Saturday, December 31, 2011

Happy New Year

How many of our thoughts deal with past regrets or an uncertain future.
A multitude of advisors through the ages have told us to learn and live in the present, but few of us do.

In reality all thoughts take place in the present.
The past is looking back from the present.
Today’s yesterday.
Today’s thought, thought Today.

The future is the concern of what is unknowable.
Today’s tomorrow.
Today’s thought, thought Today.

We move from experience to experience, event to event.
Whether pleasant or unpleasant they can only occur in the present, the NOW.
In reality you live in the present moment, the NOW.
The past is dead except as memory revives it.
The future is a present thought, conceived and nurtured NOW.
We can never deal with the past or future except as thoughts, our concepts of them reflect our likes and dislikes.
Our pleasures or dis-pleasures.
The mind bouncing back and forth like a ping-pong ball between yesterday and tomorrow robs the mind of the present.
And it gets hung up, incapable of forward motion.

It is never
what happens to you
but
what you think happens to you.


This is the difference between happiness and misery, success and failure, health and illness.

This the great principle.
Today is the life of life.
Live one day at a time.
Learn to manage this hour, this minute.
You then redeem the past and ensure the future.
Ideas from “Take Off from Within” by Ervin Seale
HappyNewYear2011
Be joyous and happy this NEW YEAR!

Friday, December 30, 2011

SEVENTY-FIVE PER CENT OF DRINK DUE TO TOBACCO

YinYangGIF
John D. Quackenbos, A.M., M.D., emeritus professor in Columbia University, New York City, is one of the most eminent members of the medical profession. Speaking recently before the American Society for the Study of Alcohol and Narcotic Drugs, at Washington, D.C., Dr. Quackenbos said:
"Physicians who have had much to do with alcoholic inebriates realize that there is a direct relationship between alcohol addiction and tobacco abuse. The first affect of tobacco smoking is stimulating, with a rise of blood pressure; and if the smoking be continued, the nerve cells are depressed. The depression is cumulative in the system of the smoker, and after a varying interval (of days, weeks or months) it creates an instinctive demand for the antidote to tobacco poisoning – and that is alcohol. The intemperate use of tobacco thus explains 75 per cent of all drink-habit cases. The alcoholic is engendered and inflamed by smoke."

Excerpt from: The Case Against the Little White Slaver (1914), by Henry ford


DR. JOHN DUNCAN QUACKENBOS of Columbia University has cured STEALING BY HYPNOTISM,
IMMORALITY AND DRUNKENNESS BY HYPNOTISM,
THE CIGARETTE HABIT BY HYPNOTISM.

Ever since the announcement was made a few days ago that this physician could overcome crime and vicious habit? through suggestion his house and office have been In a state of siege. Day and night appeal has been made at his door by those who insist that they have no strength to resist thieving or strong drink. Young boys and little girls are brought to this man by unhappy father and mothers,who have about lost hope seeing their sons and daughters weakening slowly into cigarette funds. But to one and all Dr. Quackenbos has given the cheering counsel that there is no crime or sin, no matter to what degree of viciousness the victim has fallen, but can be overcome by a hypnotic sleep, when high moral alms are suggested to the patient's mind.
It was early In the winter Just passed that Dr. Quackenbos began his self-imposed task upon the young boys who lived In the Newsboys' Home. New York. One or two of the little fellows at first rather timidly presented themselves to the doctor to be cured of the excessive use of tobacco were treated with such success by this physician that it was not long before dozens of these small chaps were urging the doctor to enable them to do without the cigarettes which were shown to be injurious to their strength and lives.
While petty stealing has been cured in many cases by Dr. Quackenbos since he began to use suggestion for the correction of crime among faithful offenders, the case in which he takes the greatest pride and upon which he bases the theory that even an habitual criminal may be reformed is the case of a young fellow who for five years had stolen right and left. He had been arrested, and was in a fair way to spend a part of his life in the State reformatory, when his case was brought to the attention of the doctor.
Quackenbos stands high In the medical world, where his specialty has been the nervous diseases. He belongs to an old Dutch family, and low of the New York Academy of Medicine, as well as of the New Hampshire Medical Society. Before the latter association in June he read a paper upon "Hypnotic Suggestion in the Treatment of Crime," In which he will tell of his work the past year among the vicious and degenerate of the New York slums.(Excerpt 1899)

According to letter in the ``Annual report of President and Treasurer`` By Columbia University, dated March 30, 1889, Quackenbos also taught English.

