Hypnosis

Franz A. Mesmer, whose theories of “animal magnetism” were the origin of the modern practice of hypnosis

Using the power of the mind (one’s own or another’s) to bring about change in one or more of the four lower bodies.

Origins

This practice has its origins with the Austrian mystic and physician Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815). Practicing medicine in Vienna in the eighteenth century, Dr. Mesmer was to have a profound effect on the fields of science and medicine of his day and to the present. He taught that man was affected by the planets and stars through the medium of an energy field that acted as a fluid because it flowed in, around and through all of Matter. He said that “everything in the universe is contiguous by means of a universal fluid in which all bodies are immersed.”

Mesmer discovered that “all things in nature possess a particular power, which manifests itself by special actions on other bodies.” He found that he could control and direct emanations of energy to his patients, either nearby or at a great distance, and that this action would result in miraculous cures of the diseased.

One of those who took up Mesmer’s work was Phineas Quimby (1802–1866), an American pioneer in the field of mental healing. The experiments of Quimby and Mesmer paved the way for the medical use of hypnosis.

Hypnosis and healing

Hypnosis is effective in healing conditions in the physical body through the power of suggestion that works in the etheric body through the subconscious mind. The power to change, therefore, is not of the higher type that would be called transmutation or divine alchemy; the power of change through hypnosis comes about because we are by the power of the etheric body, the memory body, determining that we shall change conditions in our consciousness or in the physical body.

However, the karmic record leading to a condition in the body is not transmuted, the cause is not taken, and therefore the effect must someday manifest. Unless the use of the sacred fire through the violet transmuting flame is made, the negative condition is simply dissolved in the physical by the power of your lower body, your etheric body. The record remains, and at some future time, perhaps in a future embodiment, that condition will reappear.

Dangers of hypnosis

The effectiveness of hypnosis is well documented. However, there is a price that is paid. Hypnosis is dangerous because you do not maintain the use of your own free will; someone else is given authority over your consciousness when hypnosis is administered.

When you allow another to enter into your consciousness, this means that whatever they are composed of—good and bad—is imposed upon you, and though you may receive some benefit, you also receive the negative momentums of that individual. Furthermore, the only way you can return and ascend to God is by the conscious use of your free will.

The only identity that should be given control over your consciousness is your God Presence—and the ascended masters who are wholly one with God and therefore cannot pass on to you any influence that is not of the light.

The Great Divine Director warns against the use of hypnosis:

Unfortunately, individuals who are not completely oriented around divine truth sometimes submit to an attempt to utilize the power of hypnosis in order to accomplish seeming miracles through the power of the subconscious. As your beloved ascended friends of light have told you so often, you ought never to submit your being to the control of any person or hypnotist, even for seemingly benign purposes. Nor should you practice so-called autohypnosis; for the energies required to perform this type of action, while seemingly innocent enough, actually diminish the power of the soul of man; and while they may seem productive of good for a time, the ultimate long-range effect is not freedom, but bondage. “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.”

Mesmer’s theory of “animal magnetism”

Mesmer believed that his techniques were accomplished by means of an “occult force,” which he termed “animal magnetism,” flowing through the hypnotist to the subject. This theory was discredited because it could not be proven scientifically.

However, it is true that when one individual allows another to take over his mind by allowing free admission to his subconscious or memory body, he is subject to the “lifestream”—the flow of energies working through the hypnotist, particularly to the impurities of his lower nature. These can be taken on and later outpictured by the subject without his knowing the source of the unwholesome influence.

Hypnosis by the mass media

In this same manner, the mass media of communication exert a hypnotic influence upon the public, lulling the consciousness into a type of lethargic trance, while feeding the subconscious mind with discord, violence, raw emotion and every other unwanted condition until the masses become controlled computers, storing whatever the enemy desires to plant in the memory body and triggering its release at a later time.

Sources

Mark L. Prophet and Elizabeth Clare Prophet, Paths of Light and Darkness, chapter 2, “Psychic Thralldom.”