Deep trance can dramatically alter one’s perception of reality, whether occasioned by traditional hypnosis, meditation, prayer, long term fasting, hypnotic religious rituals, or walking for miles in the hot desert. A popular misconception about hypnosis is that it involves a sleeping state, in which the subject is covertly forced to adopt thoughts and behaviours for which they would otherwise harbour an aversion. The trance-state is usually induced via hypnosis while the subject is wide awake; this state is known as the ‘waking trance’ and it is the most common form of trance. Under this waking trance, it is unlikely that hypnosis alone can cause the subject to think and behave in a manner that is contrary to their moral constitution, for it is incapable of making a subject more gullible than they are when not in trance. [1]

Subjects under hypnosis will usually remain acutely aware of their surroundings and may not even know that they are in the hypnotic state. The trance-state is a relaxing, slightly altered form of consciousness, which is very natural and commonly experienced by everyone, every day. During our favourite TV shows, driving down a long stretch of highway, or while washing the dishes, we all go into trance daily and we are seldom aware that we are in trance. Have you ever been in a daze while being asked questions by someone and you ended up asking them what you had just agreed to? Have you ever walked into a room to get something and then forgotten why you had entered that room, or what it was you were looking for? Because trance is so regularly experienced, it makes it hard to tell when we are going in and out of it. It is familiar to all of us.

Before discussing hypnosis and how it is employed in the church service, I must offer a brief qualification. I will be using the terms ‘unconscious’ and ‘subconscious’ interchangeably, although they are, strictly speaking, not the same thing. The unconscious mind is best described as a deep level of consciousness, in which, near-inaccessible thoughts are housed; whereas the subconscious mind refers to that level of awareness just below the conscious mind. The best way to distinguish between the two would be to say that a repressed memory, say, a traumatic one, exists in the unconscious mind, whereas a friend’s telephone number, which sits just below the level of the conscious mind before it is requested, is stored in the subconscious; it can be consciously recollected if required. The reason I am able to use these two conceptual constructs interchangeably is because I am using them informally with regards to awareness.

What is Hypnosis?

Hypnosis involves the production of a state of mind usually induced by a procedure known as the hypnotic induction. The induction commonly involves a long series of preliminary instructions and suggestions. [2] Hypnotic suggestions may be delivered by a hypnotist in the presence of the subject, or may be self-administered (“self-suggestion” or “auto-suggestion”). The words ‘hypnosis’ and ‘hypnotism’ both derive from the term ‘neuro-hypnotism’ (nervous sleep) coined by the Scottish surgeon James Braid in 1841. [3] Braid based his practice on the earlier work of Franz Anton Mesmer, whose name represents the etymological root of the word ‘mesmerized.’ In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Mesmer developed a practice known as ‘Mesmerism’ or ‘animal magnetism.’ He was influenced by the earlier work of Father Maximillian Hell, a Catholic Priest who had been using magnets and prayer to hypnotize subjects, and he was alleged to have had some minimal success in healing hysterical conditions, such as hysterical blindness and other psychologically rooted conditions. [4] Contemporary research suggests that hypnosis is a wakeful state of focused attention and heightened suggestibility, with diminished peripheral awareness. [5] This heightened state of suggestibility is the primary focus of this chapter.

The 5 Stages of Hypnosis

A typical hypnotherapy session contains five stages:

Introduction
Induction
Deepening
Suggestion and;
Awakening. [6]
It is the contention of this author that all of these stages can be found within most Christian church services, although they vary from service to service. The hypnotic techniques employed during church sessions have served to further entrench Christian beliefs into the minds of Christian subjects, and such manipulation underscores, at least in large part, the mentally manipulative package offered by the Christian religion. According to professional hypnotists, the subject’s mind must contain four primary criteria in order for hypnosis to be effective. The acronym is known in the profession as B.I.C.E:

Belief
Imagination
Conviction and;
Expectation [7]
These elements are frequently found in abundance in the mind of the true-believing, church-going Christian. Generally speaking, those who attend church believe that their pastor or preacher is speaking the word of a god, which has powerful psychological implications, and thus satisfies the first criteria in the list above. Further, the church-goer’s imagination is engaged at almost all times throughout the service; during the singing, the sermon, the prayer; it is probably the hardest working aspect of the four criteria set out above. Next, professional hypnotists say that the subject must possess conviction, and the stronger the better. I think you’ll agree that there is almost nothing in this world that inspires conviction like one’s religious beliefs. The attendee is convinced that the church service is permeated by the “spirit of their god,” which leads to the expectation that they will “feel the spirit,” thereby effectively substituting the hypnotherapy patient’s expectation that they will be successfully hypnotised. In truth, the elation one gets from “feeling the spirit” is little more than the pleasure and catharsis of entering a trance and having one’s dopamine transmitters stimulated by belief-induced delusions. [8]

