“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

There is no magic in hypnosis. Each of you utilize it constantly. (See the 620th session in Chapter Four.) Only when particular procedures are assigned to it, and when it is set aside from normal life, does hypnotic suggestion seem so esoteric. Structured hypnosis merely allows the subject to utilize full powers of concentration, thereby activating unconscious mechanisms.

Let us first of all discuss the nature of hypnosis, quite natural hypnosis, and the ways in which you use it now. Then you will see how you can utilize it quite easily and deliberately in your present point of power.

Dictation: Any good demonstration of hypnosis will clearly show that the point of power is in the present, and that beliefs dictate your experience.

Hypnosis clearly shows in concentrated form the way in which your beliefs affect your behavior in normal life. The various methods simply focus all of your concentration upon a specific area, shutting out any distractions.

NATURAL HYPNOSIS:  A TRANCE IS A TRANCE IS A TRANCE

(Smiling, and progressively louder and deeper:) Sixteen, entitled: “Natural Hypnosis: A Trance Is a Trance Is a Trance.” [...]

Each of you will find habitual thought patterns in your own life backed up by resulting action — conditioned behavior as it were — by which you continually reinforce negative aspects, concentrate upon them to the exclusion of conflicting data, and so bring them into experience through natural hypnosis.

[...] I want to impress upon you the fact that all of this simply follows the natural function of the mind, and to dispel any ideas that you have about the “magical” aspects of hypnosis.

Dictation: Natural hypnosis is the acquiescence of the unconscious to conscious belief. In periods of concentrated focus, with all distractions cut out, the desired ideas are then implanted (in formal hypnosis). [...]

[...] 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. [...]

In formal hypnosis you make an agreement with the hypnotist: For a while you will accept his ideas about reality instead of your own. [...]

(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. [...]

[...] Jane and I haven’t done anything about the hypnosis suggestions, obviously; we need our recorder repaired. [...] Seth was quite chiding in a gently amused way tonight when mentioning the hypnosis affair, his voice quiet, and, I thought, rather tired. [...]

[...] I suggested the use of suggestion through the framework of hypnosis simply because such techniques can be like mental vitamin pills. [...]

If you keep Framework 2 in mind, much of these stages can be vastly minimized, and the work with hypnosis that I suggested gives you such a method of inserting data, here, that accelerates motion in Framework 2, and greatly cuts down the time and effort involved in Framework 1. Of course, (with wry amusement) if you each are convinced that the venture was important-enough in your lives, and would get the results, you would have clamored to begin such experiments.

Natural hypnosis and conscious beliefs give their proper instructions to the unconscious, which then dutifully affects the body mechanism so that it responds in a manner harmonious with the beliefs. [...] Using formal hypnosis, and in the West, you may regress and discover where the suggestion was first given you. [...]

[...] This is the worst kind of natural hypnosis, and yet within your system insurance is indeed a necessity, because the belief in illness so pervades your mental atmosphere.

[...] The literature and announcements act as strong negative suggestions, following the nature of natural hypnosis — as a conditioning process, you see, where you are looking for specific symptoms, and examining your body under the impetus of fear.

All of this involves natural hypnosis.

By now we’d experimented with hypnosis in some age-regression and reincarnational work. [...] We had never used hypnosis to induce a trance in Seth sessions, however, and we had no experience with hypnosis when the sessions began. Would Dr. Instream want me to go under hypnosis? [...] (Self-hypnosis is something else—I use it now to give myself general good-health suggestions.)

[...] At the first lecture we attended, the speaker gave a demonstration in hypnosis. [...] The lecturer was a psychologist who is well known for his work in hypnosis. Lowering his voice, he said that since most of those in the audience used hypnosis professionally, they should know what it felt like to be hypnotized themselves. [...]

[...] Dr. Instream wrote back, expressing interest and inviting us to attend the National Hypnosis Symposium to be held in July 1965.

[...] I’d always thought the sessions themselves were a form of self-hypnosis. We’d talked about self-hypnosis as a way of breaking through today.

(We talked about her home environment, and how in 1965 the young psychologist at Dr. Instream’s hypnosis symposium had rearoused her fears, and my own upsets. [...]

[...] Self-hypnosis can indeed be invaluable in terms of accelerating bodily motion and healing. [...]

[...] It can serve well as a basis for self-hypnosis, but I also plan to help my wife here, and we can see what we can accomplish in the afternoons.

NATURAL HYPNOSIS, HEALING, AND THE TRANSFERENCE OF PHYSICAL SYMPTOMS INTO OTHER LEVELS OF ACTIVITY

“Natural Hypnosis, Healing, and the Transference of Physical Symptoms into Other Levels of Activity.” [...]

