Exercise 4: Light

We’ve progressed through letting-go, then letting it glow, then letting it flow, and now we come to let it grow. In this exercise, there is an upward movement—a feeling of lifting, floating and merging.

After sufficient practice the exercises are combined into the one mantra: “My arms and legs are heavy, warm, clear and light”, or just “Heavy . . . Warm . . . Clear . . . Light“.

The Dual Meaning of Light

The word “Light” carries two meanings in English. It is the opposite of both “dark” and “heavy.” The English language is almost unique in this respect (the Dutch language has it also). This dual meaning works well for our practice because it helps us work simultaneously with both body-feeling and visioning—the right hemisphere functions cultivated by REM Autogenics.

Finding the Floating Sensation

We normally ignore the weight of our limbs and are accustomed to feeling them as weightless. It is therefore relatively easy to find the floating, weightless feeling within the felt sense of the body. In an altered state of consciousness with enhanced body-awareness, we can experience the heavy body and the light body simultaneously, intermingled together.

The Dual Effect of the Light Mantra

The Light mantra serves two purposes:
(1) It helps induce a floating feeling of relaxation in the body
(2) It prompts awareness of visual imagery.

Using the word “Light” helps induce both buoyancy of the body’s felt sense, and luminosity of the inner visual field. Having cleared the body-feeling in Exercise 3 by evoking clarity and transparency, we now in Exercise 4 induce a floating feeling of lightness.

Developing Triple Attention

The previous exercises involved cultivating dual attention—remaining aware of two things simultaneously: the mantras recited in the mind (verbal) and the felt sense of the relevant part of the body (visceral).

With Exercise 4, we now add the visual dimension. We develop triple attention:
Verbal—inner recitation of autogenic mantras
Visceral—the felt sense of the body
Visual—the inner visual field.

Looking for Elementary Visuals

As we work with the Light mantra, we also look for a phosphene of colour at the centre of our inner visual field. A phosphene is the most elementary form of visual pseudo-hallucination. As we practice Exercise 4, we remain aware of the colour of the phosphene and how it changes. More complex images, e.g. of faces, animals, buildings, and so on, may form within the phosphene.

The Elemental Progression

Progression through the four exercises of REM Autogenics can be thought of, metaphorically and imaginatively, as moving from mass to energy, from matter to light. It resembles progressively increasing the vibrational energy of the felt sense of the body.

We have moved through all four elementsof the imagination:

(1) First, we tuned into the solidity of the body’s mass by becoming more aware of the pull of gravity—Earth
(2) Then, we induced a glow of warmth in the felt sense of the body, an aura of Fire
(3) Next, we cleared the aura with a flow of Water so that it becomes transparent
(4)Finally, we evoke the element of Air and in the imagination float free of gravity.

Both Water and Air are transparent and clear, but Water is subject to gravity while Air is less so. With the element Air, we can evoke feelings of floating free and merging with something higher. We can begin to move from trance to transcendence.

With use of the word “Light” the felt sense of the body, the aura, expands out to merge with the light of the universe. Body feeling dissolves and disappears as trance and ego-transcendence deepen.