Generative trance is an experiential space from which fundamentally new dimensions of reality can be created.  It is thus an especially helpful vehicle for navigating the journey of consciousness that is at the heart of a meaningful life.  This journey is about going beyond where you’ve ever been by creating new positive realities, transforming consciousness, healing wounds, and evolving to higher states of consciousness.  The result is membership in the “4-H club”—greater (1) happiness, (2) health, (3) helpfulness to others, and (4) healing of self, others, and the world.  To understand how generative trance can activate these capacities, we can examine three core premises:

1. Consciousness is primary.
2. Consciousness creates the quantum fields of the creative unconscious, which in turn create the classical world of the conscious mind.
3. Mind creates and navigates representational maps through the world(s)

These premises provide a foundation for understanding generative trance as a practice for moving the conscious and creative unconscious mind to an integrative level where creative transformation Is possible.

Life is a journey of consciousness

Generative trance work starts from the core premise that reality is created by consciousness itself.  This view, long held in mystical approaches, has been slowly developing over the past century from findings in quantum physics.[1] In contrast to the materialistic view that posits consciousness as an epiphenomena arising from brain states, it sees classical reality as being created by consciousness interacting with quantum wave fields.  These wave fields are “virtual realities,” that is, they exist as infinite possibilities, not actualities.  The “popping” of a virtual wave “field of infinite possibilities” into a specific reality occurs when an observing consciousness engages with the quantum field.  This view basically says: no consciousness, no reality.  And as we shall see, consciousness is each of us and all of us.

This view is, of course, radical in relation to our traditional Western thinking.  As physicists such as David Bohm point out, it arose in part from astonishing experimental findings such as (1) electrons moving in a discontinuous way from one orbit to another, (2) an electron appearing as either a particle or wave, depending on the observing consciousness, and (3) non-local influence, i.e., that one particle can instantaneously (i.e., faster than the speed of light) influence a distant particle.   More recent work shows that most of the universe—about 96%!!—consists of invisible “dark matter” and “dark energy.”  Such findings indicate that the classical world of time/space is not primary.

Appreciating consciousness as primary, generative trance work sees each person as having infinite potential for creative action.   Realizing this potential is no easy task, and so a core focus of the work is how to foster the states of higher consciousness necessary for this adventure.  The assumption is that consciousness is evolving at many levels, albeit slowly and with many twists and turns; the challenge is how to align with it and allow it to unfold even further.  In practical terms, the generative trance practitioner sitting with a client is “relationally meditating” with ideas like “something is waking up”, “I’m sure this makes sense”, and “something is trying to heal.”  Much of the process is then about ensuring that both the client and the practitioner are in a generative state to realize these possibilities.   This is the purpose of a hypnotic induction: to shift to a higher state of consciousness in which generative learning is possible.

To develop such a state, we become especially attentive to whenever a person’s energy swells or intensifies, their consciousness no longer bound to the “business as usual” state of the ego identity. This might be a positive event, as when someone is touched by love, opened by beauty, or lifted by aesthetic presence.    But It can equally be negative events, such as the fears, addictions, and “out of control” experiences that constitute a common currency of therapeutic work.   We see such experiences as the buds of “spontaneous naturalistic trances” by which the creative unconscious is attempting to let go of old “maps” in order to heal, transform, or create something new.   Whether this attempt is successful depends on the quality of the human relationship with it; that is, the consciousness connecting to the experience creates it either as a positive or negative event.   If an experiential event is held in a positive (“generative”) way, good things (e.g., transformation) happen; if it is held in a negative (“degenerative”) way, bad things (e.g., symptoms) will happen.  To create a generative trance, we therefore start by positively sensing that something is trying to awaken, then look to create a generative state of consciousness that allows that to happen.   In this way, generative trance is a way to midwife new consciousness into the world.

