the journal of hypnosis and consciousness · pdf filethe journal of hypnosis and consciousness...

The journal of hypnosis and consciousness exploration

In This Issue

Issue 1: July 2013

• A Note from the Publisher

• Selling Success to Your Subconscious – Roy Hunter

• Inquiring for Buckminster Fuller: An Interview Revisited – Fred Kutchins

• Former Major league Ballplayer Eric Soderholm on the Psychology of Hitting – Bob Rose

• The Secret History of Reincarnation – Roger A. Woolger

• Become a More Powerful Leader: Five Steps to Achieving Clarity in the Face of Difficult Decisions – Luda Kopeikina

• A List of Alterations of Consciousness – Prof. Imants Barušs

• Doctor Braid and the Stage – Lewis Dark

To sign up for this special subscription offer go to:HypnologyMag.com

The journal of hypnosis and consciousness explorationwww.HypnologyMag.com

Copyright ©2013 Fred Kutchins

Hypnology Magazine is, for me, a dream come true. To celebrate the premiere issue, I am making a special, one-time subscription offer to the first 1,500 people who see this message and visit www.hypnologymag.com.

Click now—and get ready for a pleasant surprise!

Best wishes,

Fred Kutchins Publisher

Fred Kutchins Editor & Publisher

Lambert Matias Director of Development

David Wood Creative Director

All opinions expressed in any article herein are strictly those of the author. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content. The ideas, procedures and suggestions contained in this publication are not intended as a substitute for consulting with your physician. All matters regarding any aspect of your health require medical supervision. The publisher shall not be liable or responsible for any loss or damage allegedly arising from any information or suggestion in this publication.

Please direct all inquiries to: [email protected]

www.hypnologymag.com

Copyright ©2013 Fred Kutchins. No part of this publication may be reproduced except by permission. Articles herein are copyrighted by the individual authors thereof.

The journal of hypnosis and consciousness exploration Issue 1: July 2013

In This Issue

2 A Note From the Publisher by Fred Kutchins

4 Selling Success to Your Subconscious by Roy Hunter

7 Inquiring for Buckminster Fuller: An Interview Revisited

by Fred Kutchins, CH

11 Former Major League Ball Player Eric Soderholm on the Psychology of Hitting

by Bob Rose

13 The Secret History of Reincarnation by Roger A. Woolger, PhD

17 Become a More Powerful Leader: Five Steps to Achieving Clarity in the Face of Difficult Decisions

by Luda Kopeikina

20 A List of Alterations of Consciousness by Imants Barušs, PhD

23 Doctor Braid and the Stage by Lewis Dark, CH

SUBCONSCIOUS is reached by IMAGINATION and EMOTIONTHINKING is an EXCLUSIVELY individual HUMAN FUNCTION

100% COMMIT to being in the PRESENT MOMENT

collective MEMORY could prove EMBARRASSING

REINCARNATION is having a COMEBACKsubconscious COOPERATION

we must reach BEYOND the OBVIOUSCONSCIOUSNESS is the FUNDAMENTAL REALITY

WHERE are we GOING?WHERE do we come FROM?

achieving the CLARITY STATEWHAT are WE?

ALTERED STATES of consciousness

Click the listing to go directly to that article.

Hypnology magazine | w w w.Hypno logyMag.com2

More than one hundred years ago (in 1902) the great American psychologist William James observed that,

Our normal waking consciousness is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.

By the time Professor James had written those words, the scientific world was already captivated with a purely biological view of the human condition—one that was not overly concerned with abstractions such as “consciousness.” As philosophy professor Paul Thaggard pointed out in an article in Psychology Today, “We all have a basic understanding of conscious experience from our own episodes of perception, sensation, emotion, and reflection. But there is an unbridgeable explanatory gap that prevents science from drawing consciousness within its scope.”

The primacy of biology has resulted in a state of affairs where we have become conditioned to look to pharmaceuticals as the cure for every ill—physical and otherwise—a situation that is often exacerbated by patients themselves. According to a survey in DTC Perspectives by Reuters Health, one in five consumers ask their physicians for brand name drugs they see advertised on TV.

So, is true happiness to be found in a bottle of pills? Are medications really the ultimate answer to mankind’s eternal quest for internal peace? I think not.

I believe there is something about being human that transcends biology. This ‘something’ is a numinous intelligence that instills us with a burning desire to understand our place in the universe and, thereby, to understand ourselves. It is expressed as a fundamental restlessness, a constant yearning for more knowledge about life, a refusal to be defined by the apparent status quo of the natural order and the limitations of physicality. We want to know where we came from and where we are going. But to find the answers we are seeking, we must reach beyond the obvious.

So, where shall we look for greater understanding? At a religious retreat?—In a mountain fastness high in the Himalayas?—On a vision quest in the Arizona desert?—In a cave?—On a yoga mat while sitting in the lotus position?—Inside a house of worship? Actually, greater understanding can be found in any imaginable setting because the answers inevitably emerge from the depths of our own psyche—the personal aspect of boundless, timeless, transcendent consciousness.

A Note From the Publisherby Fred Kutchins

we must reach BEYOND the OBVIOUS


CONSCIOUSNESS is the FUNDAMENTAL REALITY

I believe that consciousness is the fundamental reality. But if we limit ourselves to ordinary, personal waking consciousness alone and ignore the validity of all other potential forms, we are cutting ourselves off from an unparalleled opportunity for self-growth and greater understanding.

Hypnosis opens a portal into that larger spectrum of consciousness. It is the key to a wealth of internal power to cope with the problems of living, and to produce desirable changes in habit patterns, motivations, self-image, health and lifestyle.

Yet hypnosis is not a rare or obscure phenomenon. It is a part of normal everyday life. In fact, we frequently go into hypnosis without even noticing it. If you have ever been startled out of a daydream by the sound of someone’s voice or become completely absorbed in a movie or any activity, you were in a hypnoid state. A common example is so-called “highway hypnosis”— a condition where you slip into a trancelike inner focus while driving but continue responding normally to road events.

Techniques for harnessing your natural ability to enter into hypnosis go by many different names, e.g., meditation, visualization, guided imagery, Edmund Jacobson’s progressive relaxation, Herbert Benson’s relaxation response, Schulze and Luthe’s autogenic training and so on. Some would add prayer to the list. The goal of these techniques seems to be what master hypnotist Dave Elman called ‘selective thinking’—that is, the ability to place your attention on one portion of an experience and tune out the rest. Selective thinking temporarily quiets the logical, analytical part of your mind, tends to make you relax, and enables you to enter hypnosis and open yourself to ideas, experiences, and suggestions that can help you become a happier, more centered, better functioning person.

In today’s increasingly complex and unpredictable world, people everywhere are searching for peace and harmony in their lives. Hypnology will assist in this pursuit through the exploration of all potential forms of consciousness and will, I hope, foster a greater appreciation of hypnosis as an agency of positive personal transformation.

The Meditative Rose by Salvador Dali


subconscious COOPERATION

Selling Success to Your Subconsciousby Roy Hunter

Have you every tried to change an undesired habit or attain an important goal, only to find subconscious resistance preventing you from success?

Weight reduction programs and smoking cessation programs alone represent a multi-billion dollar industry in the USA. Diets work on the body, but not on the mind. Many smokers’ new years’ resolutions literally go up in smoke! College students often procrastinate term papers until the last minute, and/or cram for the final exam the night before taking it. Professional sales people all over the land often find themselves failing to do the activities that are necessary to meet sales objectives. Numerous books describe ways of achieving goals: effective weight control programs, effective sales techniques, study habits, etc., yet people who read these books and /or attend classes and seminars still fail…why?

Answering this important question will enable your ability to sell motivation to the inner mind. The missing ingredient is subconscious cooperation, because the “inner child” in all of us is tuned into WII-FM. Those are the call letters for “What’s In It For Me?”

Why Will Power Often FailsAny professional sales person will tell you that people buy a product or service because of the benefits that product or service will provide. Conversely, if we fail to recognize the benefits, most of us will not want to pay the price…and if the salesperson gets pushy, I am very quick to walk away. Most customers will do likewise if someone tries to force them to buy.

How does this relate to the subconscious? The answer is a simple metaphor: the conscious mind (decision maker) is the salesperson, and the subconscious is the customer – and this customer will normally resist a hard-sell from the conscious mind! In fact, many clients seeing me over the years have made dozens of attempts to reach the same goal through “will power” and other programs that have cost money, only to find the inner child rebels once again at the hard sell of the conscious mind. Failure to reach a goal at a conscious level doesn’t always mean that we are weak. Rather, it may indicate a very powerful subconscious. Once that power is re-directed, the difference can be life-changing!

How can we accomplish using this power? We must persuade the subconscious to cooperate, otherwise we might run into resistance from the inner mind. We must use selling skills to persuade the inner child to pay the price of change in order to enjoy the benefits. I call this “Selling Success to Your Subconscious.” Most people


SUBCONSCIOUS is reached by IMAGINATION and EMOTION

attempting to achieve a goal simply try to cram the price into the subconscious and then wonder why they run into resistance. Price for a dieter is changing eating habits, which the inner child is unwilling to do. Price for a smoker is ignoring smoking urges, often caused by various triggers of habit (putting key in ignition, drinking a beverage, etc.). While we may know consciously what the benefits of a goal might be, unless those benefits are communicated to the inner child, the result is: NO SALE.

