Complete Hypnotism, Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism: How to Hypnotize: Being an Exhaustive and Practical System of Method, Application, and UseAlpheus, A.
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Complete Hypnotism, Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism: How to Hypnotize: Being an Exhaustive and Practical System of Method, Application, and Use
Alpheus, A.
Hypnotism; Mesmerism; Spiritualism; Telepathy
“In my room that evening it occurred to me to try the same experiment.
I did so. I kept the number twenty-six in my mind. In a few minutes I
felt the sensation of terror, but in a different way. I was intensely
cold. My heart seemed to stand still. I had ringing in my ears. My hair
seemed to rise upon my scalp. I persisted in the effort, and the
previously mentioned noise in my ears grew louder and louder. The roar
became deafening. It crackled like a 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 musical chord. I seemed to be absorbed in this chord. I
knew nothing else. The world existed for me only in the tones of the
mighty chord. Then I had a sensation as though I were expanding. The
sound in my ears died away, and yet I was not conscious of silence.
Then all consciousness was lost. The next thing I experienced was a
sensation of intense cold, and of someone roughly shaking me. Then I
heard the voice of my jolly landlord calling me by name.”
The landlord had found the doctor “as white as a ghost and as limp as a
rag,” and thought he was dead. He says it took him ten minutes to
arouse the sleeper. During the time a physician had been summoned.
As to the causes of this condition as produced Dr. Cocke says: “I
firmly believed that something would happen when the attempt was made
to hypnotize me. Secondly, I wished to be hypnotized. These, together
with a vivid imagination and strained attention, brought on the states
which occurred.”
It is interesting to compare the effects of hypnotization with those of
opium or other narcotic. Dr. Cocke asserts that there is a difference.
His descriptions of dreams bear a wonderful likeness to De Quincey’s
dreams, such as those described in “The English Mail-Coach,” “De
Profundis,” and “The Confessions of an English Opium Eater,” all of
which were presumably due to opium.
The causes which Dr. Cocke thinks produced the hypnotic condition in
his case, namely, belief, desire to be hypnotized, and strained
attention, united with a vivid imagination, are causes which are often
found in conjunction and produce effects which we may reasonably
explain on the theory of self-hypnotization.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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