Vimoh Live

In this episode we talked about blasphemy and why laws about it need to go. We also talked, as usual, about caste, privilege, and social change directed at a better future.

This episode had us go through a ton of caste-related topics. We also talked about Star Trek, Star Wars, racism, and diversity.

Just a short rant about the unending persecution complex of religious people.

This episode had me talking about speculation regarding an intelligent creator, telling someone how to talk to their uncle, and discussing power structures (sigh) again.

Live long and prosper! A full episode in which I talk about Star Trek and my love for it and do little else. We also go a little bit into sci-fi in general.

This episode had us talking about the best way to oppose casteism in your family functions, scandal in the YouTube world by a well-known motivational guru, and more.

This episode went from discussions on the nature of religion, to Buddhism, to the ex-Muslim movement, to intelligent design. Tons of material in here.

Ghalib Kamal is a Pakistani science communicator who has been hard at work fighting irrationality and religious bigotry on YouTube. We will talk with him about how he got to where he is and where he thinks we all might go from here.

Sat down for a discussion with my Instagram friend Aiman about separating art from artists and all that is tangentially related to this matter. In recent times, we have come across multiple instances of authors and creators who used to be loved by everyone, come out as bigots and supporters of discrimination. This is a discussion between me and Aiman about what can possibly be the right thing to do in times like this.

The Humanities are devalued in the Indian education system. This is no secret. But what goes unnoticed is the ways in which this devaluing ruins us on a cultural and sociological level. This episode was about the things an Arts student needs to get off his chest.

An off-the-cuff episode episode after a long time with no agenda. We talked about all manner of topics.

In this episode we talked about the chip on the shoulder of people who define themselves as spiritual, despite spirituality not having a clear definition. We also got into gaming a little bit.

Hustle culture is the idea that hard work is a solution to all problems. It's not. And a lot of hustle culture promoters who call themselves "problem-solvers" can't be called so because they don't actually talk about the problem - exploitation of workers. Hustle culture is basically brainwashing workers into thinking that the thing that is destroying them will save them.

Our news feeds are full of motivational content. Some find it useful and some find it annoying. But there are threads linking much of it to religion, political doctrine, and even patriarchy. So let's talk about some of those threads and see how some of the more popular motivational "gurus" feed this beast.

I have mentioned many times in my live streams that I used to be a Hindutva supporter and I turned away from it some years ago. But since many of you have followed me in the course of the last few months, I wanted to do a show where I unambiguously put out the truth about my past and how I got to the present.

There is good evidence to suggest that even religious people consider their religions sanatan or something. This episode was sort of about that, but also went in other, related directions.

I sat down with Adi Shankar to talk about his latest work Guardians of Justice and we ended up discussing social satire, imagining the future, and his personal history.

We talked about his life, his work, his ideas and experiences on the media. We also discussed where we are as a nation and where we may be going.

This episode started out with the intention of explaining how childhood indoctrination is what really keeps religion alive, and then moved over into other interesting territories like love, evolution, and capitalism.

This episode of the show was the 50th live stream on the youtube channel and we had a lot of conversations about religion, multiculturalism, secular life, and media bias.

This episode was about engaging with the religious and not overreaching into philosophical territories that aren't justifiable in honesty. We also talked about a good number of social justice issues.

This episode had a shitty beginning (literally) and then got better as we talked about the importance of modern medicine and the threats to it from culturally sanctioned superstitions.

Shahbaz Ansar is a journalist and quite open about being an atheist. We chatted about what that makes his life next to Hindus, Muslims, and even other atheists. We also talked about the Indian religio-political landscape.

This issue had us going from religious behaviors to memelord atheism to feminism denying equalism and more.

In this episode, we talked about existence, non-existence, confidence of belief, and also, for some reason, about the math of 11 dimensions.

This episode had us talking about religious morality, morality of killing animals, morality of foul-mouthed "saints", and other interesting topics.

This episode was about how many people define god in many ways and as an atheist having conversations about claims of god, how we should abide by rules of logic.

In this episode, conversations with listeners spanned the multiverse. We talked about agnostic atheism, why people fall for baba claims, and whether scripture says caste is assigned at birth.

The live stream just crossed 1000 subscribers. So I had people call in with questions and comments and even disagreements. It was fun and 2 hours long.

This episode became, quite unwittingly, a QnA session with my listeners.

YouTuber Arpit Dwivedi on his work on spreading rational thought and scientific literacy via his channel Aastha Mukti. We spoke about his personal history, his experiences, and the state of rational thinking in India.

Girls in some Indian schools are not being allowed to enter their classrooms because they are wearing Hijab. Some call it the "Hijab controversy". But it's not that. It's just another dangerous Hindutva diversion designed to divide India.

Cartoonist Sumit Kumar is the founder of Bakarmax and one of the most original voices in the ICU (Indian comics universe). He was recently on the TV show Shark Tank and we are going to talk about that. And more generally, about the artist's fight with market forces.