A fixed idea of Health, Happiness, Success, implanted in the mind by his power of Auto-Suggestion is worth more than a fortune to any man. In this way we should, by a steady habit of Auto-Suggestion, fix in the Subjective Mind the strongest possible faith in our own ability. Dr. Quackenbos of Columbia University has accomplished seemingly miraculous results in developing great ability in music and art in boys and girls in a few months by Suggestion, which would ordinarily have taken years of training, and which ability might never have manifested under any length of training but for the strange power which Suggestion has of calling out the latent powers of the soul. Suggestions given to a pupil under hypnosis are accepted with unquestioned faith, and faith seems to have a mysterious power of healing and inspiring, and especially of awakening talent lying dormant. Men generally can do what they believe they can do, and they cannot do what they believe they cannot do. We see this in the hypnotized boy who being told he cannot cross a certain line on the floor, struggles in vain to cross it, his belief holding him in captivity and utterly suppressing his natural physical powers. On the other hand, I have frequently heard the hypnotized lad, under suggestion that he was a noted orator, arise and deliver a surprising address, of which he was utterly incapable in his normal state. And I have seen the hypnotized subject leap over a man's head under the stimulus of suggestion a feat he could not possibly accomplish in his waking state. No one knows the reserve powers of the mind. If you would awaken them, you must cultivate daily by Auto-Suggestion unlimited faith in yourself. From B.F. Austin - How To Make Money – 1918

Quackenbos wrote:
  • Body and Spirit: An Inquiry Into the Subconscious ...
  • Magnhild: A Tale Of Psychic Love (1918)
  • Hypnotism In Mental And Moral Culture Suggestion As A Means Of Perfecting The Orator, Teacher And Businessman
  • Erotomania, Infatuation And Moral Perversion - Pamphlet
  • Enemies and Evidences of Christianity;
  • Thoughts on Questions of the Hour
  • Illustrated history of ancient literature
  • Illustrated History Of Ancient Literature: Oriental And Classical
  • Hypnotic Therapeutics in Theory and Practice
  • Moral Disease Suggestion As A Means Of Perfecting The Orator,
  • Teacher And Businessman - Pamphlet
  • The Value of Suggestion to Players, Singers, Musicians and Artists
  • Body and Spirit, an Inquiry into the Subconscious
  • Lessons In Geography: For Little Learners (1889)
  • Advanced Course of Composition and Rhetoric: A Series of Practical Lessons on the Origin, History and Peculiarities of the English Language ...

SPELL OF HYPNOSIS INSPIRES AN ACTRESS

Dr. Quackenbos Helped Her to Win Fame in a Night.
HE EXPLAINS HIS METHOD
Startling Disclosures of His Influence Upon Halting Ministers, Artists, and Students Whom "Stage Fright" Has Paralyzed.
From December 20, 1901.

The medical fraternity of the entire city discussed yesterday the paper read Wednesday night before the Medico Legal .Society by Dr. John Duncan Quackenboss, emeritus Professor of•Psychology In Columbia University, in which be told of a young actress who a few months ago won fame In a single night while under the spell of hypnotic suggestion.

The spell was put upon the actress by Dr. Quackenbos himself after she had come to him a -sufferer from stage fright at the very threshold of her career. Under its influence, according to Dr Quackenbos, she appeared in a new play -in a Broadway theatre, and under the management of one greatest managers of the country. After her performance the press of city united in commending her work. The audience called her before the curtain seven times. and she became famous at once.

This case was cited by Dr. Quackenbos, as he stated, to give point his contention that hypnotism or Mesmerism is a tremendous force in the being not only of man but of the lower animals, and even of insects, and the scientists of •today are but standing at the threshold of a mysterious realm.

Quackenbos seen yesterday at his office supplemented this example hypnotic suggestion with others equally startling. He denied, however that the actress mentioned in his paper was at the time she made her great success this Fall in a trance-of the Trilby order.

