Hypnotism is rapidly becoming a major part of psychological, psychiatric, and professional counseling technique. Medical doctors are also increasingly employing it. Its use has dramatically increased since the development of Ericksonian hypnotism a couple decades ago. Classical (formal) hypnotism required that the client be put into a sleep-like stupor, but Erlcksonian (Informal) hypnosis enables the operator to embed thoughts and feelings during casual conversation, without the client's realizing where they came from. This new method of hypnosis has opened the way whereby, every professionally-trained counselor can do what the psychiatrists used to do: put people Into a hypnotic trance and suggest changes In values, wishes, wants, likes, dislikes, fears, and hopes.

All of the basics of a person's personality and character can be affected through hypnosis. You are a unique combination of information, attitudes, and principles. But all that can be changed through hypnotism.

Your character is your thoughts and feelings combined, both easily changed through hypnosis. "You should keep off from Satan's enchanted ground and not allow your minds to be swayed from allegiance to God. Through Christ you may and should be happy and should acquire habits of self-control. Even your thoughts must be brought into subjection to the will of God and your feelings under the control of reason and religion. Your imagination was not given you to be allowed to run riot and have its own way without any effort at restraint or discipline. lf the thoughts are wrong the feelings will be wrong, and the thoughts and feelings combined make up the moral character. . "-5 Testimonies, 310 (italics ours).

In addition, hypnotism weakens the will and the power of self-control, and those are the two elements that determine the strength of one's character. "Strength of character consists of two things-power of will and power of self-control."-Child Guidance, 161.

WHERE HYPNOSIS ORIGINATED

Hypnosis is basic to the Eastern religions. Just as psy­chotherapy is taking the West to the East, so hypnosis is having the same effect.

"The reader should not be confused by the supposed differences between hypnosis, Zen, Yoga and other Eastern healing methodologies. Although the ritual for each differs, they are fundamentally the same.” -William Kroger and William Fezler, Hypnosis and Behavior Modification: Imagery Conditioning, 1976, p. 412.

Torrey, a research psychiatrist, tells us this:

"Hypnosis is one aspect of the yoga techniques of therapeutic meditation."- Fuller Torrey, The Mind Game, 1972, p. 70.

Kroger explains that hypnosis is used to bring the subject to the gods of yoga.

“The fundamental principles of Yoga are, in many respects, similar to those of hypnosis. Yoga is not considered a religion, but rather a 'science' to achieve mastery of the mind and cure physical and emotional sickness . . There are many systems of Yoga, but the central aim—union with God—is common to all of them and is the method by which it achieves cure. "-William Kroger, Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis (2nd Ed), 1977, p. 122-123

­Those who wish to use hypnosis, or consult those who do, need to realize what they are getting themselves into. "We cannot call hypnosis a science, but we can say that it has been an integral part of the occult for thousands of years."-Martin and Deidra Bobgan, Hypnosis and the Christian, 1984, p. 43.

"For centuries, Zen, Buddhist, TIbetan, and Yogic methods have used a system of meditation and an altered state of consciousness similar to hypnosis."-William Kroger, Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis. (2nd Ed.), 1977, p. 126.

LEARNING MORE ABOUT HYPNOSIS

Hypnotism can have powerful effects on people. Not only can it radically change their thoughts and feelings, —it can even remold their mind patterns into something quite different. By the choice of the hypnotist—or the spirits guiding him,—the hypnotized subject can think he is in a totally different location, or fully believe he has become an animal!

"Like meditation and biofeedback, hypnosis can open the way for a person to enter a wide range of discrete states of consciousness, or, more rarely altered states." Daniel GoIeman and Richard Davidson, Consciousness: Brain, States of Awareness, and Mysticism, 1979, p. 46.

It is well-known among professionals that the deepest states of hypnosis are the ones that many psychologic counselors prefer to put their clients into so the "most beneficial therapeutic work can be done" on their minds. Yet the deeper states are the most dangerous!

Francuch, a psychiatric researcher, describes 500 levels of trance that people can be put into by hypnosis. "Up to the five hundredth, one goes through various states and levels that reflect different states and levels of the spiritual world and its conditions. At the 126th level, there is a state that corresponds to the state (Nirvana] described by the Eastern mystics.” -Peter Francuch, Principles of Spiritual Hypnosis, 1981, p. 79.

