"if you'd rate yourself as incredibly skeptical about hypnosis, as in you don't believe it could ever work on you, i'd like you to raise your hand."

you raised your hand, naturally. you'd read a lot about hypnosis, and so you were certain that whatever the hypnotist said, it would be something you were already familiar with -- and therefore, since you knew what was happening, nothing could start to happen without your intention or awareness. therefore, you couldn't be hypnotized, if you were trying not to be.

"now i would like a few --- you, you, you, and you -- of you to come up here, on stage, if you wouldn't mind --- you also, you, you, and you," he said, pointing toward people in the audience who had raised there hands. "let's get a nice number -- thirteen or fifteen -- you, you also, you, you, you...and you," he said, pointing at you. you stood up and walked right to the stage, interested to see what the hypnotist might do next. you hadn't expected the show to start this way -- usually there was a sort of induction or suggestion test on the whole audience, and then more responsive people would be asked to volunteer, or even hypnotized in their seats out in the crowd, then being surprised at suddenly being on stage the next time they open their eyes.

instead, the hypnotist asked for skeptical people, who didn't think they could be hypnotized at all. it was a good move, you thought -- if even one very skeptical person showed responsiveness to a suggestion or induction on stage, it would be a really convincing demonstration that hypnosis was real, and it would probably get the audience's attention quite focused in on the show. and it was pretty likely that even out of a group of people considering themselves very skeptical, at least one would show some degree of hypnotic response. some things, like feeling an arm getting heavy or floating up while you're holding it out, are really quite physiological -- an arm expects either to be raised or dropped, or to hold on to something, not just to be held in the air. it's natural for it to do literally anything else. likewise, when you're holding your arms out with the palms facing each other, it's natural for them to slowly move closer together even if no one says anything at all. so with a good number of self-rated skeptics there on the stage, it was quite likely that at least one would respond to such a thing quickly. then the hypnotist could declare "even skeptics can be hypnotized," and send them all back, and start his suggestion test on the audience to find the highest-hypnotizability people there tonight, whether it was from a really high innate ability to focus and imagine or from being in just the right frame of mind tonight to be hypnotized.

plus, there are different kinds of skeptical. you were skeptical that you could be hypnotized, at least in a setting like this, since you were quite familiar with what the hypnotist might do, and understood the intended effect of everything, and so none of it would surprise you. on the other hand, most of the other people rating themselves skeptical might just not have heard or read much about hypnosis, and so they might have some misconceptions. they might expect to be asked to look into a crystal, or to look at a pocket watch, rather than simply to close their eyes and focus on their breathing. they might have thought that "your eyes are getting heavy" was the part where "being hypnotized" happened, and so with their eyes closed at the start, they might suddenly have no idea what was going to happen next, and so they would simply listen very closely to the hypnotist. and since they weren't familiar with hypnosis, they wouldn't know the directions that a hypnotist could go, and they wouldn't recognize hypnotic techniques -- being now in a situation very different from their expectations, they would focus closely on the hypnotist from having no other way of knowing what was going on.

so, you realized, it was actually quite possible that a good number, perhaps two or three, of the skeptical people now sitting in a row on the stage might actually get hypnotized, and deeply, just from a classic magnetic-hands or progressive relaxation induction. that would be a really strong convincer for the audience, and since the skeptical people didn't expect to be hypnotized at all, they would likely be highly engaged as volunteers for the rest of the show. it seemed like actually a perfect idea to ask for the most skeptical people right away, considering all this. it also sort of "broke the ice" on hypnosis not "working" on people, since it would impress the audience if even just a few of the group of skeptics sitting on the stage were hypnotized.

you, of course, were certain that you wouldn't be hypnotized. you knew too much about hypnosis for it to happen that quickly, in a setting like this, where the hypnotist would almost certainly use one of the set of techniques you were familiar with. so you knew you would quickly be back in your seat, watching the rest of the show from the audience. you had walked quickly up on the stage, utterly confident you'd be sent back soon, after whatever classic induction the hypnotist was about to start on. as soon as you realized what induction he was using, you would know exactly what to expect, and so it wouldn't work.

