...the faith-curer
of the grotto has this advantage over the endormeur of the
platform or the hospital. He does not intrude his own personality
and train his patient to subject his mental ego to that of
his “operator.” The “mesmerizer” seeks
to dominate his subject; he weakens the will power, which
it is desirable to strengthen, and aims at becoming the master
of a slave. I do not need further to emphasize the dangers
of this practice... - Ernest Hart,
Hypnotism, Mesmerism, & the New Witchcraft, 1898
The Predator:
Nielsen
In January, 1947, Bjorn Schouw Nielsen was sentenced to Horsens
State Prison (the facility for Denmark’s worst criminals)
in Denmark for crimes committed during the Nazi occupation.
Nielsen, a self-educated, street smart, talkative, and imaginative
con man, was always looking for an easy profit. He had a previous
conviction and commitment to the State Institution for Psychopathic
Delinquents. His recent crimes were informing on a previous
employer to the Germans and blackmailing Resistance Movement
businessmen for large sums of money.
He had been occupying his
mind while in Horsens by planning his next, “perfect”
crime. He defined a perfect crime as one which would be impossible
to trace back to him, a crime for which another person would
inevitably serve the jail time, and he—even if accused—would
inevitably be let off. He bragged, again and again, to other
prisoners about his plan.
Nielsen may have heard of
the 1936 case of criminal hypnosis in nearby Sweden. The press
called it the “Sala affair.” A criminal hypnotist,
called only “Th.” in newspaper reports, had developed
a gang of young men and women who raised money by cocaine
trade, prostitution, robbery, and murder. Every gang member
was Th.’s hypnotic subject. He had conditioned each with
an eclectic mix of occultism, yoga, and hypnosis.
Nielsen studied hypnosis.
He learned which traits mark a susceptible person. He practiced
his hypnotic techniques on other persons whenever he had an
opportunity.
The Prey: Palle
Hardwick
A few months after arriving at Horsens, Nielsen met Palle
Hardwick in the prison workroom. He noticed the younger man’s
spiritual interests (often characteristic of hypnotically
susceptible persons). He saw how depressed Palle was, and
how inclined he was to turn to religion for answers. Nielsen
targeted Palle for remaking into an agent of his perfect crimes.
Palle’s Childhood
and Youth - Palle Hardwick and his identical twin
brother were their parents only children. They were raised
in a middle-class Danish family before, and during, World
War II. His father was good-natured, hard-working, and reliable.
His mother was witty and ambitious. What Nielsen did to Palle
broke their hearts.
In childhood, Palle was intelligent,
sensitive, reliable, dutiful, good with his hands, ambitious,
and goal-oriented. He later called his youth “a series
of little five-year plans.” He planned to have a bright
future. He was also introspective, quiet, and interested in
religion. Palle never smoked or drank. With a few heterosexual
exceptions, he was chaste.
From HIPOCORPS to
Capture - In 1940, at age 16, Palle joined a volunteer
rifle group organized by the Nazis who then occupied his homeland.
(They appeared to be there to stay.) The party’s conveyer-belt
system then carried him through the Youth Section of the Danish
Nazi Party to the volunteer German Army Corps, and finally
to the German Auxiliary Police (also known as Hipokorps).
Palle was in the Hipokorps
only during the last three months of the war, but it ruined
his life. He never participated in interrogations or mistreatment
of detainees. In fact, he actively avoided assignments that
would cause him to mistreat other persons. When assigned to
be an interpreter for the Germans, he shot himself in the
leg. When he became ambulatory again, they gave him a different
assignment. Thus, he managed to avoid participation in the
persecution of Danish Jews or of Danish Resistance members.
Years later, Palle recalled his three months in the Hipokorps
as one of the most unhappy periods of his life.
As the Allied army approached,
he became disillusioned, despairing, disgusted. He was sure
the Germans would lose the war, but he felt enough loyalty
to his Hipocorps unit that he did not walk away from them.
