Descriptions:
Video Description
Why do calm facts so often lose to a loud, glowing story? Lyam Christopher opens this lesson by watching how easily whole crowds can fall under a spell, especially when an election or a crisis turns up the heat. Trying to persuade someone with logic often fails because we are not really arguing with their reasoning; we are arguing with a trance. He begins with the psychologist definition of hypnosis, a state in which a person becomes unusually open to suggestion and command.
Then he turns the mirror back on practice itself. If hypnosis is a focused, suggestible state, is meditation simply another kind of trance, a deliberate one we enter on purpose? And is magic a way of using our own suggestibility, not to be controlled from outside, but to point the mind where we choose? The question is both a little troubling and quietly freeing: the same mechanism that can enslave a crowd can also be learned, named, and handled with care by a single person.
The deeper work is learning to notice when the spell is being cast. The cure is not more arguing but more awareness, catching the moment a symbol or slogan starts doing our thinking for us. What begins as a warning about mass influence becomes a gentle invitation to wake up inside your own mind. To see the trances we wear is the first step toward choosing them, and that choosing is the beginning of real freedom.
Full Video Transcript
Okay, we are back. And this week’s presentation is about hypnosis and mind control. It’s something I’ve been noticing lately, as the United States presidential elections come up and how the general public, there’s so many people in the general public appear to be spellbound by various leaders and ideologies.
And it’s so interesting when, you know, if you were to be so foolish as to attempt to persuade somebody towards your political views, how logic and reason don’t seem to work, because there’s something that you’re up against, and that is the mass hypnosis of the general public.
So here are a couple of definitions of hypnosis.
These are psychological definitions.
An altered state of consciousness in which individuals are more receptive to suggestions and commands than in their normal waking state.
The normal waking state.
Okay, so it’s some kind of special state of consciousness that you can enter, and then suddenly you are susceptible to commands and suggestions.
Another definition, a focused state of attention that is narrowed and directed inward.
I remember attending a workshop in which the leader of the workshop took three students,
and this was in high school, I believe it was, took three students and hypnotized them.
And before she did that, she described hypnosis and said,
well, you know, when you’re when you’re hypnotized, it’s not really that much different than when you are in a in a normal state of consciousness. Okay. And you might even be more aware. And she would say, if the fire alarm were to go off, while I have these three people hypnotized, they might be faster to respond to the emergency than everybody else in the room, because they’re in a they’re more tuned into their environment or into their bodies, or they’re more alert, they’re actually more alert than less alert.
it’s not like they are have gone to sleep okay um and since then i’ve realized that what she said
is not necessarily true uh hypnosis is not necessarily a greater state of awareness
judging by the second definition there a focused state of attention that is narrowed and directed
inward so that could be a type of awareness that is not so aware of the environment apparently
and another definition a state of altered consciousness different from both waking
and sleeping states. Yeah, and I think that some people would like to get into hypnosis
sort of like they get into drugs, so as an escape from conventional reality. And certainly it could
be used to do that, yes. But what is hypnosis? These are medical definitions of hypnosis,
and that top definition really doesn’t get into it at all, does it? It just basically describes it
from the outside. And then the second definition there, not very helpful either,
a trance-like state well what is a trance-like state not so hard to figure out really um if you
are spellbound or if you’re watching a movie like we used to watch movies do we watch movies anymore
if you uh if you watch a movie and you are riveted to your seat uh that’s uh apparently a state of
hypnosis where you are just so incredibly captivated by the movie okay or you’re reading
a you’re listening to somebody tell a story or you’re reading a story kind of the same thing
you can be captivated and completely sucked in to that experience that could be described as a state
of hypnosis. So this is not something really all that exotic. This is something that we all
experience on a regular basis, more so than you think, as we’re about to get to. So none of the
definitions are particularly helpful. Why is it so hard to define what hypnosis is? It’s a very
real phenomenon and you can you can do some amazing things with it apparently you can even
do regressive hypnosis and apparently regress someone back to before they were born even to a
time before they were conceived and then suddenly they are tuning into memories of a past life
where’s that coming from so there’s really cool stuff you can do with hypnosis as we well know
not only can you quit smoking but you can also remember past lives or you can remember you can
remember details from your childhood or from the past that as though your mind has been making a
movie of your entire life and all the details are still there like the memory is somehow perfectly
within why is it so hard to define it i’ll tell you why in a bit is it mind control and so if you
go to a therapist like a hypnotherapist they will be very quick to tell you oh don’t worry
anything we do here I cannot force you to do anything that you wouldn’t normally want to do
that isn’t how hypnosis works that’s what they will tell you okay and in part that’s true but
it’s not the whole truth okay so hypnosis that has gone on for a long time will have you doing
things that you don’t really want to do that you wouldn’t really have done before you entered that
state of consciousness okay and this is kind of demonstrated by the the stage hip um the stage
hypnosis like the the hypnosis hypnotist who comes to town and then takes several people from the
audience and then hypnotizes them and supposedly makes them do embarrassing things in front of
everyone okay and if you were to ask those people afterwards it’s like what how did you do that like
what was it like and they might say well it wasn’t really anything different i i just i was simply
participating with with what was going on like what he was telling me to do but then they’ll say
yeah but you were clucking like a chicken or you were speaking like a little infant or something
like like a little child didn’t you find that embarrassing and they’re like no not at the time
I was just kind of playing along with it, but come to think of it, now I’m kind of embarrassed.