as you sat down in a chair there, on stage, and looked out at the audience, you imagined, just for a second, yourself really being hypnotized. if you went along with the induction -- which you knew how to do -- maybe you really would be hypnotized, even though you knew what was about to happen. you blinked, shook your head, & reminded yourself that it was probably just going to be kind of boring, kind of like a p.s.a. you've heard a ton of times before. i mean, by the umpteenth time you see a spot about eating a cup of fruit daily, you don't even think about eating fruit, you just think about the image of a pear or a banana sitting in a cup. a cup of fruit. so -- like that. you were too familiar with the patterns of hypnotic inductions for them to work, almost certainly. rather than following along with what the hypnotist said, you would be too busy taking internal notes, identifying the type of induction, rating the hypnotist's speed, technique, flow, the inventiveness of his language, thinking about how convincing he would sound to a naive person, thinking about what a naive person might be feeling right now, just following along with the hypnotist and listening for what to focus on next, not knowing, as you did, most of the directions that a hypnotist might take.

so you just blinked, took a deep breath, and waited for the hypnotist to start. now that all the skeptical people he'd pointed to had come up on stage and were sitting in a row, it likely wouldn't be very long. after a few moments, you looked around for the hypnotist. he was just standing off to the side, looking through a small notebook, a touch hurriedly. he must be going over his script again, you thought. that's funny. he must have only done this a few times so far. or else he's trying out a new sort of induction thing. i wonder if he is. that would be interesting. it would be pretty cool to be in the first few groups to hear something new that a professional hypnotist had developed.

you watched the hypnotist for a few more seconds, then suddenly, he closed the notebook, slipped it in the inner pocket of his jacket & stepped around behind the row of chairs, out of your sight unless you turned all the way around. not sure what to focus on for a second, you looked forward, out into the audience, which was difficult to see more than a few rows back, the stage lights at the back of the room making your eyes adjust to their brightness such that everything else was dark. they almost felt too bright to look out into -- it hurt a bit. you looked down at your shoes, for somewhere else to look, blinking, seeing spots from the bright lights at the back of the room.

suddenly, the hypnotist spoke from behind you. it felt like he was right there by your shoulder.

"close your eyes, please, skeptical subjects, and imagine a bright and beautiful castle, floating high up there in the sky, built up there on a cloud somehow. float up there, up to the gate. the door is open, and you can go in. in there, everything is glass, and crystal. there is a knight, whose armor is all crystal, shimmering icy blue, and there is his horse beside him, whose eyes are glass, clear and glossy glass, and all along his back his mane is sharp and icy blue. they pace out, out through the gate. you go inside, there, though another door, and you see a long table, white, perfect, beautiful smooth marble, with chandeliers above, which each have a thousand and one lights upon them, one to a hundred crystals hanging down from each light -- and all along the table, crystal plates, and glasses are set in hundreds of places, going off down the table as far as you can see. you can all sit there, sit there now, and sip something that's in the crystal glass there, something clear, shining blue, in the clear glass. it's cold. take a sip, and you can feel it run down your throat, cold, yet somehow the trace, the path it leaves behind is warm, and when it runs down into your core, everything is warm, perfectly warm.

and there is one -- on your plate, on the clear, crystal plate on the long white marble table, on your plate there, there is one grape. one green, perhaps purple, perhaps red, one grape. and this has a quality which is very special. it will taste like the most delicious thing in the whole world, and yet, one bite will put you in a deep sleep for one whole hour, right just after you finish tasting how incredible it tastes. and it's up to you if you would like to try...to eat that grape. if you would, if you're curious, you may now...taste, bite into that grape. and feel its juice flowing all down, all down your throat, all around, everything. sweet. like golden honey. thick. rich. and you can lie down now, still tasting, as it fades. there is a place there, just in front of you, and you can relax, and slip, and slide, and lay down right there, that taste still left just on the tip of your tongue, fading now and you can sleep." he snapped his fingers. "sleep." he snapped his fingers. "sleep. he snapped his fingers. "sleep." he snapped his fingers. "sleep." he snapped his fingers.

