TRADITIONAL DANCE AND SPIRITUAL TRANCE

I made this video to share the phenomena of religious trances. The superhuman abilities exhibited during a trance demonstrate the amazing capabilities of the human mind. I learned that the men don't remember what happened or what they did in the grips of the trance and it reminded me of studies of Dissociative Identity Disorder: the subject has different memories, abilities and preoccupations in their alternate state. People reacting to the myriad layers and textures of music so sensitively through dance was like being tuned in to a state of higher consciousness in which sounds and movement are perceived with supreme clarity and the fear instinct that prevents us from engaging with harmful activities (like peeling a coconut with our teeth) is almost completely dissolved. The prism that most of us understand ourselves and our abilities and human boundaries through is one that has been dictated to us. Our friend John, the man interviewed, told us that the men never suffer from any health problems after consuming lit coal or eating a raw chicken which seems contrary to the laws of biology. Perhaps our almost arrogant fidelity to the sciences has been a ballast to understanding that physical and psychological human condition more thoroughly.