SUBJECT: Hypnosis
QUESTION: Should a true Christian engage in any form
of hypnosis?
ANSWER:
No, a Christian should never engage in any form of
hypnosis. The following was taken from a source on the
Internet and speaks well to the history and the many dangers
of this practice.
Hypnosis - Christian or Occult?
In these days of supposed great stress
and strain, hypnosis claims to offer relief for the masses.
Hypnosis has become the therapeutic tool health
professionals are pulling out of the bag to battle smoking
and weight problems; manage anxiety, fears, and phobias;
relieve pain; overcome depression; improve a person's sex
life; cure maladies such as asthma and hay fever; undergo
chemotherapy without nausea; prompt injuries to heal more
quickly; and improve grades. Otherwise legitimate medical
doctors use hypnosis as part of the healing process to
reduce the side effects from drugs, to help speed patient
recovery, and reduce post-operative discomfort. Dentists are
using hypnotic techniques in conjunction with nitrous oxide
to relax patients, minimize pain and bleeding, and control
patient gas reflex during procedures.
The sad part of it all is that even some unsuspecting
Christians are willing to "try it." A 1992 newspaper ad
placed by a "Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist" (there
is even an "American Society for Clinical Hypnosis")
made some amazing statements that indicate just how
unbiblical (i.e., New Age) the technique of hypnosis
is:
"Hypnosis is the most effective method
of changing the way you think, feel and act. When you align
your subconscious mind -- your inner
voice -- with your conscious mind, you erase
conflicting beliefs that hold you back. You can then move
forward, without sabotaging yourself. Clinical hypnotic
techniques guide you to a relaxed, peaceful state of mind.
You remain in total control while learning how to use the
power of your full mind to create a strong desire to
accomplish your goal. You can change your life."
Hypnosis is nothing new. It has been
used for thousands of years by witchdoctors, spirit mediums,
shamans, Hindus, Buddhists, and yogis. But the increasing
popularity of hypnosis for healing in the secular world has
influenced many in the professing church to accept hypnosis
as a means of treatment. Both non-Christian and professing
Christian medical doctors, dentists, psychiatrists, and
psychologists are recommending and using hypnosis.
Although a hypnotist may encourage only a light or medium
trance, he cannot prevent a hypnotized subject from
spontaneously plunging into the danger zone, which may
include a sense of separation from the body, seeming
clairvoyance, hallucination, mystical states similar to
those described by Eastern mystics, and even what hypnotism
researcher Ernest Hilgard describes as "demonic possession."
We would argue that hypnosis is occultic at any trance
level, but at its deeper levels, hypnosis is
unmistakably occult.
There is some controversy as to whether or not a hypnotist
can cause a person to do something against his will. Many
hypnotists say categorically that the will cannot be
violated. However, the evidence is otherwise. Hypnosis
heightens a person's suggestibility to the point that the
subject will believe almost anything the hypnotist tells him
-- even to the point of hallucinating at the hypnotist's
suggestion. During hypnosis, a person's critical abilities
are reduced in such a way as to create what has been called
a "trance logic" that undiscerningly accepts what would
normally seem irrational, illogical, and incompatible.
Because almost anything can be made to seem plausible to
someone in the trance state, it is possible for a hypnotized
person to act against his will -- to do what he would not do
outside of the hypnotic state. Hypnosis bypasses the will by
placing personal responsibility outside of objective,
rational, critical choice. With normal evaluating abilities
submerged, suggestibility heightened, and rational restraint
reduced, the will is seriously hampered and is, at the very
least, capable of being violated.
One popular use of hypnosis has been that of searching the
memory by "going back into childhood." Some patients even
describe experiencing what they believe to be their life in
the womb and subsequent birth. (This
is impossible, however, because of the neurological,
scientific fact that the myelin sheathing is too
underdeveloped in the prenatal, natal, and early postnatal
brain to store such memories.) Still others
describe some sort of disembodied state and then what they
identify as past lives and former identities. How much of
this is created by heightened suggestibility, unrestrained
imagination, trance hallucination, or demonic intervention
cannot be determined. Furthermore, the Bible clearly
contradicts past lives and reincarnation -- "It is appointed
unto man once to die" (Heb. 9:27).
