On the Healing Effect of Symmetrical States: Relational Asymmetry, Trance, and the Restoration of Plasticity

Abstract

Abstract This essay proposes a structural interpretation of the healing effect often associated with meditative absorption, trance, and nondual states. The central thesis is that such states are transformative not primarily because they provide access to metaphysical truths, but because they temporarily suspend or weaken the asymmetrical relational configurations through which suffering is ordinarily stabilized. Psychological distress is here understood not merely as a collection of contents, symptoms, or narratives, but as the fixation of relational asymmetries: self versus world, desire versus reality, past versus present, control versus uncertainty, ideal self versus actual self. Ordinary ego-consciousness continuously reproduces such asymmetries through narrative self-modeling, semantic fixation, evaluative differentiation, temporal projection, and reflexive self-observation. Symmetrical states, by contrast, interrupt this recursive production of difference. Their healing effect may therefore lie in the temporary relaxation of fixed relational patterns and in the restoration of relational plasticity. This approach avoids both reductive psychologism and metaphysical absolutization. It neither reduces contemplative experience to psychological mechanisms nor interprets it dogmatically as contact with an ultimate metaphysical ground. Instead, it offers a structural account of why such states may be experienced as liberating, cleansing, renewing, or transformative. The essay also suggests that this framework may have particular relevance for trauma theory, provided that its clinical implications are formulated cautiously and without implying that deep meditative or trance-like states are automatically therapeutic.