He said:
“I applied in her case principles that are not entirely new. As the time for her first night drew near she became attacked with stage fright and her manager brought her to me as a last resort. In her case I studied her part in the play, and as near as-it was possible for me to do so, saturated myself with its spirit. She was to visit me three times. She made two visits, and on each of these occasions I put her into a hypnotic sleep, and while she was in this state I impressed upon her by the power of suggestion that she was actually the character that She was to portray.

“I filled her with the idea that she was superior to her surroundings, and brought out by suggestion every dramatic capability that had lain dormant within her. I impressed upon her that her acting throughout would be consistent with her interpretation of the heroine of the play in which she was to take part, and would be sincere and natural in,its tone. After two sleeps she became imbued with absolute confidence, and, refusing a third treatment, went before the footlights a consummate mistress of art.

“She was not in a. trance the night she made her first appearance, and I was not even present in the theatre, but the subliminal force in her being had been made for the time the dominant force, and her self-consciousness was completely obliterated.


“That is all there is in the treatment. The operator brings into activity the dormant psychic power in the subject. Hypnotic suggestion will not give a man knowledge. It simply enables him to comprehend things that he has known, but half forgotten; It will bring to his fingers’ ends all the knowledge he has ever had and Inspires him with an overwhelming confidence in himself.

“There is a young woman violinist appearing In this. city to-day, who a short time ago was almost ruined In her art by self-consciousness. I know nothing about violin playing, but by putting her into a hypnotic sleep and impressing on her that she was capable of the very highest expression on her instrument, she performs now as. one Inspired. See her some day and notice the utter absence of self-consciousness in her work.

“I have also had a 'number of ministers of various denominations who got in that state where they dreaded coming of Sunday. They come to, me at regular intervals. I put them into a hypnotic sleep and by suggestion make them think that it is not themselves talking, but the spirit of God talking through them. Some powerful sermons preached in local pulpits recently and reported in the press have come immediately after a hypnotic sleep.

-
“Recently I had a young woman singer come here from California to study under one of the most distinguished teachers In the city. She has a splendid voice, but had certain vices of expression which the teacher, told her would take. two years to .correct. One hypnotic sleep was sufficient to correct these faults entirely. and almost Incur the enmity of her music teacher. It was done by simply impressing her with, a conviction that the faults did not exist.

“The same method has ,worked successfully with scores of students in Columbia University. I had one young man last June, the son of- a wealthy man in the city who was promised a trip abroad if he successfully passed hi examinations. He felt absolutely hopeless of being able to pass and came .to me in despair to be experimented upon. The experiment was a complete success, and he took his coveted trip through Europe. By hypnotic suggestion all the knowledge gained by him during the year was simply brought to his fingers’ ends, so to speak.
“Hypnotism is a vast subject, and has been abused by charlatans and tricksters, but there is much in it.”


From December 20, 1901.

Monday, December 26, 2011

Who would you be without your story?

Visualization is neither here nor there; negativity is neither here nor there. Don't bother with them. If you question your thinking, negativity naturally disappears; you don't need to do anything about it.
How can you know that a “true soul”, “soul-mate” or “twin-soul” even exists. This is a very stressful thought, when you don't have a clue what or where such a thing as a “true soul”, “soul-mate” or “twin-soul” is.
How do you know that you even have a “vibration”? This kind of magical thinking--”The Secret” and the Abraham-Hicks stuff on wanting--is pure ego. The Secret is trying to get what you want; The Work is wanting what you have, loving what is.
How would you know if you “choose your own reality” or not? Just because some “spiritual” writer says so? How does he know? How do you know that any such “entity” as Abraham is being channeled in the first place?
The Work cuts to the chase, beyond all spiritual concepts or any other concepts. And The Work works, if your mind is open to it.
Who would you be without your story?
Ask yourself that question as you sit down to dinner, not just during the holidays, but every day of the week.
YES!
How can YOU live in the Now?
You do. You just haven’t noticed.
Only in this moment are we in reality.

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Seasons Greetings

May you be happy.

May you be healthy.

May you never suffer.

