M.A.M., Hypnosis, and Trance States.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trance

This article in Wikipedia is a very a good intro to understanding what trance states (notice the plural) are. I suggest you take a look at it before reading this article because then I won’t have to spend a lot of time explaining the basics, but simply write about my take on the title of this piece. And yes, to those in the know, M.A.M. (mam) is Malicious Animal Magnetism, the Devil of Christian Science. By her own use of the term “animal magnetism”, she accords mam with trance states. Except she does NOT have a clue about trance states and condemns the very idea with the word “malicious” in front of the term Mesmer first used for describing an induced trance state later renamed “hypnotism”.

Mesmer was the author of the idea that one human could “mesmerize” another human, often provoking states of mind where the mesmerized person does something silly in the trance state. This exact ‘show’ still goes on at county fairs, where the hypnotist gives the audience volunteers a very quick test of how suggestible a person is and picks the ones with the most suggestibility as determined by the test. He then puts them through a bunch of silly tricks, then “wakes” them up. Many do not even recall what they did because they were so suggestible, they went deep into the trance state.

This says that suggestibility is the criteria for a public carnival trance state. Suggestibility is what makes a person vulnerable to trance states, sometimes, whether they realize it or not – and they usually don’t have a clue of how their minds work, or about  suggestibility in trance states. Trance states are a kind of hidden subject, an occult subject, if you will. I am amazed by how little most people know about trance states, imagining people acting like they are stupefied by hypnosis, giving rise to the fiction of Svengali and Trilby. However many Christian services indulge in trance states of all kinds.

The most noticeable would be the trance dancing, but glossolalia is also performed in a trance. So called faith healings are best done in a deep trance state and can actually work on hysterical ailments, or rather, ailments that have a trance component. It has been my finding that hysterical symptoms, now called “conversion symptoms” are physical ailments that arise out of trance states, so, of course they can be cured by trance states. Hymn singing causes a mild group participation trance as does the fixed order of the services and all prayers whether silent or spoken.

Every child repeats the Pledge of Allegiance at school in a group speaking together. The by rote-ness of the “prayer’ alone is trance-causing. The thousand or more repetitions of it by the time one has grown up causes the “Pledge of Allegiance trance” every single time one participates. In fact, everything learned by rote is performed in a trance state, whether the pledge of allegiance or a ballerina’s entire performance of a two hour ballet. The musician’s, too! Total focus is given to a professional performance and focus of any kind is a trance state where other external and internal influences  are put on hold. Christian Scientists public total congregation’s  pronunciation of the Lord”s prayer does exactly the same thing.

Reading Science and Health has always put me right into a trance state, where I could pretend what she was saying was true, and it still does- for an instant, because I want this to be true, but once the CS trance broke for me, it was over. My critical thinking skills suddenly reasserted themselves and I knew it was just a trance state, much like dancing to rock and roll or reggae music. But unlike at a musical concert where the spell may last a few hours after the event, Christian Science is set up so that one must try to maintain the CS trance 24/7. If you take a second look at many of Mary’s pronouncements, you will se how she exhorts all to stay in the Christian Science state of mind- to the point of avoiding sick or sinful sights, as they might break the trance. Although she never looked at mesmerism scientifically and used the knowledge to her advantage, what she actually achieved, in her book especially, was a complete trance experience.

Christian Science treatment is performed in a complete trance state too. These praxters, as I like to call them, isolate themselves in a harmonious and peaceful room and go deep into a trance prayer in which they deeply experience the unreality of matter and if they are lucky, the Allness of Love. And, because they believe in malicious animal magnetism which is defined as a baleful influence emanating from one person and heaped on another, they also believe that when a praxter is praying, it is a healing influence and an influence that can also ward off mam. I find it peculiar that Puritan Congregationalism believed in witchcraft, which is essentially M.A.M., but had no praxters to counteract the belief in witchcraft with a prayerful belief in Perfection. Such a person would also have been a witch.

I have not yet covered the importance of suggestibility in all trance states. Professional performers do understand this very well and have a couple of techniques to pick out the most suggestible people. It is perfectly amazing to me how suggestible huge numbers of people are, and to see that there is one business that has made an art of understanding suggestibility, the advertising business, the result of which is that people are entranced by brand names and have accepted the suggestion that these brands represent status. That assumes the premise that advertisers are also selling higher status as a good thing- a highly held value.

