An Overview of My Method of State Akin to Sleep/Trance/Hypnosis
I’ll state now that, once mastered, most of this method won’t be needed. When I want to enter a trance, I can, eight times out of ten, just lay down and intend to enter a trance, and wait and it happens. It will be the same for you also. I gave a talk about this subject here in Phnom Pehn a while ago and went through the scientific literature about trance and found that there were studies about ‘susceptibility’, i.e. how easy it is (or even possible at all) for a person to be hypnotized. In one well known study, peoples’ susceptibility was measured on a scale once when they were at high school, and then again twenty five years later, and the conclusion of the study was that susceptibility is a constant over time.
This makes my blood boil a little because I know, absolutely and certainly, that it is incorrect. I mean, of course, if you measure them twenty five years apart, and during those twenty five years they do nothing whatsoever to learn to enter a trance… then they still can’t do it. How ridiculous. I mean, they could just have well as tested their French speaking ability. Likely, over a twenty five year period, those English speaking students, some with a smattering of French and others with none, would have a consistent ranking for French speaking skills over the period… UNLESS THEY LEARNED FRENCH, in which case the score would go up. Oh, for God’s sake. It doesn’t occur to these highly paid, intelligent people that it’s possibly a learnable skill.
No matter. You are going to learn it now!
An Overview of my Method of Trance Induction
Preparation
The point of this practice, is generally manifestation. You are going to change some aspect of your thinking process to change your world, and so it’s necessary to have a number of intentions decided beforehand. I have another teaching where I cover manifestation goal setting, where you end up with ten unchanging themes you are going to manifest, and this is in itself, part of the induction. The excitement and gratitude over the coming changes are in themselves an energy, which again strengthens the etheric body, which draws consciousness within it and thus begins the State Akin to Sleep/Trance.
For the sake of illustration, say there are three goals. One is abundance, one is health and the last is mental healing. These are good goals for the practice because they are themes. So, you need a symbol for each one. Abundance can be a red pentacle (symbolizing wealth), and health can be a sun, a representation of the sun. Mental healing can also be represented by the same symbol.
The Practice
To start with, there’s an optional, ad-hoc progressive muscle relaxation. I don’t make a big deal about this because I get some cramps sometimes, but basically I go through each muscle group, clench and relax.
I lie on my back with palms up by my side and head on a pillow. Very simple pose.
Also optional is stimulating the etheric body with the energy technique I teach elsewhere. It compliments what is about to come perfectly by raising the amount of available energy.
So, take a few deep breaths, and then place attention on the crown of the head. Hold it there for a second until you feel a sensation, like a tingle or pressure or something, this will occur because energy is being raised there by the very act of your attention being there. If this doesn’t happen, look back over the energy circulation technique I’ve written about elsewhere and make some progress.
So hopefully, after a second or so, there is a sensation there, switch attention to your forehead. Hold it there a moment until there is a sensation, then move it to the left eye. Hold it a moment until there is sensation, then right eye, and so on through a whole rotation as detailed below.
So you can even do this with your eyes open briefly to get a feel for the sequence, but also you can listen to the recordings I will provide (at some point, please join the mailing list if they are not available on the site). The recordings are a training guide, not the practice itself. They will help you to remember the sequence and learn to enter trance, once you remember the sequence, you will be able to do it without the recording as it’s like learning anything. Over time, as I explained earlier, you won’t even need the sequence or visualizations or anything. You will be able to lie down and just have the intention for a trance to occur, then wait briefly until it does. I remember when I first realized how well I had mastered this, I can drop into a trance, sometimes in seconds, then back out. I’d be entering altered states sitting in the park, staring into space in a cafe or riding on the bus.
Anyway, you go through a full sequence. You might even start to enter the required State Akin to Sleep/trance while doing this. The next stage is the sankalpa. You state the first intention. You say, ‘I am abundant’ or ‘I am financially abundant. I am drawing wealth to me’ or whatever it is you need. Say it three times. This is the traditional instruction for the practice, which would then continue focusing on the rotation of consciousness. The method I developed is to take the symbol of the first intention, here it’s a pentacle. Imagine it shining in your heart centre. Hold it a moment and you should be able to feel it energetically, especially if you have practiced the previous energy techniques detailed elsewhere.
Now repeat the rotation, but starting at the crown, rather than simply putting awareness on the crown, keep a part of your attention on the pentacle in your heart centre (representing the first intention) and imagine it shining an energy towards the crown, which reflects there and causes a sensation there. This should only take a second.
Then the pentacle sends a ray of energy to your brow for a moment, and your attention is on the brow for that second and feels the rise in sensation, then the left eye, then the right eye and so on.
And so this rotation of consciousness continues with each of the intentions. What this does is strengthen the energy body, and the energy itself is raising via, and containing, your intentions — and consciousness begins to move within it.
It could well be the case for many people, that a trance will develop at this point, or you could lose consciousness to sleep, either slipping in and out of consciousness or just falling asleep completely WHICH IS ABSOLUTELY FINE. In fact, it’s better than fine, it’s fantastic. It’s fantastic for two reasons. One, the opposite problem, of staying fully awake and not beginning to enter into even alpha, is a more stubborn problem to solve. The other is that, when you lose consciousness to sleep like this, you are carrying your intention into the dreamworld. This is the whole point of the practice.
