states. Repetitive jobs narrow the attention to only the work at hand. Part of the mind is engaged in the job, but another part of the mind is free to dream. The dream-state produced is exactly characteristic of trance. In this dream-state, the work is being performed, but the worker is not necessarily aware of working. He may be visualizing a beach, having sexual or power fantasies or other hypnoidal and hypnotic dreams. The worker seems aware, but is really in a trance with reduced awareness.
Work addicts are almost revered for their devotion to the duty to work. Calvin and Zwingli have convinced entire societies that the person who works and makes money is closer to God and has most assuredly has an eternal lease in one of heaven's plushier communities. Employers love work addicts because this devotion enhances profit. Work addictions are not limited to any one particular industry. As a professional computer consultant, I have seen how some employers shamelessly exploit willing computer programmers who are addicted to computers.
Trance in the work place makes it easier to control information and employees. If an employee only does the job in front of his nose and knows neither what others are doing nor how they do it, that employee will never become a threat to the owners of the business nor raise embarrassing social or political questions. One presumes _ falsely _ that the owners of a business would be the only ones who would be aware of what their business is really doing. Yet, owners are themselves in trance and many times keep their attentions only on the "bottom line." They, too, may not be aware of the social or environmental impacts of their business. Unfortunately, one of the disastrous side-effects of most trances is that they not only inhibit awareness but also they disable communication. One cannot communicate what one is not aware of.
Work related addictions first require that the perception is narrowed to the work or to work-related things and activities. Second, non-work related activity should be perceived as a source of stress, i.e. something to be avoided. The rewards of work should be limited to the perfection of the work itself, so that work is the means to the end. Finally, when the work-pleasure or the perfection-pleasure can sustain itself, the reason for work can be progressively reduced or removed. The stress produced will serve to drive the worker harder into his work, rather than reduce his production or concentration on work.
The most serious social side effect of pathological work trances is the resulting reduced awareness and disabled communication. Communication of information is critical for any system to function. Human systems as well as computer systems, ecological, biological, political and social systems and more all require clear, accurate, timely communication of information in order to function properly. The lack of clear, accurate, or timely communication between individuals is the basis for misunderstandings, disappointments, hurt feelings, resentment, and violence. The human, economic, agricultural, industrial and social systems that rely on people who are in pathological trance will have and do have disastrous breakdowns.
Pathological trance is unfortunately almost universally encouraged within business, military and governmental organizations. The more an employee can with single-minded determination execute the orders and policies of his organization, the more that employee is rewarded, promoted and respected. Single-mindedness, however, is indicative of trance and possibly a pathological trance. And the existence of a trance always implies that there are areas where the employee is unaware. Therefore, the single-mindedness that is rewarded in many large institutions actually contributes to long-term organizational dysfunction.
When organizations inadvertently encourage trance in their employees, and since trance disables communication, then there can be no surprise why there are system dysfunctions in business, the military and in government.
When, unlike a yogi, we do not choose our trances, and we are unaware of the types and nature of the pathological trances in our lives, then there are things we are unaware of. What we are unaware of causes more human suffering than the sometimes painful knowledge of the truth. One goal of a robust life is to be as aware as possible of our real options. When our unconscious pathological trances cripple our options the result is often disaster and tragedy in our personal lives, our society and in the environment.
Related to work addiction is a phenomenon more akin to what people often appreciate as "artistic inspiration" or artistic drive. An artist may spend long hours with a project which consumes his energy, perhaps stresses his family and finally results in a creation. What distinguishes this artistic drive from addiction is that the artistic drive is not a closed loop. That is, eventually the behavior comes to an end. However, if the behavior had no end, but repeated with an eventual decrease in response options, therapists would term the behavior dysfunctional and perhaps even "addictive." If the behavior had no end other than a "life style," for example, a therapist could readily identify the behavior as an addiction of a sort which does not end.
If the goal of therapists is trance termination and enrichment of reality, it is also interesting to consider the type of society that might become when we all wake up.