Then he describes levels beyond the 126th.

"The subject emerged from the 126th state, or state of void, nothingness, Nirvana, as a new-born individual with a high level of individuation, differentiation, and at the same time, absorption of the Universe and creation within and without, being simultaneously one with and different from Creation. This state is impossible to describe in words, because nothing exists in the human vocabulary that corresponds to it.

"I was told that once we break the 1,000 level, all laws, rules, and regulations as they are known to all levels of spirituality and the natural world will be broken, and something completely new will appear."-Op. cit., p. 80. Such mystical talk as that is given to convince foolish people to let hypnotists work on them. But the result is only changed personalities and heavily weakened wills. Instead of producing some glorious experience, it actually corresponds more closely to a dog that has been trained by his master to respond instantly, have no will of his own, and do exactly as he is told.

Hypnosis is actually spirit possession. Or to say it more clearly: demon possession. Earnest Hilgard, a psychiatric researcher, describes trances in which pos­session clearly occurred. In one, the individual "becomes possessed by the Monkey god.” In another, the one under hypnosis is told to select from several spirits that could possess him. (Which is somewhat unusual; in this one instance the subject was permitted to choose something himself! Usually it is all done for him by other minds: the operator and the demons.)

"The spirit would possess him and then answer questions, particularly making recommendations for the cure of illness, including the special curative powers of a charmed glass of water. "-Earnest Hilgard, Divided Consciousness: Multiple Controls in Human Thought and Action, 1977, p. 168.

You will recall in our earlier set of studies, Hypnotism Enters Adventism, we told of the "self-help" hypnotism cassettes that would answer whatever questions you asked while they were playing (!). Now we know how that is done. The tape puts you into a low-level trance, and then you imagine it is answering your questions,— when actually a devil is talking to you.

Weakened will, control by men and devils, and the embedding of strange, new atheistic standards of thinking and believing;—all this comes from hypnosis. But here is an associated danger: the problem of mind emptying. During hypnosis and afterward, there is a tendency for the mind to empty out so that, passively, it awaits other minds and powers to control it. What a dangerous way to live!

The following passage bears strikingly on the subject at hand:

"Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty . . Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first."-Matthew 12:44-45.

"Any technique or practice that alters the consciousness to an empty-minded state of passivity should be avoided." -David Haddon, "Meditation and the Mind," Spiritual Counterfeits, January 1982, p. 2.

But hypnosis always brings that empty-mindedness to the one foolish enough to fall under hypnosis.

"While those kinds of [hypnotic) techniques are often taken up for the supposed benefits rather than as spiritual disciplines, the user's intention will not prevent experience of the passive mental state with its attendant hazards. . It opens the mind to false ideas about God and reality. . [and] opens the personality to demonic incursion ,"-Ibid.

DEVILS WORKING WITH MEN

Hypnosis is nothing more than a contractual agreement between devils and men. The men are given power to do unusual things, so that thereby the devils may gain access to men and women that they previously could not control. The operator is proud of his strange power, and the demons are enabled to gain control over new victims.

"What happens when a hypnotist begins hypnotizing someone?

If a hypnotist leads an individual into a state of hypnosis through a process called induction. Few people realize that hypnotic induction often involves subtle forms of deception. Even if a hypnotist attempts to make only true and honest statements, deception may enter in through the distortion of reality, which begins during induction and continues throughout the hypnotic trance.

"One form of deception employed by hypnotists is double-bind suggestions. Medical doctor William Kroger and psychologist William Fezler, two well-known authorities on hypnosis, describe induction by saying that it 'consists of a sequential series of double-bind suggestions.' Double-bond suggestions are comments made to the subject to indicate that his response (no matter what it is) is an appropriate one for moving into the state of hypnosis. The suggestions are arranged to elicit the subject's confidence and cooperation so that he may relax. Kroger and Fezler suggest such things as:

" 'If the patient's eyes blink or the individual swallows, one can say, 'See, you just blinked,' or swallowed, as the case may be. These act as reinforces to suggest that the patient is doing fine.'