Nakul Shenoy is a magician as well as a critical thinker. In this session, we will talk about how people sometimes say that hypnotism reveals knowledge of one's previous lives. We talked about the ethics, efficacy, and effects of hypnotism.Full Episode TranscriptHi. This is again back to another livestream. And today we are going to talk about a thing that keeps coming up in our livestream chat. And that has to do with reincarnation, because one of the foundations, one of the main pillars of superstition or religion, as you want to call it in the subcontinent is the fact that the spirit continues to exist after death. And some people think that something called past life regression therapy, which is hypnotherapy in some way. Deviance says, you can't hear me, deviance, you can't hear me. Is my audio okay? I'll continue because I think my audio is okay. Nakul, can you hear me? Okay. So what happens is that people think that hypnotherapy or past life regression therapy reveals evidence that people used to have a past life or that it is going to that their spirit will survive into another life in the future. And to talk about this because they say something that keeps coming up to talk about this, I figured I'll bring in someone who's adept at these things or at least somewhat more aware of these things than I am. And that person is Nakul Shenoy, who is a professional magician. He has had experience with hypnosis and other things and he is the person with whom we are going to talk about all this today. So without much delay, I shall bring him on. Hi, Nakul.Hey, Vimoh. How are you?Good. So you would be someone who has written at least in some capacity in the past about all this, about hypnosis, past life therapy, past life regression therapy, and in general, the use of magic to imply that something like a superstition is actually real. Can you give us a brief overview of your background, your career?Yeah. With regard to hypnosis itself, I got into around, I think age 16 to 18. And I've been into hypnosis for a few decades now. In terms of magic, I got in pretty earlier at around age five. By age 15, I was already performing shows. So that's been a 30 plus year career. And yeah, I perform as the mind reader, which essentially means that I'm a Mentalist. And so in my shows, I am doing exactly this right? I am using hypnosis. I am using suggestion. I am using magic. I'm using all these together to create the illusion of somebody who can go into people's minds and tell them what they are thinking of or predict things before they happen. So I sort of live this make believe that we are talking about.Okay. So how did you learn you learned all this by yourself?Magic? I am self taught. So I got hooked into magic pretty young. Like I said, I was fascinated by mandrig the magician. And I always wanted to be Mandrake right from age five. And I found some books early on, I found these magic kits that you still get in the market. That's what started me off. But that quickly got me in contact with magicians and through magicians, magic dealers, magic shops. And so I was sort of in the right place at the right time. I was brought up in Urupi and Urupiu and now has some of the best magicians of the country. So I met the Shankar there, I met Rallad Acharya there. And so Kuroli Ganesh, these are all sort of perhaps the top five in the country in that sense. That sort of started me off in magic. As I was performing magic, I was getting dissolution with it because I was doing a lot of tricks. I was cutting ropes and joining it. And I was doing all this. And I wanted to be Mandrick. Right. And Mandrick the magician was.I have to point out that Mandrick, of all the superhero choices a child has as a young person, Mandrick is not the first thing that comes to mind. People assume people want to be Flash God and a Superman or someone with muscles, etcetera. Mandrick was a very cerebral hero to be inspired by at such a young age.Correct. And Mandrick gestured hypnotically, right?Yeah.So I wanted to be Mandrick. I didn't want to have this truckload of equipment that put people in boxes and cut them, etc. But I didn't want to do that. I wanted to be able to just get because the comic book at least suggested that Mandreck didn't have any equipment. He just walked on, he did stuff. He just gestured hypnotically. And magic happened. And so I thought, okay, this regular magic is not cutting it. I need to learn hypnosis. So I was, I think, barely into my first year PUC when I heard that in Mangalo, a person called Pradeep Agarwal was conducting a hypnosis seminar. So I sort of got on a bus when I went over there, attended a two day workshop for them, which was life changing, which sort of one removed all the apprehensions or all the things I thought hypnosis does. I thought I could just get in front of people do this, and they would do everything I want. Right. I realized, no, that doesn't happen. I thought I could control people with hypnosis. I learned very quickly it doesn't happen. So the students actually taught me what hypnosis really is. And Interestingly way back then, we did something called Astral projection, where you sort of make a person sit, you take him through thing, and then you say, okay, I invite you into my house. And then this person sort of. And it so happens that the person I am still in contact with, the person I did this for. And later on, he became a very good friend. This person was JP from Autopay. And I sort of invited him to my house and start describing my house for me. He's telling me how my house is, and he's describing everything. So this whole out of body experience. So this was nice. Those two days was life changing. And I don't make anything from this, but I would highly recommend if people are interested in hypnosis. Pradhi Pagarwal is one of the best in the country. He's Hyderabad based, but he does a lot of stuff online. I think a lot of his workshops are also in what I mean in other places. So you can just get a semblance of what hypnosis is because to a large extent we believe hypnosis to be like what we see in the Hollywood movies and worse in the Hollywood movies. So it's not that it is pretty much creative thinking. I'll just quickly wrap up there. If you have gone through something like meditation. Right. And you sort of get to a state where you are very calm and cool and sort of in control of everything. Right. The super conscious kind of a thing that sort of is exactly the same state that hypnosis helps you get to. But very quickly, you don't need to have attained all that concentration because you are sort of going into a trance and you straight reach into the so called super conscious.So yeah, just quick parallel because actually earlier today when I was looking up not earlier today, this last few days, I've been looking up some stuff about past life regression therapy. And it turns out that the opinions about its ability to access something like a past life memory are wildly different even among people who think that it is possible because there are people who do believe that past lives exist. But those same people in some cases might say that hypnotherapy is not the way to do it. And you would appear to be someone who is off the view that memories access, so called of a past life through hypnosis are not reliably bad.So let me clarify that a bit. Over the years, over these 20 odd years, I have gone through a lot more trainings, not just in India but also abroad. I have attended some trainings with some of the best hypnotists in the world and some of them being hypnotherapist because of my standing in the world of magic. These guys are some of them are really good personal friends. Right now there are two sides at the base. There are two sides to hypnosis. Right. One hypnosis for entertainment and hypnosis for therapy and other things. Right.Okay.I personally have always liked to stay on the school that is hypnosis for entertainment.Okay.Right. Having said that, I have doubled and I have gone through all these courses on the therapy side. So therapy, when we say is a really large word. Right. So back in College on a small trick somewhere, a friend of mine twisted his ankle. I just said it was just like a few weeks off this course that I had done with the Pradeep. So I'm like, look into my eyes, you're not going to feel the pain it's gone. Right. But when you go and meet the Doc, if you come back so that you can tell him how much pain you're really feeling. Right. And it worked. And I'm like, yeah, this works. Now that is also therapy. Right. But that is therapy at one stage, at a limited stage in that sense, then you can get into four birds and things like that, which is slightly more permanent.Okay.Right. And agnostic is very useful there. I think the best use of hypnosis for therapy is around things, around the phobias, because most of the phobias are here are in the mind. There is no real medical reason for it. Right. I mean, there could be psychological reasons, but generally they're not, essentially because it's about the mind. Hypnosis helps a lot to remove four BS in that sense. Right.Okay. So