The Language of the SubconsciousBefore any sales person can sell a product or service, he/she must speak the same language as the customer. The conscious mind is the seat of logic while the subconscious is reached by imagination and emotion. Whenever imagination and will power are in conflict, imagination will usually win. If I say, “Don’t think of a dog,” what did you imagine? Most people will immediately imagine seeing a dog, petting one, or hearing one bark. Yet the conscious instructions were to NOT think of one! The dieter who uses self-talk to avoid the cake or pie will normally fantasize the taste of it…and often indulge. Can you relate to this?

Now let’s apply the above to someone working on weight reduction. The subconscious resists giving up dessert, but will be comfortable (and happier) imagining the benefits of trying on an ideal size of clothes. So, in a sense, the conscious mind must sell success to the subconscious by using the language of the subconscious, which is imagination.

Emotion is Subconscious Power: The Energy of the SubconsciousBefore proceeding any further, let’s overview another very important concept that I’ve used successfully with clients over the years... While imagination is the language of the subconscious, emotion is the motivating power of the mind! Emotion can either propel us to success, or hinder us from accomplishing even simple tasks…and the most powerful positive emotion is love.

Once you fall in love with the benefits of your goal, this action causes the effect of greater motivation to pay whatever price is necessary to achieve the desired goal. So the key to overcoming subconscious resistance lies in persuading the subconscious to buy the benefits of change. Before accomplishing this important step, you must identify your specific benefits.

Applying Imagination and EmotionHere’s what to do: take out a sheet of paper and list the main benefits you will enjoy upon fulfillment of your desired goal. (Note: Your subconscious responds better when you choose your own benefits rather than simply accepting someone else’s benefits.)

Get your imagination involved with the benefits of achieving your goal by fantasizing them during self-hypnosis. You should also fantasize ways of enjoying each benefit with as many of your five senses as possible. I call this process “Selling Success to Your Subconscious” . In a meditative state, imagine your benefits as vividly as possible, and fantasize how you feel emotionally about enjoying your benefits. In other words, imagine the attitude of gratitude!

By doing all of the above, you can marry two powerful methods of subconscious programming, self-hypnosis and emotion. Now you are ready to sell success to your subconscious. If you need assistance, then choose a competent hypnotist to help you. Although I wrote a book about the use of self-hypnosis, it’s like a muscle. I can lift a chair by myself, but I need help to move a couch. If your goal feels like a couch in your subconscious, seek professional help.


what I inwardly KNEW to be TRUE

Cary Grant Reveals How He Stopped Smoking (from an unpublished interview)

“For more than thirty years of my life I had smoked with increasing habit. I was finally separated from the addiction by Betsy (editor’s note: Betsy Drake, Grant’s wife at the time), who, after carefully studying hypnosis, practiced it, with my full permission and trust, as I was going off to sleep one night. She sat in a chair near the bed and, in a quiet, calm voice, rhythmically repeated what I inwardly knew to be true, the fact that smoking was not good for me; and, as my conscious mind relaxed and no longer cared to offer a negative thought, her words sank into my subconscious; and the following day, to my surprise I had no need or wish to smoke. Nor have I smoked since. Nor have I, as far as I know, replaced it with any other harmful habit.”

Betsy Drake


ENGINEER, designer, PHILOSOPHER, architect, MATHEMATICIAN, poet and—no doubt—a MYSTIC

Inquiring for Buckminster Fuller: An Interview Revisitedby Fred Kutchins, CH

R. Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) was one of the 20th Century’s most original thinkers and visionaries. Best remembered as the inventor of the geodesic dome and for his concept of the earth as a self-sustaining spaceship, he described himself as a “comprehensive anticipatory design scientist”. Fuller worked tirelessly to solve global problems surrounding housing, shelter, transportation, education, energy, ecological destruction and poverty. He was an engineer, designer, philosopher, architect, mathematician, poet and—no doubt—a mystic.

In his 1970 book I Seem to Be a Verb, he wrote: “I live on Earth at present and I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing—a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process—an integral function of the universe.”

For many of us who came of age during the late ‘60s–70s, “Bucky” was an iconic figure—a true genius with the mind of a scientist and the heart of a humanitarian. I was thrilled when I had the opportunity to interview him for a local magazine back in 1977. The interview took place in Kansas City, the evening before he was scheduled to give the keynote address to a convention.

I arrived at his hotel at around 5:00 PM and went to the front desk. An envelope had been left there for me containing a note from Fuller inviting me to meet him in the hotel restaurant for dinner. I could hardly believe my good fortune—not just an interview, but dinner with Buckminster Fuller! By coincidence, Fuller came walking by a moment later. I recognized him and introduced myself. Together we strolled across the lobby to the restaurant, where two other guests of his were waiting. After dinner, Fuller and I went up to his room and we talked for about two hours. It was a wide-ranging conversation, covering many aspects of his life and work. I left sometime after 9:00 PM.

I had kept the dinner invitation as a souvenir. On the flight home that night I took the envelope out of my coat pocket and glanced at it again. Scrawled across the face, in his handwriting, were the words “Inquiring for Buckminster Fuller”—a perfect title for my interview. And that is how it ran in the magazine.

I re-read the piece recently and it is striking that many of the things Fuller said still resonate today some 35 years after the fact. And although I have no idea whether he ever delved into hypnosis per se, it is apparent that he was tuned into something far beyond the scope of normal waking consciousness. And the trajectory of his life


extraordinary INNOVATION

clearly indicates a remarkable degree of motivation. Here are excerpts from the interview. (I have made slight edits for continuity.)

“My first visit to Chicago was when I was four years of age,” Fuller said, replying to a question about his long-term link to the Windy City. “It was a wonderful trip and, for me, an impressionable year. It was when I first got my glasses so I could see things in a different way. Up to that time, you know, I couldn’t see very well. All I have to do is take my glasses off now to see what I could see at four—pretty much a blur. I can get colors but no definition. Without glasses I cannot even see human eyes.

“My great-aunt, Margaret Fuller, came to Chicago around 1840 and wrote a book. She stayed in the Indian camps on the other side of the river from Fort Dearborn. Later, she got with Ralph Waldo Emerson and together founded The Dial, a magazine for the Transcendentalists. She was also the first to publish Thoreau. Margaret was way, way ahead of her time. The Europeans liked the new magazine. It was the first intellectual magazine in America. Interestingly, the letters they sent to the new publication were directed to Emerson, not her, even though she was the co-editor.”

I asked Fuller in what ways Margaret had influenced him.

“Originally, I knew nothing about Margaret though I was aware of our family relationship. The way I started to learn about her accomplishments was through a book called Margaret Fuller and Goethe.

At that time I was interested in the concept of time as an entity, in the way you might think about it mathematically and physically. I wanted to know who the first people were to write about the subject in this way. So, I studied poems by Sappho and the works of Father Goethe, who wrote a great deal about the phenomenon of time.

“Well, one day Margaret found on Emerson’s desk books by two German authors written in German and sent to him by Carlyle. Emerson, who did not read German, turned them over to Margaret, who translated them into English and soon thereafter introduced these two new authors—Schiller and Goethe—to Harvard University. It is interesting that a hundred years later, and under very different conditions, I found myself discovering Margaret as a kindred thinker, as more than a blood relative. Her thoughts fortified my 1927 thoughts and initiatives.”

Here Fuller was referring to the start of his 12-year Dymaxion Period. This was a time for him of extraordinary innovation. Besides designing a flat world map, he developed and built the circulator 4-D House, a three-wheeled streamlined automobile, a one-piece prefabricated bathroom and other advanced technology. But it was preceded by intense personal tragedy.

“Our first daughter had died on her fourth birthday five years earlier, having gone through infantile paralysis and spinal meningitis,” Fuller said. “It was a long battle for life. And it was a terrible thing when she died.”

Sometime later he decided to enter the construction business.

“We got up 240 buildings,” he remembered, “But much to my disgrace I was more effective in producing good buildings than in making money. I was really a financial disaster as a builder. So the company lost money and they sold it out.

“Many of the well-known names in Chicago had backed me in that building venture. So I was really in great disgrace at that time as well as being a failure. I was penniless. It was then a terrible moment when


THINKING is an EXCLUSIVELY individual HUMAN FUNCTION

this beautiful new life, our second daughter Allegra, came to us. I was on the verge of committing suicide one night when I made my basic decision to think for myself.

“My father had died, you see, when I was very young and I had been brought up being continually discouraged from thinking for myself. So were my contemporaries. It was assumed in those days that the young people’s thinking was absolutely unreliable. I had been continually admonished at home and at school, “Never mind what you think! Listen! We are trying to teach you!”

“But the game of life that I had been taught to play just didn’t work. Time and time again what I’d been thinking was the right way turned out to be wrong. Either get rid of me, I said—and let my in-laws or my mother struggle to support my wife and child—or vow to turn my life to important account. Each of us is a bundle of experiences and this experience involves others. So I decided to turn my life around.

“For my first self-questioning and my own thought answer I asked myself how a little penniless human being with a remaining life expectancy of only ten years—I was 32 and the life expectancy of those born, as I was, in 1895 was 42—could do more effectively on behalf of all humanity that great corporations and great political states cannot do.

