Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism

n Experience.--Accountable for Children's C

ows. One of these professionals gives an account in his book of what he calls "The Wonderful Lock Method." He says that though he is locked up in a separate room he can make the psychic power work through the walls. All that he does is to put his subjects in the way of hypnotizing themselves. He shows his inconsistency when he states that under certain ci

subjects as well as to the professional operators, till those subjects even impose upon scientific men who ought to be proof against such deception. Moreover, the possibility of self-hypnotization, carefully concealed and called by another name, opens another great field of humbug and charlatanism, of which the advertising columns of the newspapers are constantly

elf. It will be remembered that a professional hypnotizer or magnetizer had hypnotized him by

mighty fire. I was fearfully conscious of myself. Having read vivid accounts of dreams, visions, etc., it occurred to me that I would experience them. I felt in a vague way that there were beings all about me but could not hear their voices. I felt as though every muscle in my body was fixed and rigid. The roar in my ears grew louder still, and I heard, above the roar, reports which sounded like artillery and musketry. Then above the din of the noise a

s a rag," and thought he was dead. He says it took him ten minutes t

would happen when the attempt was made to hypnotize me. Secondly, I wished to be hypnotized. Thes

is a difference. His descriptions of dreams bear a wonderful likeness to De Quincey's dreams, such as those described in "The

be hypnotized, and strained attention, united with a vivid imagination, are causes which are often foun

and are ready to believe anything or do anything. By prolonging the operation, a whole community becomes more or less hypnotized. In all such cases, ho

nge movements of whole communities during the Crusades are to be explained either on the theory of hypnotization or of contagion, and possibly these two things will turn out to be much the same in fact. On no other ground can we explain the so-c

will last sometimes for several hours. Dr. Cocke says that he has experimented in this direction with patients of his. Says he: "They have the ability to resist the state or to bring it at will. Many

in history is that of the mystic Swedenborg, who saw, such strange

re systematically developed than with us of the West. The performances of the dervishes, and also of the fakirs, who wound them

they believe themselves to be possessed. If their own ideals of the part they are playing are imperfect, their impersonations are ridiculous in the extreme. One man I remember believed himself to be controlled by the spirit of Charles Sumner. Being

, and a long interval of time, say from one-half to two hours, will be a complete blank. During this condition of auto-hypnotization I will