Question: Dr. Mitchell, as you know, hypnosis has been recognized as one of the most effective vehicles for rapidly implementing therapeutic protocols for the purpose of treating various pathologies and for exploring the various levels of consciousness in which dwell our personalities, fears and neuroses. What advice would you give to practitioners to enable them to enhance their clinical skills regarding the exploration of non-ordinary
states of consciousness?

Answer: Well, Bruce, that is a complex question. It is incumbent upon a therapist to be aware of the state of the latest and most recent research that is being conducted to help us understand what is the nature of consciousness and how it manifests itself in the brain. It is also crucial for the practitioner to be aware of the physics behind it as well as the biochemical and neurophysiological components.

Clearly, we are dealing with events that originate at the quantum level as well as the vast bio-structural level of the brain. The more we know about the interaction of these processes, the more it will help the practitioner develop and utilize innovative and creative approaches with the ultimate objective of having the client or patient realize targeted clinical objectives within an optimum time frame.

Question: Mystics throughout the ages, together with a growing chorus of modern scientists, have proclaimed that the physical body is surrounded by and permeated with an energy field that is in effect an organizing template that governs physical and emotional development. Is this the product of
illusory thinking or does scientific validation exist
that rationally explains this phenomena?

Answer: I believe that scientific validation is rapidly being developed and the key to this is the most recent discovery that I talked about, namely, the quantum hologram. The electromagnetic nature of the body is clearly influenced by quantum fluctuations that resonate with and interact with the body and electromagnetic spectrum out of which all matter is formed. It is these electromagnetic interactions and fluctuations that are causing the subtle fields that the mystics perceive. Once we understand how these interactions work at the level of cells, organs and the body itself, the better we can answer that question. It is a very fertile area for additional research.

Question: What are your thoughts regarding the out-of-body experiences and the near death experience. Are they truly transformational or are they simply the by-products of anoxia, hypoxia or other neurologically mediated phenomena, such as endorphin release and mass neuron firings in the visual cortex?

Answer: They are indeed transformational. We see that and the evidence is convincing because people ‘come 

Generally, however, the percipient in the classical out-of-body experience simply does not have the knowledge or background to speak of it in these rather technical and esoteric terms. It is a ‘brain-body’ phenomena wherein they are globally perceiving, processing and interpreting information directly, but from a different, non-corporeal perspective and point of view that is perfectly natural.

Question: Many individuals, while under hypnosis, spontaneously, or in altered states of consciousness, reported having lived other lives in other eras or dimensions. What are your thoughts regarding the past-life phenomena?

Answer: My current explanation for the ‘past-life phenomena’, based upon studies involving the dynamics of the quantum hologram, is that these individuals are clearly pulling in and otherwise attracting information from a previous existence or they are also pulling in information of some organism’s or entity’s previous life and perhaps claiming it as their own. Discernable information, in essence, is being observed and interpreted that has been stored within the informational data base contained within the holographic template.

Question: Francis Crick, noted for his pioneering work with DNA, recently focused his attention on the study of consciousness. A growing chorus of other scientists and researchers, such as Koch, Rossi, Green, Hunt and Lu are also studying the nature of brain-body communication and energy field dynamics. What is the nature of the siren’s song that is causing traditional scientists to cross the chasm into non-traditional realms?

Answer: Ah, that’s a good one. The precise answer is that in classical Newtonian science, coupled with the Cartesian duality, the belief was that body and mind, or physicality and spirituality, operated in two different non-interacting realms of existence; and we proceeded along that path, with that paradigm for almost four hundred years.

Now, quantum physics has helped us to realize that it was a flawed concept, and that there is, in fact, interaction between mind and physical matter, both within the body and outside the body non-locally. And that has opened a whole new area of research in this century. Finally, science has started to recognize that the key to this enigma is to study the nature of consciousness and how does mind interact with matter. The true scientist never remains complacent and seeks to explore beyond the boundaries imposed by traditional belief systems. We learn by exploring and explore to learn. After all, we went to the Moon as technicians and returned as humanitarians.

First published in Volume Five Issue One 1998 in the European Journal of Clinical Hypnosis and reproduced here with their kind permission.