“I realized the thing about our total planet was that the big corporations and the big states can only govern their own corporation and their own state. This leaves seven-tenths of the planet Earth’s surface. No one but a little human individual was and is free to think practically about a total world.

“I said thinking is an exclusively individual human function. Corporations and political states are only legal contrivances and cannot think. Well, I said in 1927, I am going to think as incisively and as refinedly as possible. I’m going to think about the Earth as a spaceship with a certain amount of equipment on board and passengers with a great many needs. How do I take the total physical resources, the total know-how that has thus far accumulated, and use them to take care of humanity in the most effective

manner? And that brought me to saying, you can’t do it by words; you can’t do it by reforming the other person; I can do it only by developing artifacts. Where something you see going on is iniquitous, or unfair, or unwise, you don’t try to reform people, but you make what they’re doing obsolete by producing an artifact that makes it obsolete.”

Thus was born Fuller’s “Inventory of World Resources, Human Trends and Needs” which later became World Game, a think tank devoted to finding solutions to global issues.

Fuller continued:

“I was eight years old when the Wright Brothers flew. But all the grown-ups would have had me believe that it was inherently impossible to fly. Wireless? How wild can you get? Foreigners? They’re all crazy! This is the kind of nonsense we were told. I had been brought up in a world that was utterly misinformed.

“In those days, children accepted the authority of the school and their parents as authority. Today (1977) it’s


no more SECONDHAND GOD

different. Kids are going out on their own. They’re saying, “I love my parents and they love me but they don’t have anything to do with going to the moon or with any other big matter.” Clearly, the world is in trouble and the older people don’t know how to cope. We’ve got to do our own thinking—have a completely new world. I think our only hope is a young world that really does its own thinking, a world that realizes these potentials.

“Incidentally, I don’t think of any people as inherently good or bad. You can’t do clear thinking if you have that kind of nonsense... Human beings are designed to learn by error. They have had to make uncountable numbers of incredible mistakes. But nature gave us a vast bounty of resources, so that by excesses in trial and error we could eventually learn what the truth may be and how to get on with it. We had to discover our minds and learn that, by comparison, our muscle is as a mote of dust to the thus far discovered universe of a billion galaxies, each consisting of hundreds of billions of stars.”

I asked Fuller about tensions between affluent and developing areas of the world.

“One of the most disastrous mistakes people make today,” he said, “is that of not wanting others to be affluent. This springs from the old rationalization of selfishness based on the mistaken notion that there is an inherent cosmic insufficiency of life support, wherefore it has to be either your side or my side that is to survive, there being an eternal condition of not enough for both sides. But there is plenty of both the essentials and any desirables as well for everyone today.

“Back in 1917, when I commanded a ship in the Navy, I began to see that the very essence of technology is to be able to do more with less. I saw, for example, how one little airplane could sink a battleship. When we realize that there is enough to go around, the rationalization for selfishness is gone. But people who are playing their “economic advantage defense game” either do not know of or are not used to the idea that everyone can come up in the world. They’re not used to the idea that a guy with a beard or his shirttail sprawled on the ground can be a millionaire.’

“But the young people of today are coming through just fine. Every child is being born in the presence of less misinformation...without any conditioned reflexes. So I find each is being born in the presence of a great deal more reliable information. This is a marked contrast to the times when I was growing up.

“All our hope is in the young people. The older generation’s reflexes are so conditioned to yesterday’s world that they think everything should be left to the politicians. Or they say leave it to religion or some other intermediary. This is why I wrote my book, No More Secondhand God. I deal in god at firsthand. We can all find god ourselves in whatever the truth may be and in all the truths put together. You’ve got to deal with the truth directly, not leave it to others.”

Toward the end of my allotted time with him, I asked Fuller if he had any special projects planned for the Chicago area.

“No,” he said with some surprise. “I don’t have any plans for areas. My plans have to do with... the world.”

And the world is truly fortunate, I would say, to have had an advocate such as R. Buckminster Fuller.


“You have to have a short memory. Even the very best hitters will fail seven out of ten times. You must stay in the moment. Not in the past, nor in the future, the hitter must keep his mind in the present moment when he digs into the batter’s box. The present moment, it’s the only moment you really have.”

It’s one of many pearls of hitting wisdom from Eric Soderholm, White Sox slugger from the ‘77 South Side Hitmen team, and AL Comeback Player of the Year for that season. Few major league players understand the body/mind/& spirit influence on plate performance as deeply as Eric.

Soderholm continued, “Fear plays a big role in how well a hitter does. If he learns to deal with his fear of failure, a ballplayer will make steady progress up the ladder on his way to the big leagues. Once his level of competence is matched by the players around him, the player must next overcome ‘the quicksand of comparison’ – the urge to compare himself with teammates and others in the league. As a Twins rookie, I thought, ‘Killebrew, Carew, Oliva – am I good enough to hit with these guys?’ You have to find a way to work through your fears.”

Soderholm found that way by following the lead of seven-time AL batting champion, Rod Carew. “Rod was seeing a hypnotist named Harvey Misel. Harvey worked with him on his hitting. I figured if this stuff was approved by Rod it certainly was good enough for me. So on my first visit to Harvey he tells me, ‘You are going to be aggressive at the plate. More aggressive than you have ever been. Aggressive. Aggressive. You’re going to attack that ball.’ So my next game after the session, I go 0 for 3 with two strike-outs. I swung at balls over my head, I was so aggressive.”

Sensing that Harvey could somehow help his hitting, Eric decided to give hypnosis with Misel another chance. He knew this time what to expect and, overall, what would happen in the session. He found himself much more relaxed. He was able to go into a deeper state of subconscious. Misel made a few adjustments himself that also made a difference. Said Soderholm, “Harvey fine-tuned the ‘aggressive directive’ to be ‘controlled aggressiveness.’ He told me to see a box in front of the strike zone and to attack the ball when I saw it entering that box.” Soon after, Eric hit a game-winning two-run home run. His average began to climb and climb. Until one day, while on road trip in New York, something in the newspaper caught Soderholm’s

his AVERAGE began to CLIMB and CLIMB

Former Major League Ball Player Eric Soderholm on the Psychology of Hittingby Bob Rose

(Note: originally published in 2008. For information about Soderworld, visit www.soderworldwellness.com.)


100% COMMIT to being in the PRESENT MOMENT

attention. He shared the moment, “There it was, in print, in clear, plain, black and white: Eric Soderholm, in the top ten, for batting average, in the American League.”

Seeing his name grouped with the best hitters in baseball disrupted his hitting comfort zone. “I immediately thought when I saw it, ‘Am I that good?’ My average began to go down, and down, and down. I realize now that I was seeking a level of comfort about the hitter that I was.”

Soderholm flashed back to a telling, post game conversation he had with Rod Carew. “I had gone 0 for 4 but had hit the ball hard, really hard, every time. Two of my at bats went to the warning truck and I thought they might be home runs. The other two were line shots that I was robbed on. Rod, on the other hand, was 5 for 5 that night: two drag bunts, two infield hits up the middle, and one hit that bounced straight up off of home plate. Not one of his five hits was hit hard. I made a comment about how I smashed the ball and he barely touched it, yet, I had an ‘0-fer’ and he was 5 for 5. Carew came over to me and laughingly said, ‘You gotta hit ‘em where they ain’t.’ And then he got more serious, pausing and saying, ‘Can you look me in the eye and believe you are a .300 hitter?’ Rod, of course, truly believed he was a .330 hitter so he had no trouble topping .300 at all.”

Eric wanted to learn what the influences were that determined the way he thought of himself as a hitter. He continued to work with Harvey Misel. He did some serious soul-searching. He was determined to find out why he was the hitter he was. Finally, a breakthrough: “Way back in my first year of pro ball, Class A, I had a manager named Ralph Rowe. I was pretty young back then and Ralph was a guy who I really respected, he was a good guy. It was the end of the season and I hit a home run to win the league championship. I got mobbed at home plate and I remember in the locker room Ralph whispering in my ear, ‘You’re a hard-worker and if you keep working hard, I see you making it all the way to the big leagues. I see you as a .270 hitter, with power, who hits a lot of home runs.’ Well, I played professional baseball for thirteen years, nine of them in the major leagues. My average over

those thirteen years was right at .270 and I hit 150 home runs. Little did I know it at the time, but Ralph had played a major role in my comfort zone being established.”

Now sixty years old, Soderholm has a peacefulness about his success at the plate. “I was as good as I could have been, knowing what I knew then.” But Eric knows so much more now. Soderholm never stopped studying the body/mind/spirit connection. He is one of Chicago’s leading authorities on practicing mindfulness in whatever one does. Eric speaks from a place of knowledge gained by direct experience: “Thoughts create reality. When our wants and desires are in perfect harmony with our beliefs and expectations, everything is all lined-up, and a positive performance or outcome is the very likely result. Then, you are being the best you can be.” As a much in-demand life coach, Soderholm teaches others to enjoy the lasting benefits of mindfulness at his family run SoderWorld Healing Arts Center & Spa located in Hinsdale, Illinois. It’s an oasis of higher learning nestled in the natural beauty of a protected wetlands area.