before I get to the point where I ask you about past life regression therapy, if in a nutshell, you can tell us what is it that happens to someone when they're in a state of hypnosis? Because you just mentioned that you could make someone forget about their pain. So what exactly happens to the mind? Is there a simple way of putting it?Yes. Everything that is happening around us, the moment we are now talking to each other, everything that we are understanding, et cetera, is pretty much happening in our mind, in our brain. Right. In hypnosis, when we do stage hypnosis, we also bring in this aspect of saying, believe, pretend or act. Okay, believe, pretend, act, believe, pretend, act. We just say that. Okay. So as a stage of notice, I don't really care whether you really are in a trance or you are pretending you are in a trance. Yeah. Or you believe you are in a trance. So it doesn't matter to me as far as you play along in that sense. Right now, when you're talking therapy, it's the exact opposite. And the primary thing that's happening is that the primary thing that's happening is about the mind. So now I'm going to try explaining this in as dumb way I can.Yeah, please.Which is the classic way we go about life. Right. If we say, hey, today is a great day, it's sort of whether it turns into a great day or not, you start feeling good about it, you have some happy, positive associations.Yeah.If at some point of the day you tell yourself, oh, no, today is really bad, and then it sort of feels like everything is just not working out. I'm not even getting into the physical side of things. I'm just using that to explain what's really happening in the mind. There are things we do when we are getting on stage. A lot of performers do this. That is before they just get onto the stage. You just in the mind, go through the whole show, start to end very quickly and sort of say the audience is going to allow me today, et cetera. So that whole thing again, pretend, act, believe. Right. So that is basically what's happening in hypnosis, that either I am completely taken in hypnosis is taken me to a mental state where I am actually believing everything and it has an impact on me. Right. And that is when it is most effective, especially for therapy and other things.Okay.At most other points, the second and third one that I mentioned, it's nothing but creative thinking. Third is slightly more third is I want to be the star. Right. So hypnotists always have a great going. In College campuses, you may be okay hypnotist, but in a College campus you're going to rock because you are basically going to call ten to 15 people on stage and going to give them the license to go crazy, go nuts on stage and blame me or the performer for it. I have no clue. Did I do that? Did I run around yapping like a dog? I have no clue. That happened. Right. So now why hypnosis works is not really well established or explained in science. Like you said, there are too many schools of thought and there is a lot of research which says, yes, hypnosis real. Equally there are research. It says, no, it's just a make believe. It's just climb flat. Right.That is also something I came across like people were saying, that is hypnosis real is also a question that a lot of people still talk about very seriously.Correct. So research has shown that there is something that happens in the mind. Right. There is this change of mental state. There is a calmness that comes in very similar to, again, I'll repeat, connected to meditation, any kind of a relaxation exercise. So at best, hypnosis, or rather at worst, perhaps hypnosis is a wonderful relaxation exercise. At best. It is brilliantly, creative and can help with therapy and other things. And again, when I say therapy, I am still talking about phobias. I am talking about reducing pain, like physical pain, because pain is felt in the mind. So talking to the mind in that sense can help abate the feeling of the pain. It's almost like you've taken a painkiller. It's basically that just with words. Right. And it works. You have to see that in action for it. And there are, of course, stories that you hear which are like, there are a lot of practitioners who say that they have our own pregnancies under hypnosis, et cetera. They run surgeries. And I am not that much of a believer, but I have seen it being immensely useful to help people with their confidence, to just go over a lot of phobias. I myself have used it to help people who for some reason felt like they had seen a ghost at some point in time and that thought was with them and to sort of take them through a session where you basically help them go over the phobia.Okay.That's where I will draw the line. Right. I'll sort of park here because now after this, I will get into past life regression and perhaps things like that.I was going to get there in due course of time, but I wanted to set up you like, I want to prepare a path to get to that point. And you mentioned that hypnosis can put people into a meditative state. And there are guru type people who say that meditative States can also bring back past life memories or that if you meditate really hard, you can become aware of your past life, et cetera. And I asked you earlier if you are a materialist or a believer in some stuff, and you said that you do believe in some stuff. So before we go into your ideas about whether or not hypnosis can bring back past life therapy, past life memories, do you think that past lives is a thing? Do you think that the soul exists after death?I don't know. Okay. I would love to believe all this. I would love to believe all this.I can't, but I would love to.No. Correct. I'm a magician, and I would love to believe that there are real magical powers out there. I would love to believe that people can appear things and make it come for real. I would love to believe that people can really read people's minds. All that I do on stage. I would love that to be real. And I'm always on a search for finding people who can do this for real. Sadly, every time I come across something, it's a very badly done magic trick.Yeah.And I think that's where the problem happens.You mentioned earlier. Right. Like before a show, you'll pop yourself up by telling yourself that people are going to love me. I think the end result of all of this questing is to find that's what happened to me, by the way, is to find that human beings are very bad at telling the difference between stories and reality. They're so bad that they believe their own stories, that they tell themselves.That'S a known psychological syndrome comes to mind. But effect. Dan really comes to mind for stories around this and also a ton load of other psychological research. Now, I think it was predictably rational, which sort of starts with where he says three people of three of them were talking and each start describing he and two of his friends were professors. And they start describing where they were on when 911 happened. And they realized that the three of them are saying very different stories. And at some point, Dan realizes that one of them is actually telling the other story.Wow.And he's telling it like me, my son. Right. And that's the part of pretend act, pretend believe. What I said is exactly that the mind doesn't know the difference. Human mind does not know the difference between act, pretend, believe the moment. You start acting, you start pretending because you are. Now it's like a good method actor who wants to cry on the scene. Right. They live that moment. They start with wanting to act, and that leads into the pretend, which is that they want to live the moment and then before they know it Realtors, are coming out.Yeah.Because now they're living in that moment. And that's the belief. Right. In one of the pieces I wrote around hypnosis was not even getting into a tranche. It was like if you're walking into an interview just before actually going in in the world, when we actually went into rooms and met people just in your mind, close your eyes and just imagine you going through that, going in and acing the interview, blah, blah, blah. And then you just go around, life normal, but your mind goes through like, oh, I have been here before. This is the second time I'm doing this. And all these years are gone.You can spontaneously create confidence when previously there was that correct.And that is basically the essence of this. Right. Even when you're saying it processes something at some point, if you're taking somebody through, it's a lot of pleasible. Right. Even when you're doing Caribbean, it's a lot of pleasible. But it's a pleasible 100 times because I have put you in a state in a susceptible state, to be very Frank, where you believe that for lack of a better example, it's Ricky, somebody standing you're totally allowed to make fun of Ricky here. And you feel it. I mean, forget that. Let's try this. Right. Everybody here, I want you to just hold your hands next to your own hands like this. Come on, do it. Just put this and bring that slightly like say, yeah, that should be fine. And now slightly far off. Yeah, perfect. Now I