Category: Humankind collective cognitive capability

How I Was Taught to Self-Induce Trance At Will After Only a Few Hours

Going through a special training I have discovered how to self-induce trance states at will. It then takes some practice to anchor the possibility, but the capability is amazingly acquired quickly. I really did not believe at first I would be capable of obtaining this state (being a highly cognitive and controlling individual), and even less so that I would be able to induce it at will after only a few hours.

In previous posts I have described the state of trance and how it happens around us more frequently than we think. Still, it is usually quite a rare occurrence often associated with situations of emergency or only attainted by practitioners of certain disciplines after considerable amount of practice (e.g. through meditation).

The training was given out by Corine Sombrun, a quite exceptional woman with an incredible destiny (more about her in future posts). She has designed this protocol for teaching how to obtain trance states at will and is currently building up a cohort of psychologists and researchers to participate in scientific experiments around that altered state of consciousness. Because of the way trance is induced, it is called ‘cognitive trance’. The amazing part is that her success factor in getting people to induce trance and then to learn to induce it at will after only 2 days of training is close to 100%!

This shows that trance is not a weird state reserved for exceptions, but that it is an underlying consciousness state that we can all attain if we follow the proper protocol (and without any legal or illegal substance involved). While the benefits of the practice are currently under investigation, the simple fact that it is attainable by all makes it an incredibly interesting field of investigation.

In a series of post I will describe a personal journey into an altered state of consciousness – cognitive trance – that I was privileged to undertake this year. Previous posts in this series:

Share

How ‘Flow’ May Assimilated to a Trance State

Flow, as defined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, involves Optimal Experience, when “a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile“.

In fact, now that I have investigated trance-state, and haveing had experience of Flow, I can affirm that flow is some kind of soft trance state. Flow is “a state of concentration or complete absorption with the activity at hand and the situation. It is a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter“. It is a state where the sensation of time gets lost.

Those symptoms are typical of a trance state (as well as the intrinsic pleasure associated with it, and the fact that one seems to be on a different level of consciousness): “This is a feeling everyone has at times, characterized by a feeling of great absorption, engagement, fulfillment, and skill—and during which temporal concerns (time, food, ego-self, etc.) are typically ignored“

Flow is thus another example of commonly accepted alternate state which is in fact an example of trance-like state, which many of the associated symptoms. Flow is also a state that can become a habit and for which we can consciously traing.

We really underestimate how much and often we can find ourselves in alternate consciousness levels in our activities, in particular those we are really passionate about.

In a series of post I will describe a personal journey into an altered state of consciousness – cognitive trance – that I was privileged to undertake this year. Previous posts in this series:

Share

How Trance Is Common Around Us But We Don’t Realize It

Since I was introduced to trance and had more thoughts about this particular awareness state I have realized that I have witnessed actual examples of trance in my life.

The more emotional example is when I witnessed the celebration of Thaipusam. It is the occasion for many devotees to thank the deity for some gift. At that occasion, people parade with needles, hooks embedded in their skins and other bloody and painful contraptions. In fact they are set in trance by priests at the start of the parade. Trance allows them to easily bear pain. What impressed me the most when I followed such parade from the inside in Kuala Lumpur, a famous location for this festival, is how people were being set out of trance in an instantaneous manner by priests at the end of the parade. They also expressed quite a different behavior and character during the parade itself (and were carefully shepherded by helpers during their trance).

Another example is when I was confronted to someone being ‘possessed’ – also during a spell in south-east Asia. The poor lady was effectively suddenly shivering and seemed to be in another state of consciousness, with inarticulate sounds and random movements. In a religious context, exorcists were brought in and after some time the lady regained normal consciousness (whereby the exorcists concluded they were effective at drawing out the evil spirit that inhabited her).

In western civilisation such occurrences are less often related however there is no doubt that spontaneous trance states do occur. Trance is thus a state which many people encounter in their life, sometimes without identifying is as such.

In a series of post I will describe a personal journey into an altered state of consciousness – cognitive trance – that I was privileged to undertake this year. Previous posts in this series:

Share

How Trance Is a Common Altered State of Consciousness

Trance is a very ancient altered state of consciousness, that is known and recognized explicitly by more than 95% of the “primitive” tribes. It is often related to ecstasy experiences such as religious ecstasy, and there are many references to this state in literature and even common expressions.

According to Wikipedia “Trance is a state of semi-consciousness in which a person is not self-aware and is either altogether unresponsive to external stimuli (but nevertheless capable of pursuing and realizing an aim) or is selectively responsive in following the directions of the person (if any) who has induced the trance. Trance states may occur involuntarily and unbidden.“

The interesting part of the definition is that it is an altered state of consciousness where it is nevertheless possible to pursuing and realizing an aim. It is at the same time detached, and still enabling consistent action.

