Raja Yoga (the Yoga Sūtras with commentary) — trans. Swami Vivekananda (1896)

is why people do foolish deeds and feel misery, which, if the mind were under control, they would not do. What would be the result of controlling the mind ? It then would not join itself to the centres of perception, and, naturally, feeling and willing would be under control. It is clear so far. Is it possible ? It is perfectly possible. You see it in modern times; the faith-healers teach people to deny misery and pain and evil. Their philosophy is rather roundabout, but it is a part of Yoga into which they have somehow stumbled. In those cases where they succeed in making a person throw off suffering by denying it they have really taught a part of Pratyahara, as they have made the mind of the person taught strong enough to refuse to take up the record of the senses. The hypnotists in a similar manner, by their suggestion, excite in the patient a sort of morbid Pratyahara for the time being. The so-called hypnotic suggestion can only act upon a diseased body and a clouded mind. And until the operator, by means of fixed gaze or otherwise, has succeeded in putting the mind of the subject in a sort of passive, morbid condition, his suggestions never work.

Now the control of the centres which is established in a hypnotic patient or the patient of faith-healing, for a time, is utterly reprehensible, because it leads to ultimate ruin. It is not really controlling the brain centres by the power of one's own will, but is, as it were, stunning the patient's mind for a time by sudden blows which another's will deli\ers to it. It is not checking by means of reins and muscular strength the mad career of a fiery team, but rather by asking another to dehver heavy blows on the heads of the horses, to stun them for a time into gentleness. At each one of these processes the man operated upon loses a part of his mental energies, and, at last, the mind, instead of gaining the power of perfect control, becomes a shapeless, powerless mass, and the only goal of the patient is the lunatic asylum.

Every attempt at control which is not voluntary, not with the controller's own mind, is not only disastrous, but it defeats the end. The goal of each soul is freedom, mastery, freedom from the slavery of matter and thought, mastery of external and internal nature. Instead of leading towards that, every will current from another, in whatever form it comes to me, either as direct control of my organs, or as forcing me to control them while under a morbid condition, only rivets one link more to the already existing heavy chain of bondage of past thoughts,- past superstition. Therefore, beware how ygu allow yourselves to be acted upon by others. Beware how you unknowingly bring another to ruin. True, some succeed in doing good to many for a time, by giving a new trend to their propensities, but at the same time, they bring ruin to millions by the unconscious hypnotic suggestions they throw around, rousing in men and women that morbid, passive, hypnotic condition which makes them almost soulless at last. Whosoever, therefore, asks any one to believe blindly, or drags mankind behind him through controlling it by his superior will

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is an injurer to humanity, though he may not have intended it.