Hypnosis is not even reliable with recent recall. What is
"remembered" under hypnosis has often been created,
reconstructed, or enhanced during the state of heightened
suggestibility. Research indicates that after hypnosis, a
person is unable to distinguish between a true recollection
and what he imagined or created under the heightened
suggestibility. Hypnosis is just as likely to bring forth
false impressions as true accounts of past events. (Individuals
can
and
do
lie under hypnosis!) Hypnosis is thus more likely
to contaminate the memory than to help a person remember
what really happened.
Besides past life hypnotic therapy, some practitioners are
doing future life hypnotic therapy. The
hypnotized person supposedly sees future events, solves
murders, reveals the future fates of well-known
personalities, etc. One involved in this hypnotic time
travel must ask himself, "Where is the line of demarcation
between the demonic and the divine, between the realm of
Satan and Science? At what point does the door of darkness
open and the devil gain a foothold?"
- In today's landscape of promises for
self-fulfillment, self-mastery, personal well-being, and
quick fixes for problems of living, one could easily find
oneself in an environment conducive to hypnosis. One such
environment would be the regression into childhood memories
(see above).
Another would be in Large Group Awareness Training. The
Forum (formerly est),
Life Spring, and Momentus are the names of some of the more
well-known large-group training seminars that promise
life-transforming results. Using many of the ideas and
techniques of the encounter movement, such group sessions
attempt to alter participants' present way of thinking (mind
set, world view, personal faith, etc.) through
intense personal and group experiences. Some have marathon
meetings that last numerous hours and take advantage of
fatigue working together with much repetition, group
pressure, and various psychological techniques, some of
which attack personal belief systems and cause mental
confusion. The confusion technique, which is also a hypnotic
device, may be used to disorient the subject to make him
more responsive to cues. Michael Yapko says: "In the
confusion technique, you give a person more information than
they could possibly keep up with, you get them to question
everything, you make them feel uncertain as a way of
building up their motivation to attain certainty." While
hypnosis may not be intended or admitted in such large group
training sessions, the possibility is very strong for
participants to experience hypnotic suggestion,
dissociation, and impaired personal judgment. (Other
activities and settings where hypnosis may occur also
include: music, church services, prayer and meditation,
medical offices, and self-help tapes).
Since some doctors and many psychologists use hypnosis, most
believe that hypnosis is medical and, therefore, scientific.
The label "medical" before the word hypnosis
makes hypnosis seem benevolent and safe. Even some
well-known professing Christians (e.g.,
the late Walter Martin of CRI, and Josh McDowell & John
Stewart in their book
Understanding the Occult) allege that hypnosis
can be helpful if practiced by medical doctors whose intent
is good rather than evil. However, Donald Hebb says in
"Psychology Today/The State of the Science" that "hypnosis
has persistently lacked satisfactory explanation." At the
present time, there is no agreed-upon scientific explanation
of exactly what hypnosis is. Psychiatry professor Thomas
Szasz describes hypnosis as the therapy of "a fake science."
We cannot call hypnosis a science, but we can say that it
has been an integral part of the occult for thousands of
years. (Although hypnosis
has been investigated by scientific means, and there are
some measurable criteria concerning the trance itself,
hypnosis
is not
a science).
No one knows exactly how hypnosis "works," other than the
obvious "placebo effect" -- the successful use of "false
feedback" in the same manner that feedback is used in the
occult techniques common to acupuncture, biofeedback, and
psychotherapy. But compounding the word hypnosis
with the word therapy does not lift the
practice from the occult to the scientific. The white coat
may be a more respectable garb than feathers and face paint,
but the basics are the same. Hypnosis is hypnosis, whether
it is called medical hypnosis, hypnotherapy, autosuggestion,
or anything else. Hypnosis in the hands of a medical doctor
is as scientific as a dowsing rod in the hands of a civil
engineer.