wanted to just concentrate between the two palms. Right. Okay. Don't rest your hand on the mic. Either you have to keep it below or it's okay with no, it's above it.I'm not touching it.Just concentrate on the palms. Right. Or actually the area between the palms. And you will start feeling some energy there. You start feeling some magnetism, right?Yeah.And I just concentrate. And now I want you to believe that this magnetism is actually our hands are being pulled against pulled towards each other. They are coming closer and closer and closer. Right. Because as you just imagine that as they get even 2 mm closer, the power gets even more stronger. And you will feel that whether the hands come together or not, you will feel between your palms really like a vacuum pulling them like a suction pulling them together. Right. I do find something.I'm not sure.Yeah. So that's basically it. Right? I'm not even done. I'm hoping a lot more people who are watching this now or later go through this because it's just that there's nothing happened.But I know. So I think what happens is that I feel something, but I don't know what it is. And then you tell me what you think it is and my mind fills in the gaps. Is that what is happening.Also a lot of simple things that always happen in the hand, which is blood flow, et cetera, et cetera. And we normally don't hold our hands at this point and we don't hold it like this. So there is that feeling of.This is a place I have never been in before, that sort of thing.But what's very fascinating for me is when I'm doing this, let's say the whole audience, you have hands coming very quickly together, hands interlocking, and then you can quickly get into things like your hands are locked, you can't separate your hands and that's it from something as pretentious as this without taking them into any kind of a trance. You can move them very quickly into a trans state. You might have seen a couple of my old videos where I'm getting people to lock there. They can't even say their own name. They have name amnesia and things like that, which is that it is not like I have power over them. Hypnosis is not me having power over them. Hypnosis is me being a guide. It is self hypnosis. At any point. Hypnosis is self hypnosis. I'm helping you hypnotize yourself. Right.Because you said that if someone does not want to be hypnotized, they cannot be hypnotized.Yes, to a large extent, yes.Okay.There is always caveats, but there is also something that you might want to be hypnotized but may not get hypnotized.Yeah. So clear something up for me. Am I right now in a state of hypnosis or am I talking with you?No, you're not in hypnosis.Turns out I'm thinking I'm having an interview, but everyone is laughing in the chat because I'm clucking like a chicken.We could do that. No, please, we could do that.So people keep leaving your questions and the questions in the chat. Once I'm done with my series of questions, I'll take on your questions and we'll do this till 11:00. So we have time.Yeah, we can do it is longer. I'm sorry, I was not even seeing the chat part of it.You can, but I'll put up the questions in sequence on the screen when we get to them right now, don't get distracted by them because people are.Friends. I'm seeing some magicians ask questions also. I'm like going through that very quickly.So let's finally get to the main point, which is you had mentioned to me that you don't think that hypnosis can bring past life experiences to mind. And you also said that you don't know if a past life is a thing. I personally am a skeptic at a materialist before I even go there.Okay, I need to clarify. Right. I was still talking therapy. I draw the line at a point, like I said, about 400 BJ's. And I'll explain why personally, every two days I get emails from people because of my online persona, of being a mind reader, of being a hypnotist. Can you help me with this? Can you help my daughter with this? Can you help my son with this kind of a thing? Right. And many times people come to you when they've tried everything, they've actually tried stuff. I have doctors coming to me about their kids because they are at a point where they want anything that might work. Now, that's where a large part of this therapy comes in. This is so called therapy because now this is beyond your normal thing of your hand is fractured, I'll reduce your pain so that you can go to the doctor. Right. This is a bit beyond that. This is me playing with things I don't know about. So even when I have attended a lot of I'm a certified thing on almost of these things, I can actually start therapy practices. I have like certificates from trainers in UK, US and all that the point I always ask them at the end of it is, are you a medical practitioner? Are you somebody who is a doctor? Right. I'm using it as an overencompassing word there. Because for me, the larger problem becomes that of do I know enough about what I'm doing to people? For example, you might have an issue which for all I know, might be a tumor in somewhere. Right. And I might talk to your mind and say, your pain is gone and the pain is, to a large extent gone. Now, the example I gave you, the couple of times I did it, I essentially ensured these people do go to a doctor because under physical pain, but the pain would come back in its full when you go back to the doctor. Now, if I am doing any kind of a long term therapy for people, because that's how this scheme works. Right. You come back to me for three settings, I'll take away whatever are your ailments. A lot of times we are, in that sense, just hypnotizing them. We are making them believe that their pain or their ailment has gone away without really knowing what is ailing them. And that's why I said I am on the school of entertainment and not on the therapy. Right. So sorry. I mean, I needed to say this.No, totally.Before I went to the past life part. Right.No, I understand totally because I understand this because in your capacity as someone who's a professional in this respect, I can always understand that there will be caveats that you will need to give. So this was totally okay. And I'm happy that you did it because you mentioned something crucial and it reminded me of something else that I had read a few years back about, like someone wrote to a magazine help column and said that I do not want to get married. My parents are forcing me to get married. This was a young woman, and apparently they had tried to hypnotize her into getting married. And she wrote to this columnist and this columnist said, whoever tried to hypnotize you is violating their medical oath and B, this is criminal and you should seek legal help and everything. So this does happen a lot.Yeah. I don't know if the hypnosis would work. To be very Frank, with all due respect, yes. The hypnotist has no right to do that. And what the hypnotist is trying to do is wrong. But having said that, being a hypnotist, I really doubt it.We have a related question about that. We have a related question about that. But I'll get to that in a minute. But let's get to our main thing, that we are like 32 minutes into the conversation. We still haven't got to our main thing. Do you think past life recognition therapy works? And if it does not, then why do people think that it does?Okay, what is past life therapy? Earlier, it used to be called past life regression. In recent times, it's been called past life therapy. It believes in the fact that what is ailing me today is because let's say I have a phobia. I'm scared of the dark. This is how it starts. I'm scared of the dark. Why are you scared in the dark? Okay, we will close your eyes. And now please play along. I won't hypnotize you. Okay. Just close your eyes.Okay.Okay. Let's imagine for a minute that you have a fear of darkness. Okay. Now, one of your various past lives, he's like, really doubtful. He keeps opening his eyes to ensure he's not.No, I'm scared of actually.I'm scared of darkness.My own eyes closed.I'm afraid.No kidding. I'll do it. I'll do it.Yeah. One of your various past lives has the answer to you having a fear of darkness. I want you to go to that. Lock in your thought on that. Okay. Okay. Now open your eyes. I was like, here to say your eyes won't open when your eyes are stuck and take you. And I will not do that. But what you just did. And I don't know if you saw something, but. Okay. Curious, what did you see?Nothing.Nothing. Okay. But if I had put you in a trance, I've spent four minutes asking you to do a certain level of breathing, get into a trance, et cetera, et cetera. And now I'm guiding you through this. I'm going to give you time. Are you not finding anything? It's okay. Find something. Your creative uses will find something.Something? Yeah.Right now it will find something. You will say, oh, yes, I'm in a past life. Okay. What do you see? I see myself as I'm like dressed. I'm like dressed royally. I'm on this seat. And then there are these loads of people. It looks like I'm a King. Right. Yeah. Okay. Blah, blah. You sort of make them. So you're essentially doing what in NLP we used to call a movie