A force of combined Allies and Danish resistance fighters
arrested Palle on May 8, 1945, together with German troops
trying to retreat from Denmark. His captors took him to Horsens
State Prison to be held for trial. The route ran by his parents’
home, which Palle had not seen for a year and a half.
He stared apathetically out
the window of the train, grieving, until he arrived at prison.
At Horsens, they placed him in solitary confinement in the
cellar for a few days, then moved him to a tiny cell, shared
with another “collaborator.” Miserable, hopeless,
monotonous prison days followed, one after another. Faceless
cellmates came and went.
Trial and Imprisonment
- After sixteen months in prison, on September 9,
1946, Palle was finally tried. Postwar Denmark hated collaborators,
especially Hipokorps members. Being caught in the company
of Germans went hard with Palle also. He was sentenced to
fourteen more years in Horsens. He was only 22.
Palle’s twin brother
also was sentenced for collaboration, but he received a far
lighter sentence. He soon got out of jail, found a job in
the wholesale business, and did well from then on. Palle remained
confined, believing he had many years left to serve.
Palle did not fit in at Horsens.
A prison report dated December 27, 1946, said he was “Polite
and well behaved. Young idealist. Works well.” Palle,
himself, later wrote of this period:
For me there was no way back
to my earliest youth, before the whole thing began. I did
not think that there would be any future for me even on that
distant day many years in the future when I might possibly
be released....I tried to find a meaning in things from a
religious point of view, by thinking that they were ordained
by God. I wondered whether He even existed and how He could
have created such a world as ours. But that only made matters
worse. I began to doubt whether there was a God who directed
the universe, or whether it was not merely one long string
of fortuitous circumstances. I felt quite alone...as if I
were in a diving-bell at the bottom of the sea which was never
going to come up again. (Palle quoted in Reiter, 1958, p.
73)
Those depressed feelings all
changed, however, the day that Palle experienced a spontaneous
mystical encounter with a “guardian spirit.” The
spirit declared that Palle’s long sentence to imprisonment
was not an accidental misfortune, but was, indeed, part of
God’s plan for him, intended to develop and strengthen
him for fulfillment of a later task. From the moment he received
it, that message became very dear to Palle, a source of hope
and strength.
Nielsen the “Guru”
Soon after he met Palle, Nielsen began to tell the gullible
young man a series of grandiose lies. Nielsen claimed to know
all about religion, to have read lots on it, to have been
a member of a society for psychical research. In fact, he
said, he was a master yogi--a guru! He promised to get Palle
books to study on religion, to initiate him into the mysteries
he had learned. He would give Palle an apprenticeship in the
arts of yoga mastery. The charming, smooth-talking sociopath
promised Palle that his lessons in Indian “philosophy”
and yoga training would reveal life’s true meaning, grant
escape from his present misery, make him independent of this
world, and guarantee a better one in an afterlife.
Palle resisted Nielsen’s
aggressive overtures of friendship.
Nielsen did not give up. He
pressured Palle, every day, in the workshop. Nielsen expounded
on the reincarnation of souls. He said hypnosis was the way
to learn about one’s past lives. He promised that, through
“mind expansion,” Palle could become one with the
“divine cosmic principle” and have direct communion
with God. He chattered about levitation, channeling spirits,
telepathy, and yogis who walked through walls or who could
cure a broken leg in five minutes. He gave Palle books to
read about yoga.
Palle read the books. He redefined
his beliefs and his spiritual goal in terms of what he read
and of what Nielsen was saying. He was challenged by the “great
and difficult labor” of mind expansion. The books promoted
the Eastern concept of learning psychic mind skills from a
teacher. Nielsen purred that Palle obviously had talent and
even he, the guru, could learn much from him--if Palle would
let him become his teacher. Palle believed everything that
Nielsen said.
Palle Learns “Yoga”
- Reassured by Nielsen’s play-acting, the lonely
young man finally accepted his proffered friendship. Palle
and Nielsen were both accused of collaboration. Both were
in prison, both assigned to the workroom. Their friendship
seemed natural to Palle. Soon, he alsoaccepted Nielsen’s
offer to teach meditation skills.
