In the spirit of Halloween (pun very much intended), I’d like to talk a bit about some of the weirder aspects of hypnosis—things you may have never heard of, but may find interesting and a little spooky.
As you know, hypnosis is all about accessing, and often re-programming, the unconscious mind. When people go into deep hypnotic trance, they often can tap into information and abilities that are beyond the norm.
Here’s a list of strange and mysterious things I have encountered during my own explorations of hypnosis and the Unconscious Realm…
Evil Parts. Imagine working with a client about some mundane issue, like quitting smoking or developing greater self-confidence, when, all of the sudden, you hear them start to speak to you in a strange and sinister voice!
It’s happened to me on a few occasions. Not to worry, though—it’s all in a day’s work when you use hypnotherapy to reconcile conflicting inner ‘parts’.
Everyone has conflicting inner parts, to some degree. However, so-called cases of demonic possession may, in fact, be examples of individuals who experience this inner warfare to an extreme degree. In such cases, the individual may actually be suffering from severe dissociative identity disorder, a psychological condition where a person’s core personality fractures into multiple sub-identities that often operate autonomously.
Oracular Abilities. As I mentioned, hypnosis is a way to access the potentials of the unconscious mind. Some people believe that there is not only an Unconscious Mind, but also what is often referred to as, ‘the Superconscious Mind’. While your unconscious mind is like an enormous archive of personal information, the Superconscious Mind extends beyond the self and is connected to the universe as a whole. Devices such as pendulums, dowsing rods, Ouija boards, and tarot decks, can all be used to induce self-hypnotic trance for the purpose of tapping into the secret knowledge of the Unconscious and Superconscious minds.
Spontaneous Memories from Past Lives. When I was originally trained in hypnosis, most of my fellow classmates were either psychologists, psychiatrists, doctors, or registered nurses. That is why I was completely surprised when, one day, my hypnotherapy instructor told our class that he would be performing a ‘past life regression’ with the entire group.
“In about 1% of the cases where you use hypnotic regression techniques to determine the cause of a problem,” he explained, “your client will spontaneously ‘regress’ into a ‘past life’ experience. This is common enough that you better be prepared for the eventuality.”
In my experience, I have found his estimates to be true.
For example, I once had a young black American client who had a severe phobia of wooded areas. Under hypnosis, he spontaneously regressed to a previous lifetime where he was part of a group of Jewish people who were all machine-gunned to death by Nazis in a European forest.
Communication with Departed Spirits. Other than Ouija boards, there a few ways one can use hypnotic trance as a way to communicate and interact with spirits from ‘the other world’. One method is through a precisely-formulated hypnotic induction created for that exact purpose. The famous medium, John Edwards, employs such hypnotic inductions.
Mesmeric Inductions. Read any basic psychology textbook and it will tell you how hypnosis depends on the suggestibility of the client and the proper wording and delivery of hypnotic suggestions.
But what if it were possible to hypnotize someone without their knowledge, and without even speaking to them?
Well, it is.
Mesmeric trance induction relies on the use of ‘hypnotic passes’, or movements of the hands and arms without ever actually touching the subject. During a Mesmeric induction, the hypnotist wills the subject into trance—often without even speaking a word.
In his book, ‘The Encyclopedia of Stage Hypnosis’, the late-great hypnotist, Ormond McGill details the use of such inductions. I have personally experimented with them and have found them to be incredibly effective. For example, I once put a person into profound trance while standing silently behind them.
Unconscious Rapport. To the average person, rapport is about bonding and getting along with other people. To the trained hypnotist, however, rapport is about establishing a deep, unconscious connection that makes your subject more responsive to hypnotic suggestion—sometime even without their knowledge.
Take, for example, the case of that evil genius, Aleister Crowley. During his lifetime, Crowley was known as an infamous practitioner of the Dark Arts. He was a leader of occult groups in Europe and America and wrote multiple arcane treatises on the practice of real-world magick. The problem was, no one had ever seen him perform anything uncanny.
That is, until one day…
“I was with Aleister in his apartment on 5th Avenue, in New York,” a journalist once reported. “I asked Aleister if he would be willing to demonstrate some of his magickal ability. He agreed to do so, and we left his apartment and began walking down the street. Aleister picked a man at random as he moved past him on the sidewalk. He began following the man without his knowledge, becoming as it were, a spectral ghost moving behind him. He duplicated perfectly the gait of his walk, the swing of his arms, even the jut of his chin as he moved. Suddenly, at one point, Aleister dropped to one knee. It was then that the most amazing thing happened: The man in front of him tripped, falling flat on his face, as if a devil wind had swept his feet from beneath him.”
What Aleister Crowley did was tap into his victim’s unconscious awareness. He used physical matching and mirroring, along with a certain bit of psychic projection, to create a completely unconscious connection that caused the man to unconsciously mirror his own ‘trip’.
Well, I hope you have enjoyed this brief journey into weird hypnosis.
Obviously, I always use hypnosis in completely benign and wholesome ways to help people achieve greater happiness and fulfillment in their lives.
Still, it’s Halloween, and sometimes it can be a little fun to take a walk on the dark side… :)
If you enjoyed this article, please 'like' and share!