You will note that I use two words—“inspiration” and “suggestion.” I
inspire a hypnotized subject. I suggest to him in the so-called normal
state. A pupil writes me that Mrs. Jones has been suffering from
headaches; he _inspired_ her with the thought of “no headache”
and she went away seemingly all right, which immediately informs me
that he hypnotized her; but if he writes me that she called and he
_suggested_ to her “no headache,” I know that he did not hypnotize
her. He may have stroked her head, assured her that the headache would
pass away; he may have given her a blank pill, or even a drug. He used
methods other than hypnosis, but obeyed the law that is demonstrated
in hypnosis.
[Sidenote: Fakirs of India]
It is claimed that the rope trick of the fakirs of India is performed
through “hypnosis.” No. The first proof is that the spectators remember
what they “saw” (?), whereas if they had been hypnotized, there would
have been no memory of it after the “hypnosis” had passed off. This
trick, if done, is the same as the sleight-of-hand performer makes you
accept when he places a dollar with his right hand in his left and then
causes it to disappear. He goes through the entire motion of placing it
there except the actual doing so; that, he forces you to deduce; and
if this rope trick of India is, it is simply the result of a master
knowledge of suggestion that forces you to deduce the expected result.
[Sidenote: Pain a thought]
Pain is a thought; the suggestion or _cause_ exists. I pinch your
arm; where do you feel it? In your arm? That is not true, because when
you are chloroformed you do not feel it. You feel it in the brain. Oh,
yes. In the brain; then it is thought. Baby comes crying to mother—she
has hurt her hand; mamma kisses it and the baby goes away smiling; the
mother being scientific (?), instead of nursing the pretty thought
that a kiss from mamma will remove pain, teaches the child to be
afraid, and adds attributes—including the doctor—and by and by the
child has associated with the thought of doctor only a man who gives
nasty medicine and hurts. Teach the children that pain is something to
be laughed at; fail to add attributes to pain—arouse thoughts of “no
pain.” I would rather spank a child for getting hurt than to console
it. If we spank it, it will think of the spanking, and will have a
little more pain, perhaps; though not at the seat of the original
trouble. I have seen children of ten years, in families of mental
scientists, hold their fingers over burning matches until blistered,
exhibiting no signs of pain.
[Sidenote: A beautiful demonstration]
You hypnotize a clever subject and tell him that he has no finger; you
can then stick pins in it, burn it, and he will not feel it, because
if he has no finger there is nothing to be hurt, a most beautiful
demonstration; but, my dear hypnotist, do not try this on a fool,
because he will “holler” unless you are smart. Tell him he has no
finger, it is gone; then explain to the audience that as he has no
finger, it is impossible for him to have pain from it; he cannot avoid
responding to your inspiration, the audience thinking you are talking
to them, when in truth you are talking to your subject; you can then
stick pins in his finger and be safe.
Again, if you inspire the subject with the thought of “no feeling,” put
a pin into him, and then commence talking to your audience about it,
you will find your subject will begin to howl; or if, after you have
withdrawn the pin and have a cowardly subject, you draw the audience’s
attention to the fact that he might have the nerve to stand the putting
in of the pin, but he could not control the flow of blood, saying “You
will note there is no blood,” the moment you utter the word “blood,”
blood will appear; but if the fellow is unlearned and you use the word
hemorrhage, he failing to comprehend, you are safe.
[Sidenote: Body controlled by the mind]
I could tell you of myriads of experiments which demonstrate beyond all
question that the body is entirely controlled by the mind; that pain
is a thought, and the thing we are most afraid of is that which our
mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and friends have done the best to
build in our “minds.”
Pain is a bugaboo.
[Sidenote: Good]
Your body is a house and an unwelcome neighbor calls. You try to smile;
ofttimes do. You invite him in and treat him with the best you have.