Now that you point it out, you know.
So what’s going on with that mind control thing?
Can you learn how to do that?
Can you learn how to control other people’s behaviors and their minds?
Just to demonstrate that the science of mind control is a very real thing,
Especially if you were to study how cults form, or things like Stockholm Syndrome and things like that,
these are basically the effects of hypnosis.
Somebody joins a cult, and suddenly their outlook shifts radically,
and they become seemingly another person in a short span of time.
this apparently happens through group hypnosis okay or or or just hypnosis from somebody who
has the ability to do that okay not some not necessarily somebody who has been trained in
how to do that but somebody who might have a talent for doing it okay sometimes it’s a little
bit of both okay so these are terms that come from the study of let’s say group hypnosis or
mass formation psychosis, things like that, right? Groupthink is something that a for for mass
hypnosis, that kicks in, and people start participating in groupthink. And that’s not
the way they would behave by themselves. But when they’re in the group, they are now of the group
mind, and they start doing things that the group does, which is can be often contrary to what they
would do on their own. Selective inattention. Okay, so if you’re immersed in a particular
environment long enough, you can become blind to the absurdities of what goes on in that environment.
It simply happens so often that you just don’t see it anymore. A good example of that would be the
Donald Trump phenomenon, where like one scandal after another, one lie after another, and you just
become blind to you don’t see it anymore because you have to wonder how his you know followers and
devotees can still be loyal to him when the narcissism and the endless um lying and the and
the um the huckster mentality keeps going on and on how do they how do they reconcile that with
their religious beliefs and all these things you know um selective inattention okay and there’s a
lot that goes on in that cult of Trump that you can see if you study hypnosis you can see there’s
a lot of hypnosis going on there you know on a cultural level okay not only from the the the
celebrity Trump himself but also through the various news outlets who who are repeating the
same sort of formula we’ll talk about that in a bit okay the main one of the main things that
happens through social media and through the news is a repetition of one particular type of hypnosis
and we’ll talk about that in a bit plural pluralistic ignorance I thought that was an
interesting term it’s the same thing as selective inattention I think uh what’s the everybody sort
of learns to not see certain things about what’s happening in their in their group and they only
see what uh you know what reinforces their their worldview okay and there are other terms I don’t
have time to go over all of these priming is very interesting um embedding commands double binds
presuppositions nominalizations nominalizations is what we do in magic to hypnotize ourselves
incantations yeah really some really cool stuff there especially with enochian magic
reframing reframing is a very important practice um all now these things aren’t necessarily good
are bad these are things that we can do to help ourselves and to heal ourselves okay but they can
also be used to exert unethical control over other people’s minds anchoring is a really good thing
a really good strategy and the use of repetitious affirmations or negations kind of the same thing
anchoring is like where they where we achieve a certain emotional effect in the audience and
then we say a particular word like hallelujah and then when we achieve that effect again we say it
again hallelujah or like in occult circles and in ceremonial magic circles we might say so mode it
be and then everybody repeats so mode it be and then you do something else and that oh that sounded
really cool so mode it be and everybody repeats so mode it be okay and that’s a sort of a cult
thing that can have that can grow out of that that is a mass hypnosis which can turn into a
groupthink and sort of subvert critical thinking. Okay, it doesn’t have to. Yeah, it’s a magical
effect that has its own sort of momentum. And it kind of blasts through any critical thinking that
we have. Okay. And that can be a good thing. In some instances, okay, critical thinking isn’t
everything. That might be a subject for a future video. And so the use of repetitious affirmations
and negations that’s like if you go to um a church that’s very uh sort of gospel and hallelujah and
that sort of stuff and and amen and everybody and preachers talking and everybody’s like not yes
yes yes or there might be something and we’re not going to do this are we no
and and um we’re not going to let them get away with this are we no no we’re not so the just and
And the repetition is very interesting because the more you get into the repetitious yes or the repetitious no,
then eventually the person leading the group can insert something in there that you will then agree to without even thinking about it.
