Chapter 1: The Puzzle and the Key

Born in London in 1928 of Jewish heritage, I grew up during the Second World War and knew that members of my extended family were murdered in the Holocaust. The puzzlement at how this could happen affected me from my earliest years.

How could an otherwise civilized society like Germany become so completely immersed in what appeared to be a madman leading a nation in a trance? This was no ordinary madness; trains ran on time, children went to school, the opera performed—the veneer of patriotic normalcy was everywhere and yet the people fought to the death for the beast from the pit. Hitler might have enveloped the entire world had he and his minions not been conquered by force—and recall that beating him was very difficult even with the combined efforts of the most powerful countries in the world. How could the German people ignore or allow the atrocities taking place directly in front of them?

That puzzle was resolved for me with jaw-dropping clarity when, in the early 1940s, I saw a stage hypnotist induce people to do crazy and irrational things on an individual level, much as Hitler’s Germany had accomplished on a national level, albeit with much more evil consequences. (As I would later discover, the oft-repeated notion that people cannot be hypnotized to think and act against their own conscience is utterly untrue.)

"...my interest was profoundly sparked by that
stage demonstration. I thought, "Why can’t
this power be used to make people behave
in rational instead of irrational ways?"

Always a seeking young man, my interest was profoundly sparked by that stage demonstration. I thought, “Why can’t this power be used to make people behave in rational instead of irrational ways?” It was many years before I discovered that life itself exerted hypnotic influences, and that hypnotic pressures were the principal cause of almost all the world’s sufferings. The answer, then, did not lie in fighting hypnosis with more hypnosis—adding additional layers of conditioning on top of what was already there, but in finding a way to become progressively dehypnotized and less susceptible to the hypnotic effects of one’s formative years.

Countless others have studied this problem, including many profound figures in the history of religion. One of the most useful studies is Battle for the Mind, by William Sargant, first published in 1957. In addition to describing techniques of religious conversion, prisoner interrogation, political indoctrination, psychotherapy, and the effect of severe stress situations like combat, Sargant emphasized how suggestible people become when caught up in states of anger, fear or exultation—and how they can be manipulated once such states are begun and sustained.

There just had to be some kind of counter-hypnotic system, I pondered as a young man, perhaps what religious people called faith, or listening to one’s conscience,necessitating no other law giver. Something common to all humanity just had to be the guiding light and the “lamp unto our feet.” However, this being so, how did we get lost and how might we be found again? It didn’t take me long to realize that there were powerful religious and political forces that never wanted us to find that kind of freedom from the power they have held for thousands of years. Most puzzling was that entangled people tended to be loyal to their corrupters. Like dope addicts with their pushers, most people held fast to their systems, stubbornly defending what they thought of as themselves, which was in reality a childhood conditioning programmed into them practically from birth. 

"...after many years of using my growing
knowledge about hypnosis to help
people, I made three important
discoveries that have guided
all my subsequent work."

So, in the late 1950s, after many years of using my growing knowledge about hypnosis to help people, I made three important discoveries that have guided all my subsequent work.

The first core discovery was that the root of human problems is that we are already hypnotized and hypnotizable to varying degrees. Many well-meaning people in the past who came to this realization in some way had tried to help others by fighting hypnosis with hypnosis—further hypnotizing them into a better set of core beliefs and behaviors—perhaps by converting them hypnotically to a set of religious, ethical or political beliefs or practices that would improve their lives. I further realized, however, that wicked people who sensed this weakness in people had applied hypnotic techniques to make others serve their selfish ends for power, money or fame—with no intention of helping them ever become free.

Even converting someone hypnotically to a better set of beliefs and practices was not enough, because so long as people remained hypnotized, they would also remain hypnotizable. So another person with hypnotic skill could come along later and convert them to a very dangerous and unhappy set of beliefs and practices and lead them into disaster—as Hitler did to the German people, Stalin did to the Russian people, and as many governments and leaders are doing presently.