(“Last night I also felt that Seth’s Appendix — if there is one — could deal with notes on particular chapters; methods of using natural hypnosis in certain cases; work on beliefs, etc.”)

(Jane has kept the session for April 30 in mind, but hasn’t tried any self-hypnosis yet. [...] I decided it was better to let her think over the session for a while, then lead into the hypnosis thing. I think the session in itself is a form of hypnosis, and an excellent one.)

(I told Jane before we began that we would not stress tests to prove hypnosis, that these could come later if we chose. [...]

(By now I had learned that she could speak under hypnosis without difficulty, a point we had wondered about to at least some extent. [...]

[...] [It was during this period that Jane’s hypnosis sessions with me had proved most helpful.]

[...] And now under hypnosis Jane said the second important thing: she told me that if she got sick, I wouldn’t be sick any longer. [...]

[...] There is no such thing as hypnosis—or, all thoughts involve hypnosis. [...] Your political campaigns involve hypnosis, which simply means concentrated suggestion.

[...] Hypnosis then involves concentrated stimulus toward action of a certain kind. [...]

[...] I would like, however, some hypnosis—of the kind we have been speaking of—in the near future. [...]

[...] I talked about cases we had read about, where hypnosis was used to get the subject to focus only upon the test item, ignoring any other data even if relevant. [...]

(I put the question poorly: “Would hypnosis reach that level of your perception?”

[...] I was wondering whether the hypnosis would influence the way Ruburt let the information come out.”)

The necessary focus point may be achieved through trance, hypnosis or self-hypnosis, or through certain other disciplines. [...]

When hypnosis is more clearly understood and used, and when certain other psychological devices are discovered, it will then be possible to change focus in such a manner, and through psychological testing discover the personality types, the individual types who dwell in various stages of the subconscious.

[...] Directly beneath personal subconscious you will find upon examination either through hypnosis or applied association, a layer dealing with the period before this life, and after the life before this one.

Beneath this undifferentiated subconscious layer we will find, and psychologists can find through testing and hypnosis, a layer composed of memories, dealing successively with each previous existence, and separated by a layer between lives that is, again, undifferentiated.

[...] If Ruburt were under hypnosis you would then command him to let me speak. [...]

[...] In hypnosis as you are planning, you would directly contact the subconscious.

[...] In hypnosis the subconscious, as the patient, speaks for himself, or is spoken to.

While hypnosis can be of considerable value in the hands of an excellent professional hypnotist, it still has serious drawbacks as a treatment under these conditions. Because of its very nature, hypnosis can end up segmenting the personality still further.

In the kind of schizophrenic behavior we have just been discussing, hypnosis is frequently used as therapy, often in an attempt not only to introduce the two levels of the personality to each other, but also to uncover the time they originally split off in such a fashion.

(Edgar and Maria explained their method of healing by hypnosis. [...]

[...] Hypnosis is an excellent tool, you are using. [...]

[...] You can use the tool of hypnosis to a far greater degree than you are using it. [...]

[...] The term hypnosis merely applies to a quite normal state in which you concentrate your attention, narrowing your focus to a particular area of thought or belief.

[...] As such it also portrays the importance of belief, for using hypnosis you “force-feed” a belief to yourself, or one given to you by another — a “hypnotist”; but you concentrate all of your attention upon the idea presented.

[...] There is a connection here between you when you know so much about hypnosis (“and yet not successful in going into it yourself”—I lost these words—and am paraphrasing Seth here).

[...] In its own way hypnosis involves a psychic kind of play—meditation involves a psychic kind of play and lovemaking involves a psychic kind of play. [...]

The same applies to hypnosis. [...]

[...] The same applies to hypnosis.

[...] The dream state and dream conditions could also be studied quite legitimately, and to more purpose, using hypnosis. [...]

[...] Through hypnosis you can get complete dream recall, with a good operator. [...]

[...] A better procedure would be to hypnotize a subject, and you would need a good one, and suggest that under hypnosis he repeat the dreams of the night before. [...]

[...] In hypnosis the subject is not as much on guard as a subject of an experiment when the subject knows in advance that he will be awakened by the experimenter, when electrodes are attached to the physical organism, when the conditions of the sleep laboratory are substituted for his ordinary nightly environment. [...]

^* In 1965, in response to my letter, an older and very respected parapsychologist — “Dr. Instream,” Jane called him — invited Jane and me to attend the hypnosis symposium he was to conduct at a New York State college. [...]