Telepathy and the Subliminal Self

by R. Osgood Mason

(Looking surprised.) “It is quite well—the pain is all gone.”

“Very well,” he says. “You will continue to feel better and stronger, and you will have good sleep at night.”

And so it proves. Bernheim or a pupil of his would sit, or perhaps stand, near his patient, and in a quiet but firm voice talk of sleep.

“Sleep is what you need. Sleep is helpful and will do you good. Already, while I am talking to you, you are beginning to feel drowsy. Your eyes are tired; your lids are drooping; you are growing more and more sleepy; your lids droop more and more.”

Then, if the eyelids seem heavy, he presses them down over the eyes, all the time affirming sleep. If sleep comes, he has succeeded; if not, he resorts to gestures, passes, the steady gaze, or whatever he thinks likely to aid his suggestion.

When the patient is asleep he suggests that when she awakes her pains and nervousness will be gone, and that she will have quiet and refreshing sleep at night. What is the condition of the patient while under the influence of this induced sleep? Pulse and respiration are little, if at all, changed; they may be slightly accelerated at first, and later, if very deep sleep occurs, they may be slightly retarded. Temperature is seldom changed at all, though, if abnormally high before the sleep is induced, it frequently falls during the sleep.

If the hand be raised, or the arm be drawn up high above the head, generally it will remain elevated until it is touched and replaced, or the patient is told that he can let it fall, when he slowly lowers it.

In many cases the limbs of the patient may be flexed or the body placed in any position, and that position will be retained for a longer or shorter period, sometimes for hours, without change. Sometimes the condition is one of rigidity so firm that the head may be placed upon one chair and the heels upon another, and the body will remain stiff like a bridge from one chair to the other, even when a heavy weight is placed upon the middle of the patient’s body or another person is seated upon it. This is the full cataleptic condition.

Sometimes the whole body will be in a condition of anæsthesia, so that needles may be thrust deep into the flesh without evoking any sign of pain or any sensation whatever. Sometimes, when this condition of anæsthesia does not appear with the sleep, it may be induced by passes, or by suggesting that a certain limb or the whole body is without feeling. In this condition the most serious surgical operations have been performed without the slightest suffering on the part of the patient.

From the deep sleep the patient often passes of his own accord into a condition in which he walks, talks, reads, writes, and obeys the slightest wish or suggestion of the hypnotizer—and yet he is asleep. This is called the alert stage, or the condition of somnambulism, and is the most peculiar, interesting, and wonderful of all.