May you feel loved!
Perfecto

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Hypnotism, It's History, Practice and Theory

Purple
Although Braid believed that hypnotic suggestion was a valuable remedy in functional nervous disorders, he did not regard it as a rival to other forms of treatment, nor wish in any way to separate its practice from that of medicine in general. He held that whoever talked of a "universal remedy" was either a fool or a knave: similar diseases often arose from opposite pathological conditions, and the treatment ought to be varied accordingly. He objected being called a hypnotist; he was, he said, no more a "hypnotic" than a "castor-oil" doctor.
— John Milne Bramwell

John Milne Bramwell (1852 – 1925) was a Scottish physician and author, born at Perth, and educated at the University of Edinburgh.
He collected the works of James Braid the founder of hypnotism and helped to revive and maintain Braid's legacy in Great Britain. He studied hypnotism thoroughly, including that employed in France at Paris and Nancy. He was himself renowned a practitioner of hypnotherapy.
Bramwell is best remembered for his classic text, "Hypnotism, It's History, Practice and Theory," which even to the present day remains one of the finest books ever written on hypnotism.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

The Mind

Black-Mega
• Recent investigations have shown that the study of hypnotism throws much light on the nature of mind. The mind is even more susceptible to hypnotic suggestion than to opinion. Opinion itself often comes in the form of suggestion, and brings hypnotic influence with it. The so-called magnetism that accompanies the spoken word is often more effective than a strong argument. Thus the strong-minded sway the the weak; positive leaders draw negative minds about them and new dogmas are forced into fashion. As knowledge of the power of suggestion grows the dangers are greater. Hypnotism itself becomes a cult, in due course, and all kinds of occultism, spiritism, and the like, follow hard upon the new cult.
• . . . bread pills, for example, when given to a hypnotised subject with the suggestion that they are a powerful drug, produce the effects of a drug . . .
• What is hypnotism if not an induced direction of mind suggested by the hypnotist? When the subject is under control, and hypnotised, for example, to see a picture on the wall where there is none, the whole mind of the subject is absorbed in seeing the supposed picture, and there is no time or power to detect the deception. Many self-hypnotised people are equally at the mercy of some idea which is the pure invention of their fears.

• The hypnotist shapes the conduct of his subject when he has gained control of the subject's attention.

Excerpts from
Power of Silence by Horatio. W. Dresser – 1895 Revised 1904

A few thoughts.

1. It bears the question whether placebo studies been significantly stringent with double blind methods to avoid the taint of the power of suggestion.
2. Have politicians, world leaders, writers, healers etc. exercised the power of suggestion on the weak and gullible. The 2012 Mayan calendar is a fair example. It had been written about since the 1980’s or sooner that it stops in 2012. We now know it rolls over in 2012. Much the same as we exchange our 2012 calendars for 2013 ones at the end of 2012. How much mis-information in the last 40 years has been due to the power of suggestion? Have the weak and gullible inadvertently spread these ideas in much the same way as rumours are spread?

Friday, December 9, 2011

Imagination and cryptomnesia were the sole sources of a large number of Automatic writings

Automatic writing in "Martian" produced by Smith at a séance


Théodore Flournoy (1854 –1920) was a professor of psychology at the University of Geneva and author of books on spiritism and psychic phenomena.


In 1894 he met the medium Catherine Elise Muller , which he renamed " Helen Smith " in his important book “From India to the planet Mars” . The medium said writing under the dictation of a certain Leopold, which is another name for Joseph Balsamo. Impressed by the extent of her talent, Flournoy decided to study the case. To do this, he attended many sessions and subjects it to some experiences that change her trances and plunge into sleepwalking .
1. Helen Smith wrote novels in a somnambulistic state, divided into three cycles. In the Martian cycle, she communicates with people in the world in Mars and written in another alphabet.
2. Hindu Cycle, she is the reincarnation of a princess Indian , daughter of a Sheikh Arab , and speaks Sanskrit by glossolalia .
3. And finally, the Royal cycle she takes the personality of the Queen of France Marie-Antoinette of Austria .

