"Simon Hawke - Wizard 7 - The Wizard of Camelot" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawke Simon)

it
was magic, or you're some sort of master hypnotist."

"Hypnotist?" said Merlin, frowning.

"Someone who can put people in a trance and induce them to believe things, or
do
things they otherwise might not do. It's called hypnotism, or the power of
suggestion."

"Indeed?" said Merlin. "And how is this accomplished?"

I shrugged. "I don't know exactly how it's done, and I've never experienced
it
myself, but there are different methods, depending on the hypnotist. There
are
those who perform it as an entertainment, and have the subject follow some
sort
of bright and shiny object with their eyes while they tell them that their
eyelids are growing very heavy, and they're feeling very tired and sleepy and
so
on, until the trance state is induced. Then they use the power of suggestion
to
make the subject cluck like a chicken, or something equally amusing.
Hypnotism
has also been used by therapists to help people overcome emotional problems,
or
perhaps bad habits. Sometimes it's used to perform regressions, in which the
subject is induced to recall some event in the past, such as a traumatic
experience the subject has blocked out due to inability to cope with it. Some
people have even remembered so-called 'past lives' under hypnosis, which
encourages those who believe in reincarnation, but has otherwise been greeted
with skepticism, the theory being that the relaxed subconscious was merely
being
imaginative during the trance."

"Fascinating. And is that what you believe I did?" asked Merlin. "You think I
induced you to believe you saw your daughters fly? And that I also induced
your
wife and daughters to believe it happened, when it did not really occur at
all?"

I cleared my throat uneasily "Well, no, I didn't say that, exactly... I
mean...
that is..."

Merlin smiled. "Let us look at it another way," he said. "You find it
difficult
to believe you really saw your daughters floating in midair, but you have no
difficulty believing in this hypnotism?"