Wikipedia also offers the following definition which I find very adequate from my experience: “trance may be understood as a way for the mind to change the way it filters information in order to provide more efficient use of the mind’s resources“

And it is exactly this type of state that I have been introduced to, and that I am practicing daily for the last few weeks – because it appears that it is possible to induce trance only though the application of one’s will.

In a series of post I will describe a personal journey into an altered state of consciousness – cognitive trance – that I was privileged to undertake this year. Previous posts in this series:

Share

A Journey Into Altered States of Consciousness: Introduction

In a series of post I will describe a personal journey into an altered state of consciousness – cognitive trance – that I was privileged to undertake this year. It has led to a lot of self-reflection and discoveries. First I believe it is important to set the scene.

Altered states of consciousness are according to Wikipedia “any condition which is significantly different from a normal waking state“. They can happen naturally for example during emergency situations where the brain shuts down higher cognitive functions for survival – for exemple during near death experiences, or during emergencies where some people can react with unexpected strength and endurance. It can also be generated voluntarily, sometimes using legal or illegal substances.

Some of those altered states of consciousness can be pathological (leading to significant social and personal dysfunctions); most occurrences however are transient states encountered (or actively sought after) by normal individuals. Hypnosis, meditation, mantra recitation are often cited as examples of methods to reach those states of consciousness where basically the higher functions of the brain are temporarily limited, allowing a stronger expression of the subconscious. Trance is a particular healthy state of altered consciousness that I have been exploring for a few weeks, and the following posts will recount this journey.

Share

How Education and Learning are Different

Seth Godin in his post ‘The revolution in online learning‘ makes the point that education and learning are quite different. Experiencing makes learning; education being increasingly recognized as a formal process which may not lead to actual learning.

“Education is a model based on scarcity, compliance and accreditation. It trades time, attention and money for a piece of paper that promises value.” On the contrary, “we learn in ways that have little to do with how mass education is structured […] If you know how to walk, write, read, type, have a conversation, perform surgery or cook an egg, it’s probably because you practiced and explored and experienced, not because it was on a test.”

Although higher education as we know it today is clearly an institution of the industrial-age, it still provides some benefits which are more on the social side. This includes an important component of networking and knowing peers, being part of a group of students that have attended the same university in the same year or close.

However increasingly learning is understood to happen outside the formal framework of education, and this probably needs to be better recognized. The experiential part of learning cannot be dismissed, as it is really the foundation of true learning (as much as failure).

I believe education is still there to stay for a while because of its social role, but that actual learning experiences will be increasingly sought and recognized, even highlighted. In any case, be sure to have much learning in addition to education!

Share

How Timescales of Survival Call on Different Groups

Survival at different time scales (year, decades, centuries, millenia) requires the mobilisation of different groups. This can explain the importance for us to cultivate those groupes (from the family to humankind). And this can also be contradictory therefore leading to paradox and conflict.

This thought is based on the quote by mathematician and physicist Freeman Dyson: “The destiny of our species is shaped by the imperatives of survival on six distinct time scales.  To survive means to compete successfully on all six time scales.  But the unit of survival is different at each of the six time scales.  On a time scale of years, the unit is the individual.  On a time scale of decades, the unit is the family.  On a time scale of centuries, the unit is the tribe or nation.  On a time scale of millennia, the unit is the culture.  On a time scale of tens of millennia, the unit is the species.  On a time scale of eons, the unit is the whole web of life on our planet.  Every human being is the product of adaptation to the demands of all six time scales.  That is why conflicting loyalties are deep in our nature.  In order to survive, we have needed to be loyal to ourselves, to our families, to our tribes, to our cultures, to our species, to our planet.  If our psychological impulses are complicated, it is because they were shaped by complicated and conflicting demands.”

Survival at different time scales requires sometime contradictory approaches and relying on different social social groups. That may be something we do not sufficiently account for in our understanding of social tensions.

Hat-tip for the quote to Valeria Maltoni in ‘Fast Gets all our Attention. Slow Has all the Power‘

Share

How We Increasingly Live In a Low Resolution World

With the advent of internet and the much increased usage of teleconferencing and social networks, we may have significantly decreased the resolution of our social interactions. This is of course quite a paradox in a world where we all seek higher resolution TV and screens.

Still, our human interrelationships are increasingly virtual and by this fact, significantly lower resolution than real, face-to-face interactions in a real-life environment, with all that is entailed in terms of informal interaction. And this is not going to be significantly improved by higher resolution video!

The same applies for social networks: what we post is usually just a subset of what happens in our lives, and thus gives out an image of significantly lower resolution than would have someone living with us.