Professor Théodore Flournoys studies of the medium Hélène Smith were turned into a book, Des Indesà la planète Mars, which caused a considerable sensation in psychological and parapsychological circles in Europe and the United States. In it he described the phenomenon of "cryptamnesia," forgotten memories that reappear without being recognized by the subject, who believes they are new. These memories disappear because of their association with childhood sexual emotions. These involve a "subliminal process capable of achieving a degree of complexity and extent comparable to the work of composition and reflection in the thinker or novelist." They are "reminiscences or momentary returns to earlier phases, which have long since been forgotten and which, normally, should have been absorbed during the individual's development instead of recurring in strange forms."
Flournoy asserted that imagination and cryptomnesia were the sole sources of a large number of mediumistic communications. With regard to the remaining part, he referred to the supernormal powers of man as a fact which seemed to make superfluous the assumption of the participation of the dead.
He called on Ferdinand de Saussure[1] to examine the language she wrote spontaneously. It shows that it uses alphabets which are fanciful and mimic French, and resumed the dreams of knowledge which she had access. Smith, who composed in trance romances about the conditions on the planet Mars, and for one thing invented for the use of the inhabitants a language that in the most naive manner imitated her own mother-tongue.
The following, quoted from Esprits et mediums, by Professor Flournoy, is another typical example:
Madame Dupond, a well-bred and cultured lady from Geneva, of literary taste and philosophical and religious leanings, took up the study of spiritism at the age of forty-five. She tried automatic writing, and, at the end of eight days, was able to get the names of dead relatives and friends, who gave her messages of a philosophico-religious nature. About three days later, after having received various communications, her pencil wrote suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, the name of a young Frenchman she knew Rodolphe X., who had recently entered a religious order in Italy. As she did not know that he was dead, she was surprised and shocked; but her hand continued to write, confirming the sad news in the following circumstantial details :
" I am Rodolphe. I died last night at eleven o'clock, the 23rd. I had been ill for several days, and I was not able to write. I had an inflammation of the lungs, caused by a sudden change in the weather. I died without pain, and I have been thinking of you. ... I am in space. ... I see your parents, and I like them also. Good-by. ... I am going to pray for you. ... I am no longer a Catholic, I am a Christian."
After her first astonishment, Madame Dupont believed more and more in the authenticity of this message, because for almost a week she continued to receive communications from Rodolphe, making numerous allusions to their past relations. She had met Rodolphe, who was then a priest, during a stay in the South the preceding spring. He had returned from Italy, where he had spent the winter on account of his poor health, and had stopped a few days at the same hotel. Between this Genevese, a confirmed Protestant and republican, and this man from the north of France, an ardent legitimist and Catholic, in spite of the difference in their ages (he was scarcely twenty), a real moral and intellectual intimacy was formed, as a natural con- sequence of the analogy of their temperaments and the unity of their idealistic aspirations. Each of them had tried, without success, to convert the other to his own ideas; and when they were separated, they had continued this discourse by correpondence, even after Rodolphe had entered the religious order, pouring out their souls to each other in full confidence. At the moment of Madame Dupond's automatic writing, it was Rodolphe who owed a letter to his friend.
Do we not see there an excellent case of the apparent intervention of a " discarnated spirit " to use the expression familiar to the partizans of the spiritistic doctrine in the affairs of this world?
Unfortunately, six days after the first communication from the supposed dead man: . . . there reached her by post a letter from Rodolphe, who, far from being dead, was in perfect health. It shook Madame Dupond's recent spiritistic convictions so thoroughly that she was discouraged from pursuing further such disconcerting experiments.
It is necessary to read in Professor Flournoy's book (Esprits et mediums) he detailed a penetrating analysis to which he has submitted all the circumstances of this interesting case, and which fully justifies, we think [see THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE FUTURE BY EMILE BOIRAC-1918], the conclusion he has reached: viz., that all the communications received by Madame Dupond reflected her own dispositions, conscious or not, and corresponded exactly to those which could not fail to be in her. " She alone, in other words, and not Rodolphe, was dead at that moment, and can be considered as the real source of the communications."

[1] Ferdinand de Saussure (1857 –1913) was a Swiss linguist whose ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in linguistics in the 20th century. He is widely considered one of the fathers of 20th-century linguistics and the founder of structuralism in linguistics.

Repression is one of the most haunting concepts in psychology. Something shocking happens, and the mind pushes it into some inaccessible corner of the unconscious. Later, the memory may emerge into consciousness.
I found this on a popular new age metaphysical website:
“One of the best-known automatic writers was Helene Smith, an early 20th century psychic who felt that her automatic writing was the attempt of Martians to communicate with Earth. She claimed she could translate their Martian language into French.”
But it fails to mention that Smith by and large made it all up by her own imagination.

