Back on the Hypnotherapy Couch
To Al’s dismay, the voice was Dr. Winkler’s calling him back. Once back, Al’s friend, Mac, began excitedly chattering about what all Al had said during the session, including something about the wife of Mac’s friend in Maine who was about to lose her home and needed some help. Al was confused and frustrated, and tried to tell them about the experience he had in the oasis. It was then that Dr. Winkler reached down beside the desk and turned on the recording of the session. Al heard himself talking in an accent that was not his, using words and terms he would not use, talking about a woman he’d never heard of. Meanwhile, Mac stepped into the outer office to call the friend in Maine. When he returned, he was shaking his head. She was, as the reading said, about to lose her home. Al was dazed. Dr. Winkler explained to Al that while he was having his own experience, someone was speaking through him. “You have an uncommon ability to move in a sleep-like state of consciousness,” he said, and asked if Al would return for another session the following day.
While the experience of hearing himself speak as he did was very strange and unsettling to Al, it was also intriguing, and he very much wanted to, hoped to, go back to the oasis. So he agreed to come back. But when he and Mac arrived the next morning, there were about thirty others excitedly waiting for him, all seated around the small office. Al started to back out of the room, but Dr. Winkler quieted everyone and explained to Al that these were colleagues who were very interested in Al’s experience. Again, so hoping to return to the oasis, and with Dr. Winkler’s calm, assuring way, Al sat down in the recliner and Dr. Winkler began the session. Al did return to the oasis, and while the scene unfolded before him again in even more vivid detail, whoever was speaking through him answered questions from those present back in the office, even an answer in a code to one in a clandestine government position that could only have been understood by that one. When the session was over and Al woke up, those in the room burst into chatter. Dr. Winkler quietly turned the recorder on again for Al to hear. After the recording finished, the group members came one-by-one to shake Al’s hand, the government official being the last. He told Al to let him know if he was ever in the area again doing readings. When the man removed his hand, there was a $20 bill in Al’s hand. Al was astounded. After everyone had left, Dr. Winkler told Al he was interested in working with him.
Before Al agreed, he wanted to substantiate the information that came through him, so, he and Mac traveled to Maine to see Mac’s friend. Mac guided her through the advice given in the hypnosis session, in the “reading,” which suggested she place an ad in a certain paper that weekend and to use certain words. Al and Mac stuck around because the reading had said she would get an immediate offer. Within several days, instead of losing her home, she sold it at a great profit, insisting on giving Al a payment for what he had done for her.