The Boundaries of Delusion

There are two theories about the nature of hypnosis – one that it is an altered state of consciousness (ASC) and the other that it isn't. Prof. Charles Spanos of Carlton University (Canada) conducted a large number of hypnotic regressions – the induction of an experience of an apparent previous lifetime – on students at Carlton. He would subtly prime a subject on what to expect in such an experience. For example, he might suggest to subjects that children were generally mistreated in the old days, and that was what a significant number of his subjects found, For another group of subjects he would suggest that children were well-treated and this is what was reported. He'd ask his hypnotised subject simple questions about where and when they found themselves, what the currency looked like, who the country's leader was and whether the country was at war. These answers – as any sceptic might expect – were usually wrong. He also primed one group to expect past-life experiences under hypnosis and another that such experiences were rare. And the two groups largely delivered what they had been primed to expect. On the basis of his work Spanos concluded (agreeing with previous academics) that his subjects were involved in a kind of play-acting and that hypnosis was, indeed, not an altered state of consciousness. From Wikipedia:

Barber, Spanos, and Chaves (1974) proposed a nonstate "cognitive-behavioural" theory of hypnosis... On this model, hypnosis is explained as an extension of ordinary psychological processes like imagination, relaxation, expectation, social compliance, etc.

So not only did the contents of the experience usually match suggestions, the actual experience did also. Hypnosis can also be used to induce out-of-body experiences (OBEs) and I speculate that the contents of OBEs can also be influenced by suggestion.

OBEs can be induced by a wide variety of methods and are well-known to occur spontaneously (e.g. see Green (1968)). One group – Robert Monroe's “The Explorers” - used binaural beating (playing a tone at a different frequency into each ear – the brain supplies the “beating” that would result from their normal interference) to induce OBEs for the purposes of exploring the universe. Monroe patented a binaural beating technique which he called Hemi-Sync, supposed to facilitate this induction. The Explorers investigated, using OBEs, the nature of the universe and termed those aspects which they knew to conform to physical reality Locale One (Monroe 1987 etc). But most of their time was spent exploring what they termed Locale Two, a completely alien (and unverifiable) set of aspects of the non-earthly universe. The Locale Two entities, events, environment and nature described by Monroe and his researchers are unbelievably complex and frequently in incomprehensible space or spaces, as befits something occupying most of the physical universe except Earth, and containing multiple dimensions and “vibration planes”. Exploring such a place would be an extraordinary task for a large team of researchers. Monroe and his team spent many thousands of hours investigating it and interacting with the non-human inhabitants.

Compare this to the Theosophical Society, who claim to use empirical methods to obtain information about the unseen universe. They, too, used OBEs to perform their investigations although I'm not sure how they induced them. Maybe they have some naturally talented people. But their picture of the unseen universe is utterly and completely different to that of the Explorers. It is less complicated than that which Monroe's people described but still very detailed. Might this be because both groups are embedded in their disparate positive feedback loops of self-reinforcing suggestion? That is; someone makes the first tentative foray into the OBE world and comes back and reports their findings to other like-minded people. Who then go forth and come back with the information that the first person's report checks out and here are some additional details. This is fed into the expectations of further investigations which are then elaborated as more and more detailed, but consistent, pictures emerge.

Of course the possibility exists that a member of such a group comes back with a report that says “Nah, you are all bonkers” and is thereby ostracised and never heard from again. But if such heretics exist at least they won't be burnt at the stake. They'd maybe go away and form their own little cult.

The existence of such detailed, and consistent within a group, competing pictures obtained by OBEs does indeed suggest that OBE subjects, like hypnotic-regression subjects, can be influenced by expectation. In an in-group those expectations are constantly reinforced. Then it can be further speculated that independent individuals who have certain expectations about the – shall we say – non-material world, who find themselves in a spontaneous OBE may find their expectations confirmed. So, for example, if a devout Christian finds their soul temporarily free from their earthly body and decides to visit heaven they may well find themselves surrounded by clouds of angels and maybe even get a chance to have a chat with Jesus.

In other words, I speculate that some people who claim strange other-worldly experiences may not be making them up, may not be barking mad, but may have reason behind their story.

There is one further point. It is not obvious that Spanos et al. ever asked their subjects what their experiences were like. Either that, or experiments conducted in a sterile university setting were not conducive to dramatic adventures. But if the proponents of hypnosis as a non-ASC had read a bit more widely they might not have been so quick to conclude that hypnotic regression subjects are always play-acting. Good examples of powerful, unprompted and unexpected experiences can be found in many books on hypnotic regression. Some of the best accounts of compelling experiences can be found in accounts of therapeutic hypnotic regression – uncovering problems originating in a past lifetime. Therapeutic regression is sometimes used successfully to treat psychological problems that seem otherwise intractable. The practitioners fall into two camps; those who think that the successes of the process in uncovering problems that seem to originate in past lives demonstrate the reality of those past lives, and those practitioners who are agnostic on past lives but are convinced that regression sometimes is effective.

A believers' account can be found in Grant & Kelsey (1972 etc) which details some of the very unpleasant experiences which their therapeutic sessions elicited. What comes through from their descriptions is the remarkable reality of their subject's experience, and sometimes the terror it induces.

My late wife described her past life experience (much of my practical research in this area used the induction technique known as the Christos Phenomenon, which is trivially simple, quick and can be used by anyone - see Glaskin 1974 etc, Swygard 1970, etc) as being “more real than reality” and commented that the memory of it twenty years later was as real as if it had happened yesterday. So I speculate, given the similarities between OBEs and past-life experiences, that OBEs can possess a similar feeling of reality. The picture of the universe as uncovered by Monroe's Explorers is, on the face of it, so absurd that only very convincing experiences could make the participants believe they had uncovered the truth. Other individuals' OBEs may contain equally strange (and inconsistent with other peoples') descriptions of “reality”. One might think these weird descriptions only come to be accepted as the truth by their subjects because of the persuasive and memorable nature of their experiences. Sensible people do not usually interpret mere dreams as valid guides to reality.

If OBEs can be very convincing, and can occur spontaneously under a number of circumstances, then it is possible that the boundaries of delusion are a lot closer than we would like to think.

_Barber, TX, Spanos, NP. & Chaves, JF., Hypnosis, imagination, and human potentialities. Pergamon Press, 1974

Glaskin, G.M. Windows of the Mind. London: Wildwood House, 1974.

Green, C.E. Out-of-the-body Experiences. London: Hamish Hamilton. 1968

Grant, Joan & Kelsey, Denis. Many Lifetimes. London: Victor Gollancz, 1972.

Monroe, Robert A. Far Journeys. New York: Doubleday & Co., 1987.

Swygard, William. Awareness Techniques: Book 1. Miami, FL., 1970_