Despite my last blog entry, I’m not against the responsible use of hypnotism – especially SELF-HYPNOTISM.

Why be a color on someone else’s palette?

We’re ALL hypnotized unless we’re self-realized or God-realized.

Adano Ley (Swami Nitty-Gritty) explained …

“Relativity is an optical illusion generated by terminology. You don’t have a free mind. You are hypnotized. You live a life of self-deception. We live an environmental lie every day – it’s called illusion.”

Hippolyte Bernheim, M.D. (1840-1919) wrote …

“We are all suggestible. No one can escape the suggestive influence of others.”

Our ego consciousness is a rogue immune system defending against out-of-the-box concepts.

Boris Sidis, Ph.D., M.D. (1867-1923) wrote …

“The stream of an individual’s consciousness combats suggested ideas as an organism does bacteria and bacilli that tend to disturb the stability of its equilibrium.”

The more CENTERED your gaze is, the less hypnotized you are.

This was known by medical doctors way back when Andrew Jackson was the U.S. President.

In fact, back then (1829-1837) and extending into the Presidency of James Buchanan (1857-1861), doctors routinely hypnotized folks to throw their “spectacles” away, including eyeglasses used for over a decade.

They even hypnotized some deaf people to hear again and some blind people to see again.

There were many examples of paralyzed folks walking again.

Hmmmm. Not much of that seems to be going on today, even among renowned hypnotists like Milton H. Erickson, M.D. (1901-1980).

Scottish physician James Braid (1795-1860) – the “Father of Modern Hypnotism” – did that sort of thing routinely.

These “remission-of-symptom” stories are 21st Century anomalies because there’s more ca$h to be earned fighting disease with DRUG$.

Now hypnotism is confined to New Agers, and, frankly, most know little about it.

For example, you can use a person’s left eye to hypnotize the left side of their body.

Or, you can use their right eye to hypnotize the right side of their body.

(So much for left brain/right side, right brain/left side – something known by Reflexologists and Iridologists.)

Or, the “pseudoscience” of phrenology – reading the bumps on the skull – was proved to be legitimate via hypnotism by none other than James Braid.

However, the phrenology charts available today are mostly inaccurate. :(

A classic example of hypnotic suggestion is DANCING MANIA (choreomania), known in medieval Europe as St. Vitus’ Dance.

Reductionist science blames St. Vitus’s Dance on ergot, despite the glossed-over fact that ergot poisoning causes convulsions and paralysis, not sustained and rhythmic dancing that continued for days and even weeks, and sometimes involved thousands of people a a time … as well as sexual intercourse and orgies.

Also ignored by reductionist science is that these “dancing plagues” occurred throughout the world and throughout history.

Maybe we’re due for another dance-away in 2012?

There was bacchanalianism in Greece, tarantism in Italy, and Voudou dancing in the Caribbean islands.

I’ve experienced Dancing Mania back in my Sufi days.

I’ve been in manic states like the time I threw myself up in the air and landed flat on my back (without injury) over and over and over again …

… and when we finally stopped dancing, I sat in a tailor position and shook so violently that within an hour I had rotated more than 360 degrees and worn two layers of skin off my bum.