How would Eric help a slumping hitter on the North or South Side? “Most players in an extended slump are suffering on some level from paralysis by analysis. Everyone is giving them suggestions. The first thing I would do would be to get their mind out of the mechanics. I would ask them, ‘Remember what it felt like to hit the ball really hard?’ I would get them to connect with their emotional, feeling body, in all the ways they could. Next, I would work on their attitude – get them to be a confident hitter filled with ‘controlled aggressiveness’ – which is an important thing that Harvey Misel taught me. The right attitude helps them to trust this approach to hitting. So does having an ‘attitude of gratitude.’ A player needs to be in touch with how fortunate he is to be a major leaguer. Now, I just need them to focus, to focus on the right things. So as they stand in the batter’s box, they make it as simple as possible, ‘see the ball, hit the ball hard.’ It all comes back to being in the present moment. If I can get them to 100% commit to being in the present moment, they’ll hit, they’ll hit for sure, and enjoy a great career.”


Not long ago, I saw a slogan on a bumper sticker: Reincarnation is having a comeback. It’s a sad fact that the scientific establishment in the United States still marginalizes most work that even hints at realities beyond our own, including regression therapy, parapsychology, and a vast body of research into paranormal phenomena, from out-of body experiences to children’s spontaneous past-life memories. By clinging to such a narrow protocol, mainstream psychology risks becoming, in George Orwell’s memorable phrase, one of “the smelly little orthodoxies which are now contending for our souls.” But fortunately, in most countries where I have lectured, the general public is far ahead of the academics. Nearly everyone has heard of the doctrine of reincarnation, and recent polls show that almost one in three Americans now believes in it, even though most of the Christian churches reject it.

In recent years, a number of influences have brought past lives into present consciousness. The widely read writings of Edgar Cayce, for one, have been surprisingly influential in America, lending credence to the idea that past lives can contribute to illness, emotional difficulties, relationship difficulties, and so on. (I say “surprisingly” because Cayce channeled thousands of past-life readings while in a trance state, even though his Christian-fundamentalist conscious self didn’t initially believe in past lives!)Many people, thanks to Cayce, now understand the idea of karma as the spiritual fallout of good or bad behavior from the soul’s past. Still others have encountered Hindu teachings, in which the idea of reincarnation is central, by being exposed to yoga or reading the popular works of authors such as Caroline Myss and Barbara Brennan on the chakras, the subtle bodies, and energy medicine. The famous Bhagavad-Gita is for sale today in nearly every bookstore.Note: Ian Stevenson, M.D., of the University of Virginia has done a monumental thirty years of research into children’s spontaneous memories of past lives. (See Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation, 2nd ed., University Press of Virginia, 1974, and Cases of the Reincarnation Type, Vols 1-4, University Press of Virginia, 1975–1983.) His work details meticulous, irrefutable research into nearly a hundred stories of past-life reports from all over the world that were followed up and found to be accurate to an astonishing degree. There are even photographs of deformities that derive from mutilations and wounds in past lives. This extraordinary research has never been disproved or seriously challenged. But no one ever reads it! Happily this is not the case in Britain; there David Lorimer wrote in the Scientific and Medical Network Review that Stevenson’s last major work, Reincarnation and Biology (Praeger, 1997), would “surely rank as one of the great classics of 20th-century psi research.”

REINCARNATION is having a COMEBACK

The Secret History of Reincarnationby Roger A. Woolger, PhD

(Extracted from Healing Your Past Lives, Sounds True, Boulder, Colorado, 2004)

Worn-out garmentsAre shed by the body:

Worn-out bodiesAre shed by the dweller

Within the body.New bodies are donned

By the dweller, like garments.

—Bhagavad-Gita II


shifting ATTITUDES toward REINCARNATION

And who would have expected to see the Dalai Lama vying with the Pope in the best seller lists? The high-profile presence of Tibetan Buddhist lamas throughout America and the world has profoundly altered the spiritual landscape of Western society. The making of a film like Little Buddha, with its story of a Tibetan lama reborn in the body of a young American boy, would have been unthinkable in Hollywood a generation ago, but now it receives huge acclaim. Nor does an actor like Richard Gere hesitate to profess his Buddhist affiliations publicly. Many people, myself included, have turned to meditation and radically changed our lifestyles after exposure to these powerful emissaries of ancient wisdom.

Who Believes in Reincarnation?A better question might be, “Who doesn’t?” The influx of traditional teachers and teachings from the East clearly accounts in part for our shifting attitudes toward reincarnation, but over the centuries the West has had many distinguished believers of its own. Take the following delightful example:

Benjamin Franklin’s witty epitaph for himself, written supposedly when he was twenty-one, was never used on his tombstone, but it remains one of the most succinct and memorable summaries of the idea of reincarnation ever penned. Franklin didn’t have his tongue in his cheek, either. At eighty-eight, he wrote

to a friend: “I look upon death to be as necessary to the constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the morning.”

Nor was Franklin the only famous Westerner to believe that the soul not only survives death, but returns in a new body to continue or to rectify the life previously lived on earth. Evidence of this belief can be found in the writings of poets, writers, and philosophers across centuries: Dante, Marsilio Ficino, Paracelsus, Shakespeare, Goethe, Wordsworth, Swedenborg, Hume, Schopenhauer, George Sand, Walter Scott, Victor Hugo, Emerson, Wagner, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, W.B. Yeats, Aldous Huxley, Somerset Maugham, D.H. Lawrence, Rilke, Pearl S. Buck, Carl Jung, Winston Churchill, Norman Mailer, Shirley MacLaine.

Reincarnation, Christianity, and PaganismReincarnation has never officially been condoned by the Catholic Church or any of the major Protestant churches. But it was an almost universal belief among the many Gnostic and pagan sects that proliferated in the first three centuries of our era. Most educated Greeks and Romans of the Hellenic period subscribed to it, especially those initiated into the great Mystery schools of Eleusis, Mithras, Dionysus, or Osiris. We find it in the teachings of the Pythagorean brotherhood, an offshoot of the Orphic mysteries, and of course in the doctrines Plato taught in his famous Academy. The philosopher and initiate Plutarch, who became a priest at Delphi, wrote:

We know that the soul is indestructible and should think of its experience as like that of a bird in a cage. If it has been kept in a body for a long time and become tamed to this life as a result of all sorts of involvements and long habituation, it will alight back to a body again after birth and will never stop becoming entangled in the passions and chances of this world.

Many surviving Gnostic writings, whose origins are hotly debated by scholars, show striking similarities to Buddhist and Hindu teachings about the soul’s journey

The body of B. Franklin, Printer,

Like the Cover of an Old Book, Its Contents Torn Out

AndStripped of its Lettering and Gilding,

Lies Here, Food for Worms

But the Work shall not be Lost, For it Will as He Believed

Appear Once More In a New and more Elegant Edition

Revised and Corrected By the Author


collective MEMORY could prove EMBARRASSING

after death, no doubt because of many centuries of contact between Eastern and Western cultures following the conquests of Alexander the Great. (It is known, for example, that Buddhists taught in Alexandria and that yogis reached Athens, where they were dubbed the “gymnophysicists.”)

Before the third century C.E., pagan and early Christian beliefs exist side by side in the Roman Empire. But when the emperor Constantine adopts Christianity as the religion of the state, the Gnostics and the Mystery schools come in for persecution and reincarnation comes to be seen as a heresy. It is finally excised from Roman Church thinking in 553, when the teachings of Origen about the preexistence of the soul are anathematized by the emperor Justinian. After this, it disappears from Church history for nearly a thousand years, briefly entering Europe as part of the teachings of the Cathars, the late Gnostic group that flourished in Northern Italy and Southern France in the 12th and 13th centuries. Considered a threat to orthodoxy, the Cathars are brutally extirpated by the Church in the notorious Albigensian Crusade, which spawns the Inquisition (and in which my past-life mercenary plays a small but ignominious part).

Secret Teachings and InitiatesIn the East, reincarnation survives, buried within Hermetic and Platonic teachings that are secretly preserved by certain monastic orders during the rise of the Orthodox Church in Byzantium. These teachings, along with hundreds of lost manuscripts, come west again in the 15th century when Cosimo de Medici acquires the collection for his famous Academy in Florence, modeled on Plato’s own. This priceless library of ancient texts—among them, famously, the lost books of Plato¬—lays the intellectual and spiritual foundations of the Renaissance.

But the fearful years of the 16th and 17th centuries, the Wars of Religion in Europe, force many of the Hermetic teachings underground once more. They are carefully disguised in the opaque symbolism of alchemy and in Rosicrucian allegories that only initiates can penetrate; one such initiate, who surely knows of reincarnation and a great deal more, is

Shakespeare. (Others are the painters Durer, Botticelli, and da Vinci, the poet Edward Spenser, and the English magus Dr. John Dee.)

From the Renaissance on, with the rise of rationalism and early science, the psyche of the West begins to split. More and more, rationalist philosophers attack anything spiritual as superstition. In the 18th century, John Locke proclaims that the mind is a tabula rasa, a blank slate, at birth. Building on this dogma the burgeoning “science” of psychology will eventually decide to throw out any idea of psychic inheritance, inborn memories or traits, thus breaking with three thousand years of wisdom gleaned from the ancient philosophy of the soul. (Perhaps it’s no coincidence that this doctrine appeared just as all of Europe and its land-grabbing settlers were trying to disown flagrant acts of colonial aggression, genocide, and the horrors of slavery. With events like these to remember, collective memory could prove embarrassing!)

