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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. |