Yes, and this is how the mind control begins to set in or the brainwashing.
And my favorite is the use of suspense, which you’ll see in the cult of Trump a lot.
he’s not that good at it but he’s um you know a reporter will say what’s your decision on this
and he’ll say i don’t know we’ll see we’ll see in a couple days we’ll see so he keeps everybody
waiting for more okay um that’s a good dramatic technique i use it in these videos uh for instance
when i say what what really is um hypnosis well we’ll get to that in a bit so i can just keep it
kind of hanging there but um so you these are the kinds of things that can also keep you turning the
page when you’re reading these are dramatic devices if you read stephen king it’s like you
wonder how does he get you to keep turning the pages like you can’t seem to stop reading okay
there’s some writers who are really good at that okay and he is particularly good at it not dynamite
at it but he’s pretty good at it i’ve got a couple of other authors who are really good at it like
it’s dangerous to pick up one of their books because you can’t stop reading hypnotic social
media and validation addiction this is how social media hypnotizes people okay and this is primarily
way the way that the mass hypnosis happens in politics where people get together and they are
repeatedly outraged by something and then they find a position to maintain against that something
and then they everybody pats themselves collectively on the back to congratulate
themselves for being so righteous and so so so good and for repeatedly condemning the people
who are you know offending them or engaging in this egregious behavior and that act of feeling
good about trouncing the opposition is self-validation. It’s a feedback loop. And so
what happens is you go onto social media, someone offends you or something offends you, and you
speak your outrage against it. And other people pat you on the back and you pat yourself on the
back. You feel really good about it. It’s like, oh, that was nice. Then suddenly you go looking
for something else that might offend you so that you can get that good feeling again that outrage
and then congratulate yourself for being so above that thing that you just saw yeah it’s similar
similar to schadenfreude where you basically are um watching people who are less fortunate
fortunate than you and then feeling really good about yourself because you are above them i
remember when reality tv first came on um i thought it was a disaster i saw what was happening
to my friends as they watched the show cops i think it was called cops in the 90s and this show
would would put on display um people who are really having a tough time in their neighborhoods
with their poverty with their addictions whatever and and um being marginalized and they’re having
trouble regulating their own behaviors and the cops would go in and catch them in really
embarrassing and awful situations and the audience is pretty much invited to feel superior to all
these people who the cops are now lecturing and having to deal with uh i always got a very dirty
feeling when that wherever that show came on because i’m being invited to feel better than
than you know the people the cops are going after okay um so that’s similar to what happens with
social media like uh it’s called validation addiction okay you could also call it righteousness
addiction yeah so um see if you can catch yourself in the act of seeking out that feeling of
righteousness and then feeling good about yourself because uh because you know better right and they
are just so horrible and yours you are so much more superior yeah we see a lot with um uh with
vegans versus meat eaters and the meat eaters just don’t know they’re so barbaric and they’re
so ignorant uh about how and so um cruel and yeah is meditation a form of hypnosis possibly
we’ll get to that in a bit oops i’m using suspense on you i’m controlling your mind
is it an altered state is hypnosis an altered state of consciousness is that what we’re after
when we hypnotize ourselves or when we go to a hypnotist are we trying to achieve an altered
state of consciousness and see god or whatever like that right well is it an expanded form of
consciousness as that woman once tried to convince us when she hypnotized the three students she was
trying to tell us that hypnosis is sort of like um making you more conscious or more aware than
you normally would be okay or is it a constraining type of consciousness where you just just focus at
they’re dangled the watch in front of you just keep your eye on the watch only focus here or
only focus on my voice okay it seems to me that it’s the rather the latter so in other words it’s
the constraining of consciousness it’s the limit limiting of consciousness and if you will note
some forms of meditation are like that where you focus in on one object and one object only
okay uh it’s one form of meditation though that’s not the only form of meditation uh so
yeah, it looks like when you focus in on the one object that you are hypnotizing yourself. So
meditation is hypnosis. Okay. So let’s, let’s start talking about what hypnosis actually is.