After that, in the workroom,
every day, often in a corner by themselves, Nielsen did “spiritual”
exercises with Palle. Like most covert hypnotists, Nielsen
carefully avoided the word “hypnosis.” He always
substituted occult terminology for the “H” word.
He called hypnotic episodes, “concentrations.” He
gave Palle “relaxation exercises,” or “magnetic
strokings,” or “yogic training in how to cease thinking.”
Nielsen always began new induction
routines by requiring Palle to try it on him first. Con artist
Nielsen would then pretend to be completely, helplessly under
Palle’s mental influence. Nielsen’s play acting
banished any fear Palle might have that Nielsen could get
power over him. Only then, did Nielsen let Palle, who was
now very interested and confident, have a turn at being the
subject of the “experiment.”
Thus, when Nielsen introduced
a hand locking induction routine to Palle, Palle first did
it to the guru. Nielsen only pretended to be unable to pull
his hands apart when Palle said, “Try it. You cannot
pull your hands apart.” Nielsen knew the routine was
just a trick played on ignorant people who don’t realize
that everybody’s knuckle size prevents them from pulling
apart clasped hands--unless they spread their fingers to allow
the larger knuckles to pass through. This is a test of hypnotic
susceptibility. It’s also a hypnosis induction, because
if a subject believes they have been compelled to obey by
mental power, they may continue to obey suggestions.
When it was Nielsen’s
turn to give the suggestion to Palle, Palle really “locked”
his hands. He really believed that he could not pull his clasped
hands apart when challenged to try it. Then Nielsen knew,
for sure: Palle was a susceptible hypnotic subject, a proper
candidate to be the agent of the guru’s perfect crimes.
After the hand-locking exercise,
Nielsen led Palle in breathing exercises combined with various
yoga postures and concentrations on various mental ideas.
To Palle it was all just an amusing game, a toy, a prison
pastime. He had no idea that Nielsen was covertly conditioning
him for a mind-controlled life
Nielsen asked Palle, whose
prison behavior record was better than his, to request to
share a cell with him. Palle received permission. (That began
a long series: Nielsen tells Palle what to say, or do; Palle
obeys.) From the spring of 1947, to the fall of 1949, Palle
and Bjorn Nielsen were always together in their cell or in
the workroom.
From Trance to Hypnosis
- Nielsen told Palle that he knew a short cut to
the meditative high (trance depth) which Palle now yearned
to reach. He led Palle through more hand lockings, and relaxation
exercises. He made Palle’s arms or legs stiff (catatonic).
He did magnetic strokings of a prone and resting Palle. All
those were deepening exercises, training for automatism. Through
that series of disguised inductions, Nielsen was carefully
shaping Palle into a highly trained hypnotic subject. In the
meantime, Nielsen kept Palle calm and confident, without suspicion.
Nielsen finally proposed hypnosis
to Palle--actually using the H word. The guru made it seem
nonthreatening by, as usual, having Palle first hypnotize
him. Nielsen again pretended to be deeply affected. Palle
again believed that Nielsen was easy to hypnotize and that
he was difficult to hypnotize. The truth was the opposite:
Palle was far more susceptible than Nielsen. Believing himself
to be the more difficult person to hypnotize, Palle accepted
being, most often, the subject of inductions. Nielsen explained
that he was just trying to bring Palle up to his own yoga
skill level.
Nielsen’s fertile imagination
kept generating new mind-expansion exercises. Jail-weary Palle
welcomed them all. They were easy entertainment, a mental
escape. Soon, Nielsen was keeping Palle busy doing “yoga”
almost around the clock--excepting when he was eating or sleeping.
The ceaseless training made Palle’s hypnotic suggestibility
constantly increase.
Nielsen, next, captured and
redirected Palle’s sex drive for the purpose of powering
his hypnotic control. Kundalini yoga requires celibacy outside
of trance and channels sexual energy into intense, orgiastic
trance experience. Palle’s kundalini concentrations did,
one day, result in an intense climax enveloped in hallucination.
