Debate on Hypnosis (Incomplete Poem with Prose Comment)

"Where arms are floating in the air,

where fingertips are drawn to touch

each other or the nose, right there

hypnosis is the demon's clutch,"

quoth one. "Oh no," the other said.

"Don't fear that such hypnosis is.

Though reason rests it hath not fled,

but images sail on brisker breeze,

the flesh obeying what mind sees."

"But what," the first said, "if a lie

is in the image, when might flees

to lift an eyelid, as you try

or if a hand, you know not why

is glued to things that have no glue

or weighing down or floating high

beyond your might, although not true

the obstacles that fetter you,

or if some else's word shall gain

the power to make your voice a 'mooh'

hath Hell not shown its pomp again?"

"If demons use what men can use

man's use is not their vile abuse.

Also there is the right to play

and to enact is not astray

unless real thraldom is achieved

or other vile abuses made

in sins from which Our Lord relieved

mankind when on the Cross he bade

for Father's glory, devil's loss

for foes' forgiveness and for Church

for those reborn of ...

...

Comment:

Sometimes it does happen that I do come up with a brighter idea than just writing on a poem. As with asking myself what - if any - the Church has said about hypnosis.

It seems Pius XII pronounced himself twice, 1956 and 1957. A bit late on my scale of where to find reliable Romans. But any way, what he said was:

• may be used for medical purposes
• may be researched scientifically
• may not be used as pastime among laymen or even religious, or clergy.

Seeming to imply there is a danger but there is also a rightful use. And also to imply that science/medicine is the key to it./HGL

Further comment:

It seems the alpha state can be reached, at least approached, without using phrases like "you cannot" (or for autohypnosis "I cannot") "open the eyelids - try - you may stop trying". Or whatever the state implying unnatural impossibilities to the one undergoing someone else's or his own hypnosis.

Insofar there is a possibility of hypnosis without that particular kind of lie.

The problem is I risk becoming an addict to autohypnosis doing these experiments. And I think the ones who want me to try it are actually not my greatest friends. Like people who think I am hot-tempered because their proposal angered me, when it was in fact a bad proposal. Or who think I have an unforgiving side for my not forgiving, not what has been done once in the past but what people are still doing. Or who read an incapacity to forgive merely personal offenses offered by a system into my rejection of that system - like any of and all together of child welfare, compulsory school, psychiatry in its present extent and powers. Or who simply think I need a treat without a woman - though I would be better off married really - and also without chemicals they think or pretend to think I am using when I am not.

How much is prayer, how much is witchcraft, how much is merely depriving me of natural occurrence of alpha state when waking up slowly? Behind my craving for doses of it artificially procured by induction?

And what if a priest simply wanted me to admit this and prayed - and I fell because he prayed? I mean, he could have thought hypnosis or autohypnosis or meditation or yoga or something was behind something else I was doing or saying or writing or believing, or not doing, when in fact that was simply not the case./HGL