In a captivating demonstration, a hypnotist took a willing volunteer—one of the oldest and strongest 12th-graders in the school—and hypnotized him into thinking that he could not lift a glass of water. When the hypnotist then presented him with a glass of water and asked him to lift it, to the amazement of his fellow students, it would not budge. No matter how hard the student tried, it was impossible for him in his mesmerized state to lift it at all. Once the spell was broken, the boy realized what had happened and was able to lift the glass normally.
I have been intrigued by this story ever since a family member, one of the students who observed this spectacle, first shared it with me. What made it of special interest was that as long as the student volunteer was under the influence of the suggestion that he could not lift the glass, the physical limitations that were so obviously absurd to those in the room appeared as absolute fact to him. But his reality was not reality at all. Only so long as he surrendered his thought to the bogus suggestion was he subject to acting out its constraints.
It would have been futile to try to correct the supposed physical inability with physical remedies. He wasn’t suffering from a bodily condition. His condition was purely mental, a belief appearing as a physical reality. The only possible solution was for him to wake from his dream state.
