The Invisible Influence
By Alexander Cannon
Chapter V
The Science of Hypnotism and Telepathy
THAT was the last I saw of the Governor-General, for before sunset that very day we set off on our search of the unknown, travelling through little-known territory with various guides; and for forty-two days we travelled in sedan-like chairs nearing Thibet, where the great mystery Lhama Convent lay, surrounded by all its legends and truth. This would be our last stopping place before our final trip to the great Convent, where lay even the very secret of life itself.
We were not long in finding a large spacious old cave residence, which was welcome; for at this height the warmth of the tropics was no more, and the cold of the mountain winds could be felt.
I mused to myself on the science of hypnotism and telepathy as the philosophy of personal influence, the invisible influence which guides the destiny of mankind. I reflected that everything that is worth doing, is worth doing well. A man is as bethinks. Deeds are greater than words.
To the really sceptical whether ignorant or learned, while he is in a state of perturbation or disinclination to listen, be wise and 'cast not thy pearls before swine!' 'Be wise as the serpent and [89] harmless as the dove.' The serpent is the greatest hypnotist and telepathist of all the animal kingdom. The beast never rushes its victim. It gradually makes the intended victim aware of its presence by the subtle motion of its head. The attention of its prey secured, the serpent with consummate skill gets gradually closer and closer; never for one moment do its fascinating eyes uncover those of its prey. By a psychological and physiological law, now known to science, the methods employed cause a complete paralysis of the volition or will, even to the complete anaesthesia of certain centres of the brain; and victory is complete. There is no cruelty in this act of nature and method, as the victim is absolutely unconscious of pain or even of existence while he is devoured.
I well remember a friend of mine in the wilds just going ahead of me for a while, and at length I shouted to him, but received no reply. Soon I found him, standing, as it were, at attention, looking into space: I wondered what was the matter, as he spoke not when I touched him, and he felt not my presence; touch, sound and sight were for the time being in abeyance. Then my eye momentarily caught a glimpse of a serpent wending its way slowly towards him, with a fascinating rhythmic movement of the head and its eyes glued upon him the whole of the time. The serpent had hypnotized him! I, then, took hold of my life-preserver and hit the beast forcefully upon the head several times [90] and then upon the neck, as it began to fall to the ground. Almost immediately my friend was dehypnotized, spoke to me, and asked what was my plight. When I faced him with the fact that he had been hypnotized and that only a few moments ago he was about to be killed by a serpent, he laughed at me thinking I was trying some of my own hypnotic tests on him, in the waking state. However, I soon directed his attention to the serpent which would have taken his life. He then understood, but told me that he had no recollection of the event at all, and that he did not even remember seeing the serpent. How kind is nature; how considerate the serpent in making man oblivious to his fate, so saving him mental and physical pain!
The Greatest Ruler in the World
I then began to muse that hypnotism is the greatest and most powerful ruler of this mighty world we live in. Daily we live under its spell and unconscious of its influence. Indeed, it is a state of mind in which suggestions both verbal and visual are received as true, whether they are or not, and there is an irresistible desire to carry out effectively the suggestions made. I began to think for a moment how we live in a world of suggestion and how we unconsciously imitate the actions of those whom we admire. Even the child imitates the actions of its elders. We eat, dress and live in accordance with custom which in its very essence is suggestion. The [91] power of suggestion and the power of the will are surely very closely linked up together.
We sit at the feet of the great orator and every word he utters has magic power, and for the time being holds undivided sway in our minds. This is exactly what happened in the days of Jesus Christ, the greatest of all hypnotists, the Master Mind on Earth, whose words had untold power. Did not the hymn-writers record that, "No word from Thee can fruitless fall"? When we listen to the great orator and are entranced for the time being, forgetting that we are sitting in the edifice, but letting our thoughts be carried away with the orator, we are, for the time being, in a very mild and early suggestible stage of actual hypnosis or hypnotism. In some way which we know not, the orator has linked up his mind with ours and by so doing has commanded a power over us to such an extent that we will travel miles to hear him again.