"Other such reinforcements are used by Kroger and Fezler to lead the person more quickly into the trance. "Milton Erickson, known as the 'grand master of clinical hypnosis' [and the originator of Ericksonian informal hypnosis], used the double bind to give his patients a pseudo-choice, the patient could choose a light trance or a deep trance but, either way, the patient ended up in a trance. Hypno-therapist Peter Francuch says, 'It is very important to utilize every reaction of the client to deepen his trance.' It -Martin and Deidre Bobgan, Hypnosis and the Christian, 1984, pp. 15-16.

Clearly, the entire process is simple enough: low-level mind-control, ever deepening into greater and greater mind control. It begins by stating facts as though they were suggestions already carried out, continues as alternative suggestions leading to deeper levels of control, sinks down to the giving of commands which are followed, and ends with devils which already control the operator-now controlling both operator and subject. It does not sound very pleasant, does it?

Instead of a noble mind submitted only to its' Creator, the God of heaven, the man or woman becomes a kennel dog which obediently does whatever another created being tells it to do.

TAKEOVER OF THE WILL

Well, by now the takeover of the will through hypnotism is a foregone conclusion. The will would have to be over­come and brought into total submission, in order for the operator-and the devils he is knowingly or unknowingly working with-to do such dramatic things with the vision, hearing, senses, thinking, and feelings of the victim, —pardon me, the client.

Here is an interesting statement in the prestigious Journal of Personality and Social Psychology:

"The relationship of a hypnotizable patient to the hypnotist does not differ in any essential way from the rela­tionship of a lunatic to the superintendent of an asylum." -Martin Orne and Frederick Evans, "Social Control in the Psychological Experiment: Antisocial Behavior and Hypnosis," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 1, No, 3, p, 199.

And the following statement is an equally significant one,­ from a college textbook, no less!

"Hypnosis can be described as an altered state of intense and sensitive interpersonal relatedness between hypnotist and patient, characterized by the patient's non-rational submission and relative abandonment of executive control to a more or less regressed, dissociated state."-Alfred Freed­man, Harold Kaplan, and Benjamin Sadock, Modern Synopsis of Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry III, 1976, p. 905.

Hilgard says it well:

"Within the hypnotic contract, they will do what the hypnotist suggests, experience what they are told to experience, and lose control of movements [not directed by him]."­Earnest Hilgard, "Divided Consciousness in Hypnosis: The Im­plications of the Hidden Observer, " in Ericka Fromm and Ronald Shor (eds.), Hypnosis: Developments in Research and New Perspectives, 1979, p. 49.

Bowers explains it further:

"The perception of the world of outer reality fades away . . and there comes a time when the voice of the hypnotist is heard as if within the subject's own mind, and he responds to the will of the hypnotist as to his own will." -Margaretta Bowers, "Friend or Traitor? Hypnosis in the Service of Religion, " International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hyp­nosis, Vol. 7, No. 205, 1959, p. 208.

USELESSNESS OF THE PROCEDURE

In spite of all the high praise heaped upon hypnosis for its marvelous personality improving and medically healing powers, the experts, after using it for years, recognize among themselves that it is really useless. Because of this, they privately discuss its "placebo effect” to Because hypnotism helps no one, the professionals like to think that, at least, it makes a good placebo; that is, people imagine it is helping them, so they get better! ("Placebo": a preparation having no medicinal value, given to soothe or humor a patient.]

"The power of hypnosis is the power of belief!"-William Kroger, Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis (2nd Ed.), 1977, p.135.

Trying to find some medical benefit in hypnosis, Kroger and Fezler declare:

"Faith in a specific cure leads to the success of that cure! . . Every psychotherapist owes it to his patients to utilize his unquestioned placebo effect at the highest level—hypnosis. " - William Kroger and William Fezler, Hypnosis and Behavior Modification: Imagery Conditioning, 1976, pp. xiii, 138.

By that they mean that the patient comes to the doctor, believing in advance that somehow he may be able to help him. So a potential placebo effect is already there as he enters the doctor's office, But in order to really change that potential into reality, Kroger and Fezler tell the doctors to be sure and hypnotize the patient before he leaves! If they utilize Ericksonian hypnosis, that should not be too difficult to do.

"Our thesis is that if the placebo is (to be made] effective, then hypnosis employed prudently by a competent physician for a valid indication will serve the patient's best interests. "­Op. cit, p. 139.

Shapiro and Gillis put it even more bluntly:

"Psychanalysis—and its dozens of psychotherapy offshoots—is the most used placebo of our time. "-Arthur Shapiro, in Martin Gross, Psychological Society, 1978, p. 230.

