In order to cultivate these, experiment upon yourself by the means of auto-suggestion or self-hypnosis, which is a splendid means of training those faculties necessary to the mastery of other minds.
Change your state by means of words which imply a condition either mental or physical not personally experienced by you, and believe implicitly in your own ideas. Treat yourself exactly as if you were experimenting on another individual, surrendering your subjective and objective mind wholly to absorb the idea conveyed, and gradually its meaning will influence and take possession of your brain to the exclusion of everything else.
The change suggested should be exactly opposite to your natural state—for instance, if you are warm, tell yourself determinedly that you are cold until you credit the fact, when your body, which blindly follows mind and will, experiences the sensation of cold.
If you have a headache, suggest that the pain has gone, &c. Auto-suggestion may be perfected to such an extent, that, under its hypnotic trance, a needle may be plunged into the skin without the action’s causing the slightest degree of pain.
In suggestion, it is always the subjective mind that is swayed by hypnotic influence. This is always keenly alive, and it is through its medium that the subject is induced to an extraordinary power of imagining and experiencing the processes suggested by the hypnotizer.
Elementary exhibitions are very entertaining, and are quite sufficient to illustrate the motive power which achieves your purpose. Some individuals are better hypnotists than others, because they have a natural supply of animal magnetism at their disposal, but it is extraordinary what results can be brought about by study and patience, so that students less gifted need not despair of success.
For the sake of those who have succeeded in such simple experiments as the foregoing, the following may be undertaken. In these, intuition, sympathy, and imagination play almost as important a part as thoughtful concentration, which is ever the most powerful possession in the outfit of the hypnotizer.
Here, one word as to the difference between the terms hypnotist and hypnotizer. The former is a scientist, who employs his art solely for therapeutic or medicinal purposes. The latter is the entertainer, and care should be taken to distinguish between the two words.
Experiment.—Place the subject in a chair, with palms on knees. Pass your hands over him for a space of several minutes, the while his eyes are fastened on your own. Watch his expression carefully. It undergoes several changes, the individual character dominating ([Fig. 5]), gradually disappears, and finally gives place to vacancy ([Fig. 5a]). The firm lines of the mouth fade, and the lips become slightly parted. The face grows blank and purposeless, the eyes staring and void.
You have some plan in your mind which you are straining to impress on his brain. Supposing it is that he shall not remove his hands from his knees. Say to him, in a low soothing voice, which penetrates his hearing perfectly (to shout, breaks the spell in a moment), “Your hands are stuck to your knees; you cannot remove them. They’re glued; they’re tight fast. Do what you will, you can’t lift them. Now try——”