It’s one of the mistakes that we can make is, uh, hubris. Okay. So let’s go back to the story of
Moses with a staff. He’s Moses carried a staff, right? It was supposedly, supposedly it was his
magic wand okay uh and then he’s in the wilderness with the israelites and they need water and so i
he apparently is looking for water and then he uses his magical gifts or his connection to god
to find water god tells him where the water is okay or he’s dowsing he’s doing like looking for
water with a stick right and um when he reveals the source of the water where the spring is he
strikes a rock with the staff in a dramatic fashion as though he’s pretending to cause the
water to bubble up from the ground be it lo and behold I strike the earth with my magical wand
and water gushes forth and I have conjured it okay and in that story God punishes him for doing that
okay so in that story Moses is supposedly presenting himself as the magician who has
the magical power to cause the water to appear okay so that it’s almost like a ray of causality
beams out of him into the earth and causes the earth to boom produce water right and so that’s
kind of the way that we’re we tend to see the hypnotist that they’re exerting some kind of
magnetic influence on you and that’s what we call horizontal causality okay so i’m beaming
like information into you and you are now under my spell under my influence and i’m maintaining
a beam of control like a tractor beam on you right now i control your mind okay um so that view of
hypnosis is pretty cool okay but like any form of magic um it is mistaken and so if you take it upon
yourself to adopt the position of the god let’s say and say i am the one controlling your mind
Okay. That’s the ancient Greeks would say that’s called hubris. You are now portraying yourself as the source of the magical power, or you are portraying yourself as the source of the hypnotic power, as though it’s beaming out of your eyes, you know, and you are taking credit for something that is not yours.
okay and so when you hypnotize somebody or when somebody hypnotizes you this is not what is
happening this beam this beam of light is not you know shining out of them into you making you do
things uh no okay and just like i said in other videos when you supposedly make something happen
with magic all you can really be accused of is orchestrating the conditions so that this effect
can arise sort of like a gardener okay he creates the right conditions and maybe god’s willing the
garden will grow but it um the ability to make the garden grow is not really within the magician’s
power or within the gardener’s power okay that power still resides with the gods or with the
forces of nature right or if you’re ancient egyptian it resides with osiris you know osiris
is the power of the um uprising vegetation right and so if you are if you are attempting to produce
a state of hypnosis in another person it’s not you who does that but you are orchestrating the
environment and the conditions under which that state of hypnosis can rise okay so to view it as
horizontal like this is a mistake okay and you know if you are able to hypnotize people they
won’t necessarily know that they might even experience it as though you have hypnotic eyes
and you are you know something magical about you you’re beaming your energy at them they’re not
sure how you did it you know so that this is what hypnosis is not okay it doesn’t mean that um it’s
it doesn’t mean you don’t have hypnotic eyes, okay? There are things that you can do with your
eyes and with your speech and with your dramatic pauses, okay, and with your repetition that can
help induce that hypnotic state, okay? But the hypnotic state arises out there in the other
person, not directly from you, okay? I think that’s clear enough. So what is hypnosis then,
Okay. It’s hard to define hypnosis because most of us are in a state of mind that makes it hard
to define. Okay. Because we are trying to define hypnosis while we are in a hypnotized state,
because the average person is almost constantly in a state of hypnosis. So being hypnotized is
not so exotic a thing after all it’s not really an exotic thing okay almost everyone you meet is
in a hypnotized state of mind okay i guarantee on most days everyone you meet is in a hypnotized
state of mind okay okay what that means is that the goal of magic is not to induce a special state
of mind like dion fortune describes magic as the transformation of consciousness uh to achieve a
particular result or something like that or exerting the will to achieving a state of a
change of consciousness and conformity with will something like that right well the true goal of
magic is not to enter an altered state of mind necessarily it is to liberate yourself from all
of these altered states of mind okay so now that should not come as any surprise because when the
Buddha was enlightened he came across a bunch of travelers and they were like what is it about you
are you a god and he said no I’m awake and so what it what he was saying is that I’m no longer
hypnotized and almost everyone I meet around me is in a constant state of hypnosis and if you look
at this little picture here it should make it pretty clear okay so most of us as we proceed
through the world are existing in a subject-object relationship and are fixated on the object