The Secret of Hypnosis
Take this thought a stage further and you will see that the conscious effort of another to produce the hypnotic state in us only requires our belief in the hypnotizer that he can hypnotize us, and we shall magically and rapidly come under his spell.
The Great Leaders of Old
Hippocrates, the father of medicine, in the days of old, used hypnotism, although this state [92] of the mind was not known as such until James Braid, the Manchester Surgeon, gave this name to it, from the Greek origin which means sleep. Mohamet, the epileptic Indian prophet; Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the World; The Yogi and fakirs of India; the Christian Scientists, the followers of Mary Baker Eddy; Spiritualists; Clairvoyant mediums and the leaders of all generations, including Napoleon the epileptic — some knowingly and others unknowingly — used and still use hypnotism.
Hypnotism is really the control of the unconscious mind of man, of the conscious mind of man, of man himself, whether it be himself that controls his life so perfectly as in auto-hypnosis as practised by the Yogi; or hetero-hypnosis which is the hypnosis practised by others upon the subject. Napoleon controlled his thoughts in this way: "When I want to think of things more pleasant, I close up the cupboards of my mind revealing the more unpleasant things of life, and open up the cupboards containing the more pleasant thoughts. If I want to sleep, I close up all the cupboards of my mind!"
As I was still musing, my friend the Sage returned from his walk up the mountain-side to inquire the way to the great Lhama Monastery or Convent; that great secret school of the greatest of all learning near Lhasa in the great unknown Thibet, where the people are nearly as white as we are, but have faces somewhat resembling the noble Parsee community, which [93] totals about eighty thousand, out of all the millions and millions of India's population. Here, when a man marries into a family, the girl marries all his brothers also, as the womenfolk are few.
The Sage brought with him also on horse-back a mysterious austere personage in scarlet robes, black cap and only one arm. He was the great messenger of the Lhama Convent, situate up yonder near the gods, high up away from the disturbing elements of civilization: yet therein was the secret of all civilization, the secret of all knowledge, and the secret of life itself.
The Knight Commander, for that is who he was, had brought the great tidings that I was to be soon honoured with that highest of titles, Knight Commander of Asia, which is equal to an Earl in this country. The news was equally astonishing and surprising to me. How could he know; who would tell him; why should he know? Yet time proved that the telepathic message which he had accurately received through all those thousand of miles was true and an actual fact. As was the custom, I invited my honoured guest to remain with us so long as His Excellency cared to be pleased to stay at our new massive cave dwelling, which was probably the best within miles and miles around. Having filled his belly to the full, and rested awhile; as dusk drew nigh (for now dusk once more was an actual phenomenon, whereas [94] in the tropics the day turns into night almost in the twinkling of an eye), he began to ask questions, and amongst the many were, "Surely in Europe you do not consider mesmerism or hypnotism, which we call the psychic state, to be only one state of mind, but are there not many stages: now tell me?"
I proceeded to word my answer as follows: "The stages of hypnotism as we know it in Europe, vary from almost complete consciousness to complete unconsciousness. By consciousness, I imply all the thoughts which we are fully aware of at this very moment and nothing more. Unconsciousness implies a state of mind in which we are not aware of what is taking place in the outer world around us. The conscious mind is identical with consciousness. The unconscious mind is a mental state in which we think of things without consciously being aware that we are thinking of those things. It is these workings of our unconscious mind which guide our daily life and adjust, or even alter, our personality."
The Knight then asked me if I could show him anything on the "higher planes of the psychic state which could be demonstrated in the lower planes of the body". I had to think carefully concerning his question, for to misunderstand it would be a tragedy and to infer that I did not fully comprehend his learned interrogation would be disastrous. So I proceeded, calling and commanding my chief boy [95] and the house boy also to sit down in these two chairs. They did so. Then with a wave of my hand I sent them both into a deep hypnotic trance. Having demonstrated this fact to the satisfaction of my Distinguished Guest, I continued with my experiments.