Palle believed that he had, in that moment, experienced fusion
of his body and spirit and had found unity with a divine essence.
Now, joyfully, utterly in love with the trance trip (and perhaps
somewhat so also with the guru who worked so hard to deliver
these trance highs to him), Palle eagerly anticipated more
such orgasmic fusions. He believed he was moving away from
the mundane terrestrial world toward contact with a lofty
spiritual force.
Social
Isolation
Palle
was now completely isolated, not only because he had become
a space case, but also because Nielsen had used threats,
flattery, and visual and auditory negative hallucinations
to further isolate him. Under deep hypnosis, Nielsen had
instructed:
"From
this moment you will no longer speak to nor address your
previous comrades...You will feel that all former ties
have been broken. Day and night your entire consciousness
will be directed towards the divine. If they approach
you, you will not see them, and if they talk to you, you
will not hear. They belong to a lower world, which you
have nothing whatever to do with.” (Reiter, p.
110)
Palle’s
former friends in prison thought his new condition of
perpetual walking trance, and total ignoring of them,
was very odd. Although they were upset by the change in
Palle, none of them spoke to the prison authorities about
it. Nielsen also programmed Palle against his parents
and other relatives. Palle obeyed the secret regimen and,
thus, became totally dependent upon Nielsen, now his only
permitted associate.
Nielsen
, however, was not isolated, and he couldn’t resist
bragging about his control over Palle to some of the other
prisoners.
Again and again, day after
day, many times in one day, Nielsen pushed Palle to go into
trance as deep as possible and to stay there as long as possible.
He also taught Palle self-hypnotic techniques to make his
state of lowered consciousness last longer. Nielsen never
once dehypnotized Palle, never told him the trance was now
over, and he could again be “awake.” Palle was now
walking around in a state of constant trance, of varying depth,
instead of his normal mental condition.
Nielsen explained away Palle’s
awareness of being in a constant deep trance by saying it
was evidence that he was in the presence of the divine. Palle
believed him. He wanted to hang on to that divine connection—even
if it meant losing contact with reality. In July, 1947, a
psychiatrist (who happened to be studying war criminals at
Horsens Prison) examined Palle. The doctor wrote in his report
that Palle was an idealist with no psychotic traits, no abnormal
characteristics at all—except “a tendency to parry
questions with obscure oracular answers.” (Quoted in
Reiter, 1958, p. 205) Obscure “oracular answers”
can be evidence of a trance state.
Palle’s constant effort,
now, was focused on soaring higher and higher (lower and lower
trance depths) in each new “concentration” that
Nielsen assigned to him. Palle hoped to attain the highest
yoga condition and achieve his dream of ecstatic and mystical
union with divinity, with the universe’s “vital
principle.” Nielsen’s goal, on the other hand, was
complete control of Palle’s mind by repeated inductions,
increased trance depth, and obedience drills. It usually takes
much trance training for a subject to reach the deepest levels
of trance. A large number of hypnotic sessions “increases
the possibility of criminally exploiting the depth of hypnosis.”
(Hammerschlag, p. 30)
Palle Accepts “X”
As God - The guru then began a new “spiritual
exercise.” As usual, first Palle hypnotized Nielsen,
who pretended to be deeply affected. In his sham state of
hypnosis, Nielsen “channeled” the voice of a spirit.
He made clear which spirit it was. He was supposedly speaking
with the voice of the angel who had appeared to Palle and
reassured him. Nielsen said,
“I am your guardian spirit.
You believe that what has happened to you is a great misfortune
for you. But that is not the case. It has all been to strengthen
you and test you, in order that you may carry out the mission
which it is your destiny to fulfil.” (Reiter, 1958, p.
108)
To Palle, Nielsen’s bogus
channeling was a true and precious revelation, and he hoped
for more. Palle never doubted that he should obey the “divine
power” who had bestowed those words upon him. Nielsen
told Palle that his guardian spirit was named “X.”