The Heritage of the RomanticsBut side by side with the growth of scientific rationalism, whose achievements within its own domain should never be underestimated, we see the appearance of the great Enlightenment explorers of the soul—Swedenborg, Mesmer, Goethe, Schelling—followed by the “visionary company” of the Romantic movement, as Harold Bloom has called them: Blake, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, and Wordsworth. A generation after Locke’s tabula rasa, Wordsworth pens one of the great affirmations of the soul’s “eternal return”:

In fact, it is this “alternative” (actually, Neoplatonic) philosophy of the soul, declared by the Romantic

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;The soul that rises with us, our life’s star,

Hath had elsewhere its settingAnd cometh from afar;

Not in entire forgetfulness,And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we comeFrom God, who is our home…


WHERE do we come FROM? WHAT are WE? WHERE are we GOING?

poets all over Europe and later taken up by the Transcendentalists in New England, that lays the groundwork for the study of the deeper soul that 19th-century philosophers begin to call the unconscious. And this whole rich tradition, fired by Nietzsche’s dismantling of the Christian psyche and Schopenhauer’s sense of a divine Will (imported from the Hindu Upanishads), leads us straight to Freud, Jung, and the psychoanalytic movement: the closest thing the modern world has seen to an authentic science of the soul.

The Perennial Questions

At various points in its increasingly conservative history, mainstream psychology, with a zeal worthy of the early Church casting out heretics, has thrown out the soul, thrown out spiritual and psychic experiences, and even come close to throwing out the personal testimony of subjective experience—all with that deadly Behaviorist movement that is still stifling research today.

To this day, Freudian psychoanalysis is heretical at most universities; Jung is taught only at more

radical institutions. Yet we don’t have to look far to see that the idea of the unconscious mind as the repository of the soul’s experience is still very much alive. Thanks to Thomas Moore’s best seller Care of the Soul, inspired in part by his great mentor James Hillman, we can now talk more openly about the soul. And thanks to transpersonal psychology, with its appreciation of “altered states of consciousness” (Charles Tart); the manifest benefits of meditation; the “spectrum of consciousness” behind our spiritual evolution (Ken Wilbur); the soul’s memories before birth (Stanislav Grof); the psychic journeys of the shaman (Michael Harner); and the healing power of imagery (Joan Borysenko), we can seriously boast a growing science that is neither narrow nor dogmatic.

These are the traditions from which I write and which have influenced my thinking and my practices for several decades. With Jung and the transpersonalists, I believe that only by studying the religious dimension of the psyche can we fully appreciate the greatest mysteries of our being. And once we truly acknowledge the primordial reality of the soul, which by far transcends our limited human personalities, I believe we can address the questions that have always challenged humanity: Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?

Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?*

– Paul Gauguin

* These are the words inscribed on Paul Gauguin’s great allegory of human life: D’ou venons nous? Que sommes nous? Ou allons nous? The original hangs in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts


Every day, business leaders make decisions that impact hundreds, even thousands of people. While this seems like a daunting task, the good ones make it look easy. These leaders can make million dollar decisions based on the information presented to them and their own gut feelings. What you can’t see behind these seemingly effortless decisions is the discipline to continuously scrutinize their decisions and the commitment to continuously improve from what they’ve done in the past. These leaders, through practice, possess a clarity that allows them to make powerful decisions with ease.

Recent research shows that you can learn to reach clarity with similar ease by Relaxing your body and clearing your mind so you can focus on the issue at hand. By shifting to a higher level of coherence, you can sweep away all the thoughts that limit your decision-making skills. Plus it makes you a more powerful leader. Clarity enables you to project your commitment to a chosen path and eliminate confusion within your management team. It saves time by focusing your energy on moving forward with implementations, rather than stalling you in decision-making skills. Plus it makes you a more powerful leader. Clarity enables you to project your commitment to a chosen path and eliminate confusion within your management team. It saves time by focusing your energy on moving forward with implementation, rather than stalling you in decision-making mode—a frustrating state that drains energy.

You can improve your leadership and decision-making skills by achieving the Clarity State with the following five-step process.

1. PrepareFirst, eliminate distractions by turning off your radio, telephone ringer, and computer monitor. Get in a comfortable seated position, but not too comfortable. You want to relax, not fall asleep.

Next, clear off your desk. Put everything away except a clean sheet of white paper and a pen, in case you want to write down any interesting thoughts you have during the exercise.

Then, tell yourself you are ready to experiment and have fun with the clarity exercise. At first, you may find it easier to focus when you close your eyes and tilt them up about twenty degrees behind your eyelids.

Become a More Powerful Leader: Five Steps to Achieving Clarity in the Face of Difficult Decisionsby Luda Kopeikina

achieving the CLARITY STATE


ACKNOWLEDGING your THOUGHTS and with VISUALIZATION

2. Physical RelaxationThe first part of this step is to relax every muscle in your body. Start at your toes, and slowly release all the tension in every muscle in your feet, ankles, legs, abdomen, chest, hands, arms and back. Progress slowly, working your way up to your neck and face. As you do this, say to yourself, “The muscles in my _____________ are becoming relaxed and heavy.”

The second part of this step involves, deep breathing techniques similar to those used in yoga. Inhale with your abdomen first. Then as your breath is pulled in, inhale with your chest and shoulders. Don’t try to hold your breath, but exhale in the reverse order. Start with your shoulders and chest, and then allow your abdomen to relax at the end of the cycle. Assume a breathing rhythm that is comfortable for you, but try to make your exhalation two times as long as your inhalation.

Allow your mind to focus completely on the rhythm of your breathing, and take as many breaths as necessary to feel completely relaxed. If you are already calm and focused, you may only need a few breaths to relax. But if you are tense, you will probably need many more.

3. Calm Your MindTo calm your mind, pick a word or phrase that has meaning to you to repeat as your mantra. For example, in Hinduism and Buddhism, people use the word “om.” But you can use any word you like. Then repeat this word silently to yourself as you breathe naturally. When other thoughts come to your mind, passively dismiss them and return to your repetition. Again, continue this practice for as long as it takes to reach a calm state of mind. You may need anywhere from five to twenty minutes.

You may also want to try the countdown method to achieve a calm state of mind. This technique is simple enough, just countdown from a specified number to one and allow yourself to focus only on your counting. At first, you should practice this exercise when you first wake up in the morning or right before you fall asleep at night. because reaching a calm state is easier

at those times. But after you get the hang of it and can achieve a calm state in a shorter countdown, you can practice this technique at any time during the day.

Start at one hundred and count down to one. After a week or so, cut it back to fifty, and then twenty-five. Soon you’ll be able to reach your calm state after only a countdown from five.

4. Clear Your MindYou can clear your mind by acknowledging your thoughts and with visualization. To acknowledge your thoughts, propose to yourself. “I feel totally fine and joyful about how my life is going.” Inevitably, an unresolved issue will pop into your mind to discredit this statement. When this happens, acknowledge the thought, but don’t expand on it. Just acknowledge it and set it aside.

Then say to yourself, “Besides this issue, I feel totally fine and joyful about how my life is going.” If another contradiction pops into your mind, repeat the process of acknowledging it and setting it aside. Eventually, you’ll have an imaginary stack of unresolved issues that you’ve cleared from your mind and plenty of space to devote to the issue at hand.

To clear your mind with visualization, imagine you are surrounded by a large sphere of light. Every time a thought pops into your head, put it outside the sphere. Continue doing this until you reach a state of no thoughts.

5. Charge UpThis step builds on your relaxed state by shifting your coherence level up the emotional scale so you can focus on the issue at hand. You can achieve this greater focus by recalling a time when you felt great exhilaration and satisfaction after achieving something. Perhaps you felt exhilarated after running a marathon or completing a large project. Whatever you choose, make sure it is among the most exciting, most satisfying achievements of your life.

Now imagine that this event is happening again, and recall all the thoughts and feelings that were going through your head at the time. If you were running


CLARITY in DECISION MAKING is a tremendously POSITIVE experience

a marathon, think about the rhythm of your feet hitting the pavement and visualize the other runners around you. If you were working on an important project, think about the calm silence in the office after everyone went home for the day and the taste of the coffee that kept you going long into the night. Use these images to reignite your feelings of excitement, self-power, and success.

Clarity for Your FutureAfter following these five steps, you will feel mentally and physically relaxed. Your mind will be clear, focused, and ready to take on the rest of the decision-making process.

Reaching clarity in decision making is a tremendously positive experience. It fills you with excitement and gives you the confidence to move forward. As a leader, you demonstrate your commitment to a vision and eliminate post-decision doubt.

The inability to make decisions can paralyze an entire organization. So as a leader, you must reach clarity in the decision-making process in order to attain success. When you practice this five-step process for achieving clarity on every decision, over time it will become an instinctive part of your process. You will see the issues facing your organization and your options clearly, and become a more powerful leader as a result.


HYPNOTIC trance, FANTASY proneness, trance, dissociated STATES

A List of Alterations of Consciousnessby Imants Barušs, PhD

Before talking about specific issues that arise from a study of altered states of consciousness, it would be instructive simply to list some of the relevant alterations of consciousness. I use the expression “alteration of consciousness” as a more general term than “altered state of consciousness” (which implies a stable state that is clearly separable from the ordinary waking state along some appropriate dimensions). The following is a list of alterations of consciousness along with some explanatory notes. Unless indicated otherwise by citations, the material in this list has been taken from my book Alterations of Consciousness (Barušs, 2003).