okay or our minds are caught up in this dichotomy of me versus the world okay me versus the monster
that’s after me okay or the deadline that’s breathing down my neck right or me versus the
thing that I want and that little thing is now stringing me along that is a state of hypnosis
and if you think about it it’s almost like that when you dangle the with the classic view of
hypnotizing somebody with the watch dangling in front of them it’s like the dangling carrot right
in front of you you’re just kind of going after it like i must have the carrot i must have the
carrot i must get to the carrot and it keeps receding as you keep trying to go towards it
there’s your state of hypnosis okay and so it’s not really rocket science you can see
the people around you are constantly hounded by this subject object relationship they’re driven
by it they’re chasing after something or they’re running away from something constantly
and it doesn’t really ever stop even when they go to sleep they chase after things in their dreams
and they are chased and they are chased by things in their dreams right and it probably does stop
a little bit possibly in the deepest level of sleep if you’re able to reach that if you’re
healthy enough to reach that so now what is it like then to be free of this hypnosis okay so
yeah the goal of you know spiritual practice then is to not be hypnotized anymore okay not to
achieve a special hypnotized state that’s going to get you what you want okay now the interesting
thing though with magic is that um you could still get what you want all right but you want to look
at these two entities here there’s the little beast and the and the dangling carrot right so
So to do ceremonial magic properly, the way I’m presenting it right now, is that you’re primarily working on the way that you arise.
In other words, the carrot and this little donkey here, they arise together.
The subject and the object sort of emerge together.
It’s kind of like if you go hypnotize somebody, that state of hypnosis arises along with your hypnotizing effort.
As you, as your, as your hypnotizing effort spins around over here, does, does it work as magic, right? Over there, as they are sort of observing you, then over there, that hypnotized state arises within them. They arise together. Okay.
So primarily with ceremonial magic, it really is more about invoking the various virtues of the planets and of self-perfection or whatever.
So that if this donkey here works on his own character and his own character traits and purifies them and settles them down and takes care of any little lurking demons,
then whatever manifests around him is much more agreeable to to what he actually needs
or what he actually you know wants okay it’s no guarantee of that but life settles down as well
so in other words when he works on himself to become more virtuous or whatever that is he
starts to develop these various sephirothic virtues or these planetary virtues then the
world around him outside will also begin to settle down and
begin to provide things that he actually needs and wants, sort
of in harmony with him. And it will seem as though he’s doing
magic to get this precise thing or that precise thing. Okay, and
he might even wink at it and make you know, play along. It’s
like, yeah, sure, I did that, right? When in fact, he’s just
been working on his his own, you know, planetary virtues or
whatever that the the tree of life inside of himself so to speak is being perfected and it’s
becoming a lean mean manifestation machine okay so and now the the carrot all the carrots all the
dangling carrots that appear outside of his magic circle are much more conducive and harmonious to
what’s going on inside the magic circle and the two things arise together so everything’s still
arising separately like that as you know subject objects but um there’s no need to uh exert any
kind of horizontal causality beat like beam a magic energy beam out of my head and make the
carrot appear over there okay so one of the worst mistakes we can make um is that sort of hubris
to assume that oh i’m the one who made that thing manifest out there okay um as you will remember
the ancient Greeks were very quick to say that if you assume that you’re the one who’s working the
magic that’s you pretending to be a god and the gods will punish you for that okay or what that
really means is that life will become you know sort of hell for a while for you if you keep
trying to take credit for the things that happen in your life in that way okay but once again you
can adopt the role of the gardener or the you know the person who cultivates the one’s own
internal virtues so that whatever manifests on the inside is in harmony with what manifests on
the outside okay i don’t know if that makes sense or not um and to be to do that to cultivate you
know your own um internal planets or your internal tree of life uh in order as you do that you become
less and less hypnotized you become free of all of the dangling carrots out there and then you
begin to watch around you as everybody keeps chasing after something around you or always
running away from something and they live their lives as if life is one emergency after another
