The lighter trance states feel like those times when you are reading a book, or watching television

or a movie, and are so engrossed that you are not aware of your surroundings. The deeper trances feel similar to how you feel when you are first waking up in the mor ning. You are aware that you are awake, your imagery is vivid and dreamlike, and you f eel relaxed, calm, and good. The ability to attain and control a trance is the result of cumulative conditioning and me ntal training. ...... train your mind to respond in accordance with your will in order to pr oduce the ability to develop a deep trance. This is done by daily practice. It may take so me time and effort to establish that ability, but once you have it you will be able to main tain it by practicing only once or twice per week. If you stop practicing entirely your abi lity will gradually lessen....... When you go into any trance you gradually progress from ordinary consciousness into d eeper levels. It's convenient to have a means of measuring the depth of your trance, so t he paragraphs that follow outline some of the symptoms found at various depths. For co nvenience sake I've divided the depths of trance into four major sections, and, using ter ms borrowed from the hypnotic sciences, called them the Hypnodial, Light, Medium, an d Deep Trance states: Hypnodial Trance: You progress from ordinary consciousness through the following ste ps: feeling physically relaxed, drowsy, your mind becomes relaxed and you may feel ap athetic or indifferent, your arms and legs start to feel heavy, you may have a tendency to stare blankly, and have a disinclination to move your limbs. As you border this and the Light Trance your breathing becomes slower and deeper, and your pulse rate slows. Light Trance: You progress to a reluctance to move, speak, think or act. You may experi ence some involuntary twitching of your mouth or jaw, and sometimes of the eyes. You will feel a heaviness throughout your entire body and a partial feeling of detachment. Y ou may also experience visual illusions. As you border this and the Medium Trance you recognize that you are in a trance, but may find that feeling hard to describe. (See also: BOMPU) Medium Trance: You definitely recognize that you are in a trance and may experience p artial amnesia unless you consciously choose not to. By giving yourself the proper sugg estions you can make any part of your body insensitive to pain, and can experience the i llusions of touching, tasting, and smelling. You will be more sensitive to variations in at mospheric pressure and temperature changes. As you border this and the Deep Trance y ou may experience complete catalepsy of your limbs or body. In other words, if your li mbs or body positions are changed you will leave them in the new position until they ar

e changed again. (See also: GEDO) Deep Trance: You can have the ability to open your eyes without affecting the trance. Y ou will also have the ability to control such body functions as heart beat, blood pressure, digestion, and body temperature. You can make your body and limbs completely rigid. You will be able to recall lost memories and experience age regression. Here you can vi vidly experience the sensation of lightness, floating, or flying. You can also experience both positive and negative visual and auditory hallucinations both while in the trance, a nd, if given the proper suggestions, after awakening from the trance state. (A positive ha llucination is when you are told that you see something that is not there, and you see it. A negative hallucination is when you are told that you do not see something that is there , and you do not.) In this state you can also stimulate dreams and visions, both during th e trance state and (upon proper suggestion) later in your natural sleep. (See also: SHOJ O) Each depth of trance has valuable uses. For example, in the Light and Medium Trances you can learn to begin practical Shamanic Journeying so that you can see, hear, touch an d smell experiences in the worlds which border ours. In those trance states these journey s will feel similar to a fantasy or daydream and you may wonder if it is real, or just your imagination. As you train yourself to deepen the trance the journeys become more vivid , until, in the Deep Trance, they look and feel as though they are taking place in physical reality. More here :http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/awakening101/trance.html I also found a lot of interesting bits about perceptions of levels of concsiousness ;detaile d chart .1 to 9999 hz eeg measurements and consciousness levels -Brainwave binaural fr equencies for Kundalini and chakra awakening. http://www.xtrememind.com/Frequency _list.htm alertness , drowsiness , trance www.psyweb.com/EEG/eeg.jsp States of Consciousness and altered state of consciousness http://www.tccd.edu/uploade dfiles/employees/2475/courses/Chapter%204%20Consciousness%20Lecture%20Outlin e.rtf. Five Universal Stages of Meditation http://swamij.com/five-stages-meditation.htm Three states of consciousness: Every day, we move through three States of Consciousne ss which are ;1) Waking, 2) Dreaming, and 3) Deep Sleep. In this domain, a person exp eriences movement (vertically) within these three levels of consciousness. We naturally experience these transitions every day. The three states of mind are 1) Conscious, 2) Un conscious, and 3)Subconscious. In this domain, the mental functioning is happening at o