So, my second important realization was that the fundamental cure to all of this was not further hypnosis. Instead, I had to discover a way to help people become de-hypnotized and less susceptible to life’s ongoing hypnotic influences. Only thus could I help people to become truly free—even free of any need for me or any other helper once they had been set free from their hypnotic states and equipped with the tools to avoid being hypnotized again.

"Only thus could I help people to become truly free—even free of any need for me or any
other helper once they had been set free
from their hypnotic states and equipped
with the tools to avoid being
hypnotized again."

My third crucial realization came as I explored means to de-hypnotize people and help them become less suggestible. I realized that what is at the root of virtually all of our emotional problems, including our suggestibility and therefore our inability to truly be ourselves, is none other than our own resentment—much of it buried.

I realized at a young age why so many Germans during World War II were like those subjects on the hypnotist’s stage, living in pre-existing hypnotic states since childhood. Various authorities held the keys to quivering minds; they alone could reach inside to reawaken and reinforce implanted identities. Identity reassurance in exchange for submission had to be the reason why so many fight to the death for the strongest force. The core of authoritarian power had to be child abuse, but not necessarily the violent or criminally punished kind, as you will see.

In 1991, I re-published the booklet, Brainwashing: A Synthesis of the Russian Textbook of Psychopolitics. In this devastating 1930s account, it is clear that Russia, just like Germany, knew the evil art of subduing the mind. Shadow governments are preceded by an epidemic of personal and public defamations of noble heroes,demoralization of the youth leading to irresponsible parenting, relationships and unwanted children. An atmosphere of fear, uncertainty and strategic shocks will keep people in line no matter how old they become. Maturity rarely outgrows such conditioning. In fact, seeing and struggling with it can cause a hopeless depression and/or an ultimate decision to side with the bully.
* * * * *

Because I never look at today through yesterday’s eyes, I perceive everything afresh, every day anew. It is as though I see everything and everyone for the very first time everyday, as they are now. As I perceive things and people in each moment, I also do so without resentment—so that I discern without judging. There is love in such discernment.When you add resentment, however, you turn healthy discernment into unhealthy judgment, and you remain entangled with what is happening now, long after it has faded into the past and even from your conscious memory.

From here on, slowly but surely, imperceptibly, your life begins turning upside down and becomes the reason why this submissive or rebellious infantile conditioning is transferable from the villains of the past to the personal and political thugs of the present. 

"It has taken over 68 years for me to uncover
everything you’re about to discover
in a flash of light."

It has taken over 68 years for me to uncover everything you’re about to discover in a flash of light. Whatever patient endurance is, if you will seek that gift, your mind will become clear, your body will be made well, and soon you will prosper in everything. Instead of being changed by the world around you, you will change the world around you for the better.

All too many families are dictatorships with the children compelled to take on the identities of either parent, who in turn grow up to be parents doing to their children what was done unto them, albeit unconsciously. What power does any child have against such soul-robbing impatience? None!! Like it or not, see it or not, misery and suffering come down to us hypnotically through the generations and will continue to do so until the spell is broken by learning to give up resentment altogether. Do not wait too long to break the spell and make your stand. The longer you procrastinate in dealing perfectly with imperfect people, the more your personal world will close in. Then there will come a point of no return where it is too late to stand up as it was in the Holocaust.

From experience it should become clear that we can be redeemed only by something mysteriously beautiful within us all—something that has been repressed by a lifetime of injustice we never knew how to handle. Mistreatment of children in families exponentially begets child abuse, accounting for the inordinate number of subservient people in every nation, for whom cures are light years beyond the scope of insights and skills now possessed by organized medicine, religion, psychiatry and psychology. But take hope: healing is truly possible if you will allow trauma memories to surface, with you merely observing with calm, unemotional detachment, something like watching a bad movie without being lost in the play.