"and every time i say sleep -- " he snapped his fingers -- "you can slip, and slide right back here, tasting that grape, green, purple, or red, too delicious, and you slide right, right back here. sleep." he snapped his fingers. "sleep." he snapped his fingers. "sleep." he snapped his fingers.

that's the last that you remembered, at least until you opened your eyes, blinking in the bright light. you felt, for a second, like you'd looked up from your shoes out at the stage lights again, and just zoned out staring at them. then you realized you were on your back. you were purely disoriented for a few seconds, then you blinked, and realizing you were looking up, at the lights above the stage, which were even brighter than the ones out at the back. you raised your head, looking around, then lifted yourself up on your elbows, blinking. it looked like most other people on stage were doing the same -- like they were just waking up from a nap they didn't mean to take, surprised they'd fallen asleep. one girl and one guy were still sitting in their chairs, like nothing had happened. wait, what *did* happen??

"wonderful, wonderful. you may now take your seats, if you would like."

you got to your feet, & sat down again in the chair you'd sat in when you first came up to the stage. you looked out at the bright stage lights for a second, then down at your shoes again, blinking away the streaks. everyone else that had woken up lying on the ground took their seats again too.

however, the girl & the guy who'd just been sitting there like nothing happened stood up, looked at each other, and started out back toward the audience. as they went back, you heard the girl whisper, "what was the deal with that? castles can't float, they would fall. i don't get it."

you blinked. oh. they took "take your seats" to mean, back in the audience. i took it to mean here on the stage. you blinked again.

wait. am i hypnotized?

you were definitely out for a bit there. you woke up on the ground. there was -- a floating castle, like the girl who it didn't work on had just said. then there was...a crystal glass, a long white table....a magic grape?...and then...you blinked. all you remembered after that was the moment of waking up and looking up at the ceiling light, totally disoriented, thinking you were still in your chair before you realized you weren't. so -- you were out there for a second. for sure. realizing this, you blinked. so -- am i hypnotized??

you started to breathe faster. you looked around for the hypnotist. you couldn't see him at either side of the stage, so he must still be there behind you. probably checking his notes again, you thought.

after a few moments, the hypnotist spoke, a little loud for right behind you, like he was addressing himself to the whole of the audience, all the way out to the way back. you focused intently on every word he said, taking notes to yourself on his choice of words, his intonation, he pace. this is definitely the part where he test the audience. i can sense the change in him -- now it's like he's directing a whole show, a whole orchestra, where before it was just him and me, him and a few of us.

"you all out there, if you didn't raise your hands, you're more inclined to believe in hypnosis than those up here. so you're actually less surprised to see them hypnotized than they themselves are. and so having seen the power of hypnosis right here, you wouldn't be surprised at all, and you would believe me if i said i could hypnotize every single person here in the space of just a few minutes if i so chose. yet that's not what i'm going to do. i would like up here, with these skeptical subjects, several people who are highly suggestible, naturally and tonight. and i can find out who of you is highly so, in quite a direct way, right now."

here it is.

"just close your eyes. that's actually all you have to do. close your eyes and focus on the shape of each word i say. and actually, you don't even have to close your eyes to be hypnotized. yet i would only like to hypnotize those here who want to know what it's like. so i will only hypnotize you if you've closed your eyes. and then i will begin.

with your eyes closed, could you hold your right arm up in the air, like you're answering a question? right. i see that everyone with their eyes closed is raising their hand. the feeling is quite curious, and i think you will likely have a lot of questions about the feeling in a few moments when most of you are through. and you can watch those who are up here, who are most suggestible, and those others here, who are most skeptical, and perhaps i can show you some things to help investigate some of those questions you may have about the feeling of being hypnotized.

what i would like you to do now is imagine something simple. high up there like that, in your hand, you're holding a stone. it's a magic stone, which can float, and right now it's floating up in the air there, up where you're holding it, actually pulling your arm...up a little. a special property of this stone is that its weight, its mass, can magically change. right now it's negative, floating upward actually against gravity. now though, when i hum like mmmmm, the weight will slowly increase, get heavier. it's a very funny feeling. mmmmmmm. now you might feel the weight of it a little, making your arm...a bit tired to hold it up there. and now that the weight is there, it can start to increase quite fast. mmmmmmm. it's a little heavy now. surprisingly heavy for its size. like a ball of heavy rubber. mmmmmmmmm. it's really heavy for its size now. try to hold it up in the air, yet it pulls your arm down. hold your arm stiff as you can. now it's going to get so, so much heavier i want you to be careful, i want you to be ready, it's going to increase tenfold, incredibly heavy for its size, like there's a super-gravitational force on it -- mmmmmmmmmmmmmp.