theater experience.Right. In case somebody doesn't know about it, it's neuro linguistic programming.Yeah. Neuro linguistic programming is again, an area where a lot of again, the same thing. It started with saying, I can help you take your phobias away, et cetera. Right. And they said, what is your phobia? Okay. So the way they had this out of body experience, which was essentially you sit down and imagine that you are seeing a moon play and you are watching yourself in that. So, like, if you hate darkness, you are now watching a movie of you in a dark room. And so supposedly because you have seen this, your fear of darkness goes away, blah, blah, blah. The problem happened is that example works for certain kind of, Bobbys. It's very problematic if there are traumatic experiences. And now you're asking the person to watch themselves go through traumatic experience and relive this in their mind again and again. Right. So taking that back into past life, the primary problem here is one I am just encouraging free thinking, which Hypnosis is a great tool for. Right. And for smaller issues, smaller therapy problems. It helps. But the moment people start believing this, it's like everything else. Right. I have this problem today because in one of my past lives, I did this. Now this is now self hypnosis. That is where the dangers are. Now you're doing self affirmation in the longest of ways and you are essentially, I don't know, the opposite of self affirmation.Self deformation.Yeah. So you repeatedly telling yourself this is the problem. Right. And you start believing it.Yes.Parent teller who are very famous today with their foolers shows magic years back created a series called Bullshit. It ran for seven to eight series. I mean, that they exposed a lot of this, especially things like past life regression and stuff. Now, one of the things that we found in just conducting Hypnosis workshops because Interestingly, Pradeepa Garb has conducted in each of these two day sessions that he does, he does one part where he says, this is an interesting exercise. I won't get into whether this is true or not, but I will just take you through this experience and you teach everybody, like your 30 odd people in 30 to 60 people in the class. So you get them to hypnotize each other and you hear their experiences. Right. Interesting how most of the times they are Kings or Queens for great political reason. I personally have met many Gandhi. I've met many Bhagat Singhs. So it's interesting. Right. Either the solar is in multiple States.I have a question about this. These people who turn out to be kiopatra, Julie Caesar or Mahatma Gandhi's. It's a favorite. Yeah. A lot of people think they were kiopatra in their past life. But do you think that someone the first thing someone's mind goes to is Cleopatra in one person and in some other person? It's a completely novel setting, like they're writing fiction. Do you think it's got to do with how creative a person is? Because someone is not creative. They'll latch onto something historical, but they're creative. They'll make up their own past life. Or is it the other way?You can't do anything to choose your future. Right. You have no bearing on why you are where you are today. And we pretty much have not much in that moment bearing on what we can do for tomorrow. But here's a free run. I am basically saying here's a blank check. Go and write your own past. And because you are in so called hypnosis, you can blame me saying this is real. Right. Okay, I take you back to the stage experience of hypnotizing. You and saying a dog is chasing you. Or in Las Vegas. I've seen people in other places also. We do it. I myself have been a participant on stage and for each shows, I love being not just the hypnotist. I love being hypnotized.Being hypnotized.Yeah. I love that.It sounds like it must be a fascinating experience.It is quite a fascinating experience because you realize to a large extent you are in control. I mean, I can either go nothing or I can completely go like this. It's completely here. And it takes that one moment for me to say, okay, I am going to be hypnotized versus I am not right now. I'm not saying everybody can be that right. But that's very interesting. Okay. The last biggest example I was saying was pretty much telling people to strip on stage this fantastic hypnotist called Anthony Cool. I was shocked when he just got a person on stage and said the room is getting hotter, blah, blah, blah. And in no time the person was I don't know if it was his own person audience, I doubt it would be his own person. I mean, he can do this.He'll probably get that to someone who is not prepared for it already.Yeah. But it's Vegas, right? So like I said.You can do it in Vegas.But when we do it, say in a similar thing in India, you would say you would not get to the physical part of the clothes, but you would get the room is suddenly becoming very cold. Right. And when I stamp my fingers, the room is getting very cold. You are looking for a blanket, but there's nothing to cover you. You're looking for a jacket. You are feeling good. And you see this entire bunch of twelve odd people on stage going like this, right. And then suddenly you're like, okay, something happened. Somebody turned on the heater, but the heater has been turned on at a very. So now what is also very clear is that this is all in the mind. But then there are people who completely sweat. One of the points where I was trying to help that person who thought he had seen a ghost halfway through that session, three minutes into that session, he was just sweating like he was wet because I basically made the thing off. Just turn around and open your eyes and in your mind, of course, and there is nothing standing there. Just look around your room. And this guy goes, he just starts. And I'm like, okay, in his mind, he's actually now imagining the ghost rather than imagining a room without the ghost. Right.So there is a limit to how much even you, as the hip noticed, can control the experience of the person.The control of the experience is completely you right. I can only give you suggestions.Okay. And you don't have much control over how those suggestions manage.Exactly. Now, coming back to the real past life thing, it's exactly that. I am just giving you guidance. And now it's absolutely for you to figure or what you want to see. I sort of saw this message from Samar saying it's very similar to getting high. I would think so.And Summer also says that he will definitely choose the latter. But since you mentioned about this lack of control over their experience and you have no control.Let me just give an example. Sorry. I'll just give one thing he tried because Pradeep, whenever Pradeepawal comes to Bangladesh to do his workshops, I just go for the fun of it. I just go sit back and watch. And it's also that moment to meet your mentor, spend half a day a day because we never get to catch up with each other. So the last time this was happening, I just walked up to Sadeep and gave him like a nudge. Right. So he got a person on stage and he hypnotized after everybody had learned this and said, okay, now we're going to do this past life thing on stage. And he calls it past life progression or whatever. So he hypnotized this person and then ask the person, just because it's a demo. So you will be going to one of your various past lives. But just so that everybody understands something, you'll go to a past life where you are a human and I want you to go to one of your past lives where you are a human. Are you there yet? The person says, yes. And then he says, okay, so look around you. You are a girl in London now, you are around age seven. Describe what's happening. Right. And this person starts describing how she's wearing a white gown and it's the early 1900 and there are horse carts going around, et cetera. And now the progression happens, right. So now. I'll jump you to when you are 20 years of age. I'll jump you to when you're 60 years of age. What are you seeing? Et cetera? Very clear depiction of what this person is seeing, what life she is leading, et cetera, et cetera. He gets her out of the session. And this person that he had hypnotized, or rather even now he's one of the top past life therapy people of Bangalore. Okay. He was a student. So he says, all that is fine. How was it? He says real? Did it feel real? Yeah, it felt real. This, that all that happens. He said all that is fine. I just have one question. How did I know that in one of your various past lives you are a human aged seven and a girl in London, and the guy goes, no answer, right? And this was not a normal person. This is the person who charges people day in and day out to do so this was our way of teaching him a lesson, right?This is telecom delusion on another level.It is all about me planting a thought. And that's what I do on stage, right. If I want you to think of something, I am planting a thought in your mind. I am doing justice. I'm seeing a lot of things to make you do certain kind of choices. Those are the exact same things that apply when you're doing something