"Humanitarian fervor aside, it's the therapist's job to take power over the patient, push ahead with solving the problem, then convince the patient he or she is better, even if it means being devious." -John S. Gillis, "The Therapist as Manipul­ator," Psychology Today, December 1974, p. 91.

LYING MEDIUMS AND SPIRITS

There is nothing as devious as hypnosis. It is lying and deceptive from the start to the finish of the hypnotic process, and also in the "beneficial results" claimed for it before and afterward. Janet, one of the leading early pioneers in hypnotherapy, said this:

"There are some patients to whom . . we must tell part of the truth; and there are some to whom as a matter of strict moral obligation, we must lie."-Pierre Janet, Psychological Healing: A Historical and Clinical Study, Vol. II, 1925, p. 338.

Not only are lies told in order to put the client under hypnosis, lies are told to him afterward.

"[We must convince the] client that the therapy is definitely working, apart from any objective evidence of change (or improvement],"-John S. Gillis, "The Therapist as Manipulator," Psychology Today, December 1974, p, 92.

These mind-healers are working with lying spirits, and it is those spirits that guide both the operator and his client. You do not think that lying takes place? Read these lying "memories" embedded into a man during hypnosis:

"One man who suffered from migraine headaches reports [under hypnosis] the feelings he had when his mother suffered headaches while he was in her womb. Then he 'remembers', In a previous (reincarnated] life he was captured by Indians and leather bands were twisted and tightened around his head. He describes the intensity of the pain. . later he moves into a 'different life' in which he is an Indian and this time a metal band is around his head. . After several other accounts, he 'recalls' the birth experience of his present life. Voices are saying that his head is stuck and he feels metal on his head as he is pulled through the birth canal. After the fourth session of hypnotic regression, his migraine headaches had vanished."-Martin and Deidre Bobgan, Hypnosis, and the Christian, 1984, p. 21.

Lying spirits embed lying memories that were never there before.

"This [these so-called 'birth memories'] all flies in the face of the well-known, neurological, scientific fact that the myelin sheathing (the coating on the nerves] is too underdeveloped in the prenatal, natal, and early postnatal brain to store such memories. David Chamberlain, a San Diego psychologist, paradoxically reports that people 'can indeed remember their own births in extraordinary detail' through hypnosis, but that the birth memory is not stored in the brain! This raises a question: If memories are not stored in the brain, where are they stored?"-Op. cit., p. 22 (italics his).

They came directly from devils.

ILLEGALITY AND IMMORALITY UNDER HYPNOSIS

Half a century ago, there was a controversy in professional circles over whether a person under hypnosis could be told to kill someone—and he would actually try to do it. It was recognized that if a person could be made, under hypnosis, to do this worst of all wrong acts, then, surely, he could be made to do any kind of wrong act!

Then, in a well-known research experiment, a man was placed under hypnosis, handed a gun, and told to shoot the next man that entered the room. When the man entered, he raised the gun in a fury of anger and shot at him! Unknown to the hypnotized subject, a thick glass wall separated him from the doorway and the man who entered the room.

Thus it is clear that, hypnosis can turn a kindly man into a vicious monster. "We consistently underestimate the power of techniques like suggestion and hypnosis. .. -E.F. Torrey, The Mind Game, 1972, p. 107.

"Since a person under hypnosis would do something if it is made plausible and desirable, and since reality is distorted under hypnosis, violation can occur through the fact that the subject is in a more highly suggestible state and the trance propagator can make almost anything plausible and desirable. Hypnotist Simeon Edmunds cites numerous cases in his book, Hypnotism and Psychic Phenomena to illustrate his belief that it is possible for a hypnotist to perform an illegal act against a subject, and that is even possible for a hypnotist to cause a subject to perform an illegal act." -Martin and Deidre Boban, Hypnosis and the Christian, 1984, p. 35.

So there you have it. Hypnotism ought to be outlawed! There is no valid reason for any longer permitting this devastation of the human mind. It is fiendish, devilish, and originates in the most pagan savagery.

"How can witchdoctors, relying primarily on such techniques as suggestion and hypnosis, achieve as good results as Western therapists who use techniques so much more sophisticated?"-E. Fuller Torrey, The Mind Game, 1972, p. 107.

