Alanzo wrote:
"Definition of Hypnosis
Hypnosis is a state of inner absorption, concentration and focused attention. It is like using a magnifying glass to focus the rays of the sun and make them more powerful. Similarly, when our minds are concentrated and focused, we are able to use our minds more powerfully. Because hypnosis allows people to use more of their potential, learning self-hypnosis is the ultimate act of self-control."
Well.... If that is the definition you are using, then I'd have to agree with every thing you had to say about it.
On the other hand, in my given profession using the same definition, I am in a hypnotic state most of the time.
Yes. A trance state or hypnotic state is natural to human beings. We move in and out of them throughout the day.
They're aren't wierd-o "woo-woo" states at all.
You are very familiar with them.
For instance, when you become totally absorbed in a really really good movie. It could be three hours long and, when the movie is over, you had no idea the time had passed. You kind of "wake up" and start looking around and realize that you have been somewhere else the whole time.
It's a very familiar state.
In that state of mind, you are not unaware, or unconscious at all.
Instead, you are VERY aware and VERY conscious of ONE THING, to the exclusion of ALL OTHER THINGS in the environment.
Just like being really IN SESSION with a good auditor.
That's why LRH isolated TRs and placed so much emphasis on them. They were so important because TRs serve as the vital skill necessary to keep the pc "interested in own case and willing to talk to the auditor", or keeping the PC "IN SESSION".
The state of being IN SESSION is a trance or hypnotic state.
Hmmmm.... not sure how this really applies.
However, the definition you cite, doesn't appear to have any harmful connotation unless you were given suggestions by an auditor while your mind was in a "concentrated and focused" state?
Right. Hubbard mis-defined hypnosis and made it this VERY BAD thing over there, while making auditing very different and VERY GOOD over here.
It was a misdirection technique he used on us. Auditing came straight from techniques of hypnosis, and auditing, I believe, is correctly categorized as a highly developed form of hypno-therapy.
Do you feel that the bogus crap in Scientology that you read between sessions bypassed "the critical censor of the conscious mind" in your case due to the auditing you had?
Along with the social coercion techniques that Hubbard built into Scientology like stats, disconnection, screaming at juniors, elitist hierarchies which can not be questioned, sec checking for any doubt or dissidence, etc, I think that the hypnotic nature of auditing served to soften up Scientologists so that his positive suggestions, and enforced suggestions, would take hold more deeply.
Hubbard was a hypnotist. He knew what he was doing. If you read the Chapter in Barefaced Messiah on the missing research for Dianetics, you'll see interviews with Forrest Ackermen and others about Ron's use of hypnosis on others at SF conferences and dinner parties. Russell Miller could not find any other evidence for Hubbard's research into Dianetics than his work as a hypnotist.
The examples of hypnotism that I am most familiar with have to do with having the patient concentrate and focus on something like a spinning watch. Do you think that the act of focusing ones mind on ones own data has a similar effect?
Yes.
The guy who coined the word "hypnosis" in the late 1800s,
James Braid, realized that since hypnosis has nothing to do with sleep at all, he had used the wrong term for it. So he tried to change the word to "MONOIDEAISM".
But it was too late. "Hypnosis" had stuck.
And even Ron says that focusing one's own mind on one's own data has a similar effect. Remember SOS and DMSMH and those early books where he's always talking about hypnosis?Take a look at some of those references from Ron by way of the indexes on hypnosis, or "hypnotism". I believe it was in SOS that he said that any time you return a pc down the time track you make him more suggestible.
And anyway - whatever happened to the "cancellor" from DMSMH?
If dianetics was going to make you so vulnerable to suggestions that you had to install a cancellor at the end of every session, then where the hell did it go after 1951?
I'm not being argumentative but am instead trying to understand where you are coming from.
The key is to look into hypnosis, suggestion, trance states, etc on your own and WITHOUT data from Hubbard.
Get an understanding of these things from those who had nothing to do with Hubbard.
You will see what Hubbard was doing with hypnosis, and with scientologists.
Don't get me wrong.
Hypnosis is not at all what Hubbard told you it was.
Hypnotic states can be extremely therapeutic and always have been for human beings. They are states of mind in which you can become extremely aware of one thing, to the exclusion of all other things. And in that state you can finally grasp things you were not able to grasp before. As a result, your whole world can change.
You are just vulnerable to certain degrees in that state to suggestions from others slipping in and taking over your inner world.
Unethical practitioners will exploit those vulnerabilities for their own gain.
Like Hubbard did.