While I like to focus on trance states in Christian Science, I think it is essential to understand what trances states are and know many examples of such, when you see them. I would venture to guess we spend the majority of our waking hours in one kind of a trance or another

Mary Baker Eddy and the DSM V

I have been making posts about Mary’s “symptoms” since the beginning of this blog. The most pronounced feature of her old age was her paranoia, but no diagnosis I have considered so far describes the constellation of symptoms she exhibited throughout her life. I will now list these without references, but the information is to be had in every authorized biography. The fact was, she was an odd bird with odd mannerisms and speech patterns noted by many from her childhood, until she wrote S&H, then all those peculiarities became charismatic. I imagine whatever speech patterns and mannerisms she had remained with her, but in her new context as a teacher of metaphysics, it was no longer so odd, but became accepted as her genuine self.

She had “fits’ as a youngster that kept her family jumping, first her parents and siblings, then her husbands, and finally her close followers. I have hypothesized before that, these fits may have been from over-stimulation. Her father was known to get upset at sinners and rant about them at home. He also delivered very scary sermons to his family, all lined up in front of him. It is well noted that Mary had bad reactions to his ranting from a very young age and they were the cause of some of her fits. Her family soon learned that a very quiet atmosphere was necessary to keep young Mary calm and or to restore peace and quiet, especially when she had a fit. Rocking Mary also had a soothing effect on her and people commented on that fact  well into her second marriage.

Young Mary had an early interest in words and early developed a huge vocabulary which she increased and practiced throughout her life. Others commented on her use of big words as a youth  and young married woman, and also the unusual tone of voice she employed. She enjoyed writing and poetry from a very young age and practiced both throughout her life. Words were her shield and her weapon her entire life and she had learned to use them formidably by the time she established her church.

Even when she was moving from boarding house to boarding house for many years, she required that her room be immaculate and that everything in it be the best quality she was capable of getting and it does seem she had many nice things when she entered her second marriage. Most of her things were pared away from her for decades, but the little she retained was still quality. In her old age, she really indulged her desire to keep her room exactly the same for several decades. There are a lot of anecdotes about how she required all furniture and knick-knacks to be returned to the exact same place after cleaning when she got old, but I am sure that was no new habit.

She had a great deal of trouble with peer relationships and even as a youngster seemed to collect negative comments about her ability to relate to schoolmates. If you are willing to consider that friends, family, her family doctor all said about the same things about Mary, though they dealt with them in different ways. She was pompous, verbose, disconnected socially, and did not take normal social cues and would expound on her latest thought, whether of Quimby or her new formulations, to the complete and utter boredom of listeners. This habit was so pronounced, many people from different periods of her life commented on it. Once she founded the college of metaphysics and became its teacher and for the rest of her life, she had a complete license to expound about her creation, Christian Science, as much as she wanted, and that was the topic that dominated her entire life once she started writing “Science and Health”.

The diagnosis I think is the most appropriate of all I have considered, so far is Asperger’s Syndrome, a mild form of autism. Now this diagnosis more than any other indicates, that her brain was wired in an unusual way; this is not a personality trait or a form of psychosis, it is a mild form of a developmental disorder that was not named until 1944. It is only in the DSM V that the diagnosis becomes part of the autism spectrum. There are about one million diagnosed cases of Asperger’s or high functioning autism, at present and probably millions more that have no idea that that is what their set of peculiarities is called, but have (or have not) learned to function with their quirks.

People at the high end of the autistic spectrum typically have every single quirk I named as belonging to Mary. First, the early blooming of her vocabulary was far ahead of her peers, but she had speech and bodily mannerisms that put people off and made them think she was strange. Children with High Functioning Autism  often have an ability with numbers or words or something else that is far beyond their age. With boys it seems to be a preoccupation with things numerical, and with many girls it seems to be words.

She had definite social deficits that made her seem rude or pompous to about everyone that talked to Milmine or Cather, esp. when she insisted on sharing her passion/obsession with anyone and everyone, whether they wanted to hear it or not. She seemed to lack the ability to understand social cues- and she had a hard time with empathy her entire life. She was quickly proven to be an inadequate mother to her son, her own needs were overwhelming and she did not have the empathy to override the distance from her son.

