Mesmeric Sleep Waking

By Atom Bergstrom

Atom’s Blog

Mesmerism is common in politics.

It’s also common in romances and doctor-patient relationships.

It’s common in landlord-tenant relationships.

Be careful WHO you see or hear and how often you see or hear them.

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Chauncy Hare Townshend (Facts in Mesmerism, with Reasons for a Dispassionate Inquiry into It, Second Edition, 1844) wrote …

“In proportion as persons sink deeper into mesmeric sleepwaking, their external senses seem blunted, one by one, and so far there is certainly a relation between the mesmeric and the natural sleep.

“The eye, as we have seen, yields first to the slumbrous influence. Long after this organ has ceased to act, the hearing retains all its acuteness, and the sleepwaker is able to indicate what sounds are going on around; but, at length, the ‘porches of the ear’ are closed as well as the ‘curtain of the eye,’ and the patient, though still alive to feeling, is dead to every sound save that of the mesmeriser’s voice. I have proved this times innumerable — so frequently, indeed, that it is better to give the general results of the experiments I have witnessed than to state one in particular. Often have the members of my family, or visitors, who, perhaps, were but little inclined to believe in mesmerism, tried to awaken Mademoiselle M—– or to startle her by sudden noises. Logs of wood have been dashed against the floor; plates have been suddenly broken; her name has been shouted out, close to her ear; in vain. Other persons present have shown that they were startled — but not the sleepwaker. Once or twice, indeed, on such occasions, when asked if she heard any thing, she has replied, ‘No, I heard nothing; but I thought, just now, something pushed against my chair;’ a mode of expression which deserves to be remarked, as analogous to that used by deaf persons to describe the sensations given them by the concussion of the air produced by great sounds. I once met a young lady, perfectly deaf and dumb from her birth, who was, in this way, remarkably sensitive to the undulations of the air. I have frequently seen her start when a door was opened, or when anything fell suddenly, and the account she gave to me of this, in writing, was that she felt as if some one had pushed against her. So susceptible, indeed, was she to aërial vibrations, that she could distinguish a certain measure and rhythm in harmonious chords which gave her a marked degree of pleasure. She would take a stick, and, putting one end of it in her mouth, would place the other in contact with the piano, while any one was playing on it. Discords struck upon the instrument made her shudder, and convulsed her features with all that pantomimic exaggeration so usual in the dumb; but soft and pleasing sequences of sound soothed her and brought a satisfied smile over her countenance.

“It has appeared to me that the mesmerised possess similar perceptions of sound apart from the natural sense of hearing, and that, like the young lady above alluded to, they require certain conductors, in order to make them apprehend a regular series of aërial vibrations. Be it, however, remarked that the degree of this isolation from sounds depends on the intensity of the mesmeric sleep; for it should ever be kept in mind that mesmeric sleepwaking has its shades and graduations, varying from consciousness fully retained to its faintest twilight or utter extinction. A due recollection of this truth will prevent many mistakes and unfounded expectations relative to our subject.”

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When Neo was a prisoner of the Matrix, he had his suspicions.

We all have different “shades and graduations” of unconscious living.

TRINITY: “Neo, please, you have to trust me.”

NEO: “Why?”

TRINITY: “Because you’ve been down there, Neo. You already know that road. You know exactly where it ends.”

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