Habit Dictionary

Hypnotism (from Greek hypnos sleep)

One name for an artificially produced somnambulistic, entranced, or psychologized state. A better word for the procedure is psychologization, hypnotism being but one phase of the general subject which includes fascination, multiple or double personality, some religious ecstasies, and different methods of psychic healing. All these things operate in and upon the important intermediate part between our spiritual and physical-astral self and usually affect the latter self very strongly. This intermediate part is the human soul of the reincarnating entity -- the man or woman we see and know. As this includes the psychomental-emotional powers and faculties, it is intimately related to intelligence and sanity, to emotions and conduct, and to health.

Theosophy holds that mesmerism is not hypnotism. In hypnotism the subject's intermediate nature is disjoined from its natural relations with his physical and astral body and put out of the control of the person himself, becoming susceptible to other influences. This process is a reversal of all evolutionary currents which in every being unfold and manifest from conscious centers within. Such a reversal is dangerous and far-reaching in its results, spiritually, mentally, morally, psychically, and physically.

Moreover, the hypnotizer endangers himself by such intimate linking with the lower mind and feeling of his subject -- whose spiritual nature is always beyond another's control. From the operator's entrance into, and operation of, the subject's physico-astral body, there results a mutual infection with each other's faulty human nature. Whoever thus changes the forces and trend of another's life, obligates himself to share karmically in those changes to the end.

Psychologizing a person to heal him of disease or rid him of some injurious habit is also harmful. Bodily ills, in themselves, are the cleansing processes by which past inner wrongs of thought and feeling, having reached the material plane, can be worked out of the system. As for karmic faults and failings in character, the person restrained from them by hypnotism or psychologization merely loses a timely opportunity to develop his spiritual will by which alone every human being must consciously work out his own destiny. The apparent cure of disease, or of a weakness, means that these have been driven inwards, dammed back, inevitably to reappear with accumulated force at a less opportune time in this or a future life. Nor does the practice of self-hypnotization or self-psychologization prevent a disjunction of the person's intermediate nature from his immortal self. The results finally appear as mental disease resulting in crime or as physical disease which is the minor evil.

Suggestion has a dual power: for good or for ill, the results depending upon both the motive and the method of its use. The conscious and unconscious use of it for self-interest is unfortunately met with everywhere; as a part of modern training in high-power salesmanship, it pervades the methods popular in both commercial and professional circles. However, suggestion has a power of noble appeal to the intelligence and spiritual will of others whose better nature responds to a good example, impersonal teaching, and pure and helpful thoughts and feelings. Hypnotism and other such practices are dangerous because they so often fall into black magic or sorcery.

(See also: Hyperion , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Hylozoism (from Greek hyle matter + zoe life)

A term used by Ralph Cudworth (1617-88); the doctrine that matter includes its own vitalizing principle. Contrasted in The Secret Doctrine with crude materialism on the one hand and anthropomorphic deism on the other, it is said to be tantamount to a kind of pantheism.

The Stoics, using the word matter to mean something that actually exists, argued that the vitalizing agents in matter, although spiritual in origin, must themselves be material in order to affect matter. The duality between spirit and matter, or the active and passive potencies, they regarded as formal and a concession to Aristotelianism. They recognized the mind and vitality inherent in nature:

"Nature is a habit moved from itself, according to seminal principles," says Laertius, after Zeno. This is equivalent to recognizing the hierarchies of gods, in contrast with the notion that one "Supreme Architect" concerns himself directly with the innumerable details of the inferior ranges of the universe.

(See also: Hylozoism , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

 Instructions on Meditation.

From "Easy Steps to Yoga" by Sri Swami Sivananda.

Read more here: » Meditation: Special Instructions on Meditation

The mind creates the dream-world out of the experience and Samskaras of the waking consciousness.

Dream is a reproduction of the experiences of the physical consciousness with some modifications. The mind weaves out the dream creatures out of the material supplied from waking consciousness. In dream the subject and object are one. The perceiver and the perceived are one in this state. The Abhimani of Svapna Avastha is Taijasa. Taijasa is a Vyasthi Abhimani. The Samasthi Abhimani is Hiranyagarbha, the first-born.

A spiritual view on dreams and the meaning of dreams by Sri Swami Sivananda, an authority in the vedic sciences and traditions.

Read more here: » Philosophy of Dreams XII: Why Jagrat is a Dream?

The last thought of a man governs his future destiny. The last thought of a man determines his future birth. Lord Krishna says in the Bhagavad-Gita, “Whosoever at the end abandoneth the body, thinking upon any being, to that being only he goeth, O Kaunteya, ever to that conformed in nature”

The death and dying and the life after death has always fascinated man. This is an excerpt from the book What Becomes Of The Soul After Death by Sri Swami Sivananda.

Read more here: » Soul After Death: Last Thought Forms

Dream Interpretation including the meaning of dreams about:

Cries, Criminal, Crippled , Crochet Work, Crockery, Crocodile, Cross, Cross Roads, Cross-bones, Croup, Crow, Crowd, Crown, Crucifix, Crucifixion , Cruelty, Crust, Crutches, Crying , Crystal, Cuckoo, Cucumber, Cunning, Cupboard , Curbstone

For more dream interpretations, see: Dream Interpretation

For more about dreams, see: Dreams.

Read more here: » Meaning of a Dream: Meaning of Dreams from; Cries to Curbstone