How do you know when you're in trance?

[Flood]

Hello,

I've been meditating over Saturn drumming about 30~60 minutes everyday trying to hit trance/gnosis but I'm not so sure whether I ever will or not, sometimes I feel a bit like a slight electrical charge in the head, or some heavy feeling on the nose, and my neck got slightly bent backwards during one session.


Can someone please tell some of the diagnotic signs of these 2 states?

[KashakuTatsu]

For trance think deep day dream. Sitting in a dull class, staring out a window, longing to be elsewhere, you stop hearing the teacher and suddenly you're a bird outside (or out frolicking wherever you're wishing to be). Teacher or fellow students have to yell a few times or touch you to bring you back to class.

Another example of the feeling is right before you sleep. All is relaxed, you feel heavy, lose senses of surroundings, etc.

You are usually less aware of surroundings (like to call it, 'checked out'), many lose feeling of their body and/or a separation feeling like you're floating out of your body. Thoughts will flow freer than when you're actively thinking about something, or some prefer to experience it with a blank mind.

Gnosis is a term for enlightenment (which I'm starting to think just means an altered world view instead of the advertised meaning, I have my own rant about that). Kind of like an Eureka! moment. And unless people are calling themselves enlightened cause their state is like someone else's who also fancies themselves enlightened, I think the feeling of gnosis will differ per person.

[Flood]

Thanks Kasha, this seems much harder than the simple way some people try portray it. I hope my insomnia doesn't stand in the way :(

[EtuMalku]

Flood,

True trance induction (not forms of ecstasy like day dreaming and the sort) is not unlike hypnotism, if you have set up boundaries in order to NOT be hypnotized or entranced then your experience will be unlikely but not impossible.

Listen to the Saturnian Meditation for several settings, allow it to permeate the subconscious.

[KashakuTatsu]

I actually use trance states in place of sleep during insomnia days. Instead of my usually transcendental dancing I opt for a more zen approach (sometimes biofeedback) while laying down. It tricks my body into thinking it got rest so I don't get the full ramifications of days without sleep lol.

[Vulpesveritas]

Saying trance is like hypnosis is kind of off there EtuMalku. Trance is actually an element of hypnosis, due to the suggestability of the mind when the brain reaches beta or theta states. That said, my summery of trance is that I feel like my arms and legs are just barely there. Beyond that I really can't give much advice, as while I am rather easily hypnotized I really am not one to hypnotize others and have not seen the effects on anyone but myself. But its best described as like one reads a good book, your mind creates the world based on the input to my knowledge. But that's late alpha and beta... theta on the other hand is only reachable by an estimated 1% of the population and when I reach it, I feel more disconnected to myself still and the trance becomes my whole reality while it persists. Best way I can put it.

[EtuMalku]

Saying trance is like hypnosis is kind of off there EtuMalku. Trance is actually an element of hypnosis, due to the suggestability of the mind when the brain reaches beta or theta states.
Dennis Wier (Executive Director of the Trance Research Foundation), in his 1995 book, Trance: from magic to technology, defines a simple trance (p. 58) as being caused by cognitive loops where a cognitive object (thoughts, images, sounds, intentional actions) repeats long enough to result in various sets of disabled cognitive functions.

Wier represents all trances (which include sleep and watching television) as a dissociated trance plane where at least some cognitive functions are disabled such as volition but not consciousness within the trance typically termed hypnosis.

With this definition, meditation, hypnosis, addiction and charisma are unified trance states or attempts to cause a trance, he adds ecstasy as an additional form and discusses the ethical implications of his model, including magic and government use which he terms "trance abuse".


Trance phenomena results from the behavior of intense focusing of attention, which is the key psychological mechanism of trance induction. Adaptive responses, including institutionalized forms of trance, are 'tuned' into neural networks in the brain and depend to a large extent on the characteristics of culture.