These four psychological components come together to create the perfect state of mind for a hypnotic trance induction. You may have experienced this yourself, or you may know someone who has. More interestingly, you may have experienced the result of a breakdown of one of the above criteria, which could have led you to snap out of the church trance. This often results in what many refer to as a “crisis of faith,” but if the truth be told, it is no crisis at all, it is an epiphany. The mental manipulation of modern Christianity is built upon three main lines:

The intrinsic emotional factors manifested within the mind of the believer, such as those discussed in the first volume, i.e., ego protection, the avoidance of dissonance, the rationalizing of painful truths, confirmation and disconfirmation biases, etc…
The worship service’s structure, along with the architectural layout of the building, environmental and cultural expectations set out by the Church itself and the interior design of the church building.
The four cognitive criteria mentioned above.
I should stress that I am not suggesting that pastors, preachers and priests are actively trying to hypnotize their congregations, but the way these sophists have been trained at seminary, coupled with the environment and church experience as a whole naturally produces this outcome.



Stage 1: The Introduction

The introduction stage is an important one. It is focused on the development of a rapport between the subject and the hypnotherapist, which over time develops into powerful trust. Trust is possibly one of the most important criteria upon which a hypnotherapy session is built and maintained. Generally speaking, meeting a subject for the first time will require a longer and more in depth introduction, for it is crucial for the therapist to build rapport and establish trust. The subject will get to know their therapist and over time, the therapist’s ability to hypnotize his or her subjects will become increasingly effective and the trance-state will take less and less time to induce. This is due to the trust established, further aided by what is commonly referred to as ‘post hypnotic cues’ or ‘post hypnotic programming.’

Post hypnotic cues aid faster trance induction by establishing cues that the subject responds to less critically each time they return to the same therapist. Post hypnotic programming or cues sound a little farfetched, I know, but they are actually very mundane. To give you an example, imagine you are at a friend’s house and he tells you that he is going out for a while, and that if the phone rings you should answer it. After a little time has passed, and while you are consuming the contents of his fridge and watching his TV, the phone rings. Most people will usually jump to answer it, because they have been asked to, and following this request, their mind has drifted from the subject, until the cue of the ringing phone hits their ears, which produces an automatic response. There are exceptions, but most people in that situation will respond by answering the phone almost automatically. [9] In his book ‘Hypnosis for beginners,’ Dylan Morgan illustrates the power of post hypnotic cues, or post-hypnotic programming, by way of the following example:

When Nobel prizewinning physicist Richard Feynman was at graduate school he volunteered to be hypnotized. I am going to quote a bit from his book Surely you’re joking Mr. Feynman! (Vintage 1992) so that we can have a firsthand account of what it feels like to carry out a posthypnotic suggestion. “He [a hypnotist] started to work on me and soon I got into a position where he said, ‘You can’t open your eyes. “I said to myself, ‘I bet I could open my eyes, but I don’t want to disturb the situation: Let’s see how much further it goes.’ It was an interesting situation. You’re only slightly fogged out, and although you’ve lost a little bit, you’re pretty sure you could open your eyes. But of course, you’re not opening your eyes, so in a sense you can’t do it. “He went through a lot of stuff and decided that I was pretty good. “When the real demonstration came he walked on stage and he hypnotized us in front of the whole Princeton Graduate College. This time the effect was stronger; I guess I had learned how to become hypnotized. The hypnotist made various demonstrations, having me do things I couldn’t normally do, and at the end he said that after I came out of hypnosis, instead of returning to my seat directly, which was the natural way to go, I would walk all the way around the room and go to my seat from the back.

All through the demonstration I was vaguely aware of what was going on, and cooperating with the things the hypnotist said, but this time I decided, ‘Damn it, enough is enough! I’m gonna go straight to my seat.’ “When it was time to get up and go off the stage, I started to walk straight to my seat. But then an annoying feeling came over me: I felt so uncomfortable that I couldn’t continue. I walked all the way around the hall. [10]

He sums up the primary points encompassed within the above example by saying:

There are a number of things that come out of this account. One is, of course, that at NO time was Feynman unconscious of what was going on: though he clearly was not in quite a normal state of mind, but rather “fogged out”. (You will find that there is a very common misconception that hypnosis involves a total loss of awareness of proceedings.)