like pass life regression or therapy, whatever you want to call it in. Hypnosis. I'm sorry, I saw another comment and smile.The PMO one.Yeah, they reached out to me, but I don't think for what.So we have the software called Pegasus and we know that this person is an asshole. Can you also hypnotize them into thinking that they don't get infected?I don't hear you.Nor did I not get any of you in the chat. So how did you like the film Inception? Did it strike you as something that was inspired by hypnosis?Weirdly. You're gonna kick me for this? I have not seen Inception. It's always been on my to. Do you like, I have Inception in like, Bluray.If you are not sleepy right after this live stream ends, turn your lights off and watch Exception, the Bluray version right now. I think you will enjoy it a lot.Yeah, I think that's one of the reasons I'm not watching because ton load of people after my shows come and say, you know what, you did that's. So like Inception, you're planting thoughts?Yeah, planting ideas and things like that.And that's been a pitch I was performing with. And so it was like, okay, I do not want to now watch and get sort of, oh, that's why your plot comes from actually about a magician.Like, if I were to put it in terms of stage magic, magician plants ideas in someone's head and then faces the consequences himself. So that would be the best way to describe it, but I won't spoil it for you. Please do watch it.One few questions.Sure. We're already at 50 minutes, so I wanted to ask one more question, but we'll see if we have time left after the audience question is over because that's just one thing I wanted to ask. Shamir says, hold on.Hey, Shamir.So popular question I've been asked by many is that does hypnosis work in all languages or are there any language barriers?Hypnosis works in all languages. The person being hypnotized should understand the language that he's being hypnotized in. Having said that, I have friends. And Shamir, you're a magician, so you would know a few of these.Shabir is a magician. Hi, Shamir.Yeah. She's I think logging in from the US. So there are performers who can hypnotize without too much reliance on word. Now what can they do with it? How much? Like, is it all about only taking somebody till the Tiller trance or beyond? That is a different thing. Right. So what do you want to achieve after hypnosis? After hypnotizing, somebody. What do you want to achieve? The second part, but does it work? Like my friend Brian Phillips in Tywin? He just and ton load of people like that who just generally do what something called street hypnosis. They just walk up to people. The video looks like this. They just walk on to the people, tap on them, just say something and walk off. And that guy just stands there like this for like for an hour.Do you believe that is real?Yeah, I can do that. So yes, it is real.Wow. Okay. I'm not going anywhere close to you ever in my life. I'm scared.But I have learned from Brian ages back and then some more friends of mine do this immensely. Well, I sort of again digressed from hypnosis into other areas. I don't see the value in getting 20 people on stage and making them stand like statues on stage. My show is not about my show is about reading minds. So I use hypnosis or skills of hypnosis only to plan thoughts and make people more susceptible. Right.Okay.So that's where my focus is.The one time I have met you in real life was at a Comic Con. I can totally imagine you coming and telling me, go sell someone else's comic books. And I'll be like, Robin and Ruthija asks, do you go through hypnosis while learning it? And I will just add a supplement to it. Is it possible to learn hypnosis without getting hypnotized?I tried to learn hypnosis through books. Like, I learned magic through books pretty early on. It didn't work for me, especially those kind of books that I found in India where like put a candle and stare at it for 8 hours or whatever nonsense. So I didn't have the patience for it. And so clearly I can't just look at you and hypnotize you. I can today, but that's a different story.No, but you learned how to you went through the process.But I do believe going through hypnosis as an experiencing hypnosis, whether you believe it is true, whether you believe you played along, whether you believe I just pretended and walked off. I fooled the hypnotist. That's fine. But I think you need to go through that experience. Then you know what your audience is going through. Because the biggest thing I have heard from people is like, I met this hypnotist who tried and tried for 30 minutes. He just could not hypnotize me. Right. I met this guy once in my hometown and I said, we want to be hypnotized. He ran one of the biggest super large stores, their grocery stores. I always wanted to be hypnotized, but I've never been hypnotized. I said, okay, let's do that now. And three minutes later, he was completely into it because I took away a few of the fears he had about his Masters. One, since you're here the point, that when I hypnotize you, you will be like in a state of coma. No, that's not how it is actually. Remember the creative mode. You will hear more. You will perhaps hear things that you normally don't hear because you are now mind is concentrating a lot more. It's free of all the immediate things. Right. As an Ipnotist, also, I will do things like your hands are stuck in your hands can't come apart or your eyes are closed and you can't open them. But the point is as simple as that. When you are in a hypnosis session, all it really takes for a person to come out of the trance in that sense is open their eyes or at any point tell themselves, I'm done with this. Right. I've seen this on stage. I've seen this like 20 people completely like this. And the hypnotist gives a suggestion. One of the people just doesn't like it, looks at him and just walks off from the stage. Done. Okay, Ruthvija. Yes. I think going through hypnosis while learning it is the best way to do it.So there is a question from Priya Shagarwal saying what is the explanation for children having past life experiences? Or rather, I think he meant claiming to have past life experiences and these experiences coming out to be true.So ages back, you guys would have heard of this person called Professor Richard Weizman. Richard Weissmann is one of the most famous psychologists in the world today. He's written books like Cocology. He has the Cocology channel on YouTube, which I think has millions or billions of views. Richard and I were working on trying to find people who claimed last night that they had gone through. Like, I have this kid who can tell me that he was this person. And then we went and searched for that and have a book on that somewhere else. Reincarnations. Yes. That's the book that I remember now. So there are tons of these stories out there. And Richard, at that point in time wanted to pick three or four stories across India. He's in Edinburgh. He's part of the herd for Chai University. And he wanted to find out if some of these are real. I did letters to Editors across the country. This is early 2000, letters to Editors across the country and all that. We got some ten to twelve letters. There is not a real evidence story that has emerged from all this, not just my example, but in all this cohort's work and a ton load of work. Of course, in popular culture, there is popular culture. You always say, oh.There is this scared, unverified.And I went and searched and he happened to be that guy, right? Yeah. He went and said Hi to the recent grandmother.There was some news article about a scientist who has prepared a boatload of case studies. And he says that they're falsifiable like children have claimed to have these details in their past lives. And when you go and check those details, those details are found to be true. I'm not saying that you know the answer to this or neither or anyone does. But what conceivably could be the reason behind children coming up, coming up with accurate details?I have no clue, to be Frank, outside of my purview, but most of the time stories get added on. I start with one word or I start with the line, right?Yeah.In trying to find something, whatever was the original. Let's say you're a story writer. Let's say you write five lines of the story. Right. And then you go out and do 20 conversations and come back and you don't get the first four lines, but you have to write the same four lines again without looking at your first four lines. You're going to write completely differently. But you're going to believe this was exactly the story I said earlier. Very weird example. But I personally believe something like that is happening.I totally understand.Why would a kid suddenly wake up and say, I was this?It's like the parents are instead of asking the child, what are you saying? They'll say, who are you in your past life? And the child will come up with something because I remember asking my nephew if he had seen a snake and he said yes, how big was it? He extended his arms because as far as he could extend it. And then I asked how many arms did it have? And he