LETTING THE DEMONS IN

"Sophrology" is the latest fad in the medical/psychiatric world. According to Brain/Mind, it is a combination of Eastern and Western lore and mind/body disciplines, and over 5,000 physicians in North America and Europe have already been trained in its use and are now using it! ("Sophrology: Neutralizing Stress, Enhancing Physical Performance," in Brain/Mind, October 26, 1981.) It primarily consists of Raja yoga, Zen, and Tibetan Buddhist religious exercises.

"Patients can no longer afford the luxury of failing to determine the spiritual status of those who treat them. Failure to ascertain that may be more costly than a yearly medical bill. Practices that look entirely innocent. . can become the means of occult bondage."-John Weldon and Zola Levitt, Psychic Healing, 1982, p. 7.

Intertwined with these hypnotic practices is TM (Tran­scendental Meditation), which is used both by medical doctors and professionally-trained counselors and psychologists to "heal" a variety of physical and emotional problems. In addition to sophrology and TM, other Eastern cultish techniques are being used by medical and psychological personnel: yoga, astrology, the I Ching, Tantr, Tarot cards, alchemy, and Actualism. Yet all of these are occult practices derived from Eastern religions.

It is significant that those who have been "healed" through hypnosis, frequently later develop a different physical or mental problem-and often a worse one, within a year or two. But, in reality, everyone who undergoes hypnosis will have increased problems later. The reason is simple: hypnosis was actually an initiation into spirit control. Only resolute fleeing to God for protection can stop the invasion of those spirits in coming months.

"The original organic illness is shifted higher into the psychical realm, with the result that while the physical illness disappears, new disorders appear in the mental and emotional life of the person concerned, disorders which are in fact far more difficult to treat and cure. Magical healings are there­fore not really healings at all, but merely transferences from the organic to the psychical; level."-Kurt Kock, Demonology: Past and Present, 1973, p. 121.

"We would expect that most if not all of those who are occultly healed are likely to suffer either psychologically or spiritually in some way." -John Walden and Zola Levitt, Psychic Healing, 1982, p. 195.

The whole thing is really a séance. The one doing the, hypnotizing is the medium and the one hypnotized re­ceives the spirits brought in.

"Although certain Christian workers believe that some types of healing mesmerism are dependent on neutral rather than mediumistic powers, I would say that I have personally hardly ever come across a neutral form. Many years of experience in this field have shown me that even in the case of Christian mesmerisers the basic mediumship has always come to the surface in the end." -Kurt Kock, Occult Bondage and Deliverance, 1970, p. 40.

A PSYCHIATRIC ATTORNEY LOOKS AT HYPNOSIS

Bernard Diamond is both an attorney and a clinical professor of psychiatry. He often appears as "expert testimony" in court trials. Few men in America have the professional qualifications that he has. The California Law Review, asked him some Questions, and obtained the following answers:

"Can a hypnotized person be free from heightened suggestibility? The answer is no. Hypnosis is, almost by definition, a state of increased suggestibility.

"Can a hypnotist, through the exercise of skill and attention, avoid implanting suggestions in the mind of the hypnotized subject? No, such suggestions cannot be avoided.

"After awakening, can the hypnotic subject consistently recognize which of his thoughts, feelings, and memories were his own and which were implanted by the hypnotic experience? No. It is very difficult for human beings to recognize that some of their own thoughts might have been implanted and might not be the product of their own volition.

"Is it rare for a subject to believe that he was not hypnotized when in fact he was? No. On the contrary, very often hypnotic subjects refuse to believe they actually went into a trance.

"Can previously hypnotized persons restrict their memory to actual facts, free from fantasies and confabulations? No . . Out of a desire to comply with the hypnotist's suggestions, the subject will commonly fill in missing details by fantasy or confabulation. "After the hypnotic subject is awakened, do the distorting effects of the hypnosis disappear? The evidence. . is that the effect of suggestions made during hypnosis endures. "During or after hypnosis, can the hypnotist or the subject himself sort out fact from fantasy in the recall? Again the answer is no. No one, regardless of experience, can verify the accuracy of the hypnotically enhanced memory." -Bernard L. Diamond, "Inherent Problems in the use of Pretrial Hypnosis on a Prospective Witness," California Law Review, March 1980, p. 333-337.