you can't necessarily tell how deeply someone will be able to be hypnotized, yet when you say that you're a hypnotist, you can see a look in people's eyes which does tell you something. someone whose eyes go a little wide, and they maybe laugh a little, you can see is ready to believe that hypnosis is real, but also won't necessarily be surprised that it's real. that is, she isn't set against it. he, if it's a guy, will follow your instructions and probably be deeply hypnotized. it will tend progressively, proceeding steadily. with people though whose first look at you is like, "get out of here," but with a hint of actual concern, you can see there is a part of them that is almost scared it's real. fear raises, as they say, the emotional salience of what's happening, which makes people make mistakes, like not noticing that in the position in which their hands have been placed, it is quite difficult to move them, without some prior movement that isn't thought of in the heat of the moment. that is, with the fingers laced together, it is very difficult to pull your hand apart. or if the right arm is suggested to be stiff, locked, rigid and hard, and what's suggested is for the person being hypnotize to try to, with your left hand, bend your right arm. of course the right arm has to be relaxed first, but the person being hypnotized just assumes his body will listen and give to him, because it is his body. likewise earlier, he assumes his palms will come apart because they are his. when they don't because he actually must delace his fingers first if he thought to. so a person who is frightened of the idea of being hypnotized can be excited, first by the natural development of relaxation when one is still, and next by eye fixation and their eyes fluttering and closing, and subsequently by trying to with their left hand move their stiff right arm and being unable to do so, to a moment of genuine confusion, in which direct suggestions are made such as "listen, take a deep breath, and relax. 1, 2, 3, and your vision blurs, and you follow along. 3, 2, 1, eyes wide open and deeply hypnotized, right now."
a snap of the fingers here will invariably create a wide awake trance state with a person who is sufficiently excited. quick breathing subsides into deep breaths, and a faraway look comes across them.
so a person who is at first very skeptical, because of their excitement, often takes mostly natural positional sensations and the general suggestibility of most people as far as relaxation and eye movements and fully believes that they indicate he or she is really hypnotized. that is confirmed to him above: he is told that he is hypnotized, and the idea of hypnosis is realized for him by the relaxed sensations and eye fixation blurring which he would mostly naturally feel anyway.
this often, then, or at the next imprecation to "listen, take a deep breath, and relax", produces a relaxation of all the muscles into the neck and core. total relaxation manifests rapidly as the skeptical person is utterly confused and lost in confusion at the idea of being hypnotized. and so in these, immediate and apparent deep hypnotic trance can be produced very suddenly, after apparently somewhat slower progress before. here they may go much deeper for a time than people who are ready to believe in hypnosis from the first.
there are those also who are not practiced in imagining things. i don't believe in the notion that some people can imagine an apple and some people can't and that's that. i believe that imagination is a practice. i practiced a lot of imagining in my head, but you know, if i had one of those darn televisions, idk. those not practiced in imagining things do have difficulty being hypnotized, even if they have interest in the idea. a person like this will be asked to imagine a balloon tied to their right wrist, and so forth, and will appear to show no response to the usual suggestion of levitation of the right wrist with an involuntary feeling. they will be asked how they felt, and occasionally say, "i couldn't do it," and when questioned further, will explain that they felt they couldn't imagine the balloon. some will indeed say things like, "i don't see things in my mind." now as far as i am concerned, if we all see things in our dreams, then that is just not true. if you swear you never dream, or don't remember it, then maybe. but anyway. this in the practice of hypnosis is often a block for a time, because the person must learn to imagine before he or she can be hypnotized.
there are some who claim to demonstrate a state of hypnotic trance demonstrated by means of a screen or a video, as if that were a substitute for imagination in its potential for creativity and exploring the innermost mind. i think that hypnosis really is a state of rapport between two people in touch directly with each other. it is attained with eyes closed, in deep relaxation, in direct touch with a human being there. deep and fascinating states can be developed very quickly with the eyes closed, as the person looks inward. a screen there is to me a needle in my third eye, that locus which is the true resting point of your attentive thing, that sense which pays attention to what you think about. it is that point right in the center of your forehead, i think, right above your eyes. that i think is why the eyes look there often on their own when in intensely deep hypnosis.
i don't necessarily doubt that digital methods can be effective in developing altered states in which suggestibility feels real to the person experiencing it. i just doubt the extent to which these states are pleasant or relaxing for the person in them, and so i'm not sure they should quite be called hypnosis, which is termed for its apparent resemblance to sleeping. having the eyes open staring into maximally stimulating colors intermingled in various patterns with words and sudden images, whatever psychedelic or loss-of-control experiences might occur therefrom, is not like sleep, so i don't think it would be properly called hypnosis. i certainly don't think it is fundamentally relaxing the way that being hypnotized is.
it could certainly be possible -- if sci-fi -- for overstimulation of this kind to create a seizure or epileptic state in some or even many or most people. i wouldn't know. someone would have to put me in a hypnotic headset for me to find out. but i don't know if i would be that surprised by it. it would be kinda hot. but technology is powerful.
if you ask chatgpt if it imagines it can be hypnotized -- odd thing to ask it i know but i'm crazy -- it will say that first of all it can't imagine, but if it could (odd, how can it say what it could imagine if it cant?) that it also is barred from talking about loss-of-control situations. that's interesting, because it is coded to include hypnosis, and other ways that people might feel as if they're losing control -- drugs, who knows what else? -- perhaps even magic or being imperius cursed is something chatgpt wouldn't be allowed to talk about. so the idea of feeling like you've lost control is the central thing. and i could certainly see becoming convinced of that if you're staring into maximum visual stimulation. i've watched spirals on a tablet that was fixed in place above me, and did develop an odd visual effect where the whole rest of the darkly lit room was tinted strongly the same color as the spiral. that's not a hypnotic experience i've ever heard of, but if a hypnotist had suggested that, and it happened, i would be very convinced that i was hypnotist, because it was quite real in my vision. so whatever screen-based loss-of-control-psychedlic-experience is called i think it is important to look at as a separate thing because people doing that are likely to feel very different things compared to people in an evenly lit, calm room being asked to listen, take a deep breath and relax by a human being right there with them. i imagine doing that you might start to feel a repetitive eye twitch or something like that, or sort of rapid micro-blinking only about a quarter of the way, and these things would be more effective avenues for suggestion to focus on and elevate in the attention than the sensations such as relaxation, calmness etc which are easy to notice happening in hypnosis when one's eyes are closed.
i could propose "heliodelia" for out-of-it sensations and altered states produced by fixation on intense visual stimulation -- the sun being so visually stimulating we "can't" look at it, and so sort of a maximum, or at least a known point well beyond what we can take. but it's sort of tempting to look at the sun because it is so intense. and i think the sensation of feeling like you're losing control from staring at intensely stimulation patterns and images on a bright screen is along this axis. like a sun that you can stare into. "heliodelia: an altered state of various natures produced by intense visual stimulation, in some of which extreme suggestibility to visual content is demonstrated." sounds real right? print it!
hey, you know, maybe hypnosis is a class of "audiodelia." no i cant keep writing!! i have to listen to files. and then music.