The second is that subjectively the thought in his mind was that he was choosing to comply with what the hypnotist suggested.

But the third thing – and the thing that impressed him and is one of the things we associate with hypnosis – is the fact that when there became an issue of conflict – when he consciously willed something at variance to what had been suggested – then he found his body doing something against his conscious will. [11]

Post hypnotic cues are established upon psychological principles of compliance and also upon what is known as a ‘pre-established automated suggestion response.’ This pre-established response gains increased effectiveness through repetition. Regular church attendees have this post-hypnotic programming deeply ingrained in their mind and every time they enter their church, the effects of the post-hypnotic cues increase. It is simply a matter of repetitive mental conditioning. The routine of going to church will also aid a faster trance induction, as repetitive behaviours tend increase access to the subconscious mind. Take experienced drivers for example, they might go off into a light trance while driving, causing them to miss an exit or a turn, because their mind had wandered off for a while. [12] This also occurs when we are engaged in other simple and monotonous tasks that require little concentration. [13] The conscious mind is distracted and takes us on a little journey into our thoughts, leaving our subconscious mind at the wheel.

For the regular church-goer, the routines associated with going to church become monotonous and almost automatic. Perhaps they wake up, have their Sunday breakfast and watch a little morning TV, or not. Then they might have a shower, or not. Following this, they might adorn their special church going clothes, or just their regular clothes. In some Christian churches, like the Pentecostal church, women are forbidden from wearing earrings, so these women might take out their earrings on this particular day, or wear a slightly longer dress than usual. Finally, perhaps, the church-goer might get into their family car and go to church, or walk. This may or may not be representative of any church-goer’s routine, however, one thing is almost certain, and that is, they will have a routine. Human beings are creatures of habit. Whether it is visiting the same places for lunch or going for walks on the same routes over and over, we tend to partake in repetitive activities. This often results in a kind of monotony-induced trance, which is the result of automatic behaviour that side lines the conscious mind for varying periods of time. Whilst at the surface, the subconscious mind is more prone to external suggestive forces. [14]

Returning to the issue of rapport, most Protestant churches usually have someone at the door to greet arriving church members and new comers. It might be the preacher, the preacher’s wife, his children, an elder of the church, or just someone on the greeting roster. The introduction at the door, or even being greeted by fellow parishioners, helps to make the attendee feel comfortable in the church environment. As mentioned, a new comer to a church might be approached by the Pastor’s wife or the pastor himself, and asked whether this is their first time. Following this, they may engage in some introductory chit chat. This is the same technique employed by hypnotherapists to gain rapport with their subjects, establish trust, and make them feel at ease. These church greeters are not consciously trying to establish rapport so they can hypnotize a new comer or regular attendee, they are just doing what is normal. It is just good manners to introduce yourself and welcome fellow church-goers and new comers to your church. There is nothing at all sinister about this. However, this does not mean that it does not achieve the task of the first stage of the hypnosis session. Once the parishioner or congregant is settled and comfortable, they are ready to begin their session.

As an aside, quite often there will be music playing as people enter the church. This music is quite often accompanied by a drum beat ranging from 45-72 beats per minute, the average rate of the human heartbeat. This melodic and rhythmic music has the effect of soothing and relaxing the attendee, preparing them for the mental state required to receive suggestions in a less critical manner. Further, the lyrics in most Christian songs are very repetitive and serve as good trance inducers. As the attendee walks in they may see people with their hands raised and their eyes closed, swaying to the music. This creates an atmosphere conducive to trance, by increasing the “religious tension” or atmosphere in the room. This atmosphere, coupled with the rhythmic beating and repetitive lyrics, sets the subject up for the next stage of the hypnosis session. Before we look at the second stage of the hypnotic church session, I would like to take a moment to highlight the important role played by the environment itself.

Has Anyone Seen my Church Hat?

Any given environment, be it school, work, home, church, or a sports stadium, carries with it a different set of cultural expectations for behaviour. That is to say, we wear different hats in different environments. Generally speaking, one wouldn’t behave at church as they would at a football match, nor would someone behave the same way at work as they do at home. In my experience, I have only met one person who almost completely ignores the expected norms associated with different environments and she, I am happy to boast, is my wife. Regardless of the few exceptions, like my wife, our environment commonly impacts upon our behaviour, which in turn, influences our thoughts, moods and feelings. These social-environmental expectations (norms) produce in the church-goer, the right frame of mind for the church experience and from the outset, they procure the attendees’ compliance.