There is thus quite an interesting contradiction between a world that seeks always higher resolution TVs to watch the world, and the diminishing resolution of our social interactions. How can we explain this contradiction? Is the race for higher resolution screens a way to compensate for lower resolution relationships?

Hat-tip to Valeria Maltoni’s ‘What is High Resolution, what is Low Resolution. Can we Tell?‘

Share

How Cities Need a Minimum Size for the Knowledge Economy

This Quartz piece ‘What it takes for a city to jump into the knowledge economy‘ mentions an interesting study to determine the critical size of a city to fully be involved in the knowledge economy: 1.2 million inhabitants.

This is based on studies carried out on a sample of hundreds of metropolitan areas, looking at people occupations. Statistics show a definite increase of knowledge workers above this threshold.

“In addition to more white-collar, higher-paying jobs, a bigger population leads to a more diversified economy, which in turn leads to innovation” In addition, the network effect created by the metropolis does help ideas being exchanged and innovation to be fostered.

This is quite interesting as it tends to show that there is a critical mass for the Collaborative Age metropolis to be fully embedded in the digital innovation. 1.2 million people is a relatively high threshold that makes may local towns seemingly less adequate to be a center of Collaborative Age value.

Share

How Deployment of Facial Recognition Creates Many Issues

In this Reuters investigation ‘Rite Aid deployed facial recognition systems in hundreds of U.S. stores‘, the major problems of deploying this technology massively are exposed. At the end it seems that this pharmacy brand has actually renounced using it for the moment.

The primary intent of this implementation was security and theft prevention. Beyond issues in the information of the public on the application of the technology, it seems that there have been many instances of wrong positive recognition, in particular with minority people of color. In addition the paper adds the links of the technology to China which reflects the fear that facial recognition data may be misused or the system manipulated.

Of course facial recognition software could be used for positive usage such as individualized service, but other technologies would also allow it. The current lack of reliability of the technology, and the fact that it is deployed without the proper guarantee for appeal for wrongly identified people is a concern. This probably calls for a strong regulation how people from the public can access the data and what is done with it.

Share

How Plastic Recycling Remains a Major Challenge to Overcome

In case you haven’t noticed there is a scandal recently uncovered around plastic recycling, explained for example on this well-named post ‘How Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled‘. It is worth reading thanks to the depth of investigation as it almost reads like a spy novel. It shows how the general public got manipulated by the industry in believing plastic would be recycled when it isn’t – but giving us good conscience. And this probably does not stop at plastic recycling: much of the waste sorting effort at its origin gets wasted by subsequent treatment.

PLASTIQUE, LA GRANDE INTOX

In addition to the situation exposed in the link, there have also been reports of illegal disposal of recyclable plastic in less developed countries as the result of cross-border waste commerce. There seems also to be increasing evidence that the situation has been developed consciously by the industry: “We found that the industry sold the public on an idea it knew wouldn’t work — that the majority of plastic could be, and would be, recycled — all while making billions of dollars selling the world new plastic.” According to the investigation, the plastic recycling illusion was developed at the end of the 1980s to face the increasingly worse image of the industry.

It is good that such journalism still exists today to uncover such practices and differences between what is published and what is actually happening.

Like for most materials around including metals and glass, plastic virgin material is easier and cheaper to produce, and avoids also all risks of contamination. Still I observe that there are a few startups around developing new technologies based on enzymes that would provide new routes for effective recycling of plastics.

Effective and economic recycling of material is still a major challenge to be addressed in spite of laws on disposing only ultimate waste; this will need to be addressed in an urgent manner if we want to preserve our natural resources and avoid plastic demand to overgrow our capability to dispose of it.

Share

How Our Perception of Knowledge Is Shifting to Relative Knowledge

In this quite tedious post ‘Knowledge is crude: Far from being a touchstone of the truth, knowledge is a stone-age concept that harms our dealings with the modern world‘, some interesting concepts are developed how our view of knowledge needs to change as we move into the Collaborative Age.

My understanding of the thesis of the post is that basically, knowledge is increasingly relative – and more based on a statistical evidence. It is much less absolute and certain like we considered knowledge previously.

Specifically, knowledge being considered as something being shared between people becomes increasingly an alignment of opinions rather than a more certain knowledge independently vetted and settled.

I am quite convinced that we have realized in the few past decades how knowledge is temporary and can be put in question by new evidence. We now know that scientific knowledge and theories only wait for the next bit of evidence to contradict it and thus create the need for new, better theories.

In the Collaborative Age, we will increasingly see knowledge as relative and ready to be upended. Tools to support this are already there, such as online encyclopedia. The challenge of course is to ensure that knowledge remains grounded and does not become another set of conspiracy theories. We still have to invent the quality criteria of a relative knowledge. Let’s get to work.

Share