So let it be with pain, if he is going to enter the house, instead of
running away, meet him and sit down and talk to him. You will forget
his unpleasantness, because there is good in all, and if you are
looking for good you can find it, but if you are looking for “bad,”
you can find “bad.” A few years ago I failed to see any good in life,
because I overlooked the good and was quick to discover the “bad.”
To-day I can see much good and can overlook the “bad” and forget it;
I feel sorry for it; I know it is a disease, and who, other than a
degenerate (sensualist), can enjoy disease.
[Sidenote: Sympathetic system]
That the Sympathetic System receives sensations as well as responding,
was first impressed upon me when I was giving little cross-road
entertainments in the South. I arrived in town with a few handbills,
hired a hall, distributed the bills, got a few people interested,
hunted up a little negro boy, who, after being promised a quarter,
agreed to go on the stage. The little negro would have run if anybody
had told him I was going to stick pins in him. I got him on the
platform, and, after putting him through a performance of jumping out
of hot chairs, and brushing flies off his nose, et cetera, I inspired
him with the thought of “no feeling,” and, we will say, stuck a hat pin
through his left ear, afterward taking him among the audience, allowing
the doctors and others to examine him. I removed the pin, put him
through more “monkey-shines” and ultimately awakened him.
As he started to leave the hall, the doctor said to him, “Did Mr.
Santanelli hurt you when he stuck those pins in you?”
“No, suh; he done stick no pins in me, suh;” and the left hand rubbed
the left ear. If I had pierced his right ear, he would always put his
hand up to that ear. There was no question but that he was thoroughly
_unconscious_ of the pin having been put into him. Why and
wherefore, then, was the hand always put to the proper place, if the
Sympathetic System does not receive impressions? A hypnotized subject
does not use his cerebrum.
[Sidenote: Statuary]
[Sidenote: Change of thought]
[Sidenote: Completing action]
In my “Living Statuary,” where I inspire the subjects with, “When you
open your eyes you will juggle balls in the air; when I call _now_
you will be stiff as iron, stone, you cannot move a muscle; now open
your eyes;” they go to juggling, I call, “now,” and they are perfectly
rigid in whatever position they are in when I speak the word, “now”;
their eyes are immovable. It was here I first learned that the eye
blinks every time one gets a different or new thought. I tell the
subjects to close their eyes, and their hands drop to their sides and
they are limber. If one is not expert the subjects will fall. If a
subject, during the “statuary,” is put to whistling, and I call, “now,”
he will stop; when I release him he will _complete_ the whistle.
If he is uttering a word he will stop and when I release him he will
_complete_ the word, something that no “normal” being can do; the
same with sneezing.
[Sidenote: Abdominal brain]
When the subjects are baseball pitchers I stop them in the middle of an
action, and when I release them they _complete_ the action. One
evening, in Kentucky, the boys were defending themselves from an eagle;
one of them had his coat off and started throwing it at the eagle; I
produced the catalepsy, and when I released him out of that rigidity
the coat passed or was thrown into the gallery of the theater. Where
did he get the energy, how did he complete the action? The “mind” will
hold but one thought at a time. When they open their eyes they are
jugglers going through the actions they have seen jugglers perform.
When I call “now” to them they think of rigidity, the action of which
thought is catalepsy, when I tell them to close their eyes, they
think of relaxation, yet complete the _first_ thought, having a
_third_ thought in their “mind,” an utterly impossible thing to
conceive, other than that action is received and executed by separate
brain conditions. It was through noting these effects that in 1895 I
preached an Abdominal Brain. At that time, having no comprehension as
to what I was talking about, but being familiar enough with actions of
the subjects to note that it was an utter impossibility for _all_
to be done with the brain system as now understood (?).
Now, dear reader, we have covered all the different phases of hypnosis,
how and why it is, how to induce it, et cetera. This book answers
all questions as to hypnosis if you have the comprehension to pick
them out. On the premise here given you, I have yet to fail to give
a logical and _comprehensive_ explanation to the thousands of
questions asked me by students, doctors, ministers, lawyers and laymen
before whom I lecture.