Solve this one problem of resenting, and it will free you to resolve all others. The roots of your ongoing problems begin to be starved of the energy that sustains them when you master a simple technique that enables you to no longer resent. So long as you keep feeding them with resentment, your problems will continue to grow and thrive despite your determination to rise up against them.

"Whether we like to admit it or not, we all walk
around in an endless loop of thought that is
equivalent to a hypnotic trance..."

Whether we like to admit it or not, we all walk around in an endless loop of thought that is equivalent to a hypnotic trance, in which everything is less than clear and forever confusing.

As I said, life itself exerts a hypnotic pressure to which we respond with resentment. Resentment in turn throws us into a daydream condition and it is hard to get out. Daily pressures arouse emotions that program our subconscious and allow other people’s wills and beliefs to interrupt our lives. We find ourselves pleasing others, being confused, not knowing what is imaginary and what is real, not living our own lives or being ourselves.

Most likely your problems began with cruelty or injustice directed at either yourself or others. A cruel, overwhelming, impatient parent, teacher, minister or other significant adult shut you down, or drove you into rebellion. That person made you out to be the problem, possibly giving you a label such as “bad girl,” “bad boy,” “spoiled,” “mentally ill,” “violent and unmanageable child,” “juvenile delinquent,” or “incorrigible,” and sent you off to your room or elsewhere for appropriate “treatment” or “punishment.” More often than not, the experience trapped you more resentfully into deeper levels of unconsciousness.

Since parents or governments pay bills and decide which doctors, psychologists,counselors, ministers, teachers or law enforcement personnel they will consult, those sought out to treat or punish you have something of a conflict of interest that makes it hard for them to see and face the possibility that the parent may actually be the problem. They tend to treat you as the parent or government wants you treated—that is, as the problem, even when you really are not. Injustice inflicted on others, especially in your home or school, but even in a movie or news telecast, can have exactly the same effect. Due to a little-known susceptibility that we all tend to have from birth, these kinds of evolving injustices have compounded your confusions and behaviors and trapped you into a lifelong role—either subservient and intimidated or dominant and intimidating—in each of your key relationships.

Here you will see how easy the way out is from these two wrong choices. Please keep in mind as you read this book what I said about adding resentment to the gift of discernment and how clear things become when you drop this key cause of all your problems. The cure lies in realizing there is one root cause—a single “infection” entry point—to all our addictions and strange behaviors, in fact to the vast majority of mental, emotional, physical and marital problems. 

"Be mindful of resentment, because holding on to it
deepens the programmed extremes of rebelling
and conforming  from which
there is no way out..."

Be mindful of resentment, because holding on to it deepens the programmed extremes of rebelling and conforming from which there is no way out other than letting go of the resentment that has always pulled you away from being poised in the present moment and instead locked you into emotional thinking about the past and the future. Letting go of resentment, then, would be as if you were saying quietly to yourself, without words, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

Today’s secret judgments within each of us are the suppressed protests from yesterday and yesteryear piling up all the way back to where it all began as the unavoidable reactions to injustice of frightened, angry and trembling little children. Because we were born into environments as helpless children responding resentfully to relentless pressures, we grew up inheriting those same roles from our parents and passing them on. That has to change if we are to survive and thrive.

Whether it’s the appeaser’s secret resentment toward bullies, or the bully’s overt contempt toward appeasing cowards, both of these resentment addictions cry out to be fed to avoid awareness of an ever-growing guilt for a life based on hate. There comes a point in family life where both “victim” judge and “villain” judge cannot give or get enough perverse gratifications from each other, and thereby destroy both lives. Both the victim and the bully judge the other, each feeding his or her own continued role in the drama by resenting the other’s role. The bully resents the appeaser’s weakness, and the appeaser resents the other’s bullying strength. Both are blind to the fact that the central problem that locks each of them into the drama is the resenting itself. Simply dropping resentment—from now on—is the key to stepping out of the game and into a truly free and happy life.

