Hypnosis can be a helpful therapeutic tool practiced by a trained professional, but can be abused in the service of the occult. Many hypnotherapists practice past life regression and the subjects often find these alleged "retrieved memories" a convincing demonstration of reincarnation. The problem here is that the hypnotized subject often has an unconscious desire to please the hypnotherapist, thus creating the false memory illusion. I recall a study of group hypnosis in which several of the 500 subjects recalled a prior life (1) as Napoleon, a soldier at Jesus' cross, or some other famous person or (2) as a witness to the life of a famous person.
My one experience with deliberate self-hypnosis was significant in an unexpected way. I bought a book on self-hypnosis and then read the hypnotic narrative into a tape recorder. I then planted the suggestion that I would have an out-of-body experience. As I contemplated how I might shape such an experience, the thought of a romantic encounter became a temporary obsession. Upon further reflection, I recognized that romantic dreams are one thing, but OBE romantic adventures might be spiritually dangerous, and so, I ruled out that idea. I then played the tape, while lying in bed, and to my dismay, I found myself floating up by the ceiling, looking down on my sleeping body! At that point, I felt my desire for an edifying spiritual encounter, but could not shake the suggestion of a romantic encounter instead. As I resisted this suggestion, I felt fear and decided to return to my body. But as I draped my spirit body over my sleeping physical body, I couldn't make my "spirit fingers" merge with my physical fingers! This failure deepened my fear that I had in fact died! Fortunately, that fear woke me up.
I'll never repeat such an experiment, but I learned 2 important lessons in the process:
(1) First, what my self-hypnosis had actually achieved was a lucid dream of an out-of-body experience, not a genuine OBE. I am now suspicious of many claims to know the difference between lucid dreams and OBEs.
(2) Second, I learned that self-hypnosis, especially involving sleep, can be very much controlled by unwanted unconscious processes. In my case, it didn't matter that I had predetermined NOT to pursue a romantic OBE; rather, the fleeting fantasy of a romantic experience was dominant for unconscious reasons. This lack of self-control has convinced me that Christians should not consciously pursue OBEs in the interests of developing prophetic gifts.