endlessly endlessly endlessly keeps going suffering suffering suffering calamity calamity calamity
life is just one damn thing after another right uh and that’s you can you can step out of that
rat race okay and the so in other words um to be free of hypnosis uh hypnosis is a constrained
kind of mind in which you have been sucked into some kind of drama of the chase okay in which
something’s after you or you or you are after something you have been sucked into this drama
and you have bought into it hook line and sinker you believe it’s real now you’re hypnotized okay
so if you so if you look at the various things going on around you we are basically in a society
that’s pretty much under mass hypnosis civilization really has gotten us and sunk its claws into us
and uh and has us strung along strung out consumerism and fear of um of extinction and
all these things that we do compulsively because we think we need things or we think that something’s
out to get us. What is the world really like beyond all that drama? Now, the interesting thing is that
if this is kind of a downer for you, it’s like, well, I wanted to enter special states of mind
and things like that. The interesting thing is that when you are free of all of these little
narratives, all of these little hypnotic states, then you have the power to basically participate
in them as though they are real. Not only that, but you can induce them and create them in other
people with great efficacy. You naturally develop the ability to hypnotize people. And hopefully
you will use your powers for good instead of evil. Okay. So just having that perspective where
suddenly you are free of all of the narratives or almost all the narratives that are going on
on around you okay um it gives you the ability to um see all these little dramas from the outside
and then you can choose which drama you want to create or which drama you want to participate in
the choice is yours and you really don’t get caught in them anymore because you know they’re
really not real all right so hopefully that that clarifies something about hypnosis okay
um i’m not defining hypnosis the way that a doctor would define it or the way that a psychologist
would define it that’s too limiting okay because the people who are making these definitions are
also hypnotized okay they’re seeing you know hypnosis in terms of of um of you know trying
to make people better in other words chasing this dangling carrot of good health or something like
that okay uh when it comes the the perspective of the perspective on the the perspective that
we develop over hypnosis from an enlightened state of mind let’s say okay or from a perspective that
is relatively free of all these little dramas the perspective is to to look back upon humanity and
say wow everybody’s caught up in some kind of hypnotic drama amazing amazing that’s kind of
of the the state of mind that we’ve evolved into you know and it uh there are very few people who
have um awakened from that very few and of course now the job is clear wake up so we practice these
various magical techniques it’s kind of interesting too because these magical techniques are like
aren’t we just inducing other states of hypnosis these are all like mind games anyway like well
i’m drawing a circle magic circle around myself isn’t that a sort of hypnotic thing right creating
a reality that isn’t really there. So when you do magic, you are deliberately restructuring
the hypnotic state that you’re in. You’re starting to play with it in ways that are
showing it to not be what you think it is. And in some way, there really isn’t any escape
from it too. Because if you are incarnated as a human being on earth, that’s already
a state of hypnosis okay so you’re kind of because we you have sort of fallen into this realm of the
flesh or something like that you’ve already bought into some kind of drama and now well now you’re in
it okay and now you’re sort of working yourself free okay um but the cool thing is it’s possible
to be free of that drama even while you’re still in it and then it’s bliss it’s it’s enlightenment
It is enlightenment that has a tremendous amount of joy and freedom, a type of freedom that you cannot experience if you don’t have a body.
So the ecstasy of enlightenment is really only possible in a body, I would say, whether it’s a physical body or an astral body.
There needs to be some kind of drama going on so that you can experience that freedom from the drama in the midst of the drama, if that makes sense.
all right i think um i just saw a video about blood magic and the use of blood and magic
and it had me thinking about um what what we used to think that um hypnotism was we thought it was
sort of an animal magnetism that we exert upon each other or something like that right and i
think there’s some truth to that so i think next week i would like to talk about um uh the uh
astral substance and the use of blood and magic and also some other things like the blood of the
gods like ichor and the metaphor of nectar that occurs in some of the eastern traditions
okay or the elixir of immortality i think i want to talk about some of these things
yeah and it could be a little bit disturbing too because then we’ll talk about the use of blood
and various other bodily fluids in magic all right so until next time
Source: Lyam Christopher