| Titel: | Trance in America: A comparison of trance types and trance experience in two religious communities |
|---|---|
| Autor: | uhrman, SA |
| Mediengruppe: | --- |
| Herausgeber: | --- |
| Zeitschrift: | Dissertation Abstracts International Section A: Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Jahr: | 1996 |
| Band: | 57 |
| Heft: | 4 |
| Seiten: | 1707 |
| Sprache: | englisch |
| Abstract: | Trance behavior and subjective trance experiences of established trance practitioners (yogis and mediums) were studied in two U.S. communities, a Yogic community on the west coast and a Spiritualist community on the east coast. Extensive interview data in this study suggest previous confusion over associations of amnesia with trance type result from failure of previous typologies to use depth of dissociation experienced by the practitioner as a criterion. It is critical to distinguish between behavorial and subjective amnesia, and between trance behavior (the actions of the physical body during trance) and trance experience (the inner subjective awareness of the practitioner). Interview data suggest two psychobiologically distinct forms of common full trance experience: conscious trance, with continuous and remembered altered subjective inner awareness, and unconscious trance, in which the practitioner completely loses all subjective consciousness between the time of entering into and the time of coming out of trance. The former type, conscious trance, is termed 'samprajnata samadhi' in yogic traditions, and it is developed in several stages. The latter type is emically related to deep sleep in the traditions of both groups, and is termed 'yoga nidra' by the Yogic informants and 'a sleep state' by the mediums. Although trance behavior and its purpose are different for yogis and mediums, subjective trance experience is not different. Both types of full trance have appeared in both groups, as well as spontaneously in occasional naive subjects. On the other hand, trance behaviors, such as expression of body movements and speech, seem quite socially labile, probably explaining previously noted cross cultural correlations of mediumistic trance with excessive body movements and amnesia, and with rigid, stratified, and state-level societies. Mediumship activities appear to be able to be 'appended to' any type of trance experience, or they can occur in a focused waking stat. |