The Benny Hinn Experience: An Altered State of Consciousness

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The Benny Hinn Experience An Altered State of
Consciousness

• Presented by
• Sophie, Cristina, and Holly

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Outline

• Introduction
• Televangelism and Inducing an ASC (Sophie)
• Hypnosis
• Meditation
• The trance-like state (Cristina)
• Healing through faith? (Holly)
• Suggested Studies

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Who is Benny Hinn

• Toufik Benedictus Hinn
• Born in Israel, moved to Canada as a teenager
• World famous televangelist
• Miracle Crusades
• Religious Healer

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Induction-A closer look at his Miracle Crusades

• Line up outside for hours
• Hours of singing, clapping, and anticipation
• Enters during How Great Thou Art
• Collects money
• Heals the faithful

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Meditative and
Hypnotic Induction

• Focus attention
• Concentrative Meditation
• Mandala
• Yoga
• Mantras
• Koans
• Hypnosis focus on the
• hypnotists voice

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Pre-screening Participants

• Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale measures
  subjects ability to be hypnotized through a
  series of exercise.
• Harvard Group Scale consist of motor and
  cognitive tasks but administered in a group
  setting (hence the name) and score themselves,
  highly subjective.

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Hypnotic Susceptibility and Religious experience
Language, Mysticism, and Hypnosis. Adams PJ, 2008
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Trance-like State

• Electricity felt
• Viennese physician, Franz Anton Mesmer
  (1734-1815), believed magnetic plates effected
  behavior and labeled the reactions animal
  magnetism. The behavioral results were reported
  to be convulsions and seizures but likelihood of
  electrical current from the battery like devices
  used by mesmerist (Wallace Fisher, pg 84).
• GSR study?

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High Suggestibility

• Video

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Theories of Hypnosis

• Sociological Theory/Task Motivation Theory
• Trance Theory
• Does a healing crusade bring about an altered
  state of consciousness?

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Healing

• "George has HIV. But my brother George, the holy
  ghost is burning it out of your body!"

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Hypnotic Analgesia

• "Related hypnotic phenomena indicate that
  hypnotic suggestions can also alter organic
  functioning in ways not clearly understood.
• Pain studies and hidden observer

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Temporary Nature

• Smoking cured with hypnotherapy
• Symptoms return for many
• The healed get sick once they get home

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Suggested Studies

• Right Temporal Lobe activation
• Right temporal lobe epilepsy associated with
  religious experience
• Devinsky Lay
• 1 microtesla magnetic stimulation to the right
  temporal lobe caused increased susceptibility
• Healey et al
• Altered Perception?
• PET ACC, thalamus, pontomesenphalic brainstem
  had altered rCBF
• Rainville et al

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• Religion is the greatest hypnotizing agent or
  influence in the world."

-REV E. L. CRUMP
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Works Cited

• Devinsky O, Lai G. Spirituality and Religion in
  Epilepsy. Epilepsy Behav. 2007 Dec 31
• Healey F Persinger MA, Koren SA. Enhanced
  hypnotic suggestibility following application of
  burst-firing magnetic fields over the right
  temporoparietal lobes a replication. The
  international journal of neuroscience.
• Wallace and Fisher. Consciousness and Behavior.
  Waveland Press, Inc. (2003)
• Adams PJ. Language, Mysticism, and Hypnosis. Int
  J Clin Exp Hypn 2008 Jan-Mar 56(1) 73-82
• Do you believe in Miracles? The Fifth Estate,
  CBC News.
• Brian Vandenberg, "Hypnosis and sociogenetic
  influences in human development" Nov 10, 2005.
  doi10.1016/j.newideapsych.2005.08.001
• NBC News - Dateline/December 27, 2002
• Hildgard ER 1973. A neodissociation
  interpretation of pain reduction in hypnosis.
  Psychological Review 80, 396-411 (1973)
• Powell DH (1980). Helping habitual smokers using
  flooding and hypnotic desensitization techniques.
  International Journal of Clinical and
  Experimental Hypnosis, 28, 192-196.
• Rainville et al., Hypnosis modulates activity in
  brain structures involved in the regulation of
  consciousness. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience,
  14(6), 887-901, 2002.