1. the ordinary waking state, daydreaming, absorption, mindfulness

2. sensory restriction

3. sleep, parasomnias

4. hypnagogic and hypnopompic states

5. dreaming, nightmares, dream incubation, lucid dreaming, precognitive dreaming, shared dreaming

6. hypnotic trance, fantasy proneness, trance, dissociated states, dissociative identity disorder, possession, mediumship

7. out-of-body experience

8. alien abduction experiences

9. drug-induced states

10. flow, mystical states, transcendent states, pure consciousness, nondual states, states of no-self

11. death, impending death states, near-death experiences, shared near-death experiences

12. putative memories of: pre-birth experiences, previous-lifetime experiences, future lifetime experiences, between-lives experiences

13. pathological states such as derealization, depersonalization, depression, psychosis, anxiety, the ordinary waking state

The following is taken from Dr. Imants Barušs’ paper entitled What We Can Learn about Consciousness from Altered States of Consciousness, which originally appeared in the Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research | July 2012 | Vol. 3 | Issue 7 | pp. 805-819. Dr. Barušs’ list identifies virtually every form of consciousness within the purview of Hypnology magazine and provides a succinct description of each one. The complete paper is available online at http://www.jcer.com/index.php/jcj/article/view/227.


COMPLIANT behavior in the ORDINARY waking STATE

1. There are a number of definitions of daydreaming, depending upon the combination of spontaneity, subjectivity, and fancifulness one adopts for one’s definition. Usually, one conceptualizes daydreaming as being opposed to focussed thinking. In our Western intellectual tradition, we have epistemically privileged focused rational thinking in the ordinary waking state, although acknowledging that insights could occur during reverie as described, for example, in Graham Wallas’ (1926) description of the four stages of problem solving. Absorption is a focussed state of mind with attenuated self-reflection that can occur by itself or in the context of hypnotic trance, trance, flow, and concentrative styles of meditation. Mindfulness usually refers to sustained monitoring of the events of one’s experiential stream and includes disidentification with the contents of mind as well as an attitude of equanimity toward those contents.

2. Sensory restriction, known previously as sensory deprivation and also called “restricted environmental stimulation technique,” refers to the reduction of sensory input. This can be done, for example, by staying in a dark and quiet room, lying in a floatation tank, or by experiencing a uniform sensory field, such as in so-called Ganzfeld experiments.

3 Sleep is a biologically induced altered state of consciousness. Parasomnias are sleep disorders such as sleep terrors and sleepwalking. Highly complex behaviours can occur during sleepwalking, such as in the case of Kenneth Parks who drove his car to his parents-in-laws’ house and killed his mother-in-law while asleep.

4. Hypnagogic and hypnopompic states are transition states that occur while falling asleep and waking up, respectively, often characterized by vivid imagery. These are sometimes liminal states in which nonconscious material surfaces in awareness.

5. Dreaming occurs during non-rapid eye movement sleep, during which there is lowered brain metabolism, as well as during rapid eye movement sleep during which brain metabolism is about the same as it is during wakefulness. Nightmares are dysphoric dreams. Lucid dreaming is dreaming in which one

knows that one is dreaming; that ability can be deliberately cultivated. Precognitive dreaming entails dreaming about events that occur in the future. Shared dreaming includes both meshing dreams, in which two people dream the same dream contents, and meeting dreams, in which two or more people encounter each other in their dreams. Experimentation with shared dreaming involves becoming lucid while dreaming and then seeking to meet with another lucid dreamer to exchange specific information (Waggoner, 2009). Whereas there is considerable evidence for precognitive dreaming, there is less proof for shared dreaming, although its occurrence appears to be likely.

6. Hypnotic trance is whatever state one enters upon being hypnotized. This is not the same state for everyone but depends upon one’s hypnotic susceptibility and the dispositions that allow for such susceptibility. In some cases, such trance is simply compliant behavior in the ordinary waking state. In other cases, it could be due to fantasy proneness or dissociation. Fantasyproneness refers to a person’s ability to imagine something as though it were real, without mistaking the imagined events as being real. Often, hypnotic behavior is the result of dissociation, whereby there are functional disconnections within a person’s psyche. “Trance,” in general, is a term used for a number of states in which there is the appearance of the presence of subjective awareness and self-determination, but no significant actual awareness or self determination. Dissociative identity disorder is a psychiatric disorder in which alternate personas or fragments take turns being that person. Possession refers to states in which a person appears to have been taken over by something other than who that person ostensibly is. There can be confusion between possession and dissociative identity disorder in that possession could simply be the manifestation of a persona derived from that person’s psyche or, vice versa, that personas are possessing entities such as deceased relatives, if that is possible. In other cases, it appears that both dissociative identity disorder and possession are occurring within the same body. Mediumship is the ostensible transmission of information or energy from dimensions of reality other than ordinary physical manifestation.


no known EXPLANATIONS for these EXPERIENCES

7. Out-of-body experiences are experiences in which a person has a somasthetic sense of being outside of her body, irrespective of whether or not there is any sense in which she is actually outside of her body.

8. Alien abduction experiences are experiences in which a person believes that she has been abducted by aliens and can include feelings of extreme terror, missing time, and bodily scars such as “scoop marks.” At present there are no known explanations for these experiences.

9. Psychoactive drugs induce alterations of consciousness to varying degrees. The most interesting of the drug-induced states are those caused by psychedelics such as ayahuasca, dimethyltryptamine, d-lysergic acid diethylamide, psilocybin, and mescaline.

10. Flow is a state of exceptional well-being in which one is absorbed in a challenging activity for which one has the requisite skills. Mystical states are characterized, in brief, by a sense of unity with all that exists, noetic revelation, and joy. Transcendent states are states that are judged to be superior in some sense to the ordinary waking state. Pure consciousness refers to states of consciousness without intentionality, i.e., states of consciousness in which the sense of existence occurs but in which there are no contents of consciousness. Nondual states are states in which the duality between subject and object disappears. And states of no-self are states in which a person’s sense of self disappears (e.g., Roberts, 1993).

11. Death is an altered state of consciousness, although it is not clear exactly what sort. Impending death states are states of consciousness close to death in which a person might hallucinate the presence of deceased relatives or other beings. Near-death experiences are reports of experiences in which a person has usually been close to death for some period of time without breathing, heartbeat, or brainwaves. Shared near-death experiences are similar to shared dreams, in that the near-death experience of a person having that experience is shared by a person who is possibly in the same room but who is not close to death (Moody, 2010).

12. Either spontaneously or through hypnosis, guided imagery, or some other means, people appear to “recall” experiences that occurred before they were born, experiences from apparently previous lifetimes, experiences from “future” lifetimes, or experiences from between lives.

13. Consciousness can also be altered in pathological states such as derealization disorder in which feelings of reality are lost; depersonalization disorder, in which the sense of self is lost; depression, psychosis, and anxiety. And finally, it is not difficult to argue that the ordinary waking state is also a pathological state (cf. Walsh, 1984; Malamud, 1986).

References:Malamud, J. R. (1986). Becoming lucid in dreams and waking life. In B. B. Wolman & M. Ullman (Eds.), Handbook of states of consciousness (pp. 590-612). New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

Moody, R., Jr. (with Perry, P.). (2010). Glimpses of eternity: Sharing a loved one’s passage from this life to the next. New York: Guideposts.

Roberts, B. (1993). The experience of no-self: A contemplative journey (Rev. ed.). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Waggoner, R. (2009). Lucid dreaming: Gateway to the inner self. Needham, MA: Moment Point.

Wallas, G. (1926). The art of thought. New York: Harcourt, Brace.

Walsh, R. (1984). Journey beyond belief. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 24(2), 30–65.


HYPNOSIS is a FUN THING

Stage hypnotism is legally defined as the exhibition of trance states (usually on audience volunteers) for the entertainment (usually comic) of the public.

A poll taken last year among the membership of the on-line community Hypnothoughts.com included an inquiry into opinions about stage hypnotism. (Most of the members are therapeutic hypnotists of one stripe or another.) This question harvested the following results: 115 respondents unconditionally approved of stage hypnotism; 410 approved conditionally (“It’s a good thing only when done well”), 490 approved of stage hypnotism but thought the general public was confused by it, 250 expressed no opinion, and 110 thought stage hypnotism was a terrible thing. (All these numbers are approximate.)

In response I posted the following comment:

“Speaking as a stage hypnotist, and hopefully speaking for my peers... I am glad that the survey at least sought out opinions about stage hypnosis.

“For that hundred people who say stage hypnosis is a terrible thing, you have my sympathy. Some of my colleagues do tasteless or risky things and make the rest of us look bad. The medical-therapeutic profession has condemned stage hypnosis not particularly as dangerous but as a trivialization of an important therapeutic technique, which attitude I find reasonable.

“Now, I have no interest in ever seeing a private client; I am strictly a stage entertainer, a lecturer, and a teacher of self-hypnosis. I have a certain amount of professional training, I have read very widely, I hold certification and registered CEUs with the National Guild of Hypnotists, and I keep up with the literature a bit, so I can talk somewhat knowledgeably about therapeutic and self-help hypnosis.

