Journal Entry 1 by miketroll on Thursday, July 03, 2008

Fascinating memoirs of the brilliant mentalist and skeptic. Brown begins with his apostasy and disillusionment with religion. In his youth he was a happy-clappy Christian speaker-with-tongues, but now speaks of the intellectual dishonesty of his circle of believers. Most of them discouraged any questioning of faith, but as Brown wrote:

"One can be a true believer in anything: psychic ability, Christianity or, as Bertrand Russell classically suggested (with irony), in the fact that there is a teapot orbiting the earth. I could believe any of those things with total conviction. But my conviction doesn't make them true. Indeed, it is something of an insult to the very truth I might hold dear to say that something is true just because I believe it is. Surely if we have a belief in a cosmological process we are happy to live by and express to the point where we will endure public ridicule, we should want it to have its roots outside our own unreliable convictions. Some sort of evidence outside what we happen to feel is right."

A number of Brown's fellow Christians condemned his dabbling in hypnotism as "Satanic". But as he grew more proficient as a hypnotist and viewed his own skill with an open mind, he realized that the hypnotic "trance" state is a myth. The whole thing is just powerful suggestion and the hypnotist's subject always remains in control.

Brown goes on to explore magic techniques, which also rely heavily on suggestion and misdirection, memory techniques and unconscious communication (body language). He concludes with some thoughtful and articulate chapters on the New Age anti-science culture, pseudo-science and the misrepresentation of illusion and trickery as paranormal/psychic power.

A wonderful book! I will keep sending copies to my friends...


 

Journal Entry 2 by LeishaCamden from Alna bydel, Oslo fylke Norway on Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Then I guess I must be among your friends, Mike!! :-) This book arrived in my mailbox today - what a great surprise. I didn't know Brown had written a book, but it certainly looks very interesting. I've seen several of his shows, he's had three or four of his TV series shown on TV here. At first I thought he was just another TV hypnotist ... but eventually I came to understand that he has a deeper agenda than most of the breed. The most recent shows of his that I saw were quite interesting - I'm not sure which series it was - but some of it was really pretty fascinating. So I'm definitely interested in reading this book. Thank you so much, Mike!! :-)