The key to happiness, health and prosperity lies in the way you meet each present moment. Without the proper knowledge, you respond incorrectly, the ugliness outside you gets inside, and guilt, confusion and fear begin piling up. Respond correctly, using the techniques I teach, and you will find an invisible shield of love, through which something unspeakably good passes to help change you and your loved ones as well as the world you live in. Never again will anything negative be able to penetrate that invisible protective shield to harm you. You will be free to express the marvelous potential of self, which currently lies dormant within you. 

"Never again will anything negative be able to penetrate
that invisible protective shield to harm you. You will
be free to express the marvelous potential of self,
which currently lies dormant within you."

None of life’s problems can be solved until you know what it is you are dealing with—in yourself and others. The scary but necessary part of this book is to describe these real-life dynamics vividly enough so you can become aware, as never before, when it is happening to you. With such awareness, along with a new technique for responding without resentment to what you see about your past, present and future, you will begin to find that you are no longer playing the usual game. Until that time you will be in bondage to a pressure system that has you compulsively acting the role of either bully or appeaser.

The little-known bottom line: When you become upset, you stay in a daydream state as a means of dealing with reality. That is the problem that must be resolved first,and in so doing, you will find not-of-this-world freedom and security.

Just as families are ravaged by the playing out of these inherited roles of bully and appeaser, so are nations shaped by them. Indeed, several times every century we see such perverse family projections in political scapegoating, exponentially spiraling into genocide. Why? It is because the inherent bully role inherits an insatiable hunger for the unwitting and compulsive subservient role, which often results in appeasers giving up their lives, thinking of it as love. But they can never give enough, because they are just feeding the voracious craving of a tyrant and making them emptier, guiltier and hungrier. Men reborn as beasts, weak before the strong and having lost life of their own, feed on innocent lives.

Both Great Britain and Nazi Germany had their champion bullies. Neville Chamberlain bullied the peace-loving British into appeasing Hitler. Hitler in turn convinced the German people that their peace-loving neighbors were a threat. In reality, believe it or not, like it or not, the abused are the friends of the bully—the silenced majority are his power. Hitler played his part but if the silent majority had found their voice there would have been no war, no genocide.

You may well take your sanity in your hands by trying to confront a friend or member of your family with the error of their ways. More likely than not they will try to make you think there is something wrong with you for seeing something wrong with them. Nevertheless, there are moments when this must be done to friends, spouse,children—whoever, whatever, and whenever it is timely. However, such authority needs to flow from a different place than those cruel circumstances that have shaped friends and foes alike. You will need to become the kind of person who does not overreact to stress.

To put it simply; you need to represent the true authority of the mother, father or atmosphere that your adversary never had, with unwavering patient endurance. 

"To put it simply; you need to represent the true
authority of the mother, father or atmosphere
that your adversary never had, with
unwavering patient endurance."

There is an old saying: You never get a second chance to make a first impression and the first impression must be yours. This does not mean to say that you should stoop to the same cruel aggressiveness to get that reaction because that would bring you down to his or her level. Effortlessly, your response of no response will cause a counter shock that will prevent an otherwise harmful escalation of anger and bring about a positive atmosphere. The worst thing that can happen is that they will walk away mumbling to themselves.

Intimidators and bullies of every stripe cannot function or take advantage if you do not react with fear or anger. Fear and anger in the victim is a trigger mechanism that literally empowers other people to hurt you. Now, two things begin to happen all by themselves without any effort on your part. Your problems begin to fade away, and friends, family and foes alike feel those gentle correcting shock waves and respond with respect, relieved of their inherent compulsion to hurt you.

Sooner or later the persistence of patient endurance will define friend from foe. The foe will run away frustrated and friends will respect you for helping them from a fate worse than death, often something you did not know that they were suffering from. You cannot tell those who are really wicked from those who were simply programmed to be that way and cannot help themselves. This is why you must be patient. I’ve met a lot of friends and grown stronger in the face of trials and tribulations. This is what I call real security. People become afraid when they cannot make you afraid. They cannot evolve as a bully over you if you don’t respond to that bully with the emotions of a bully. 

