Some interesting related studies found about eye pupils and human / animal interactions

[pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]

[pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]

Quote
corboy
An ambitious charlatan who had already mastered 'tratakam'--the technique of lengthy, blinkless gazing--would have had no trouble learning these forms of trance induction.

Talking about lengthy, blinkless gazing ...

Marco Paret is an Italian hypnotist. He has uploaded to YouTube dozens and dozens of trailers for his hypnotism courses. One of his specialities is the hypnotic gaze, which he calls the art of fascination. He says he learned it from Erminio di Pisa. Here are some of the techniques he mentions in his videos:

* Train yourself to look without blinking
* Practice in front of a mirror
* Energize yourself with breathing exercises
* Be physically relaxed
* Gaze with a positive state of mind
* Use a gaze of curiosity and attention

[www.youtube.com]

I spent several hours yesterday watching YouTubes on hypnotic induction techniques. I began to see that trance-induction is almost everywhere.

Listen to the start of this video. Soft voice, long pauses, invitations to relax and close your eyes, focus inward on your own experiencing, don't follow any thoughts, don't have any goals. Doesn't this sound like trance induction?

[www.youtube.com]

At other times, the trance induction techniques are much less obvious. Dennis Weir gives the example of watching TV.

"The viewer looks at the images on the screen, associates to his own ex­periences, and this association access creates a desire to resolve or repeat the actual experience. The view­er therefore continues to look at the screen in order to obtain fulfillment of this desire" (Dennis R. Wier, Trance: From Magic to Technology, p. 86).

Now consider the nonduality talk. The guru describes inner experiences most people don't understand and haven't experienced. The listener desires to understand and experience. The guru talks some more. The listener again desires to understand and experience. And there you have the "trance generating loop" that Dennis Weir talks about. The listener dissociates into the trance plane. What appears to be a philosophy lecture is in fact a hypnotic induction.

Quote
corboy
But in his book The Sun at Midnight, Harvey said he was told by a number of people that there were certain very powerful techniques of hypnosis in which a guru gains power by gazing deeply into a person's eyes. And in the book, Harvey alledges that in California, a Tibetan lama casually offered to teach him 'some yogic techniques from the Shaivite tradition that are very effective in helping to acquire disciples' (paraphrase)

It was actually Bede Griffiths who told Andrew Harvey: "Many of the gurus now are not enlightened beings but black magicians, occult Masters manipulating millions of seekers" (p. 34).

In Montreal an early disciple of Mother Meera named Jean (French male name) tells Andrew Harvey about a Burmese technique called "framing." Jean says to Andrew Harvey: "Meera is a brilliant 'framer.' My guess is that she had the occult powers from childhood and has increasingly 'given in' to them. She knows that the majority of seekers can't tell black magic from Divine Power . . . Most of the magic manuals I have studied stress how important it is to stare into people's eyes" (p. 135).

Later Andrew Harvey remembers: "I was sitting with a famous Tibetan Master in a garden in northern California; we had been laughing and talking. He turned to me and said, casually, 'Would you like to learn some yogic exercises to get disciples? There are certain exercises adapted from Saivism which are very powerful.' He said it so casually I hardly registered what he was saying until the night afterwards. At the time I simply laughed and said, 'No. I have enough problems as it is. The night after, however, I woke up in bed in a cold sweat. What on earth had P. meant? Was he himself using such exercises? Wouldn't that be black magic? At that moment, all sorts of conversations I had had in Ladakh and Nepal came back to me about how certain sects of the Tibetans were Masters of black magic, and how tantric Buddhism had as profound a mastery of the 'black' arts as of the 'white'" (p. 222).

A couple of other books exposing the occult side of Tibetan Buddhism:

[*] Exposing Deeds of Darkness by Donald and Cheryl Rubbo
[*] Enthralled by Christine Chandler

Thank you for this information.

(Grim)
The devil really is in the details -- and a lot of what people assume to be holiness is merely techniques deployed by clever predators.

I was wondering what the magic manuals were that "Jean" was talking about. This is the closest I could find. It is an excerpt from Lauron William de Laurence, The Great Book of Magical Art, Hindu Magic and East Indian Occultism, 12th edition, Chicago, 1914. This passage is about how eye-gazing can be used to psychologically overpower people.

Quote
L. W. de Laurence
The Art of Fascination. I call fascination a binding, because it is effected by a look, glance, or observation, in which we take possession of the spirit, and overpower the same, of those we mean to fascinate or suspend; for it comes through the eyes, and the instrument by which we fascinate or bind is a certain, pure, lucid, subtil, generated out of the ferment of the purer blood by the heat of the heart, and the firm, determined, and ardent will of the soul which directs it to the object previously disposed to be fascinated. This doth always send forth by the eyes, rays or beams, carrying with them a pure subtile spirit or vapour into the eye or blood of him or her that is opposite. So the eye, being opened and intent upon any one with a strong imagination, doth dart its beams, which are the vehicle of the spirit, into whatever we will affect or bind, which spirit striking the eye of them who are fascinated, being stirred up in the heart and soul of him that sends them forth, and possessing the breast of them who are struck, wounds their hearts, infects their spirits, and overpowers them.

According to Wikipedia, there is a ban on bringing this author's writings into Jamaica.

Since aikido was mentioned on this thread: aikido is a cult falsely preaching a means for self-defense and self-development when it’s really a means to oppress and promote fascism in the world. They claim they are creating “one universal family”. There’s another word for a “family” who harms those who don’t submit or allow the men to sexually assault, exploit and use them. They continue to silence and use criminal means to get away with sexual violations and assaults of al kinds with flying monkeys covering up for all the narcissists with no conscience (ie. no mind pretext to do horrible things to others).