Finally, children along the autistic spectrum have extremely sensitive nervous systems. This is built in, like being left handed is. They can be easily over stimulated by loud noises, too bright lights, crowds and especially being tired. When a child like this has reached the end of its tolerance, you get the “meltdown” This is not a tantrum, though often interpreted that way, it is simply trying to release an overload of stimulation and demonstrating an immediate need to be put to bed in a quiet room. This problem is often misunderstood, and parents react as though the kid is doing it on purpose. Neighbors often think the kid is spoiled, Doctors think so too and that is exactly how Mary’s former friends, neighbors and doctor remember her. Since there was no such diagnosis as autism until long after she died, her peculiar combination of symptoms has been attributed  as being bad character, being hysterical, or being paranoid, even delusionally paranoid without noticing the Asperger’s Syndrome symptoms. This does not preclude a final slip into”delusional psychosis” when she got really old, although her “delusions” about mind over matter were very acceptable to others and thus probably not able to be considered delusions. Rather like an atheist can call a belief in god a delusion, but to the believers, it is not  a delusion.

So, if you know Mary’s biography, does this diagnosis make sense to you?

The actual DSMV criteria for autism spectrum. I underlined the most relevant parts; she does not have to meet every criteria, just enough of them, which she does in great measure.

Autism Spectrum Disorder           299.00 (F84.0)

Diagnostic Criteria

A.      Persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across multiple contexts, as manifested by the following, currently or by history (examples are illustrative, not exhaustive, see text):

1.       Deficits in social-emotional reciprocity, ranging, for example, from abnormal social approach and failure of normal back-and-forth conversation; to reduced sharing of interests, emotions, or affect; to failure to initiate or respond to social interactions.

2.       Deficits in nonverbal communicative behaviors used for social interaction, ranging, for example, from poorly integrated verbal and nonverbal communication; to abnormalities in eye contact and body language or deficits in understanding and use of gestures; to a total lack of facial expressions and nonverbal communication.

3.      Deficits in developing, maintaining, and understanding relationships, ranging, for example, from difficulties adjusting behavior to suit various social contexts; to difficulties in sharing imaginative play or in making friends; to absence of interest in peers.

Specify current severity:

Severity is based on social communication impairments and restricted repetitive patterns of behavior (see Table 2).

B.      Restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities, as manifested by at least two of the following, currently or by history (examples are illustrative, not exhaustive; see text):

1.       Stereotyped or repetitive motor movements, use of objects, or speech (e.g., simple motor stereotypies, lining up toys or flipping objects, echolalia, idiosyncratic phrases).

2.       Insistence on sameness, inflexible adherence to routines, or ritualized patterns or verbal nonverbal behavior (e.g., extreme distress at small changes, difficulties with transitions, rigid thinking patterns, greeting rituals, need to take same route or eat food every day).

3.       Highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus (e.g, strong attachment to or preoccupation with unusual objects, excessively circumscribed or perseverative interest).

4.       Hyper- or hyporeactivity to sensory input or unusual interests in sensory aspects of the environment (e.g., apparent indifference to pain/temperature, adverse response to specific sounds or textures, excessive smelling or touching of objects, visual fascination with lights or movement).

Specify current severity:

Severity is based on social communication impairments and restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior (see Table 2).

C.      Symptoms must be present in the early developmental period (but may not become fully manifest until social demands exceed limited capacities, or may be masked by learned strategies in later life).

D.      Symptoms cause clinically significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of current functioning.

E.       These disturbances are not better explained by intellectual disability (intellectual developmental disorder) or global developmental delay. Intellectual disability and autism spectrum disorder frequently co-occur; to make comorbid diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder and intellectual disability, social communication should be below that expected for general developmental level.

From <http://www.autismspeaks.org/what-autism/diagnosis/dsm-5-diagnostic-criteria>

This language may be strange to laymen, so I underlined the relevant sections.

Mary Baker Eddy’s Horoscope

Here is an online version of it:

I am not sure this is the correct birth time and doubt those were recorded, but it may have been chosen because a rare conjunction of two planets makes that an exciting place to start. This chart has a lot of information on it, but I will start simply.

Astrology has 12 signs and twelve houses. The first house belongs to Aries if you were born at sunrise during April, but if you were born at sunst, your sun would be in the seventh house. So most people have the houses different order than Aries rising. However, since I don’t trust this birthtime yet, I am not going to deal with Houses, but merely the planets in their signs and the relationships between the planets, which represent the dynamics between her body, mind and spirit, so to speak.

 

MBE was born in July under the sign of Cancer. Cancer is a constellation in the sky that people used to assign the rotating yearly duties of agriculture, each to its proper time, but when astrology was kept alive through fortune telling, Cancer became the sign of the mother and its natural place in the fourth house made the fourth house represent the home. So Cancer is associated with home and mother. This aligns quite nicely with MBE’s desire to be regarded as “Mother”, as well.