It was, then, Palle’s
turn to be hypnotized. When Palle was in deep trance, Nielsen
told him that X was the same person as God. He designated
X as Palle’s induction cue to a deep, amnesic trance.
From that moment on, Palle had complete amnesia for all his
time spent in X-related trance. Under the cover of that amnesia,
Nielsen hammered into Palle’s unconscious the belief
that Palle’s guardian spirit--who was supposedly God
and was named X-- would hereafter deliver all his orders to
Palle via Nielsen.
At first, X’s orders,
via Nielsen, came in phony seances during which Nielsen pretended
he was hypnotized and channeling the spirit’s voice.
Soon, however, Nielsen developed a wider variety of X communication
systems. Palle soon gave the same obedient response to words
that Nielsen said while making an X with his body—such
as having his legs or arms crossed in the sign of an X--or
to the words written following the symbol X in a letter.
Eventually, all Nielsen had
to do was say, “X says...” It was a convenient setup,
informal and unrecognizable to any random persons who might
overhear the guru in the process of implanting new hypnotic
commands in Palle. It worked in any social situation. It worked
even when Palle seemed to be in a normal waking state. Nielsen
would say, “The guardian spirit wants...” or “X
wants you to...” Palle would obey, as a hypnotic compulsion,
whatever followed those cue phrases.
Sometimes, Nielsen completely
concealed his role in X’s messages by causing Palle to
have posthypnotic hallucinations in which X materialized before
him and spoke the predator’s instructions. In the first
of these posthypnotically hallucinated scenes, Nielsen instructed
Palle’s unconscious that the spirit would act the same
as Palle’s spontaneous experience of a guardian spirit
had. So it comforted him, and seemed protective and loving.
Over time, however, Nielsen weaned Palle from comfort and
protection. X was more and more likely to simply show up and
give orders. Being completely amnesic for the trance sessions
during which Nielsen programmed him to experience these posthypnotic
visions, Palle accepted the apparitions with complete faith.
Nielsen made Palle deeply
terrified of the slightest failure to give unconditional,
absolute obedience to any command from X. He did that by threatening
banishment to spiritual darkness in this life and to hell
in the next--and then concealing the threat under amnesia.
The number one rule to which X demanded obedience was the
rule of Secret, Don’t Tell. Nielsen indelibly impressed
on Palle’s unconscious several corollary admonitions
that supported the basic rule of secrecy. X told Palle never
to speak of X, or of his “revelations” from X, or
of Nielsen, who was X’s “instrument.” In fact,
Palle was never to speak to any other prisoners at all.
The threats, if Palle should
weaken and tell, were as bad as those for imperfect obedience.
He would be judged as having failed in his mission in this
life, as having failed all his guardian spirit’s tests.
He would have no chance whatsoever of salvation and would
be damned forever.
Preparation for a
“Mission” - X (Nielsen) now told Palle’s
unconscious more about his “mission.” He made it
sound lofty and righteous. X said that God was personally
ordering Palle to end all wars and to develop and lead a world
government in which God and Mankind would be spiritually one.
He said that Palle had been designated by God to be the savior
of humanity who would “help, cure, and redeem” them,
and lead them from suffering into happiness.
Nielsen spent the next year
eroding all the moral values that Palle had internalized up
to that point in his life, his original superego. Palle’s
belief in X was made the basis of a new superego system which
displaced the old values. Nielsen did that by training Palle
to unconsciously judge his behavior as good or bad based only
on his X programming—what would cause X pleasure or displeasure.
In a condition of obedience to X, Palle would feel happy and
peaceful. Resisting X’s commands resulted in feelings
of misery, fear, and guilt.
Nielsen waited until Palle
was conditioned to shift instantly to deep trance on cue and
to have total amnesia for time spent in trance before he began
giving him really noxious suggestions. That conditioning,
combined with the comforting fantasy of world omnipotence
and a savior’s mission, unconsciously counterbalanced
Palle’s amnestic reality of humiliating submission to
ever more cruel and humiliating demands by Nielsen.
