Catherine Sawaya
Catherine Sawaya
Orem
Last week as I was running up the six flights of stairs in the Tanner Building, I was frustrated to see an advertisement for a hypnotist hanging on one of the bulletin boards. I feel very strongly that participating in hypnotism in any form, including as a spectator, is completely against the basic principles of the gospel, as well as the morals encouraged here at BYU.
As I’ve wandered around campus this past week, I have been upset by the number of these advertisements that are around campus on BYU approved bulletin boards.
One of the great blessings of BYU is the absence of these wicked practices.
We have been cautioned several times by general authorities to avoid this practice. President Francis M. Lyman, who was President of the Council of the Twelve from 1903-1916 said, “Hypnotism is a reality, and though some who claim to have this mysterious power are only tricksters, yet others do really hypnotize those that submit to them. From what I understand and have seen, I should advise you not to practice hypnotism.
“For my own part I could never consent to being hypnotized or allowing my children to be. The free agency that the Lord has given us is the choicest gift we have. As soon as we permit another mind to control us, as that mind controls its own body and functions, we have completely surrendered our free agency to another; and so long as we are in the hypnotic spell, (and that is as long as the hypnotist desires us to be) we give no consent in any sense whatever to anything we do.
” The hypnotist might influence us to do good things, but we could receive no benefit from that, even if we remembered it after coming out of the spell, for it was not done voluntarily. The hypnotist might also influence us to do absurd and even shocking, wicked things, for his will compels us” (Era, vol. 6, p. 420).
