Psychologists and Psychiatrists Warn Us
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.