Trances brought about through medical doctors are not
significantly different from occultic hypnosis. In their
text on hypnosis, which is used in medical schools, two
well-known researchers state categorically: "The reader
should not be confused by the supposed differences between
hypnosis, Zen, Yoga, and other Eastern healing
methodologies. Although the rituals for each differs, they
are fundamentally the same." E. Fuller Torrey, a research
psychiatrist, aligns hypnotic techniques with witchcraft. He
also says, "Hypnosis is one aspect of the yoga techniques of
therapeutic meditation." Medical doctor William Kroger
states, "The fundamental principles of Yoga are, in many
respects, similar to those of hypnosis." To protect the
scientific label for hypnosis he declares, "Yoga is not
considered a religion, but rather a 'science' to
achieve mastery of the mind and cure physical and emotional
sickness." Then he makes a strange confession, "There are
many systems to Yoga, but the central aim -- union with God
-- is common to all of them and is the method by which it
achieves cure." Obviously then,
just because hypnosis is used by medical doctors does not
mean that it is free of its occult nature. More
and more medical practitioners are being influenced by
ancient, occult medical practices. The holistic healing
movement has successfully wed Western medicine to Eastern
mysticism.
We then raise the following questions
about the use of hypnosis by a medical doctor: How can one
tell the long-range spiritual effect of even a well-meaning
medical doctor's use of hypnosis on a Christian patient?
Would an M.D. with an anti-Christian or occult bias in any
way affect a Christian through trance treatment? How about
the use of a medical hypnotherapist who belongs to the
Satanist church? What about an M.D. hypnotherapist who uses
past or future lives therapy as a means of mental-emotional
or physical relief? These and other questions need to be
answered before subjecting oneself to such treatment, even,
and especially, in the hands of a medical doctor or
psychologist.
Those who might feel a bit nervous about being hypnotized by
another often tend to feel safe with self-hypnosis. (Although
those in a self-induced hypnotic trance may gain a certain
amount of control and exercise some degree of choice, they,
nevertheless, do not retain their normal means of evaluation
of reality and rational restraint.) Teachers of
self-hypnosis will generally try to assure people that
hypnosis is simply focused attention, increased
concentration, relaxation, visualization, and imagination.
Yet such activities are precisely the useful means of going
into the trance. Furthermore, they continue on at a
different level during the trance. By imagining one is
leaving his body, one may move into the trance with the kind
of hallucination and trance logic of really seeming to be
out of the body.
A medical doctor, teaching a class in self-hypnosis,
instructed his students to go into a hypnotic trance, leave
their bodies, and then go back in to explore various parts
of the body. All of this was for the purpose of
self-diagnosis and self-healing. Occultist Edgar Cayce also
used self-hypnosis to diagnose disease and prescribe
treatment. Therefore, self-hypnosis can be as occult and
demonic an activity as a trance directed by a hypnotist.
One researcher makes some interesting observations
concerning why he would classify hypnosis as part of the
occult (Peace,
Prosperity, and the Coming Holocaust,
pp. 119-120):
"One reason for calling hypnotherapy a
religious ritual is the fact that it produces
mysterious effects that leave any investigator who
approaches it as science thoroughly puzzled: (1) under
hypnosis administered by psychiatrists, persons who have
never had any contact with UFOs can be stimulated to
'remember' UFO abductions that conform in detail to those
described by supposed genuine abductees; (2) hypnosis also
leads to spontaneous 'memories' of past and future lives,
about one-fifth involving existence on other planets; (3)
hypnotic trance also duplicates the experiences common under
the stimulation of psychedelic drugs, TM, and other forms of
Yoga and Eastern meditation; (4) hypnosis also creates
spontaneous psychic powers, clairvoyance, out-of-body
experiences, and the whole range of occult phenomena; and
(5) the experience of so-called clinical death is also
produced under hypnosis.