For example, a man’s elderly mother was dying a slow death from cancer, and the man found himself troubled and dismayed by his periodic angry outbursts while sitting with his mother.  He was helped to welcome this “other than ego” pattern, which included developing a centered inner state where he could witness the experience.  Sitting in a mindful trance, he noticed where in his body he felt the energy, and what earlier ages (“8”) were associated with it.  Other associational experiences, both positive and negative, also arose within the “quantum soup” of the trance.  Guided by positive intention for healing and grounded by mindbody centering, he was able to realize this old anger as representing one of the core pieces of his mosaic identity that was transforming in response to his mother’s passing.

Of course, major life changes—deaths of loved ones, births, illnesses, marriages, divorces, etc—will occur throughout a person’s life. We see such major life changes as natural and inevitable, like a river flowing through a person’s life, bringing many possibilities for growth and awakening.  Again, generative trance is about organizing contexts so that these potentials can be received and positively realized.

Consciousness creates the quantum fields of the creative unconscious, which in turn create the classical realities of the conscious mind

The unfolding of consciousness takes us through two successive worlds. These two worlds go by many names—for example, imagination and reality, possibility and actuality, creatura and pleroma, primary and secondary, etc. In generative trance work we describe them as (1) the quantum reality of the creative unconscious and (2) the classical reality of the conscious mind.

The quantum world is the deeper order: It is the imaginary “field of infinite possibilities” from which realities are created.  It is “before and beyond” time or space, empty of real (material) forms but pregnant with infinite potential forms.  When you ask a person where a creative idea came from, a typical answer is “I don’t know” or “it just came.”  We refer to that “mystery space from which all creative thought comes” as the quantum field of the creative unconscious.

When consciousness interacts with the quantum world, it “collapses” a wave field that contains many possibilities into the classical world of the conscious mind that holds a specific actuality. This classical world is the conventional reality of separate “things”: solid matter, space and time, Newtonian physics, stuff “really” there.  It is the empirical world of single values: something is true or not; if you are here, you’re not there; what you see is what you get.  Causal logic abides, time marches forward (and not backwards), that which is born must also die, things are as they are.  The classical world includes what we’ve experienced before, the mainstream traditions and history of where we’ve been so far.

These two worlds complement each other in many ways, including the following:

Looking at these complementarities, we can see that creative consciousness needs both worlds. The quantum fields of the creative unconscious hold all possible forms or states of something.  Applied to psychological identity, this means that the creative unconscious holds all “possible selves” of a given individual.  So let’s say a fellow named Dave comes in complaining of depression.  As he shows his state of “depression,” we appreciate that in his creative unconscious there are many other “Dave identities”—a playful Dave, a serious one, a young boy, a wise man, etc.  So as Dave is collapsed into “depressed Dave,” we make room for that presence while also sensing the many other possible selves available in the “creative unconscious” of his quantum field.  The task of generative trance, then, is to help a person relax the attachment to the specific state, and open up to the greater quantum field of additional possibilities. The ingredients of this “quantum soup” can then be stirred into a nourishing and transformative meal.

Of course, to experience new possibilities in trance is not enough: you need to actualize them in the classical world to make a real difference.  Otherwise, you are left with mere “ghost fruit” rather than the nourishment of new realities.  While the creative unconscious holds infinite possibilities, it is the conscious mind that makes them real. The conscious mind breaks the wholeness (what David Bohm calls the “implicate order”) of the creative unconscious into a field of many parts (what Bohm calls the “explicate order.”)  The shifting relationships between the different parts of the whole is what allows time, space, self-awareness, and existence to emerge. (As Bateson would note, mind is based on “difference.”) Thus, it is the conscious mind of the classical world that allows the self-realization of consciousness.

It is important to remember that each mind completes the other, as all too often in trance work the unconscious is thought of as superior to the conscious mind.  As we shall see, generative trance work looks to move in both worlds at the same time.   To do this, we need to appreciate how the minds of each world can be generatively structured.

Mind is the medium for creating and navigating the two worlds.

We have thus far distinguished three different levels: consciousness itself, the quantum world of the creative unconscious, and the classical world of the conscious mind. The distinctions parallel what the mythologist Joseph Cambell (1949) described in “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” as the monomyth of the “hero’s journey” of consciousness found across many cultures.

