A Guided Tour Through Reality. Parallel Universes [1/5] Consciousness and Creative Trance. Trance is an altered state of consciousness which individuals can enter through a variety of techniques, including hypnotism, drugs, sound (particularly music, percussive drumming etc.), sensory deprivation, physical hardships (eg. flagellation, starvation, exhaustion) and vigorous exercise (particularly dance).
People can also use trance, particularly in the context of ‘ritual’ events, to learn new strategies of thinking or of relating to one another. There are different types of learning: for example what Eric Jantsch calls ‘conscious learning’ is a transaction between consciousness, the environment and memory. Jantsch also identifies ‘superconscious learning’, which takes place with the addition of ‘outer’ and ‘inner’ ways of learning.