ne of three levels, though all three interact as a unified whole. This interactive mental fu nctioning is going on all the time, though we are usually not aware of it.The three states of manifestation are 1) Gross, 2) Subtle, and Causal. In this domain, the physical or Gro ss universe, the Subtle world, and the Causal plane arise from, and then merge back into one other. Gross arises from Subtle, and Subtle from Causal. Gross recedes back into S ubtle, and Subtle into Causal. Normally, the three coexist in a mutual interaction. http:// swamij.com/levelsdimensions.htm http://swamij.com/images/beyond/realms5j.gif From low to high, the levels of consciousness are: shame, guilt, apathy, grief, fear, desir e, anger, pride, courage, neutrality, willingness, acceptance, reason, love, joy, peace, enl ightenment. http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/04/levels-of-consciousness/ Levels of Consciousness -From the conscious awareness of an infant to its immediate en vironment, recognizing its mother as apart from others, for instance, levels of conscious ness rise as we grow. Colin Wilson suggests at least eight degrees of consciousness, fro m Level 0 to 7. They are: Level 0 deep sleep Level 1 dreaming or hypnagogic Level 2 mere awareness or unrespo nsive waking state Level 3 self awareness that is dull and meaningless Level 4 passive a nd reactive, normal consciousness that regards life 'as a grim battle Level 5 an active, sp ontaneous, happy consciousness in which life is exciting and interesting Level 6 a transc endent level where time ceases to exist. Wilson does take note of further levels of consci ousness as experienced by mystics but gives no details. Canadian psychologist Richard M. Bucke, in his book Cosmic Consciousness, coined th is term. It is a transpersonal mode of consciousness, an awareness of the universal mind and one's unity with it. Its prime characteristic is a consciousness of the life and order in the universe. An individual who at attains this state is often described as 'Enlightened' a nd such a person is also said to have a sense of immortality, not of attaining it but of alr eady having it. Burke saw this state of consciousness as the next stage in human evoluti on, very much as spiritualists have always seen it. Indian yogis and mystics classify the seven states of consciousness differently. They poi nt out that human beings normally experience only three states: sleeping, dreaming and waking. In meditation, fleetingly you experience turya, literally the fourth state, or trans cendental consciousness, commonly known as samadhi. When this state coexists and sta bilizes with the other three, that is the fifth state, where I-consciousness expands to beco me cosmic consciousness. The sixth state is God consciousness whereby you see God e verywhere, in everything. The last is unity consciousness: what is within is also outside pure consciousness, and nothing else is.

Spiritually, consciousness is as vast as the universe, both known and unknown. The pote ntial power of this level of consciousness has been merely touched upon and that too by a few mystics. Consciousness at this level becomes capable of magical powers, defying accepted scientific physical laws and giving us a glimpse of probable future developmen ts in, among other things, quantum physics http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/Consci ousness/id/9475 Mystical Mind Cake 0 let's go ego 1 Smack down the monkey mind 2 rupturing the self/ other boundary Pre /Trans Fallacy 3 Sliding down the kundalini 4 Conscious of Conscio usness 5. Integration: The Long Road Home -Zen point where real training begins. http: //www.dillgroup.ucsf.edu/~bosco/meditation.html Freud's levels of consciousness -Freud initially attempted to subdivide the mind purely i n terms of different levels of consciousness, emphasizing the unconscious. Though he a bandoned that theory in favor of his tripartite division of the id, ego, and superego, he h eld that the different functions of the mind operated at different levels http://www.victor ianweb.org/science/freud/illustration.html http://www.victorianweb.org/science/freud/ill ustration1.gif Seven Levels of Consciousness http://www.meaningoflife.i12.com/7levels.htm 49 THE LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS The Dreams and the Reality by Dee Finney 4 9 coloured stones in a rubric http://www.greatdreams.com/MIND/49levels.htm Levels of Consciousness http://www.marshasummers.com/innerman/tape7.htm 8-Circuit Model of Consciousness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8-Circuit_Consciousness medical definition of Level of consciousness -a term used to describe a person's awaren ess and understanding of what is happening in his or her surroundings. There are three main levels of consciousness:Consciousness is an awake state, when a person is fully a ware of his or her surroundings and understands, talks, moves, and responds normally.D ecreased consciousness is when a person appears to be awake and aware of surrounding s (conscious) but is not responding normally. While in a state of decreased consciousnes s, a person may not answer when spoken to, stare straight ahead, and have no facial expr ession. Others may think the person is acting confused, odd, or sleepy. Later, the person may not be able to recall what happened. Unconsciousness is when a person is not awar e of what is going on and is not able to respond normally to things that happen to and ar ound him or her. Fainting is a brief form of unconsciousness.Coma is a deep, prolonged state of unconsciousness.General anesthesia is a controlled period of