"I raised my children and my grandchildren 
 with this knowledge and so far no one has 
laid a glove on them."

I raised my children and my grandchildren with this knowledge and so far no one has laid a glove on them. No matter how old or young you are, this book can show you how to achieve victory over evil in the world and help you to come out smelling like a rose. However, there is one condition; you must be willing to see all the variations of your faults. I reassure you that simple willingness to look at them objectively will make them go away without struggle.

Where do you think conflict, anxiety, fear, guilt and depression come from? Guilt means you have become somehow compelled to act out another person’s will as if it were your own, and every act of folly comes complete with its own excuse. Always lost in a daydream state, you are setting yourself up to be upset, again and again. Under the hypnotic spell of emotion you tend to be victimized, literally mesmerized by your own poor judgments and timing. Your life, your health or your marriage will continue to deteriorate until you learn how to awaken from the compulsion to worry, scheme, make excuses, or talk to people in your head, instead of face-to-face.

By coaxing your consciousness to come out of the fantasy of past and future thinking, this book will show you how important it is to stay in the present moment, to trust yourself and to stand up to stress calmly. Keep daily pressures from getting inside and a better life will come, without effort.

My 68 years of work and discovery have borne much fruit. Were the contents of this book to be distributed and understood throughout the world, the silent and broken majority might rise above the territorial tyrannies of the minority and live free—unaffected by authoritarian pressures. Indeed, even many of the inappropriate authorities themselves would wake up and be glad to give up the bullying and tyrannizing roles they have been locked into, just as much as those they have bullied and tyrannized. Ronald Reagan earned the friendship and gratitude of many of those previously caught up in bullying and sub-bullying roles in the former leadership of the Soviet Union and among domestic political opponents.

"The question this book poses, and answers, is how to
recognize the workings of evil and how wonderfully
easy it is to weaken and defeat it."

The question this book poses, and answers, is how to recognize the workings of evil and how wonderfully easy it is to weaken and defeat it. Part of the reason Reagan aptly described America as “the last, best hope of man on earth” is that America has not experienced such thorough going tyranny as most other countries in the world have. Indeed, it was founded by people who initially fled other lands hoping for a better, freer life. America has fought off efforts by many, starting with the British, to curtail its emerging freedoms. And, it bears noting, by using techniques of nonviolence and non-resentment, as Jesus taught, Martin Luther King, Jr. was able to lead one of the most downtrodden groups of Americans, whose forbears were enslaved on American shores, out of segregation and other remnants of the worst injustice of America’s past, and force America to confront itself and become a significantly better country. In light of this, America can, if most of its people master the basic coping skills I teach, help lead the world by example out of its hypnotic state that has always doomed most of world’s population to live without freedom. That is why I have referred to my countrymen in the title of this book, Hypnotic States of Americans. The sacrifices of free men and women have allowed me to write this book, where such efforts would have been forbidden, ignored or persecuted elsewhere.

Deep down, every human soul everywhere has a healthy aspiration to breathe free and lead the blessed life that becomes fully possible only when resentment is dropped, and entanglement with the age-old game ends. Stepping out of that game, and becoming free from its tug, is the first and most indispensable, freedom each of us must find. And each person can find it without anyone else’s permission, wherever they are, under whatsoever government system they now live. The other difficulties will resolve with surprising ease, though not without pain, conflict and sacrifice, once enough people find this key and begin living without resentment. In that sense, then, people everywhere are “Americans,” yearning to breathe free—and so this book is addressed to everyone, everywhere. 

"Every political system ends up with silent submissive majorities entranced by the will of tyrants."

Every political system ends up with silent submissive majorities entranced by the will of tyrants. Were it not for some mysteriously inherent proclivity within each of us to allow our common sense to be out-shouted and shut down, to lose our voices, and to “go-along-to-get-along” with dominant bullies, there would be peace on earth and good will everywhere.