OK, randomly falling asleep is good practice, it isn’t ideal practice. As this becomes a daily exercise there will be more control, and longer periods of deep relaxation/trance (aka State Akin to Sleep) where your consciousness will be holding more directed mental sequences, vivid scenes of the wish fulfilled, with total feelings of naturalness, and this is the practice for your waking consciousness going forward in beta (state), aka your new way of thinking and the new you, and so the life you will be shining out.
When you finish the Yoga Nidra part, then the practice progresses to the more Western/occult section. The absolute key to obtaining and/or deepening a trance is the SENSE OF FALLING, I’m not sure the neurological reason for this, but this is the centre of the method and I’m not sure why traditional scientific literature on this subject tends to focus on eye fixation and monoideasim, both of which work (which is why they are included) but are not the most powerful.
Firstly, begin with eye fixation. What this means is, your eyes are closed and looking into the blackness of your closed eyelids. Don’t look straight ahead, but look up slightly. To give the idea of how much, think of the positions your eyeballs would be in if there was a bee hovering about 15cm before your third eye. There are two reasons the eyes will be kept in this position for the whole exercise. One is that it reduces stimulus and so parts of the brain can start to shut down (as per the James Braid method) but also, it will increase the SENSE OF DISORIENTATION when we soon come to induce the feeling of falling.
Next, while you are looking into the blackness of your eyelids, be aware that it isn’t actually pure black. When you are looking at is the insides of your eyelids, but it has the appearance of looking into space, like if you look up into the night sky. It doesn’t seem to be flat. Not only that, but when you look, there are actually little sparkles of light or kind of glows swirling around. Like when you look into a lightbulb and then close your eyes and you can see the afterglow. Except, these little phenomena (technically called hypnogogia) are always present, and the important thing is that they strengthen the closer you get to trance/sleep, and focusing on them strengthens them. As you progress in the practice, you might find out the other fact about them, they are also the precursor to both clairvoyant vision and out of body experiences (because you see these lights/phenomena with the etheric eyes). The more relaxed you get, recognizable shapes and scenes can begin to form, all of which is fine and if it happens just go with it.
Now for the crux of the operation, the sense of falling. Imagine you are lying in a lift, but without the elevator muzak! The walls are made of glass and beyond the glass you can see the granite walls outside. There is a screen showing the floor number as 100 and it holds a picture of your first intention, abundance. It can be the pentacle, or an actual scene playing on a little tv screen. Affirm ‘Joy and gratitude are arising in me as my wish comes true, while I fall deeper and deeper into an trance’ and feel the elevator start to descend.
You know that feeling, when you are actually in an elevator and you realise it is going down. You feel a little bit of pressure from gravity on your feet, and there is that vague sense of… movement. Create it now and hold onto it. It can be heightened by seeing the texture of the granite walls passing outside as you descend. When you say the last word ‘trance’, elongate the sound to be traaaaannnnnnccccceeee like a long sigh as you feel yourself falling and the numbers start spinning away rapidly 100, 99,98 etc. Get to around 66 and slow slightly, and affirm the second intention, ‘I am healthy, fit and well’. See the picture on the screen change to either the sun or a picture of you in the scene of your wish fulfilled (say with a loved one at the gym, working out and telling them how well you feel, or whatever) and again end with the word traaaannnncccceeee and feel the drop to around 33, and so on with the last desire. As the lift drops and you see the granite shooting up, you feel your body going down, but emotion, of joy and excitement is rising in you.
Now as you are doing this, you could lose consciousness, (which is great) or enter a trance. You will feel that intense stillness. The hypnogogic lights behind your eyes could well become much stronger. If that happens and you stay conscious, then when the lift starts to slow at the end of one of it’s descents, then look at the picture of your wish fulfilled on the lift screen, and feel yourself into it. Imagine your consciousness transfers into the scene and you are there, living the wish fulfilled with full sensory vividness, say at the gym working out, hearing your voice telling your loved one how well you are, feeling the heaviness of the weights, the cotton smell of the towel and sweetness of the energy drink. Sometimes, with practice, you will actually become conscious in a lucid dream doing this, but at some point, put consciousness back into your physical body and continue with the next intention and descent until you have completed all of the intentions.
A Pictorial Representation of my Method
Before going through an actual induction, I want to refer to a picture I made to help me write about the method. I apologize for not being a great artist. It can generally be read from top to bottom.
At the top the eyes looking up and fixed show the initial induction, and down both sides the lights seen in hypnogogia help with the sensation of falling. Disorientation is stated, as it is also key, and expectation. The background intent of entering a trance also has an effect, rather like the expectation of sleeping while lying down each night.
In the centre of the picture is a representation of the lift you imagine around you with the floor counter going down and the gold arrows are the emotion rising in you while descending.
Below the lift is shown the representations of your ‘wish fulfilled’ and with each ‘drop’ (state of countdown) you are associating into the wish fulfilled (feeling your consciousness into the scene) and then dissociating (consciousness returns to the physical body surrounded by the imagined scene of the lift ‘pushed out’ ready for the further descent.
Ending the Trance State
No harm can come from ending the trance state incorrectly. This is one thing to be very aware of because while I was mastering this, I was living in Asia (as I do now) in often less than ideal conditions and would often achieve a light trance but then be startled out of it by a dog barking in the distance or car horn and I would be frustrated, thinking that it would be harder to achieve trance in the future. I don’t know why I thought that, and it isn’t true. Nowadays, I can slip in and out in most environments as long as I feel safe. Obviously, in the beginning, you want the environment to be as quiet and comfortable as you can make it — but don’t get so hung up on perfection.