Trance work

The second objective is to bring the vital energy (prana) into the Shushumna channel. This usually only happens in sleep or as death approaches, which is why trance work plays a part in some esoteric practices and why the ancient manuals acquired such names as the Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Only by esoteric practice can the vital energy be made to enter the Shushumna outside of sleep or death. When this happens, Kundalini is activated and rises. As it ascends, dualistic states of mind are annulled and realization is achieved. 

Flowers—divination and trance work. Flowers used in love magic. 

Sachet mix incense mix potion for divination and trance work. 

Incense in psychic work for divination and trance work as potion or incense aids women s diseases oil yellow dye culinary medicinal dry use aromatic. 

For a while I lay in a trance of revelation and was almost smug that palingenesis had worked after all, because hadn t the addition of saltpeter to the alchemical mixture revealed the notebooks to me, and thereby restored my father and my mother in their true colors And I thought. Now I can forgive my father his harshness, because I understand that the sacrifice he made was for a whore s bastard daughter rather than his own flesh and blood. 

In the 1 century a.d., Plutarch, then the high priest at the temple, left records on how the oracle worked. He described the descent of the priestess into a small chamber where she would breathe divine, sacred vapors and enter a trance. Then the Pythia would return to sit on a stool with a basin of water held in one hand and a sprig of olive in the other... 

In spite of the positive uses of hypnosis in medicine and psychotherapy and as an aid to learning, and in spite of decades of work by responsible professionals to educate the public to have a more positive view of hypnosis, in common usage hypnosis is still usually referred to as a trance. Hypnosis has negative connotations a hypnotized person is thought to lack animation, to be pardy asleep, to be in Ae power of the superior mind and will of the hypnotist, to be controlled and manipulated. 

Second, consensus trance induction is not limited to an hour s session. It involves of repeated inductions and reinforcement of the effects of previous inductions. Given the way children experience time, the cultural hypnotists have forever to work on their subjects. Further, consensus trance is intended to last for a lifetime there are no cultural hypnotists waiting to give you a suggestion to wake up. 

Finally, and most important, consensus trance is expected to be permanent rather than merely an interesting experience that is strictly time limited. The mental, emotional, and physical habits of a lifetime are laid down while we are especially vulnerable and suggestible as children. Many of these habits are not just learned but conditioned that is, they have that compulsive quality that conditioning has. Because they are automatized habits, they do not need the support of a specially defined situation, such as formal hypnosis usually requires they operate in almost all circumstances. You no longer have to work at maintaining consensus trance it is automatic. 

Each of us is in a profound trance, consensus consciousness, a state of partly suspended animation, of stupor, of inability to function at our maximum level. Automatized and conditioned patterns of perception, thinking, feeling, and behaving dominate our lives. For too much of life, we are like the evolved crane/sorter we appear to be intelligent and conscious, but it is all automatized programs. Many of these automatized and conditioned patterns may have been adaptive once upon a time, but they don t work well anymore indeed, they may destroy us. We live in and contribute to mass insanity. 

If his level of consensus trance is still deep, he may buy the promise that more of the rewards the culture offers is what will satisfy him. This is a very frequent belief and one actively encouraged by the culture itself. It keeps people working hard and distracts their attention from deeper questions. We see innumerable examples of, say, someone who is very well off financially nevertheless working himself to death to get more and more wealth, never slowing down to enjoy life. 

This is the attitude with which you should approach the techniques in this book. If they appeal to you, play around with them a little to get a feel for them. Indeed, I do not expect you to believe many of the statements I have made about our being asleep, in consensus trance, until you find out for yourself by trying to awaken. This is the kind of experiential feel you need to get for the ideas and techniques. Be aware that you re playing around, not seriously working. Knowing this, it s realistic to expect some results from them, but nothing spectacular. 

Sometimes in the writing of this book I have thought, This whole effort is wasted. No one will believe he has to work very hard to create faculties he believes he already has Yet the need to do this is crucial for our survival will automatons in consensus trance bring peace to our planet. Certainly argument alone, no matter how cleverly I do it, will not really communicate our condition, but if I have enticed you to begin practicing self-observation and self-remembering, your own experience will get my points across. 

Mary had been working at Awareness Enhancement Training for over a year when on one weekend retreat she suddenly realized that she had b n at the place of her dream, working on reviving from death, from consensus trance, for over a year Consider these striking parallels ... 

I will not attempt to answer these questions here, but I want to leave this unfinished example of possibilities in your consciousness as we move on to discuss the nature of group work for awakening. I also want to leave a vital question open in your mind. If your being attracts your life, what are you attracting What are your most consistent desires, conscious or unconscious Your most persistent beliefs about yourself and your world Do you really want to get what you believe in and wish for in consensus trance A constant examination of wishes and beliefs is in order. 

Low levels of fear are common in most social situations. You could say something stupid or embarrassing, people might not like who you are, they could reject you. Even when not expressly felt, fear is potentially there. Fear can also be a common element in work groups. We are afraid of the condition of consensus trance we find ourselves in, of being like automatons, afraid that we won t learn to self-remember and will thus fail in our goal, afraid that others may see how badly we are doing and reject us. 

A Gurdjieffian work group is particularly apt to do this because of the explicit teaching that consensus reality and our normal state of consciousness are a kind of sleep or trance. You should not, of course, accept this statement on faith, but only as a focus for self- and world-observation you should test this idea rather than Just accept it. Nevertheless, the statement easily constitutes an implicit permission from authority to reject many or all of the cultural norms you normally live by and develop new ones that suit you better. 

To the extent to which the work group members are fully conscious of and learning from this, there is no problem other than responsibly accepting the consequences that come from social rejection responses. To the extent to which lower needs for social acceptance are dominant over real consciousness, though, the work group members can simply create a different form of consensus trance than the socially dominant one, even though they call it waking up, and perhaps become more entranced than they were before. 

A major function of the teacher is to prevent a work group from turning into a culture with a different trance state. It is possible that a teacher may not be awake enough to fully prevent this, however, or may not fully recognize its dangers, especially if, as discussed elsewhere, the teacher s own flaws are being magnified in a positive feedback loop. 

For visualisation in psychic work. For divination, trance and creative work. 

A classic illustration of psychic ability gone wild is the renowned healer Edgar Cayce, who worked as a psychic diagnostician (his term) by entering a trance and suggesting cures for clients he had never even met. 

---