Please forgive my use of certain strong and highly charged words such as “psychopath,” “sociopath” and “psychotic.” Don’t be offended, because these words are necessary to convey a proper understanding of how the dark forces work in this life, and how to become free of them.

Psychopaths like Hannibal Lecter in the movie, “The Silence of the Lambs” are irredeemably wicked. If they don’t kill 10 people a day and eat their livers for lunch, they consider that to have been a bad day. True psychopaths are conscienceless, predatory people who, through the way they tempt others, in effect “clone” themselves in their victims, for which reason we have so much suffering. Believe it or not, see it or not, we all compulsively act out roles. If suffering doesn’t awaken us to a need for salvation, then nothing ever will.

In contrast, the sociopath is a psychopath with a different appearance, which manifests as a super-kindly version of the psychopathic beast, concealed beneath a gentlemanly and honorable demeanor. He will prey on you while creating the illusion of being more believable than God. He too “makes copies” of himself. The good news is that, although the “originals” are born morally upside down and are irredeemable, we the “copies” who are born with the proclivity to sin, not by choice but through inherent infection (that is, being born into a dysfunctional family and world) are very redeemable.

In this book the “copies,” which is to say the infected ones, that play the roles of bullies and cowards, are called psychotics. Let me explain: We usually think of a psychotic as one who has lost all sight of reality, but that’s not entirely correct. The pressures we are born into subvert our relationship with God and program duplicate bullies that, in turn, replicate cowardly people-pleasers. These duplicates infect every family in varying ways. What I’m trying to say is that psychosis is everyone’s problem; it’s only a matter of degree. The people-pleaser represents the behavior of the sociopath who tries to manipulate another’s affection and loyalty with what looks like love, but isn’t. So then, the war in every home is between the bully and the people-pleaser, neither one of which could ever rise to the state of wickedness of the originals. The “originals”alone possess the malevolent talent and knowledge to seduce and intimidate the masses into supporting them, for which reason they rule almost every country in the world. 

"The people-pleaser represents the behavior of the 

sociopath who tries to manipulate another’s 

affection and loyalty with what looks 

like love, but isn't."

What I am trying to convey in this book is that the people-pleasers are in the majority and are mostly decent people wanting to go-along-to-get-along. But they have not yet realized the truth, which is that they have been bullied into submission and that their “love” for such leaders is servitude in the service of the “dark side," rather than their Creator.

The point is that without people-pleasers bullies could not possibly thrive or rise to create the familiar horrors of psychopathic power.

Therefore, this book is dedicated to awakening people-pleasing appeasers to the meaning of real love and courage because, unconsciously and inadvertently, they are the ones who are submitting and giving their life force to bullies, deceived into believing they are loving and being loyal. But such loyalty is to the wrong people and it is this relationship with others that leads us into endless wars and genocide.

The bully in the family cannot help but create two kinds of offspring; one who becomes the bully and one who submits and cowers before the bully, causing him or her to become crazy with power. This in turn drives them both to varying degrees of psychosis and mental ailments, and ultimately to passing on their identities along through the generations.

People-pleasers please pay attention to the next few words: bullies of all stripes have no power unless you become upset and deceived, and hence give power to them through your childhood conditioning.

This book will lead you out of the realm of these two inherited “choices”—roles you never really chose, and from which you yearn to be free.

I know what you want. You want relief from your nervous tension and guilt feelings. You want solutions to your family problems and sex problems. You want to stop smoking, drinking and overeating. You want happiness. But you’ll never find what you are seeking until you discover the hidden cause of your trouble, and that cause is allowing people to upset you too easily.

Your main line of defense is to stay calm and patient. I’ll show you how to put up an impenetrable, invisible force shield of patience that lets the good come through, but stops the ugliness in the world from getting inside you and controlling your life.

######################

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