Hypnosis and Other Altered States

Abstract

Our own reality seems so inherent and secure that it is difficult to imagine just how different it can be if a few of the assumptions of our self-concept are changed. In many parts of Africa and in Pentecostal churches in Brazil, Haiti, Mexico, and even the United States, you will see parishioners seized by spirits, speaking in tongues (unknown languages), and otherwise demonstrating forms of consciousness that are frighteningly different from what we consider normal. Howling, spasms, and speaking in unknown languages are the norm during these church services. These altered states are not a physical ailment but simply a result of people believing that they exist. The exact form these altered states take varies from region to region because the concept varies. In the United States it has been estimated that there are some five million people who speak in tongues. Televangelists Oral Roberts, Jim Baker, Jimmy Swaggart, and Pat Robertson all speak in tongues but they avoid doing it on TV because they have found that it scares the uninitiated.¹

There is nothing more difficult than to become critically aware of the presuppositions of one’s own thoughts.... Every thought can be scrutinized directly except the thought by which we scrutinize. — E. F. Schumacher, 1977