"Two conclusions that most investigators find very
distasteful seem nevertheless to be inescapable: (1) there
is a common source behind all occult phenomena, including
UFOs, that seems to be intelligently and deliberately
orchestrating a clever deception for its own purposes; and
(2) hypnosis, or the power of suggestion, is at the very
heart of this scheme"
The connection between hypnosis and
Eastern mysticism is clear. At varying depths of the
hypnotic trance, patients describe experiences that are
identical to the cosmic consciousness and self-realization
induced by yogic trance. They experience first of all a deep
peace, then detachment from the body, then release from
identity with one's own small self to merge with the
universe, and the feeling that they are everything and have
no limitation upon what they can experience or become: i.e.,
God-consciousness "in which time, space, and ego are
supposedly transcended, leaving pure awareness of the primal
nothingness from which all manifested creation comes."
Hypnosis began as part of the occult and false religion. The
Bible speaks out strongly against all practices of false
religion and the occult. God desires His people to turn to
Him in need, not to those who practice sorcery, divination,
or enchantment. He warns His people about following after
mediums, wizards, enchanters, charmers, and those who have a
familiar spirit (Deut. 18:9-14). Hypnosis, as it is
practiced today, may very well be the same as what is
identified as "enchantment" in the Bible (Lev. 19:26 KJV).
In hypnotism, faith is shifted
from God and His Word to the hypnotist and his technique.
God speaks to people through the conscious, rational mind.
He commands individuals as creatures who make conscious,
volitional choices. He sent His Holy Spirit to indwell
Christians to enable them to trust and obey Him through love
and conscious choice. Hypnosis, on the other hand, operates
on the basis of imagination, illusion, hallucination, and
deception. Jesus warned His followers about deception. After
a person has opened his mind to deception through hypnosis,
he may become even more vulnerable to other forms of
spiritual deception.
Hypnosis can generate Satan's counterfeits of true religious
exercise. If hypnosis generates any form of faith and
worship not directed toward the God of the Bible, any person
who subjects himself to hypnotism may be playing the harlot
in the spiritual realm. (See Lev. 19:26,31; 20:6,27; Deut.
18:9-14; 2 Ki 21:6; 2 Chron. 33:6; Isa. 47:9-13; Jer. 27:9.)
Hypnotism is demonic at its
worst and potentially dangerous at its best. At
its worst, it opens an individual to psychic experiences and
satanic possession. When mediums go into hypnotic trances
and contact the "dead," when clairvoyants reveal information
which they could not possibly know, when fortunetellers
through self-hypnosis reveal the future, Satan is most
certainly at work.
Are people in the church being enticed
to enter the twilight zone of the occult because hypnosis is
now called "science" and "medicine"? Let those who call the
occult "science" tell us what the difference is between
medical and occultic hypnosis. And let those Christians who
call it "scientific" explain why they also recommend that it
be performed only by a Christian. If hypnosis is
science indeed, why the added requirement of Christianity
for the practitioner? There is a scarcity of adequate
long-term studies of those who have been hypnotized. And
there have been none which have examined the effect on the
individual's resulting faith or interest in the occult.
Before hypnotism becomes the new
panacea from the pulpit, followed by a plethora of books on
the subject, its claims, methods, and long-term results
should be considered. Arthur Shapiro has said, "One man's
religion is another man's superstition and one man's magic
is another man's science."
Hypnosis has become "scientific" and "medical" for some
Christians with little proof of its validity, longevity of
its results, or understanding of its nature.
Because hypnosis has always been an integral part of the
occult, because it is not a science, because of its known
harmful effects, and because of its potential for spiritual
deception, the wise Christian will completely avoid it, even
for "medical" purposes. It is obvious that hypnosis is
lethal if used for evil purposes. However,
we contend that hypnosis is
potentially lethal for whatever purpose it is used.
The moment one surrenders himself to the doorway of the
occult, even in the halls of "science" and "medicine," he is
vulnerable to the powers of darkness. |