[Sidenote: Memory (?)]
[Sidenote: No memory]
You are satisfied if you comprehend; yet a most important question you
have failed to ask me—not you who have not tried, but the amateurs.
I lead into hypnosis Mrs. Santanelli and tell her when she opens her
eyes she will find in her lap an object which she will describe to me;
to open her eyes; she does so, takes up the object and describes it.
While she is describing it, I say, “all right” and clap my hands; she
awakens, and I ask her what she has been doing and she has no memory
whatever. I have her again take on hypnosis, ask her what she was doing
in the last “hypnosis,” and she tells me. Why is it the hypnotized
subject has no memory of what has taken place in “hypnosis” when he is
actually awake, yet while in “hypnosis” has a memory of the previous
hypnosis? Why this contradiction, what does it mean? How is it that
the subject does not see his _present_ environment, but sees the
environment of the picture I arouse for him? Why this contradiction? I
will explain it to you.
[Sidenote: Memory defined]
Memory is the registration of ideas. The subject, having no memory,
proves that nothing has been registered cerebrally; again, it is
impossible to register through one sense that which the economy of man
intended to be registered through another. Therefore, we put nothing
in through the cerebrum. When I talk to a subject he does not hear me
cerebrally, if he did he would always remember what I said to him. The
subject only responds to me.
[Sidenote: Consciousness]
[Sidenote: Insulation]
[Sidenote: Decapitated]
Consciousness, realization, is cerebral. Sense-impressions pass through
the cerebrum yet are actually registered in the Sympathetic System.
_Every_ cerebral nerve is accompanied by a sympathetic nerve. Many
sympathetic nerves are alone. This makes the so-called brain system a
two-wire system. I believe it to be a _three-wire_ system. I say
to a hypnotized subject, “You have no feeling in your finger” (touching
the finger); the Sympathetic System immediately contracts the tissue
over the cerebral nerve and insulates it; yet the Sympathetic System
is conscious of any irritation that I make on the designated place,
showing that it receives the impression free of the cerebrum. The
Sympathetic System can work free and independently of the cerebral,
but the cerebrum cannot work free of the sympathetic, because the
sympathetic is the actual machinery that does the work, the cerebral
brain simply being the realizing brain. In a hypnotized subject the
cerebrum is inactive, as in hypnosis the impulse is received through
and responded to by the Sympathetic System. The experiment made by
all students of decapitating a frog, irritating a nerve-end and the
“normal” action taking place, proves my affirmation. A hypnotized
subject is as a _decapitated being_. Feeling is never eliminated
until death. _Conscious_ feeling—yes. If the Abdominal Brain did
not know what was taking place it would lose its control over the body,
therefore, feeling as to the Sympathetic System cannot be obliterated.
[Sidenote: Hudson]
[Sidenote: One mind]
Hudson’s philosophy of objective and subjective mind will not hold
water, inasmuch as it is based on the premise than man is a free agent
and can discriminate. Now, this subject is so thoroughly illustrated in
the barber story, the banjo story, the story of crime, that really it
is not worthy of discussion, although the entire public has seemingly
endorsed a most false theory, manufactured to explain a condition that
the alleged “authority” was not capable of explaining. We have but
_one_ mind; we are entirely creatures of our environment; our
every action, our every thought, is simply the transforming into other
action, of suggestion. The ability to discriminate is impossible.
Ofttimes men say that the ability to perform a mathematical problem is
an example that man is a free agent and capable of thinking. Can a Fiji
Islander, having no knowledge of figures, solve a mathematical problem?
Can the son of the most brilliant mathematician do so until he has gone
to school and had the ideas associated on his “cylinder?” Those who
have the ideas properly registered will respond to the problem; they
will all work it out in the same way, getting identically the same
result, proving that the problem was simply a suggestion that forced
into action ideas (actions) already associated.