said, ten arms, because that's how much he could count. And he was a baby barely walking. So children, if you give them a sentence with three blank spaces, they'll fill in something.No, absolutely. Like I said, this is creative thinking at its best. But if you want a scientific answer for it, I'm not the qualified person to answer that. But in my own world of theories I think that's exactly what's happening. Kids are basically either the parents want the kids to come up with these kind of stories because that's the parents claim to Fame many times it's the parents claim to fame. I mean it's like all these talent shows, you watch all these talent shows and I think this is something you wanted me to touch upon. Recently a kid went on and we went after Africa and after that because he said this kid has supernatural power. He just said it in fun. But that became the promo clip for this kid because she blindfolded herself and she was able to read or whatever.That's a common thing. Also like someone called Rajiv Malotra stood by Saffron Guru whose name is Swami Nityanand or something and they were into this like they were trying to open schools in Bangalore to encourage children to pursue their third eyes or something. And you wrote something about that also.Yes. So we have been carrying forget all that I have written. You can just search third eye Nakul Shenoy and you'll find the banking articles on it. But here's the thing, the next time you find somebody not a magician, the magician is telling you he's tricking you for your entertainment. But if you're finding anybody in your family or in your circles who has paid ton load of money, I mean trust me, this is $50,000 of rupees plus for a kid to go through a two day three day workshop whether coerced into learning how they can sort of read mines with a blindfold. The last time I met a kid like this I said I trust you completely. I just have one thing. Can you remove the blindfold and put that on the book right. And now read, keep eyes open. I don't care because as a magician I can blindfold myself and put hoods around my neck, etc, etc. And put steel blindfolds or whatever and drive and do stuff. So magicians have been doing this for 200 years plus so there are tons of load of ways we can do this. They are using one of these methods. They are teaching the kids this method but they're teaching it in such a way that the kids are choirs into believing that they should not tell anybody that they are cheating. Yeah, so much so if you hint at your cheating or anything like that the kids will start bawling, screaming and shouting. It's all there. So it's very simple. It's very nice to say white cloth on the I put the cloth on the book to be Frank I would find it very difficult to do something like that.That is actually a very good way of dealing with this but we're at 1 hour, 1 minute right now. Are you okay with going on for ten more minutes or it should be fine. So before we proceed to the next question I would really love it if you could show us your book.So this is Smart Course and Magic. This was published in 2015 with Harper Collins. This is available across the world, mostly through Amazon and most of the bookshops also. But I think it's pretty much run out of stock in most of the bookshops, so you would find it easier on Amazon. So this is the only book I've written. So if you go into Amazon or any of the bookshops and search for my name, which is down there, you will find Smart Course in Magic. This is a course in magic. I used to do a workshop. I used to do a two day workshop in magic. That workshop is what is condensed into the book. This is not a book of 200 tricks and things like that. I think I barely teach 20 tricks in there. But the point is I teach performance. The idea here is again, I think there's a chapter on hypnosis also. But the primary thing is, what is magic? How do you approach magic and how do you perform magic? Is what is covered in there primarily.No, that's perfect. It would have been a lost opportunity if I hadn't, because I do think that more people need to be aware of how their minds work, how their minds can be fooled. So that the kind of thing that we often run into. Superstition, for example, can be dealt with more effectively.Just to add on to that, I believe magic is something people should absolutely, totally learn, and especially kids should be taught magic, even if I don't mean so much because I have written a book on it. But it is the best tool for developing critical thinking.Yeah.If you have a kid in the home who knows even three or four magic tricks and they understand the principles, why magic works, they're going to question everything in life. You don't need to teach them how to question things. They are going to question things in a way no other education can train them for, which is why a lot of universities in Europe are especially putting a lot of thought into critical thinking and magic, for example, that's a side benefit.So Samurai has a question. A person who is in good mental health and has strong convictions and form of certain beliefs, is it difficult to hypnotize them into believing in something opposite to their beliefs? I think this is something that is related to that thing we were speaking about where girls parents were trying to hypnotize her into getting married.Yeah. So quite an abstract question, Samar. So it's difficult to give a general answer to this. Right. What is opposite? I believe smoking is good. Somebody else had a smoking question. I believe smoking is good, but I want to be convinced smoking is not good for me, which I know internally. Right. I want to give up smoking, and hypnosis will help tremendously with this. Absolutely. Right. So in a way, what you're saying. I think that's the other question for smoking and things like that. It absolutely, absolutely helps. But again, it has to be you. Right. So I'm going to talk to you because you asked the question, let's say this is you and it's you that wants to give up smoking. A hypnotist can help you. But to be Frank, you don't need the hypnotist. It's like saying, I will be fit. I will run every day. Right. But for us, as somebody said, to wake up at 05:00 every day, 05:00 in the morning, you're going to get up and you're going to run 05:00, you'll get up and say, what the heck? And I'm going to go back to sleep. That's what happens even with this. Right. I think was I reading one of these Agatha Raising stories, which I came into contact very recently. So she goes through this whole thing where she's hypnotized. She wants to give up smoking. So she goes and meets Hypnotist, and he says every time you try to smoke, you get the taste of burnt tire. So every episode is that like she takes a smoke and she goes, it's the worst thing, five, six times. And then done right after that, the cigarettes back, the smoke is gone, the burnt tire is gone. So at the end of it, I think it's all here. Hypnotism definitely helps, but the success of it always is also dependent on what the individual wants. So I think that answers both your questions, in a sense.Okay, so Haymanth saw you in his office performing magic, and you correctly guessed the first word on a random page from a book you had never seen before, just by reading the face of the person holding the book, apparently. And how did you do it? Like Bangalore?Yeah, I don't know. Okay. Could be tons of the offices. I play this character on stage. Right. My onstage character is the mind reader. And on stage, it's basically not just books. I would ask somebody to think of a person or a place or a vacation they've been to and things like that and be able to tell them what they're thinking of. And in an unprepared scenario, it would be something like this because rather than using my own books, if there are books available, like if I was doing this with more at his house, I would say, why don't you pick up a book from behind you and look at. But I'm not going to really get into the how there.Okay, so is that you protecting a trade secret?Yes. It's more in the territory of the mentality side of things or the magic side of things.Okay.There are multiple ways of doing these things. I don't think explaining anything.No, totally. Let's not spoil the magic. So Hemat obviously always wants to get to the bottom of things. He's a friend of mine. Rushdie asks. Also a lot of people say that they start speaking foreign languages.The moment they get drunk. Question.I think, do they speak those languages correctly?Yeah. So that would have been my follow up. So the vernacular joke in that sense in OT, mostly in OT, Bangler, after he gets done, he speaks English. Right. So that is like a cultural joke. I think that's coming to movies. But I think to hypnotize somebody and say, hey, you can talk a foreign language. If I was doing this on stage and I was hypnotizing you, I would say, okay, in a moment you're going to speak Chinese and you would now would that really be Chinese? No. Do you think it's Chinese? Perhaps. Right. So that's how I'm going to.And does the audience think it is Chinese? Perhaps because they don't know Chinese