Milton Erickson, a renowned hypnotherapist, would have his clients perform trivial tasks for him upon entering his room. For example, he might have asked them to shut the door behind them and then requested that they move their chair closer to him, anything that would get the subject responding to him without them being consciously aware of his motivation for doing so. This technique establishes a pattern of compliance-based behaviour in the subject, which results in them being more prone to suggestion during the session. Similarly, the church environment sets out its own list of compliance-based behaviour patterns, giving it the ability to increase suggestibility during the service.

The Building Itself

Frank Viola and George Barna, in their book ‘Pagan Christianity,’ discuss this issue in the following words:

Every building we encounter elicits a response from us. By its interior and exterior, it explicitly shows us what the church is and how it functions.

To put it in the words of Henri Lefebvre, “Space is never empty; it always embodies a meaning.” This principle is also expressed in the architectural motto “form follows function.” The form of the building reflects its particular function.”

The social setting of a church’s meeting place is a good index of that church’s understanding of God’s purpose for His body. A church’s location teaches us how to meet. It teaches us what is important and what is not. And it teaches us what is acceptable to say to each other and what is not.

We learn these lessons from the setting in which we gather—whether it be a church edifice or a private home. These lessons are by no means neutral. Go into any given church building and exegete the architecture. Ask yourself what objects are higher and which are lower. Ask yourself what is at the front and what is at the back. Ask yourself in what ways it might be possible to “adjust” the direction of the meeting on the spur of the moment. Ask yourself how easy or hard it would be for a church member to speak where he is seated so that all may see and hear him.

If you look at the church building setting and ask yourself these questions (and others like them), you will understand why the contemporary church has the character it does. [15]

Viola and Barna go on to say:

The disjunction between worship and everyday life characterizes Western Christianity. Worship is seen as something detached from the whole fabric of life and packaged for group consumption. Centuries of Gothic architecture have taught us badly about what worship really is. Few people can walk into a powerful cathedral without experiencing the power of the space.

The lighting is indirect and subdued. The ceilings are high. The colors are earthy and rich. Sound travels in a specific way. All these things work together to give us a sense of awe and wonder. They are designed to manipulate the senses and create a “worshipful atmosphere.”

Some traditions add smells to the mix. But the effect is always the same: Our senses interact with our space to bring us to a particular state of the soul—a state of awe, mystery, and transcendence that equals an escape from normal life.”

We Protestants have replaced some of the grander architectural embellishments with a specific use of music intended to achieve the same end. Consequently, in Protestant circles “good” worship leaders are those who can use music to evoke what other traditions use space to evoke; specifically, a soulish sense of worshipfulness.” But this is disjointed from everyday life and is inauthentic. [16]

Gabriel Moser and David Uzell, two environmental psychologists add:

Understanding and designing the environment for human activity can be achieved only when both the environment and the user are considered together as one transaction.

The environmental setting is not a neutral and value-free space; it is culture bound. It is constantly conveying meanings and messages and is an essential part of human functioning and an integral part of human action. As Getzels (1975) writes, “Our vision of human nature finds expression in the buildings we construct, and these constructions in turn do their silent yet irresistible work of telling us who we are and what we must do” (p. 12).The environment embodies the social and cultural values of those who inhabit it. [17]

I think it is fair to say that most people can relate to the experience of entering different environments, and the impact that these environments have on our thoughts and behaviours. We don’t usually walk into a funeral drinking beer and cheering, unless of course that happens to be your way of expressing grief, or the person being buried is someone you possessed a strong disdain for, but usually the environment will tell us what it wants from us by its layout and its socially recognized purpose. The church environment, with its architectural and interior design, its set of cultural expectations, the greeting at the door or idle chit chat with fellow congregants, the melodic music upon entry, the atmosphere created by people already slightly entranced by the “spirit,” along with the post hypnotic programming/cues, creates a powerful introduction that paves the way for a seamless transition into the hypnotic ‘induction.’

Once again, I must stress that variations exist, but whether the building is designed to elicit the introduction and induction effects, or whether it is the music, style of worship, or a combination of these elements, all churches, and even mosques, synagogues and Buddhist temples for that matter, emit a hypnotic influence over worshippers.

Hypnosis is actually not a bad thing like the media tends to portray it these days. Hypnosis can be used to help you gain control over undesired behaviors or to help you cope better with anxiety or pain. That's why I became a hypnotherapist, by the way. Back when my brother died, it was tough for me to cope with it. The only thing that helped me through it was the support of my parents and friends and the hypnotherapy sessions I went to. That's what motivated me to become a hypnotherapist myself. If you want to know what this career path is really like, you can read this article https://www.becomeopedia.com/hypnotherapist/. It's a fascinating and fun profession!