“I justify my existence by using the show as propaganda for hypnotherapy as best I can. That means I present a tasteful show with the moral: ‘Hypnosis is a fun thing here and a good thing for the rest of your life, either to solve problems or simply improve your existence.’

“We have a number of colleagues who switch-hit: they are ‘office hypnotists’ who do shows, or stage hypnotists who see clients. (Jim Wand is an actual Doctor of Psychology!).

“For those of you who approve of stage hypnosis, conditionally or not, thanks, and I promise to increase your clientele by spreading the word.”

Doctor Braid and the Stageby Lewis Dark, CH


promotes HYPNOTISM itself as a technique USEFUL FOR HUMAN WELL-BEING

I mention this post primarily as an introduction. It is an uncomfortable fact that in the early twentieth century, the few medical experts promoting hypnosis, such as Clark Hull, George Estabrooks, and a then-fledgling Milton Erickson, were crying out in the wild. It was, by majority, stage hypnotists who not only preserved hypnosis, but preserved therapeutic hypnosis. Dave Ellman, a stage hypnotist, felt compelled in the public interest to teach hypnotism to doctors after World War II, including therapeutic techniques. The debt that therapeutic hypnotism owes to laymen-showmen such as Ormond McGill, Arthur Ellen, and Gil Boyne is elided by both the medical and psychological communities.

The tradition continues even in this century: the British stage hypnotist Paul McKenna has reconfigured himself as a sort of trans-Atlantic self-help guru. He markets an abundance of self-hypnosis books and recordings, though he is most famous now as the hypnotist who induced the comic and talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres to become an ex-smoker.

Even the contributions stage hypnotists make to therapists by means of simple publicity or example are derided or overlooked. The late great “Miss” Pat Collins (d. 1997), “the Hip Hypnotist,” so popular in her peak times that she owned her own nightclub in Los Angeles (performing two shows a night), would stop her show in mid-stride for a “propaganda for hypnotherapy” lecture. She twice-nightly declared that she had been cured of hysterical paralysis by hypnosis; she spoke about the good works that hypnotists do in

the fields of medicine and counseling, the ease with which hypnotized people could quit smoking, lose weight, overcome stage fright, and improve their performance in academics and sports. And she would talk about the power of mind over matter, and mind over human muscle.

She incidentally did this while standing behind a “human bridge,” a deeply-hypnotized subject in a state of effortless rigid catalepsy who was suspended across the backs of two chairs -- both promoting and proving the potential of hypnosis to enhance human ability.

(I recently discovered to my surprise that Martin Orne, M.D., Ph. D. [1927 – 2000], one of the great academic-medical-research hypnotists, was first exposed to hypnosis during his teen years in his native Austria — while working as a magician’s assistant!)

At a hypnosis conference a few decades back, the stage hypnotist Mike Mezmer was introduced to the crowd of attendees by a therapeutic hypnotist with the words, “You may disapprove of stage hypnotists; but all I know is that whenever one comes through town, my phone starts ringing off the hook.”

Indeed, whatever effort my peers and I make for the public good, we are roundly condemned for the simple fact of being stage hypnotists. These condemnations never cite any actual proven danger to the public (but will often vaguely hint at awful possibilities); usually the outcry merely claims that we trivialize and misrepresent an important therapeutic tool. As


IMAGINARY thoughts could cause ACTUAL healing!

mentioned above, I actually think this is a valid criticism: quite a few stage hypnotists are tasteless, many (especially before World War II) presented themselves as wizards rather than teachers, and many others are careless of the impression they leave on volunteer subjects and audiences. The main justification for stage hypnotism is that it promotes hypnotism itself as a technique useful for human well-being, and any stage hypnotist who fails to mention this aspect in between the various comic routines is doing a disservice to both the public and to hypnotism.

The supreme irony, of course, is that we owe modern therapeutic hypnotism, even the use in English of the words hypnosis and hypnotism, to the predecessor of stage hypnotism -- stage mesmerism.

The histories of therapeutic hypnosis and hypnosis for entertainment have been intertwined for over two centuries. Though the use of trance states for healing is documented as far back as ancient Egyptian times, the “modern” scientific or medical study of what we now call hypnosis dates back to about 1770, when Franz Anton Mesmer, an Austrian physician working in Paris, was able to effect cures of intractable medical conditions by the application of magnets. Mesmer noted that his patients convulsed, fainted, or became catatonic. They also tended to follow commands quite literally; and to display remarkable, even superhuman, powers of body and mind. He called his technique “animal magnetism,” but others coined the term “mesmerism,” a name that has stuck.

A student of Mesmer’s, a nobleman named Armand-Marie-Jacques de Chartenet and entitled the Marquis de Puységur, gave “scientific” public demonstrations on his estate. He would exhibit patients in a relaxed stupor so deep they could not be distracted or roused until he “wakened” them. He would show them to

have become insensible to pain. They would display remarkable abilities: to remember long-past events, to hallucinate imaginary objects and situations, to even not see or hear actual objects and sounds. He is credited as being the first actual, if not intentional, stage hypnotist.

Mesmer was eventually discredited by a committee of scientists who disproved the healing abilities of magnetic fields. (They explained away even the quite genuine cures as the result of “imagination,” never imagining that imaginary thoughts could cause actual healing!) However, the custom of displaying the “wonders of mesmerism” had taken hold, and various “experts” traveled throughout Europe performing paid shows of this scientific curiosity. Meanwhile, a few physicians and serious scientists continued to investigate the genuine effects of this somewhat mystical-seeming technique.

In 1841 James Braid, a Scottish physician working in Manchester, England, observed a demonstration by the traveling stage mesmerist Charles Lafontaine and applied his scientific skepticism.

Lafontaine, a Swiss, had been touring Europe for years, and by all accounts was an expert and flamboyant showman who owned no lack of self-confidence. In those days of long attention spans, a public demonstration could last several hours. Lafontaine traveled with two experienced subjects, a brother and sister, and first demonstrated mesmeric phenomena on them -- primarily insensitivity to pain and distraction. He next

called for audience volunteers and induced in them the “magnetic sleep,” after which he used them to perform more routines.

Lafontaine routinely accepted challenges to the genuineness of animal magnetism, and welcomed Dr. Braid and a companion physician onto his stage.


the ability of humans to ACCEPT COMMUNICATION at a LESS THAN CONSCIOUS LEVEL

Braid’s skepticism washed up against the rocks and dissipated when he personally examined a “mesmerized” subject, a young woman. He lifted the subject’s eyelids and discovered pinpoint pupils that did not respond to changes in light. Upon shoving a needle under her fingernail, he observed not the slightest reaction, and became convinced that the physical phenomenon was genuine, though not that magnets had anything to do with it.

He later conducted his own experiments and determined that these trance states were a "neuro-physical" condition, caused by fatigue to the eyes, that gave the subjects their extraordinary abilities, and made them amenable to suggestion, the ability of humans to accept communication at a less than conscious level. It was here that these fantastic powers of mind and body resided: the ability to not feel pain; to control one’s heartbeat, respiration, and even, sometimes, bleeding; the ability to hallucinate or to become another person; to retrieve old memories or forget new ones; and to be healed of otherwise untreatable or inexplicable illnesses. Braid added to his practice the induction of trance states to effect cures, and even performed a number of painless surgeries using trance states and suggestion as the anesthetic (ether and chloroform having yet to be discovered as anesthetics).

Subjects could be made even to sleepwalk, to act as competently as if awake, but indistractably and with no subsequent memory of their trances. It was from this last effect that Braid either coined or adopted (from a French researcher) the term hypnotism (a contraction of neuro-hypnotism or neurypnotism), after Hypnos, the ancient Greek god of sleep. Both sleepwalking and deep hypnosis are called somnambulism.

Incidentally, “hypnosis” is the name of the actual trance state and “hypnotism” refers to the science and study of these trance states.

Some of Braid’s experiments and demonstrations smack of stage shows. He once hypnotized a housemaid into believing herself to be the contemporary popular singer Jenny Lind, and caused her to give a recital. (It was reported that she acquitted herself quite competently, and this incident

undoubtedly gave rise to the later famous novel and movie about Trilby, the milkmaid brainwashed by the evil musician Svengali into becoming an international opera sensation.) On another occasion, he caused a man to hear the ticking of a watch from 35 feet away -- ten times the normal audible distance.

Hypnotism has been in and out of fashion in the fields of medicine, psychiatry, dentistry, counseling, and psychological research ever since, but stage hypnosis consistently remained a form of public entertainment, from quasi-scientific displays in the Victorian era to the pure-entertainment high-energy comedy shows of today. In the English-speaking countries it was mostly stage hypnotists who preserved hypnotic techniques during times when professional or licensed healers shunned it as “magic” or “voodoo.” Many stage

hypnotists have had to double as therapists, teachers, and prophets for hypnosis when offstage; and on-stage as well, in the manner of the above-mentioned Pat Collins.

Very few stage performers display the powers of the human mind in any radical fashion anymore: tests of anesthesia are forbidden by law (as assault and battery), and the “human bridge” has become quite rare, but each routine in modern stage hypnosis still displays a lesson: the abilities that hypnotized


STAGE HYPNOSIS is ultimately USEFUL

subjects display for both their own fun and audience entertainment are useful for solving problems, making general life better, or simply amusing one’s self.