ideas?Yeah.Nelson says, I have not found any scientific study that supports NLP or approves that it works. Nlp ideas don't match with modern neuroscience. Any scientific evidence that it does is energy a real thing.Okay, you're opening a can of forms.So I have a Tony Robbins right here that I have never opened. So this answer will determine if I do.Richard Bandler did this PhD write off on Milton Ericsson's work was a Hypnotist and called it Neuro linguistic Programming. That's how the whole thing started. Right now, again, to me it's a branch of Hypnosis because that's how it came about. Nlp guys always say, oh, we are not Hypnotized, we are doing NLP. I am a master NLP practitioner and I've done pretty much everything that is there to be done in Hypnosis. I don't see a difference. I think in the mind of the audience, the person who is going through this, they are going through the exact same thing. They are just falling for it more than anything else. So again, I use the same example for NLP also for small little things, again for smoking and things like that. It's extremely beneficial. Anything that gets into therapy. Well, if a psychologist is doing NLP, why not? If a psychologist is doing Hypnosis, why not? Because a psychologist at least knows what's going on or is supposed to be knowing what's going on in my mind, I'm a communicator. If I'm trying to do the same thing, there is a problem, is all I'm trying to say.It was 2010.I was going to say that. Yeah, I was going to say that.Hayman Single says Art of Living is carrying out a program of intuition process for blind people to identify color or read. Is that possible?What? It's a scam.Yeah.I have an article online on this. I have actually used some of the Art of Living and other videos in that. But I have actually reached out to the team at that point in time. I try to be nicer to them and said, hey, your competitor is doing this. Why are you guys doing it? Why don't you come out and give a statement that the whole thing is fake? So they said no, what we are doing is an inclusionary process for kids where they can read with their eyes closed. And I said okay, I will come to they said why don't you come to the ashram and see for yourself? Yes, I will. Happily, I have friends.Did they know that you were a magician?Yes, of course they do know that. And I have friends who are part of the shrimp set up. In that sense, I'll come with them, right? One for my security, two for your security also. Right? So they are these in between people? It never happened because the moment I said we will come give us a date. The dates never happen. Now, I don't know specifically about the blind people here, but the kids do this, the same thing with color and reading, et cetera. Simply, they're just speaking from this part. I mean, most of the times they are just speaking from this part. With regard to blind, I can think of multiple ways in which they can be trained to identify color by unconscious queuing, for example, and differences in a slight difference in material and things like that. Since this process here is, for lack of a better word, cheat people. There can be lots of methods to do this.By the way, I'll just point out there was an episode on Shark Tank a few weeks ago. At least I saw it on YouTube. I'm not sure if it was on TV recently where one of the startups that came to pitch their idea was this. Only like they said that these are our daughters, we will blindfold them and our daughters will grab hold things and they will tell you what they are. And one of the things that they handed her was that mobile earphone cup box with surrounded corners. So she held it, she felt it and she said this is a mobile earphone box. And the judges were really impressed. I'm not sure they got funding for it or not.But this was on they send me that link now.It was bizarre, the kind of stuff that goes on on that show. But anyway, I think we are at 1 hour, 15 minutes and we shall now wrap up before we go. Nicole, I wanted to ask you if you have ever received backlash for the rational stuff that you put out, like you will go after a superstition that some guru is promoting and their fans will come. I know of YouTubers who get their channels banned because of this because their network of followers is quite large. So has something like that ever happened to you?It happened on a few of the other things I went after, right? The Tiranga bangle that was launched. Interestingly at that time. By now in general, a lot of the guys are full support in exposing that at that point in time. This is pre 2014 today. I guess if any of the ministers at that level was going to do something like this, I would be full Hardy to try exposing them the way I went after Sashitaroo and naming back then. Yeah.At some point you knew that this was a very different India.I think it's a different world. We did get threats from Nichananda ashram and we were told to come to the ashram. We said no. Meet us in a Press conference. Right. I have tied up with Narendra Nak, who is one of India's top rationalist. He's the President of the Rationalist Federation of India. And we have done programs in different paths. I even appeared on NDTV ones on one of these kind of programs, Barkas show ages back. We do get at least I have not got so much friends of mine have Narendra, and I, being in the forefront of it, has a cop, always an armed cop, going around with him everywhere and things like that. But for me, the closest was the series of things that happened with Nichanandasha, which is why I was trying to actually pitch the shrimp against that. I think the point of the one thing that we always ensure when they reach out is to say, tell them I'm a magician. Right. And that seems to push them away because they realize you're not somebody who's out here with an agenda. You actually know how they're doing this and they know they can't fight you because they might know one method. I know 20 meters of doing the same thing.Yeah. Someone from your background will be more uniquely suited to flushing this toilet, to use a very bad example.Yeah.So there is one more question that Brian had asked, and I had not put it on screen because I don't want to give medical advice on this live stream, but maybe you can direct them in the right direction. He says he has tennis ringing sound in his ear. Can hypnotize help him get rid of the perception of sound?That's exactly the problem. Can a hypnotist help you get rid of the perception of the sound? Yes. Should a hypnotist help you get rid of the perception of the sound? No, because we don't know what's the impact. Most probably what you need to do is find a really good ENT and the really good entry is not good enough. You need to find somebody better than that to find out what's really at the problem here.And also, Nicole made clear earlier on that he is more on the performance side of it and not the medical side of it.I think there was one question I saw about from Summer only in us hypnotherapy is usually I just put it up. Yeah, I would be allowed to answer that. I'm one of those guests who has to be kicked off the show. Looks like.No, that's okay. We can do this for as long as you might be.Like, Knuckle, 1 hour is up. You can leave.You were the one who asked me earlier on, how long will this go on? So I keep thinking that maybe I'm keeping you from something.I just wanted to plan for it. I just wanted to have some tea on the side. Okay. That's tea.I thought you were drinking.Yeah, I was drinking, but it's tea.In US, hypnotherapy is used by legal institutions such as courts as a tool to recall memories, especially in respect to events which cause trauma, such as sexual assault, et cetera. Is it a credible tool?Okay, two parts to this one. I just want to also draw your attention to things that happened in India called narco analytics or some nonsense like that, where they were inject in Bangalore itself. They were injecting people with some sort of a serum. And they said this was going to put people in this trance like state. They called it the truth serum. And people, they're in a hypnotic kind of a state. And they'll tell you the truth about everything. There is no scientific evidence for that. And that is basically this. That is basically getting a criminal mastermind and giving him free rein to basically imagine whatever he wants and say, make people say and sort of claim that is true because you've just given me a trip syrup. So whatever I said was true. Right. This particular thing I have heard and come across things like this where hypnosis has been used to help recall memory. Now, the problem here is the last part of your question is it a credible tool and that's why the whole thing falls apart again, because there is no way to know whether the credit, which is why I started with the it's like getting a person d

This episode is about how sometimes religious people think testimony about supernatural claims is sufficient evidence. And about how they sometimes deflect genuine questions from atheists by changing the meanings of words.

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