and now, another property of the magic stone is that it can disappear. with a snap of my fingers, it will just vanish in a puff of dust. yet i want you to keep your arm stiff exactly where it is right now."

he snapped his fingers.

"now could you open your eyes, and look at your hand?"

you looked at your hand. your arm was held out straight, and your hand was a few inches below shoulder level. you blinked. it really didn't feel like your arm had moved that far from up! the magic stone felt pretty heavy, but --

movement out in the audience caught your eye. the hypnotist had stepped off the stage & across the front of the seats. you couldn't quite hear what he was saying, but he was talking to a guy whose hand had ended up pulling him halfway to the floor. as you watched, the hypnotist took the guy's pulled-down arm by the wrist, lifted it, and held a small crystal on a thin chain in front of his eyes. you only saw it for a few seconds -- the guy focused on it, and in a few moments looked glazed over and totally zoned out. then the hypnotist lifted his arm by the wrist, and sort of tugged it forward in slow motion, except for a quick movement at the end just before letting his hand drop. the guy had closed his eyes after just a few seconds looking at the crystal, and then with the slow pull & quick movement his head dropped forward, and his stomach relaxed, and he slouched over forward, head between his knees, arms around them, fingers resting on the ground. the hypnotist was tapping on his back in a steady, rapid rhythm, then snapped his fingers. you hadn't been able to hear what he was saying, yet it was clear in a few moments -- the guy jerked upright and stood up all in a moment, still looking oddly zoned out, then turned and walked right up on stage, sitting cross-legged a few feet in front of me.

while i watched him walk up and sit down i didn't even notice the hypnotist doing an induction on someone else. i just saw her stand up, blinking, and walk up on stage, sitting down cross-legged just next to the guy. i tried to look for who the hypnotist was inducing next, to see what technique he was using, but it was hard to look out into the bright lights, and he was a few rows back now. it was only when the people he hypnotized stood up and started walking up the aisle that i could see them. none of them looked at all nervous or surprised to be hypnotized, they were just sort of smiling, half glazed over.

before long there was one suggestible person sitting cross-legged in front of each skeptical person sitting in a chair.

"if you please, now, you more skeptical ones, could you spot for a moment? just kneel there behind the person now in front of you, so you would catch them if they leaned backwards. good. wonderful. now each of you sitting cross-legged, you and only you, look up here right now please -- take a deep breath in --" you saw their chests all rise. his hand caught the eye with a wave of his fingers, & then he snapped. "ssssshhhhhwwww," he said, sort of like how you'd say the sound of wind. the guy in front of you went out like a light, collapsing back into your arms quicker than you were quite ready for. you held him up by the shoulders, a little off the stage floor. as his head fell back, between your arms, you could see that his eyes were fluttering, moving behind his closed eyelids, & you could see that the muscles along his face and neck were completely relaxed. he was out.

"now, skeptical subjects, i would like you to prove to yourself now that the person you are holding is in a state very different from awakeness or sleep. you can pinch them, gently, you can tap their foreheads, you can tug their ears, you will see that nothing like that will disturb them at all from this deep hypnosis that they are in. you can -- being very careful now -- pull up their eyelid a little, just lightly with one fingertip, and you can see it does nothing to disturb them from this deep hypnotic trance. take one of their hands by the wrist, now. lift their arm, move it back and forth, just like that, and see how deep this relaxation is, just in a few moments, for a suggestible subject. drop -- carefully drop their arm now, in their lap. good.

right in front of you, now, is someone who is deeply hypnotized. it's not every day that you get to closely examine someone in such a different state. and now you can see, that while even a pinch or lifting their eyelids wouldn't, you can just say "eyes open, wake up" gently by their ear right now, and exactly that will happen."

when you whispered that by his ear, the guy in your lap blinked, and quickly sat up, like nothing had happened.