“We have come two stages: first, from the immediate emanations of the Uncreated Creating to the fluid yet timeless personages of the mythological age; second, from these Created Creating Ones to the sphere of human history.  Where formerly causal bodies were visible, now only their secondary effects come to focus in the little hard-fact pupil of the human eye.”  (p. 315)

“Briefly formulated, the universal doctrine teaches that all the visible structures of the world—all things and beings—are the effects of a ubiquitous power out of which they rise, which supports and fills them during the period of their manifestation, and back into which they must ultimately dissolve.  This is the power known to science as energy, to the Melanesians as mana, to the Sioux Indians as wakonda, the Hindus as shakti, and the Christians as the power of God…its manifestation in the cosmos is the structure and flux of the universe itself.

The apprehension of the source of this undifferentiated yet everywhere particularized substratum of being is rendered frustrate by the very organs through which the apprehension must be accomplished.  The forms of sensibility and the categories of human thought, which are themselves manifestations of this power, so confine the mind that it is normally impossible not only to see, but even to conceive, beyond the colorful, fluid, infinitely various and bewildering phenomenal spectacle.  The function of ritual and myth (Gilligan: and generative trance) is to make possible, and then to facilitate, the jump—by analogy.  Forms and conceptions that the minds and its senses comprehend are presented and arranged in such a way as to suggest a truth or openness beyond.  (p. 258)”

In these brilliant passages, Campbell traces the progression through the three levels, emphasizing how we get caught in the content of the conscious world, creating an amnesia for, and negative hallucination of, the deeper levels from which they emanate.  This imprisonment is especially revealed in those situations for which people seek therapeutic assistance; they are caught in a self-created world of great suffering, a sort of a limited hypnotic trance with little or no awareness of the greater possibilities beyond.  The goal of generative trance, then, is to help a person become, in Campbell’s words, “transparent to the transcendent”[2], that is, to dissolve the opaque walls of their conscious world to illuminate a shimmering world of greater possibilities beyond.

To do this, we need to remember that both the creative unconscious and conscious worlds of experience are generated through filters.  This is a main function of mind: it is the tool of consciousness that (1) creates an experiential world and then (2) navigates within it.  We can now extend the idea that (1) there is no reality independent of an observing consciousness, to further emphasize that (2) the observing consciousness is using certain filters to create this reality.  These filters operate at many levels—for example, a nervous system is a mental filter, as is a cultural identity, an individual self-identity, or even a single experiential memory.  Each generative trance is an “experiment in consciousness” exploring how these filters (or at least the relationship to them) might change, thereby allowing the construction of a different reality. Again, this is no easy task; generally speaking, your level of awareness must be at least as deep as the level of the pattern you wish to change.  But at the very least, the realization that you are actively participating in creating your reality allows you to deeply explore how you are doing that, and how you might do it differently.  This curiosity is the essence of generative work.[3]

The idea that consciousness-with-filters is creating reality means that there is no fixed structure to either the unconscious or conscious minds. Thus, Freud looked into the unconscious and saw a dark orgy of sex, drugs, rock n’ roll.  Jung saw a pantheon of archetypal figures that evolved from centuries of core human experience.  Erickson observed a vast storehouse of experiential learnings that could be used as resources for creating a happy, fulfilling life.  When you look into the unconscious, what do you see/create?

Equally important, there is no fixed structure to the conscious mind.  While the traditional Western conscious mind is too often constructed as a disembodied intellect bent on controlling or consuming whatever it encounters, there are many other possibilities.  Milton Erickson modeled an exceptional example of a conscious mind that was curious, cooperative, relationally connected, and eminently creative.  How would you like to organize your conscious mind filters?

To be sure, there may be long-held traditions—that is, deeply conditioned filters—for creating a reality in a certain way.  These conditioned patterns exist at neurological, cultural, familial, social, and individual levels.  Once a pattern is set, it will automatically function as the default value unless disrupted or transcended; and to transcend a default value is no small feat. Thus, this constructivist view is not some shallow solipsism that declares that positive thinking at the ego level will bring instantaneous and complete change. Rather, it is way of appreciating that we are observer-participants in the creative process of life itself, and that it is possible to attune our consciousness to align with and transform some of the realities in play.