Mary’s Moon in in the sign of Aquarius. This is not an ideal place for the moon because Aquarius is airy and dry. It makes for a kind of abstract mother, rather than an earthy one or watery mom. Also the sun and Moon are not in a relationship. That is they have no trine, square, or opposition to each other. They do not work in concert, whether that relationship is strong, weak, difficult or easy.

The next planet one looks at is Mercury, which represent the intellect or smarts. Leo is a good place for Mercury, it gives an steadiness and maybe a bit of pride to the mind.

Venus is the next planet. We find it right next to Mercury in the sign of Leo. This closeness in space is called a conjunction, though in this case a loose one. Venus is one’s romantic side. When this close to Mercury in a Fiery sign like Leo, this could be interpreted as a love life inseparable from the intellect with no juiceiness in either. It would also be interpreted as a mind with a feminine twist, or an intellectual love life. Pretty dry stuff. Before we move on to other planets, make a note that the Mercury /Venus conjunction is in opposition to the moon. And it is all dry and intellectual. There we have the symbolism of Mary’s love and home life- It all takes place up in her head.

Next planet out is Mars, her imprint of the masculine, the fighter in oneself. Mars is in Gemini, the sign of the twin hands, the handy. Mars has a pleasant, supportive relationship to the Moon esp. and the Mercury/Venus conjunction secondarily.  This means they all work together harmoniously, even if they are all out of their own elements, so to speak.

The next planet out is Jupiter, the prosperous, jolly uncle-that Falstaff part of oneself. Jupiter is in Aries, a sign compatible with its expansive, warm nature. But it is so close to Saturn, the next planet out, that they are conjoined, wed to each other, inseparable, in spite of their opposite natures. Saturn the other half of this strained marriage is the banker of the planets and a tight wad, solemn, boring, and absolutely stable and predictable, the perfect Calvinist, sure he is ‘saved’, but in this case, married to a big fat sloppy indulgent pleasure-seeker. These opposite factors wedded is a very difficult combination maybe contributing to her constant reference of sin, as Saturn can think Jupiter is a sinner and try to repress or even kill it.

The unpleasant conjunction of the sinner and the saved, is in a strongly workable relationship to another conjunction of the next two planets, Uranus and Neptune in Capricorn. Uranus is a rule breaker,  it has a different orientation to everything, so it brings unexpectedness to the table. It is scientific in orientation. It’s job just seems to be to turn whatever its focus is 90 degrees, which can really mess up the established order.    Neptune is the  dreamer, a mystic and not opposed to drugs that enhance that part of the brain opioids, pot, ayahuasca. When Uranus and Neptune marry, it is a combination of stirring it up and seeking new states of consciousness. This conjunction is of the outer planets, so it does not happen very often, maybe once a century or less, (a guess without looking it up) compared to the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter which can happen more than once in a generation, so this conjunction is the most rare aspect of Mary’s chart. Which is why it may have been put front and center in the ascendent position of this chart. But whatever house it is in it is the the most unique thing in her chart. Having this happen in Capricorn, the natural home of Saturn, may sway the whole balance to the Puritanical side.

Rule-breaking mysticism. Mary was actually born into a time when religion was beginning to explode into various unknown directions. Everyone born within months of Mary up to a couple of years had this conjunction in their birth chart in some form. Some would express it as leaders, some as followers, some as an internal experience, others as external events, if Astrology is to be believed. But in Mary, with the backing of Saturn and Jupiter working in harmony can be projected something like writing a book like Science and Health. Sat & Jup represent a combination of persistence, stifling of pleasure, the established order, both conservative and liberal. This established order, unhappy within itself, was in harmony with the rule breaking metaphysics of a book like Science and Health.

The final planet to consider is Pluto. I am not really sure what Pluto represents, but whatever it is, it is far out. “Far out” This might be the part of the self that is beyond, out there, so distant is is hard to recognize as part of oneself. In this case Pluto causes friction to the Neptune/Uranus alliance while being the planet with the most harmonious relationship to her sun. She really was pretty far out there.

What I see in this chart as a whole is that her sun is free floating in one area and her moon is free floating in another and the two sides never rally have anything to share between them. Now I’ll go get out the astrology books and check on what I just said, off the top of my head. LOL

I will have to return to this subject!