If you really want to get into a pathological trance and stay there, here's a general recipe. First, you must impoverish your reality by removing all distractions and limit your awareness to a single, or at most a very few objects of attention. This narrowing of attention can be helped along by the passions inspired by drugs, trauma, by joining some religious or political movements or by staying at home and watching a lot of television or computer screen. It would be a good idea to get rid of distractions like kids, magazines or books _ especially books that give you options or make you think about other possibilities. Second, you must convince yourself that all options _ other than your chosen perfect ideal, of course _ are "evil" and every attempt that your monkey mind makes to have variety must be crushed and that you must keep your mind "pure" and only allow thoughts about your chosen passion. This mental trick will serve to concentrate your attention our monomania. A second order loop which reinforces or rewards your monomania in such a regular and consistent way that even pain does not deter you, will 'fix' your trance. You will then be entranced in a pathological trance.
While pathological trances are not at all desirable, most people nearly all of the time are either in a trance or are engaged in trying to get others into trance. It is precisely pathological trance, not the yogic trance, that permeates most of our waking reality. It seems to me that once we can identify these pathological trances on a personal level we can take steps to avoid them.
If trance is defined as fixated thinking, then nearly all human activities create some type of trance. The bounded circles of thinking that keep us in trances are countless. The entire "ordered universe" is a trance. But there is an escapists pleasure in remaining in trance and a deep human fear of the chaos which can result if there were no trance "order" to life.
Start at any place in your addictive trance. Addictive trances reward an impoverished thought-set. You can help reduce any addiction by rewarding the enrichment of your thoughts. This means to expand the variety of your thoughts without trying to remove the thoughts you think are the problem. Continue expanding and enriching your thoughts with new and stimulating ideas, people and experiences. When the variety of your thoughts becomes robust, ideas will be self-generating and the addictive trance will naturally cease to exist by definition.
One effective way is to find the trance generating loop and replace one element in that loop. Wait until the dissociated trance plane changes, then replace a second element. Continue until the second order dissociated trance plane is unstable enough so that you can attack the primary trance generating loop. Once you destroy the primary trance generating loop the addictive trance will stop.
Limited awareness, the special characteristic that identifies a dysfunctional, impoverished reality, also identifies a type of trance state that may be characteristic of a posthypnotic state. Certainly those who have delusions can be considered to be in a trance of some sort. But of what sort is it?
Compulsive repetition, memory defects leading to various types of amnesias, faulty registration and recall and reactive confabulations and misidentifications resulting in disorientation can suggest some schizophrenic psychoses or a variety of organic brain disorders or a pathological trance.
Even a neurotic's inability to abandon old and disadvantageous patterns of reacting can suggest that a repetitive and compulsive behavior is due to some type of pathological trance. That is, it may not be enough to point out or interpret unconscious mental contents without simultaneously investigating the possibility of trance generating loops, secondary trance generating loops and examining the nature of the dissociated trance planes and trance forces that are created by such loops.
It is known that simple and uncomplicated repetitive behavior can be terminated through vigorous stimulation except when there is a gross defect of attention. Trance, too, can be terminated, except when the dissociated trance plane contains secondary loops or when multiple dissociated trance planes exist whose combined trance force components exceed the energy available to the normal ego structure. In such cases, trance termination is very difficult.
Since, normally, trance reduces both body awareness, memory functions, judgement, etc. it is not at all desirable to indefinitely prolong trance or to create habitual trance states. To do so increases the potential that the body or ego structure becomes damaged and that subsequent action does not correspond to reality, i.e. becomes delusional. Although temporary trance states are in fact essential to an intelligent adaptation to life, prolonged trance produces a variety of effects some of which can be termed pathological but some others can be termed remarkable and extraordinary. Distinguishing between normal and pathological trance can be determined by measuring and analyzing the numbers and extent of dissociated trance planes and their associated trance force components relative to the normal ego structure and its energy needs.
The foregoing was part of an article on trance.
For more detailled information on trance theory and trance engineering, order the book
TRANCE: from magic to technology from Trans Media or get more information from the Trance Institute.Dennis R. Wier is a computer consultant and a long-term meditator (since 1965) who lives in Switzerland with his wife Doris.
His comments are the result of his personal realizations and investigations.
He may be contacted by snailmail at The Trance Institute; CH-8311 Brütten, Switzerland, or by email at
drwier@trance.edu.