This is the main interest of generative trance work.  We are working in those areas where new realities are needed.  If reality is constructed by consciousness-with-filters, then by adjusting these filters we enable a new, more fulfilling reality to be created.  Later blogs will explore some of the ways we do this in generative trance work.  For example, generative trance work identifies three types of mind—Somatic, Cognitive, and Field—and looks to move each of them to a Generative Level where emergent properties of creative transformation appear.  Some of the properties of this generative consciousness are mindfulness, flow of information and energy between states and levels, subtle awareness, and creative acceptance.  Most important, this generative level allows us to move from experiencing ourselves as victims of a fixed external reality to creative participants in the great unfolding journey of consciousness and self-realization.  And this, indeed, is a healing and transformative knowledge.

Stephen Gilligan, Ph.D.

April 2, 2010

[1] For example, see Fred Alan Wolf, David Bohm, and Amit Gotswindy.

[2] Campbell credits the German psychiatrist Karl Durkheim as the source for this luminous quote.

[3] I knew Milton Erickson in the last 6 years of his life, from 1974-1980.  I often witnessed students asking him just what the possibilities were in using hypnosis to change some particular condition.  His typical answer was something to the effect of,  “I don’t know!  But I’m very curious is discovering just what is possible for you here today.”  He would often add that the longer he worked, the less certain he was about what exactly was possible and what was not.

This year’s “Trance Camp,” held in San Diego in July, is organized around the theme of generative trance as a third-generation trance work. The first generation of trance work is the traditional hypnosis that is still holds sway in most places. Here both the conscious mind and the unconscious mind of the client are considered to be, well, idiots. So trance work involves first “knocking out” the conscious mind, and then talking to the unconscious mind like a 2-year old that needs to be told how to behave. So if a person comes in wanting to change a personal habit, they’re told to be quiet and follow the orders of the hypnotist. To relate to a person in this way seems like the problem, not a solution. Is it any wonder that so many people are (rightfully) leery of trance and hypnosis?

Milton Erickson created the second generation of trance work. He approached the unconscious as having creative wisdom and each person as extraordinarily unique. Thus, rather than trying to program the unconscious with new instructions, Erickson saw trance as an experiential learning state where a person’s own creative unconscious could generate healing and transformation. This radical idea of the unconscious as tremendously intelligent led to a very different type of trance work–for example, each trance was unique, the communications were primarily derived from the person’s own patterns and ongoing experience, and the hypnotist-client relationship was cooperative rather than authoritarian.

At the same time, Erickson for the most part carried the same low opinion of the conscious mind, seeing it as more a nuisance than an integral part of self-transformation and healing. Thus, Ericksonian hypnosis looks to bypass the conscious mind with indirect suggestions and dissociation, and depotentiate it with confusion techniques. The idea is that once the conscious mind is out of the way, the creative unconscious can do its thing.

The third generation of trance work sees this negative attitude toward the conscious mind as unnecessary and ultimately unhelpful. Creative action requires a skillful conscious mind to realize the potential of the unconscious mind. The conscious mind is needed to set and maintain intention, to sense and evaluate multiple pathways of possibility, to properly name and represent experience, and to organize actions in a sequential and linear way. William James used to say that the unconscious mind is the horse and the conscious mind is the rider; it’s the relationship between the two that is most important. And while some organizations of the conscious mind are unhelpful, this does not mean that all forms of conscious mind are.

Erickson demonstrated this beautifully in modeling a generative form of the conscious mind that was mindful, respectful, and attentive. His relational style with the unconscious mind was not the traditional “fight, flight, or freeze,” but rather the “creative flow” of skillful acceptance, positive curiosity, and endless flexibility. But in attributing the client’s positive change to the intelligence of their unconscious mind, Erickson gave an incomplete and misleading picture. If the unconscious was so smart, then why was the person showing up in the office with such troubling problems?

