Primary experiences are experiences that are related to the external world, or the territory.
The prefix “meta-” means “above” or “about.” It is a state about something that happens inside of your head, as opposed to a primary state which must be anchored to the external world. A quick example of this is that if a person is seeing themselves in an image inside of their head as if it were on a movie screen, they are meta to the screen. They’re not actually inside of it. Only when they view it as if it were really happening and with them inside of their body, do they start to experience the primary states.
Note that meta does not mean dissociation, but dissociation is very very important. Skillful hypnotists all use dissociation on some level.
People dissociate from their consciousness. It is a wonder to me that most people do not understand just how powerful the ideas of “conscious” and “unconscious” are. “Your unconscious now” is not just a command, but it presupposes that there is some part of you that is unconscious-ness. It focuses attention to the part of the mind that, by definition, they don’t have all of their conscious “stuff” there.
