“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(9:38.) This inner communication acts like the constant repetition of a hypnotist. In this case, however, you are your own hypnotist. Few people will have simply one main area of concentration. Usually several are involved, but these represent the ways in which you are using your energy. The individual who takes it for granted that he is worthwhile does not need to belabor the point. His ensuing experiences come naturally to him. In many areas of your own life, those in which you are satisfied, you need make no effort. Your conscious thoughts and concentrations bring about results with which you are pleased. It is only in those compartments of your life that confound you that you suddenly begin to wonder what is happening — but here also, natural hypnosis is at work just as easily and naturally, and your conscious ideas are automatically coming to physical fruition. So it is in these areas that you must realize that you are the hypnotist.

In formal hypnosis you make an agreement with the hypnotist: For a while you will accept his ideas about reality instead of your own. If he tells you that there is a pink elephant in front of you, then you will see it and believe it is there, and act according to the suggestions given. If you are a good subject and your hypnotist a good practitioner, then blisters can arise on your skin if he tells you that you have been burned.

This intensity of conscious concentration cuts down barriers and allows the messages to go directly to the unconscious, where they are acted upon. The hypnotist, however, is important in that he acts as a direct representative of authority.

In your terms, beliefs are accepted initially from the parents — this, as mentioned earlier, having to do with mammalian experience. (See the 619th session in Chapter Four.) The hypnotist then acts as a parent substitute. In cases of therapy, an individual is already frightened, and because of the beliefs in your civilization he looks not to himself but to an authority figure for help.

(10:10.) Even in primitive societies, witch doctors and other natural therapists have understood that the point of power is in the present, and they have utilized natural hypnosis as a method of helping other individuals to concentrate their own energy. All of the gestures, dances, and other procedures are shock treatments, startling the subject out of habitual reactions so that he or she is forced to focus upon the present moment. The resulting disorientation simply shakes current beliefs and dislodges set frameworks. The hypnotist, or witch doctor, or therapist, then immediately inserts the beliefs he thinks the subject needs.

Within this context, subsidiary groupings will be included that involve the therapist’s own ideas. In your society regression is often involved; the patient will remember and relive a traumatic experience from the past. This will then appear to be the cause of the present difficulty. If hypnotist and subject both accept this, then at that level there will be progress.

In many instances, therefore, modern physicians are inadequate witch doctors who have forgotten their craft — hypnotists who no longer believe in the power of healing, and whose suggestions bring about other diseases which are diagnosed in advance.

Chiropractors, again, are hypnotists. Unfortunately they are trying to gain respectability in medical terms, and are therefore emphasizing the “scientific” aspects of their work, and playing down the intuitive elements and natural healing. The “quacks” end up with those who are hopeless, who realize the ineffectiveness of other belief systems, find them wanting, and have no place to go. Some of the “quacks” may be unscrupulous and dishonest, yet many of them possess an intuitive understanding, and can work “cures” through the instant alteration of belief. The medical profession is fond of saying that such individuals prevent patients from seeking proper treatment. The fact is that such patients no longer believe in the doctors’ system of belief, and so could not be helped by them.

What should you do, then? First of all, you must realize that you are the hypnotist. You must seize the initiative here as you have in other positive aspects of your life. Whatever the superficial reasons for your beliefs, you must say:

For a certain amount of time I will momentarily suspend what I believe in this area, and willfully accept the belief I want. I will pretend that I am under hypnosis, with myself as hypnotist and subject. For that time desire and belief will be one. There will be no conflict because I do this willingly. For this period I will completely alter my old beliefs. Even though I sit quietly, in my mind I will act as if the belief I want were mine completely.