A more accurate description is that the change arose from the relationship between the client’s creative unconscious and Erickson’s generative conscious mind. In effect, Erickson replaced the client’s conscious mind with his own, and then skillfully interacted with the client’s unconscious mind to create extraordinary outcomes. To be sure, he was exceptionally respectful and skillful in utilizing the client’s reality as the basis for all communications. Still, the implicit message was that he could do for his patients what they couldn’t do for themselves. Given the cultural context that Erickson was working in some 50-60 years ago, this is hardly surprising: The ideas of self-generativity and mindfulness had not yet taken root.

We live in different times now, with a much deeper appreciation and support for each person’s capacity for self-awareness and self-transformation. So we must ask if the hypnotic strategy of dissociating (rather than differentiating) a person’s conscious mind from their creative unconscious is the best we can hope for. Was only Erickson capable of that generative form of the conscious mind pattern that we might call “the Erickson function”? If so, we’re in trouble, because he’s no longer here. Are only the “high priests” of psychotherapy skillful enough to speak directly with the unconscious? This would affirm the antiquated idea that the unconscious is fundamentally a dark and dangerous place that we should fear and stay disconnected from. Again, such attitudes seem like part of the problem that disempowers people, rather than the therapeutic goal of helping people to find their own voices and their own ways.

In emphasizing equally the complementary intelligences of the conscious and unconscious minds, Generative Trance is a third-generation type of work. It sees both minds as having an endless number of possible organizations— some helpful and others not–and seeks to help people to develop those that best allow them to live in a transformational way. Like William James, it sees the relational fit between the two minds as the most important issue. In this way, it is like couples therapy that starts out staring at two seemingly irreconcilable realities. The goal of both couples therapy and trance work is not to see one side as more “right” or “better” than the other, but to see what kind of context and conversation might allow a mutually respectful relationship in which the two sides can “make love, not war.” Moving to such a mutually inclusive and reciprocal relationship opens a space beyond opposites. In Self-Relations, this space is the Generative Self that allows healing, transformation, and creativity.

The practical question, of course, is how to create such a generative relationship. In the Generative Trance workshops, participants learn how to skillfully connect with three different types of Mind: Somatic (the mind of the body), Cognitive (the mind of the head), and Field (the mind beyond the individual position). You learn how to shift each of these minds to a higher (generative) level of consciousness that allows a deep conversation with the creative unconscious. Somatically, this is done via principles of alignment and centering, including basic elemental skills such as relaxation, absorption, fluidity, openness, and felt sense. Cognitively, this is done through principles of creative acceptance and transformation—for example, how to clear a space, set a positive intention, creatively make room for whatever is there, bring balance and complementarity, express something in multiple ways, and integrate parts into creative wholes. In field consciousness, we explore how to open a space beyond the problem, include resources, and receive direction from the creative unconscious.

That’s saying a lot in a short space, but the basic idea is that generative trance is a higher state of consciousness that can allow healing, transformation of problems into solutions, and the creation of new realities. And to find the highest state for a person, it’s best to include both their conscious mind and unconscious mind in a harmonious collaboration. Erickson demonstrated how he could this with a person’s unconscious. Generative Trance shows how each person can have that same generative relationship with their unconscious mind. In essence, you can “become your own Milton Erickson,” your own inner hypnotist that can work skillfully and safely to achieve extraordinary outcomes.

(For more info on trance camp, click here)

(For a free audio interview with Dr. Gilligan on the topic of generative trance, click here.)

I am in the beginning stages of getting this blog going, so pardon my “dust.” I’m going to be sharing with you some of my insights and stories about the history of hypnosis and trance, my initial work with Milton Erickson, and future directions in the work that I know call, “Self-Relations Psychotherapy” and the development of the “Generative Self.”

If you are interested in books, dvds, CD’s and downloads, please stop by my store where you can buy products related to Milton Erickson, Hypnosis, and the Generative Self.

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