Sunday, December 4, 2011

A "quack and compulsive liar"?


Dr. Alexander Cannon (1896–1963) was a British psychiatrist, occultist, hypnotist and author. He became well known in the 1930s for his occult writings, and more recently for his alleged influence on King Edward VIII shortly before his abdication.


He was born in Leeds, England, and educated at Leeds, London, Vienna, Hong Kong, and several other universities, eventually receiving both an M.D. and Ph.D. Later he trained in various Eastern spiritual disciplines, acquiring or claiming such titles as
"Kushog Yogi of Northern Thibet"
and
"Master-The-Fifth of the Great White Lodge of the Himalayas.”

In Hong Kong in the late 1920s and early 1930s, he became vice president of Hong Kong Medical Society, medical officer in charge of prisons, head of the Department of Morbid Anatomy at the University of Hong Kong, and psychiatrist and medical jurist to the High Court of Justice. He also served as British Consul and Port Medical Officer in Canton (Guangzhou). He studied occultism and yoga, and travelled in India, China and Tibet. In his book The Invisible Influence (1933), he claimed that during his travels he was levitated over a chasm in Tibet, together with his porters and luggage. The book was structured as a conversation between Cannon and a series of mystics, yogis, and other sages, and offers anecdotes of crystal gazing, levitation, hypnotism, distant-touching, and other supposed phenomena.
After his return to England, Cannon served as psychiatrist and research scientist at Colney Hatch Mental Hospital. After learning of his book, London County Council dismissed him on the grounds that he was unfit to practice in charge of a mental hospital, but he was reinstated after bringing action for wrongful dismissal. He then set up in private practice as a consultant in Harley Street, London, where he used hypnotherapy and psychic mediums in diagnosis. He became well known for prescribing exotic remedies such as electrotherapy and Tibetan hypnosis techniques as treatments for stress, alcoholism, sex and confidence problems.
King Edward VIII consulted Cannon, and received hypnotic treatment from him for a drink problem. This was drawn to the attention of Dr Cosmo Lang, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Two days before the King's abdication in December 1936, Lang wrote to another Harley Street doctor, William Brown, that he had been "informed by a credible person that a certain Dr Cannon... has been recently attending the King... Would you kindly tell me whether you think this Dr Cannon is a really trustworthy person? He seems from the accounts I have received to be one who encourages somewhat dangerous methods of treatment." Archived letters suggest that it was believed that Cannon — then known as "the Yorkshire Yogi" — was having an adverse influence on the King.
By the late 1930s, Cannon's London clinic, where he billed himself as "His Excellency Sir Dr Alexander Cannon", had become highly lucrative. He continued to work and publish. In 1938, in his book Sleeping Through Space, he gave directions for bringing the dead back to life:
"[administer] a severe kick with the knee between the shoulder blades" at the same time shouting in [the] left ear "Oye," "Oye," "Oye." He added: "It is rarely necessary to repeat the operation before life is again resumed, but this can be repeated up to seven times in long-standing cases."

In 1939 Cannon left London and established the Isle of Man Clinic for Nervous Diseases. On the Isle of Man, he was a friend of Captain George Drummond, a Nazi sympathiser who had entertained Edward VIII before he became king and was interned in his mansion on his island during the war. Cannon was himself suspected of being a Nazi sympathiser and German spy, his telephone conversations with Drummond were recorded by MI5, and he was forced out of his home. However, MI5 concluded that he was a "quack and compulsive liar" rather than a spy.
When the war ended, Cannon began to produce live magic shows using two assistants, Joyce and Rhonda Deronda (born Joyce and Eleanor Robson), who helped with performances. One act involved putting Rhonda into a hypnotic trance to diagnose physical and psychological problems, as she glared at the patient. Some of his apparently magical techniques were exposed in 1952.
His books on the general subject of thought stirred up controversy here and abroad. He declared that while today a man cannot grow a new leg (as a crab can grow a new claw), he could if the mind of man hadn't rejected the possibility. The eminent scientist claimed that if the thought is changed in the innermost depths of the unconscious mind, then man will grow a new leg as easily as the crab grows a new claw. I know, such a statement may sound incredible, but how do we know that it will not be done some day?
Do hypnosis, occult and New Age mix well?
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Cannon_%28psychiatrist%29