Starting from the Medusa Greek myth, the legendary being capable of turning people into stones with her penetrating gaze, to the Egyptians, who featured the eyes in amulets and monuments, up to many modern films, man has always been aware of the legendary power of the gaze. This power has been called "fascination".
During the Middle Ages people referred to fascination as the power of one gaze upon another gaze, while for the Indians this "power to bind" is connected to the third eye, the ajna chakra.
Why are the eyes so powerful? The gaze, when properly used, allows two people to come into really deep contact. Eyes are said to be the "windows of the soul". Love, fear and any emotion can be read into the eyes.
Looking into someone's eyes always gives a strong and persisting impression. This is also backed up by scientific research results that have shown how the infants so strongly react to the gaze of parents and how this is important for bonding.
However, only few people might have seen a true hypnotist using the original secret method we are describing here.
Only using his hypnotic eyes for few seconds, in the 1800s hypnotist Donato stupefied the whole of Europe. He was able of hypnotizing dozen of even unwilling persons. His able performance was often followed by profound amnesia. He even asked to be defied and turned people to resemble statues. He had a secret method for doing it, that seemed to have been lost forever after his death.
The fact that the gaze could be so powerful is also proved by what is called "hypnotic theft", a kind of criminal hypnosis diffused in Europe, mainly in Italy and Russia. There are cases where the victims have given all their money to the robber; afterwards they have even thanked the robber and have forgotten everything! In some cases the robberies were videotaped by VCR washing away any doubt that this could only be an urban legend.
How is it possible to avoid this kind of gaze? Or better, how could we get the secret behind it, so as to be able to use it in a positive way?
In this article we are offering the practicing hypnotists and the researchers some very rare and precious elements of this ancient knowledge.
The gaze, when rightly used, instead of harming people can be used to enrich them therapeutically and open new dimensions!
Thanks to the profound state that we can create, deep change is facilitated, instant regressions occur and it is possible to instantaneously release aches, tensions, and even healing deeply uncounscious-bond problems with stupefying ease.
As the mind is deeply entranced, strange psychic phenomena can also occur: it seems as if the minds of the people involved get into contact.
The method that Dr. Paret and Dr. Tira are unveiling for the first time here, has been long time researched. It is also thoroughly dealt about on the site www.mesmerismus.info. It had been always kept secret and only transmitted by word of mouth. Some elements have been scientifically proven only recently.
We will call it therefore the "Dr.Paret - Dr.Tira method" as we apply with incredible success this ancient methodology into which we were personally initiated, or even the "Virgilian" method. Virgilio T. was the Master of it. And it took him more than twenty years to admit us to his tradition.
It should also be noted that fascination methods we are now describing are also quite new for the English speaking countries. There are very few testimonials of the power of the gaze in English books. Historically, when animal magnetism spread around Europe, it arrived in the British Island quite later; until the middle of 1800 this country had been considered at the borders of Europe.
Probably because it was something new, an English physician of Manchester, James Braid, felt compelled to carry out a very first (and very incomplete) analysis of a gaze-produced hypnosis. Why was his analysis incomplete? Firstly because his model (the magnetizer Lafontaine) unluckily did not use the complete gaze method. Secondly because Braid tried to fit it within the frame of what was known at that time (1800) about the eye.
We will anyway shortly expose Braid's explanation. He said that looking at a bright object at a distance of 20 cm (7,87 inches) involved strain of the muscles, so that the eyes closed and a state that he called "hypnosis" occurred.
In fact, this is not so easy to be performed according to his method, which is even misleading. Real hypnotic fascination happens with the eyes wide open, not making them close down! Furthermore the goal in fascination is not to tire the subject, but to excite his unconscious and non-logical mind.
However Braid's method was divulged in dozens of books. But no one of his followers managed to easily hypnotize with it. They managed therefore to rely on other methods, opening the path to a hypnotism based on speaking, to tire and to confound the conscious mind. This original flaw is still present in the modern clinical and slow hypnosis.
In fact, with Braid's method and the modern methods derived from it, in the cases were you produce hypnosis, it takes you minutes and a long explanation. Also with words you cannot hypnotize an unwilling or defying person. Fascination with the eyes is a different path. A person able to use the gaze is able many times to obtain deep results in a matter of seconds without a word. And for sure during a robbery the hypnotic thief does not ask the victim to look at an object for some minutes! In fact this is possible only if you know how to use the right gaze technique.
Until recently this was possible only if you knew somebody wanting to teach it to you.
What is therefore the secret of the gaze? There are many secrets.
Firstly, fascination does not rely on relaxing the conscious mind as traditional hypnosis. We would like to give a short explanation about why we have a "dissenting opinion" with respect to the mainstream hypnotic schools on the best way to induce profound states. When we look somebody directly in the eyes we always get a strong feeling; even our heartbeat changes. As our subconscious gets excited, we cannot resist it and its excitation will break and wash away any conscious resistance. Even in love, a glance can catch the attention. In this way we are brought into a different reality.