Remember that all hypnosis is self-hypnosis, that hypnosis happens because of agreements made at a less than conscious level, and that subjects can, and have, refused suggestions or disobeyed orders, sometimes for good reasons and sometimes even at illogical whim. But the suggestions that are followed are beneficial, if only by analogy or example.

If you can become completely relaxed and limp instantly onstage, you can do it when you need immediate and rapid sleep at night. If you can role-play an interpreter of the Martian language in a trance, you can express yourself more vividly and amusingly when you’re awake. If you can be comically immune from hecklers while giving a speech, you can attain better concentration in work and play. If you can forget your own name for awhile, and get it back, you can forget or remember other information at will, storing distracting problems away for when you can face them and calling up memories from the past when useful.

Last New Year’s Eve I performed a show in a private home. One of my volunteers was a professional folk singer of great talent and presence, and I utilized her skills in the following manner: she was set to singing a song unaccompanied, and I would occasionally interrupt her performance by freezing her in place on cue. She could not otherwise be diverted from her singing and she could not be perturbed from her mannequin-like state when frozen, even though I changed her pose, draped her with scarves, and perpetrated other silliness upon her. She later proved to have been unaware of the interruptions in her song. “This is not just for fun,” I announced. “This is about achieving indistractible concentration!” I was informed a few months later that an audience member, inspired by this example of sudden and genuine changes in affect and perception, subsequently quit smoking. He didn’t even need actual personal hypnosis to achieve this.

I assert that this is why stage hypnosis is ultimately useful. I would like to see preserved the genre of

popular display that caught Dr. Braid’s eye in the first place, and see it used it to keep the public informed of the true potential powers of the human mind. And I urge my colleagues to higher standards of professionalism, ethics, good taste, and safety, beyond those now imposed on them by the insurance companies, so that fewer people have reason to think stage hypnosis is a terrible thing.

In my show, I also make a pitch for recreational hypnosis and self-hypnosis. I insist that I want my volunteers to have as much or even more fun than the audience members who are watching the show. I do my best to have them amuse themselves and each other, because I want them to be glad that they volunteered. I send them to the beach, I give them hysterical amusement, I let them enjoy some uninhibited role-play and creativity. And I talk about self-hypnosis not just for self-improvement, but for enjoyment. “I use self-hypnosis all the time,” I say between routines. “Not just to control stress and keep my blood pressure down, but to save myself from boredom. Many is the time that I have taken a wonderful vacation while waiting in line at the bank.”

I hope Dr. Braid might not mind.

©2013 Lewis Dark

[email protected]


. . . from the MOMENT he said it, it NEVER LEFT my MIND.

Edward G. Robinson on the Power of Suggestion

In his autobiograhy All My Yesterdays (Hawthorn Books, 1973) screen legend Edward G. Robinson recounts how, early in his career, a chance remark had once caused him to forget his lines. It happened while he was appearing as a lawyer in a play with actor/director Rudolph Schildkraut:

“I remember him as a painstaking director, but I was a quick study and pretty optimistic about my chances to cut the mustard. Unfortunately, I mingled with members of the audience on the sidewalk before the curtain rose on the first performance, and a gentleman, an actor, came up to me and said, “Congratulations. You’re playing with Schildkraut. What will happen to you if you forget your lines?”

“Such a prospect had never occurred to me. But from the moment he said it, it never left my mind. While I was onstage, his words kept interfering with the text of the play. And I dried up. I fluffed. I could not recall one more line of the play. Mr. Schildkraut politely gave me the cue again, and exactly nothing happened. I was catatonic. I managed to ad lib something and looked beseechingly around for the prompter—but he was nowhere in sight.

“Desperately I burbled something to the effect that I would have to go into my office (off stage) to check some law books relevant to the case. I left Mr. Schildkraut to the mercies of the audience and fled backstage, looked for the prompter, and found him eventually. As he gave me my line, mirable dictu, I also remembered the rest of the play.

“And so I walked back onstage to find that Mr. Schildkraut had been ad libbing with bits and pieces of previous plays he had been in, and it was perfectly evident that the audience had no idea anything was wrong.

“We finished our scene; Mr. Shildkraut took all his bows and actually motioned me forward to take one of my own, and then the curtain rang down.

“So what was it, young man?” asked Mr. Schildkraut?

“I’m terribly sorry,” I said. “I forgot my lines.”

“So what was such a problem?” asked Mr. Schildkraut. “All you had to do was ask me and I would have told you.”


hypnosis and consciousness EXPLORERS

Contributors to this Issue of HypnologyImants Barušs, Bsc, Msc, PhD, is a Professor of Psychology at King’s University College at the University of Western Ontario. He teaches courses in psychology, mostly about consciousness, and has written or co-authored 4 books, 27 papers, and 17 reviews, and given 64 presentations, mostly about fundamental issues concerning consciousness. He can be contacted at [email protected].

Lewis Dark, CH, has seriously studied hypnotism since the 1970’s, counting among his teachers Larry Garrett CH, Linda Williamson CHI, Klaus Boettcher, Norma Baretta Ph. D. and Phil Baretta AAMFT. He has performed as a professional stage hypnotist since 1995, primarily in the Chicago area but also across the Midwest United States. He is a Certified Hypnotist affiliated with the National Guild of Hypnotists and a member in good standing of the Association to Advance Ethical Hypnosis (IL Chapter 2). He has lectured to his fellow hypnotists at the AAEH, the Mid-America Hypnosis Conference, and the Leidecker Institute. He is based in Chicago. Learn more at his website, www.findyourhypnotist.com.

C. Roy Hunter is a well-known hypnotherapy instructor, a prolific author on the subject of hypnosis and a professional speaker. He is the recipient of numerous awards. In April 2000, Roy was inducted into the International Hypnosis Hall of Hypnotherapy Fame for his written contributions to the field. His latest text, co-authored by Bruce Eimer, PhD, is entitled The Art of Hypnotic Regression Therapy: A Clinical Guide (Crown House Publishing, 2012). For more information, visit www.royhunter.com.

Luda Kopeikina is CEO of Noventra Corporation www.noventra.com an innovation commercialization firm. Her book, The Right Decision Every Time: How to Reach Perfect Clarity on Tough Decisions (Prentice Hall, Oct 2005) is based on her breakthrough research at MIT with over one hundred CEO’s. For more information, visit www.ludakopeikina.com.

Fred Kutchins, CH, is a consulting hypnotist and founder of the Braid Institute, an educational forum pertaining to hypnosis and motivation. For more information, visit www.fredkutchins.com.

Robert Rose is a Chicago-based business consultant and writer as well as the founder, editor and publisher of an award-winning consciousness magazine. He can be contacted at [email protected].

Roger Woolger, PhD, (1944-2012), was a Jungian analyst, regression therapist and lecturer with degrees in psychology, religion and philosophy from Oxford and London Universities. Born in England, Dr. Woolger taught Jungian and transpersonal psychology and comparative religion in North America and in England. His original technique, Deep Memory Process ®, is a practical and highly effective therapy of the soul that combines active imagination (Jung), bodywork (Reich) and psychodrama (Moreno) with shamanic/spirit journeying and integration between lifetimes derived from The Tibetan Book of the Dead. For more information, visit www.deepmemoryprocess.com.


Hypnology SPONSORS

If you would like to join our growing association of Sponsors or to add an Event please contact Fred Kutchins at:[email protected]

[email protected]

Midwest: Our office is in Chicago, IL312-675-8300866-740-9288 Fax

West Coast: Our office in Orange County, CA714-400-2576

866-740-9288 Fax

"Where technology is enter taining, and problem-solving is serious business"

+1.847.293.3988

[email protected]

www.ataglancemarketing.com


Hypnology EVENTS

If you would like to join our growing association of Sponsors or to add an Event please contact Fred Kutchins at:[email protected]

Interested in Hypnosis? You’re Invited!AAEH

(Association to Advance Ethical Hypnosis)

Monthly Meeting

When: Second Tuesday of every month Where: Leaning Tower YMCA,

6300 W. Touhy Ave., 9th Floor, Niles, IL 60714

Time: 8:00pm

Email: [email protected]

Always a MESMERIZING speaker!

($5.00 donation)

The Sunday CircleThe Sunday Circle brings together an amazing group of people who are open to new ideas and are willing to discuss much of what others just dream of. We meet on the first Sunday of every month at 1:00 PM at the Garrett Hypnosis and Wellness Center. We discuss a variety of topics which may teach us a way of feeling healthier in life—physically, emotionally and spiritually. Join us for great interaction with like minded friends who are here to explore the possibilities of improving life. There is no charge.

Garrett Hypnosis and Wellness Center 3020 N. Kimball Ave.

Chicago, IL 60618 (773) 395-6100.

Email: www.garrettwellnesscenter.com

Join Us for the Best Hypnosis Learning Event of the Year!October 18th–20th, 2013 at the Crowne Plaza2875 N. Milwaukee Ave. Northbrook, IL 60062

To register, visit www.mid-americaconference.comor call (847) 451-9303 for registration information

the journal of hypnosis and consciousness · pdf filethe journal of hypnosis and consciousness...

Documents