The guru told Palle that his
spiritual exercises were now going to teach independence from
all physical and material ties. They all involved self denial
because X said that Palle must now practice indifference to
whatever was dear to him. The training exercises in “independence,”
however, always involved Palle giving Nielsen his worldly
goods. Thus, Palle yielded up his daily meat ration to Nielsen,
then his watch, then his accordion. If Palle resisted any
concept or command, Nielsen explained that the student’s
inner resistance was caused by “matter” fighting
“spirit.” And he would urge Palle to overcome that
rebellious “body resistance to the spirit.”
Nielsen prepared Palle to
commit robbery and murder for him by means of a classic series
of desensitization exercises. He said Palle was “above”
the usual moral principles such as right of property, or respect
for life. X ordered Palle to free himself from all those “middle
class morals.” In deep trance visualizations, Nielsen
gave Palle systematic training in criminal acts. At first,
he induced Palle to hallucinate only minor crimes. The guru
acted as if it were all a joke--just a little thievery. However,
the acts which Nielsen made the hypnotized Palle visualize
gradually worsened: robbery, safe cracking, murders, then
murdering Palle’s own mother. That last item was agonizing
for Palle, so Nielsen made him experience it, in hallucination,
over and over.
X also instructed Palle to
never reveal Nielsen’s involvement in any crime that
Palle might commit. And he told him to never be hypnotized
by anybody but Nielsen.
Palle now walked around in
a near-constant trance. He believed that he had direct, daily
instructions from God (via X). He was forbidden to tell what
was really going on in his life to his conscious mind or to
anybody else. He was sealed against induction by any other
hypnotist. He believed he had been designated the messiah
who would unite the Scandinavian peoples and found an ideal
society, because X had told him so. He believed he was founding
a new patriotic underground. (Having been long and severely
punished for joining the occupier, Palle now was the “resistance.”)
His mixture of religious and political delusions was an artificial
psychosis, created by means of hypnosis. To the casual onlooker,
however, Palle would seem merely insane.
Nielsen was finished hypnoprogramming
Palle. It was early in 1949. He gave Palle instructions, via
X, to escape from Horsens prison--and then to return and free
his guru. Palle carried out the escape exactly as ordered,
but he was recaptured before he could return and attempt to
free the guru. Nobody knew that Nielsen was behind it. Palle
was sentenced to serve extra prison time because of his escape.
Palle Out of
Prison
Horsens Prison was now shortening the sentences of all prisoners
accused of collaboration. Nielsen got out a few months before
Palle. After the guru was gone, Palle was not walking around
in a trance any more. As Palle’s release date neared,
however, Nielsen began sending letters to him. They always
closed: “Greetings from X.” Seeing those words thrilled
Palle. They meant that X had not forgotten him. For a moment,
he felt the old rush of contact with the divine.
Palle walked out of Horsens,
a free man, on October 29, 1949. That day might have been
the beginning of a new, better life for him, but his freedom
was a cue that Nielsen had pounded in for years. Old hypnotic
suggestions activated by that cue now poured into Palle’s
consciousness. He later wrote:
The moment I heard I
was to be released...I felt at last God had given me my
marching orders...I felt exactly like a soldier ready to
leave for the front...everything which had happened up to
now was only testing which had been designed to bring me
up to the peak of my powers and ability...My earthly incarnation
was now practically at an end and only the final short step
remained to be taken... (Reiter, 1958, p. 124)
As soon as Palle arrived at
his parent’s home in Copenhagen, he called Nielsen (obeying
a posthypnotic suggestion) to hear X’s next instructions.
Nielsen told Palle to relax, talk to his family, and call
in the morning to arrange a meeting time. At six o’clock
the next morning, Palle called. Nielsen said to come at three
in the afternoon.
Too
long to list here.
Please read the rest in Carla Emery's "Secret,
Don't Tell".
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CANTOR
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MRS.
E
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PALLE
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CANDY