(2) You should be careful to keep your self consciousness active and alert when entering trance. Do not give yourself up completely or allow the mind to become a blank at first. Give yourself up in every other way but this. You must always keep in the background of your mind the thought: “I am I … I am so-and-so (your name) … I will remain in my body. … I am strength and power … I will not be influenced against my will by forces other than good. … I can always return to myself when I want to.”
These and similar suggestions you must give to yourself, and hold them in your mind as a central point of force while entering trance, even when allowing yourself to become passive in every other way. If you do this, you will avoid a great deal of difficulty and danger.

(3) If you can in any way assure yourself that you have a band of spirits or controls “on the other side” who are ready and willing to help you, this would mean much. A good medium or clairvoyant could probably tell you whether this is the case, and the nature of the intelligences who are trying to influence and act upon you.

If these are described as evil, you had best postpone your development until this condition changes. If, on the contrary, they are described as good and helpful, you may proceed, subject to the above precautions and advice.

Both trance and catalepsy occur spontaneously; both may also be induced artificially by hypnotism. Both are mistaken for death, and in many respects they are very similar. In catalepsy the body is rigid, whereas in trance this is very rarely the case this forming the chief mark of distinction (external indication) between the two states. What the internal differences are we do not know. Various attempts, however, have been made to define them. Dr. Franz Hartmann, e.g., thus distinguishes them: “There seems hardly any limit to the time during which a person may remain in a trance but catalepsy is due to some obstruction in the organic mechanism of the body on account of its exhausted nervous power. In the last case the activity of life begins again as soon as the impediment is removed or the nervous energy has recuperated its strength.
When a hypnotist places bis subject under hypnotic control, the subject remains en rapport with the operator. The influence comes from a living person. In the medium-trance it seems probable that the operator is not a living but a deceased person, and that it is a kind of telepathic influence from spirits which induces this state. In fact, it is brought about by influence from the “other side.”