Why You Keep Going Back

An induced state can fade. That is why it needs reinforcement.

Stop listening to the hypnotist, stop doing the prescribed practices, take time away from the group, and return to ordinary life for a while. Some of the induced sensations begin to disappear.

“Where did the love go?”

“I can't feel the space anymore.”

“The stillness is fading.”

“My personality seems to be back.”

“Without my morning meditation, I'm just an ordinary person again.”

Instead of considering that the state depended on hypnosis and has now worn off, you are given another suggestion: “You lost awareness.” “Your mind took over again.” “You need to get back to your daily practice.”

That is the purpose of the morning and evening routine, the constant contact with teachers and group facilitators. The ideal arrangement is to bring you back into the same state twice a day, leaving little room to step outside it and examine what is happening.

“You can't get stuck in hypnosis” is therefore a half-truth in the sense that concerns me here.

Yes, a particular session ends. You get up from the chair. You open your eyes.

The suggestion can stay.

You can remain trapped in the worldview built around it. You can spend years returning for reinforcement, restructuring your relationships, work, finances, and life around it. You can keep repeating the hypnotist's words long after the hypnotist is gone.

You don't have to lie with your eyes closed for twenty years. Accepting an induced illusion as truth for twenty years is enough.

Almost everyone knows what it feels like when a spell of this kind breaks.

Once, you believed in Santa Claus. Then you saw how it worked, and the magic was gone.

Perhaps you once fell in love and saw an almost perfect person. Later, the state ended, and you looked at the same person in disbelief: “What did I ever see in them?” They had not necessarily changed. Your hypnosis had. What had supplied imaginary qualities—and concealed real ones—was no longer operating in the same way.

Growing up is, in large part, a succession of departures from these spells. But not everyone wants to grow up.

Sometimes we want to stay where there is magic, where someone bigger will explain, protect, and provide a ready-made meaning.

That wish can be especially powerful when actual life is painful: debt, poverty, anxiety, panic attacks, little education, unhappy relationships, no self-respect, no sense of influence over what happens next.

Then a teacher arrives with a different story:

“You're not insignificant. You were chosen.”

“You've discovered the secret of creation.”

“You understand the universe.”

“You're almost enlightened.”

“You are God.”

Yesterday you felt worthless. Today you are the Absolute.

Of course you cling to the suggestion. Not because it is true, but because returning to the life you actually have feels unbearable.

That is how people end up in the hands of groups that know exactly how to keep them there.