I commanded the chief boy to open his eyes, without awakening, and to add up a list of figures on the right-hand side of the paper (in fact there were two columns of figures, one on the left-hand side and one on the right-hand side, but for the left-hand side column a negative hallucination was produced; that is, he was told he could not see any other figures on the paper but the column of figures to which I had referred), and having done so, to close his eyes again. This being done, I then repeated the experiments with the house boy. I asked the chief boy what he noticed about the figures, and he told me as he added up the column, the figures became smaller and smaller. Afterwards I asked the house boy, and he replied that the figures became fainter and fainter as he added up the column of figures. The explanation is that during the hypnotic state the field of consciousness is greatly limited, and therefore if it be assumed that to begin with the person's visual capacity is ten-tenths, then when he has added up six-tenths of the column, he has only four-tenths of his consciousness left for vision, the other six-tenths having been taken up in the process of addition.
When the subject has added nine-tenths of the column, he has only one-tenth left at his disposal to see and therefore the result is either a very small number visible, or a faint and indistinct number. The same applies to hearing and addition. (See The Lancet, Nov. 19th, 1932. <http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673601181547>)
The chief boy was a well-educated Peking (Peiping) scholar and he was asked to go through the multiplication tables from twice one are two, right through to twelve times twelve are one hundred and forty-four. Without being instructed he went through (as ascertained after the experiment) the first, second, third, fourth and fifth multiplication tables, seeing them as if printed on a sheet; black background with white numbers. But he could no longer see them and had to now listen to imaginary children saying them, and continued to do so right through the six, seven, eight, nine and ten times; but then he could neither, see the tables nor hear the children say them, and so had to "say" them to himself, to the end of the tables. I have since carried out numerous tests and found that this applies to all peoples and that as the person tested is lower in the scale of intelligence, there is less visual and more auditory thought: still lower in the scale practically only what I term movement or kinaesthetic thought occurs, the person having to "say" the tables to himself. A great psychological lesson is demonstrated that as mental fatigue sets in, the process of thought transforms from visual [97] to auditory, and from auditory to kinaesthetic; in other words, from pure seeing, to hearing, to doing. This does not uphold the idea of many psychological theorists that visual is the most primitive type of thought. I would suggest that whilst symbolism in picture form is a primitive type of thought, nevertheless visual thought itself is one of the highest forms of thought and one of the very best of aids to memory, without which there would be no growth of mind.
Other experiments carried out even in this remote part of the world showed that suicidal tendencies, as well as other tendencies and complexes, are readily detected, and love attachments noted.
The Austere Personage at this point interrupted, and asked what my explanation was concerning the cure of stammering by hypnosis. I pointed out that stammerers are permanently cured by hypnosis, and that I believe the reason is that the stammerer is normally a person who thinks in terms of hearing (that is, when he thinks of a field he does not mainly think of a green field, leafy trees, hedges, of the river flowing by, and the cows eating the grass, but instead he hears the rustling of the trees, the lullaby of the leaves, the river rippling, and the cows chewing their cud), but during hypnosis he becomes a visual thinker, as determined by my Psychograph records, and the subjective examination afterwards. It amounts to this, [98] that the subject can easily picture a thing during the hypnotic state which he can only recall in terms of hearing in the waking state and pays little or no attention to actually picturing things. This suggests that the reason for so many "cures" of stammering by " periods of silence "or rest treatment and the like, is that, when they do not speak and do not hear others speak, their mind begins to think in pictures.
At this point the Knight Commander intercepted: "Do you know that hypnosis and sleep can both occur without loss of consciousness?"
Hypnosis and Sleep without Unconsciousness
It has been shown that sleep can occur without loss of consciousness and loss of consciousness without sleep. Is hypnosis a particular form of sleep? Fatigue is not necessary for either sleep or hypnosis. Fatigue might actually prevent sleep. You have heard of Pavlov (Pawlaw) and his theory which explains sleep and hypnosis as varieties of cortical inhibition; that is, the higher cells of the brain are not working. He states that the cortical elements are functionally exhausted with comparative ease and speaks of a 'scattered sleep' or sleep of separate groups of cellular structures. Greater mental effort can actually send some people to sleep."
After a few more comments, we retired to our well-earned rest, the Sage not having uttered a word.
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