"skeptical subjects, please be ready to spot once more. and -- sleep." he snapped his fingers. the suggestible people sitting all fell back again in a row. the guy's back and the back of his head hit your arms surprisingly hard. he was totally out, like he'd been knocked silly.

"now, skeptical subjects, please, carefully, you may let your suggestible subject gently down on the ground, and sit again where you were in your chair there."

you did so, keeping your hand underneath his head till it was resting on the stage floor, then taking your seat, looking out at the bright lights, looking at your shoes & blinking away the spots. now you were also looking down at the suggestible subject laying back, totally out, legs still crossed, eyes fluttering. you wondered what it felt like to be that relaxed. you were out for a few minutes earlier, yet it wasn't like that. although -- you did wake up on the ground, now that you thought about it. even though it was just a few minutes ago, it didn't seem real.

then...you don't remember what happened. there was a vague sense of the hypnotist behind you. an image of him standing behind someone further down, not at you yet, pointing out at the light at the other end of the room, his hand on the person's shoulder.

-------

you felt someone take your wrist, then snap his fingers. you looked up, and caught the eyes of the guy who, just a few minutes ago, had fallen back into your arms, deeply hypnotized, totally out. now he was looking right into your eyes, with complete confidence. he said, firmly, "sleep," and at the same time tugged your arm by the wrist. arm-pull induction, you thought to yourself, and you weren't surprised to feel your head fall forward, following the arm he pulled -- that was mostly physiological. you tried to blink, though, and shake off the oddly heavy feeling that suddenly came over you, and somehow you couldn't, and trying just made it heavier, and heavier, and heavier, and heavier, and -- you realized your head was forward on your knees. he wasn't holding your arm anymore. he'd dropped it. you hadn't noticed. you felt yourself still heavier, heavier every time you tried to shake off the feeling, heavier, heavier, slipping, sliding forward til you slipped past that certain point and fell, like you were drugged, out of your chair, sprawling out on the floor, totally relaxed. after that you didn't think about anything but how relaxed you were, how deeply relaxed you were. so deeply relaxed. increadibly deeply relaxed. the feeling was so powerful, so fascinating, it was so intense and ecstatic to be so deeply relaxed. so deeply relaxed. so deeply relaxed. so deeply relaxed.

-------

you blinked. you were looking out at the bright light at the back of the room. you looked down at your shoes, blinking away the spots.

"there you are -- skeptical and suggestible subjects, hypnotized just the same. i hope this show tonight has given you all a lot to think about, and a lot to remember. before i leave you i would just like to ask a few people up here what they thought as volunteers." the hypnotist stepped over to you. "did you think you could be hypnotized?"

"yes," you said. "i thought i would be a very suggestible subject."

"and you were?" he asked. "i think so," you said, laughing.

then he turned to someone behind you. you looked over your shoulder -- it was the guy from before. you remembered the image of him coming up on stage after you, halfway zoned out looking.

"and did you, my friend, think that you would be hypnotized?"

"no way," he said. "i was absolutely, totally skeptical of it. that's why i raised my hand. i'm -- i don't even know what to think, now."

you caught the eye of the hypnotist, as he looked back down to you. something seemed incredibly funny to him, & you had the odd sense that on some level you knew what it was, & even though you couldn't quite think of it, it felt really funny to you too. you felt like it was probably just that super skeptical people are often the most hypnotizable, and it was always funny to see or to read about a super skeptical person getting deeply hypnotized to their utter shock. since you'd read so much about hypnosis, you already had strong ideas about what being hypnotized would feel like. you'd even done a few self-hypnosis experiments on yourself, which seemed effective as far you could tell. so you'd considered yourself a pretty suggestible person -- someone who could be hypnotized quite quickly, since you knew the expected responses from all the classic techniques, and that knowledge would reinforce what the hypnotist said, making things likely to be highly effective on you. you were never at all skeptical about hypnosis, and you couldn't even imagine what it felt like. you always felt like you could be hypnotized deeply, and so you were, just like that.