However fascination is also very technical in its strongest form. There is also a second fundamental and very important physical element behind the power of fascination, unknown to the physiologist of 1800s. There is a specific point in space: if you focus this point, the mind goes still. It is called the "dark focus" (so called by physiologist because it is the point where the eyes look when there is nothing to look, as for example in the dark). It is something like a "magic point". After the initial excitation, under certain circumstances, the eyes can be "set" and the accommodation (the way in which they adapt themselves to the distance) stays blocked at this resting point. As in the blind spot of the eye we do not see anything, under the right circumstances fixing this point the conscious mind gets blocked.
Sometimes this phenomenon also occurs to aviators (the so called Mandelbrot effect); in this case it can be very dangerous. Obviously the aviator does not want to get in such a state, but if he does not know how to avoid it, he risks entering it, willingly or unwillingly. This phenomenon is deeply physiologically wired.
In the Middle Ages fascinators were said capable to throw "mist" around their victims. And this is exactly what happens to the fascinated person. Practically the brain enters this territory beyond ordinary reality, where there is no more knowledge and distinction between far and near. As a result, distance and space change, the voluntary muscles change their tonus and the face assumes a stone-like aspect. And also mind-to-mind communication seems easier.
But where does the mind go as the eyes go to this "dark focus", in this "magic point"?
We are physically in the "middle of nowhere". And note that the same terms were exactly used by the famous hypnotist Milton Erickson as he defined the "trance state"! He used his incredible sensibility and his words to bring people there as a mean to create a therapeutical trance.
If he had ever met a hypnotist using the real fascination method, he would have been surely interested, as it is a lightning fast method. But he did not know it, as this tradition was always transmitted in much closed, non-medical circles.
Most of the times this state was used for creating energetic shifts of consciousness or for specific initiations.
With eyes fascination we bring the eyes to be "set" in the middle of nowhere. In this way the mind enters in a profound trance-like state where space gets distorted. If we give a command to a person in such a state, it is immediately executed. His conscious mind does not even understand what is going on and he will execute whatever task he is asked. A curious feat is that if we don’t stop the fascinated person, he will repeat the action again and again indefinitively.
Please also note that the auditory localization of sounds is influenced by the gaze (as recent experiment with monkeys has shown). Sounds are well perceived differently; certain sounds can have deep impact, thus also symbolic mantras can be used.
If we have a clear key to get into this state, we can use it to bring remarkable therapeutical changes and wipe away old mental programs very fast as we are accessing the deepest layer of the mind. Practically any psychological problem can be relieved or even healed. Healing is achieved by permitting body movements directed by the subconscious mind (this was Mesmer's method), or also leading to a profound state of rest after the excitation. We can also bring the person in specific states just moving his body. For example, we can give non-verbal suggestions putting the hands of the fascinated and stone-like person in specific positions, thus creating ecstatic feelings or others.
Third: to get the best results, this phenomenon can be further enhanced by moving hands as we excite the field of peripheral attention. In this case we have something probably similar to what happens in the so called "highway hypnosis", when people driving on monotonous roads can enter trance-like states. On the highway there is a monotonous stimulus at the centre, where the eyes are focalized and, at the same time, a continuous line of movement laterally, where the eyes are not focalized. What happens is that here as well the mind enters a trance-like state. This is also very similar to what happens looking at the centre of a moving spiral, often used to induce hypnosis. The neurons controlling peripheral visions are linked to different a zone of the brain with respect to the zone to which the neurons involved in the foveal (central) vision are linked. Therefore if we stimulate them we are stimulating different and non-rational mental processes.
And, as the mind is open, all these physiological process are further enhanced through the use of Energy. In fact fascination is the Western school corresponding to the use of Prana or Ki (Chi) in Orient.
We could go even further examining other elements in fostering further the power of gaze, but we will discuss them in another article to follow.
Now we would rather give you the first five immediate how-to practical keys to hypnotize your clients:
1 - move your hands while gaze-hypnotizing, in order to stimulate the peripheral field of vision
2 - ask the person to look at you at the centre (the third eye of the Indians), where in fact there is no movement
3 - do not blink (exercise before a mirror to do it)
4 - move your body fore and back slightly and slowly, so it will be easier for the eyes of the person to get into the resting point of accommodation (dark focus)
5 - fix your client and be centered and concentrated. Think and imagine him to be healed.
Yet, the above is still not enough to give instant amnesia. In order to get amnesia you also need other elements need to concur, but it is however enough to start fascination.
Please remember that this is a non-verbal method. You never need to speak as you use the gaze. You are directing yourself to the unconscious mind and you want to excite it. If you speak or try to mirror you risk waking up the rational mechanisms of the conscious mind.
At the beginning do not try to perform full hypnotization using with this method. Only use fascination to "soften" the person, then rely on some other methods you already know (the best are the non verbal methods).
You will also verify that what we call "depth of hypnosis" will be stronger in relation to the energy that you will put at the beginning.
Among the other important points we will subsequently analyze there is the inner part of fascination.
It is necessary for you to consider that, as you look somebody directly, you are transmitting a lot of who you are through the eye. In life, often love occurs through a glance.
At the same time you also need to know that real hypnotic fascination is not only physiological. It is also energetic. It taps in what the oriental call Chi or Prana.
Additional personal exercises are therefore necessary to be completely congruent and powerful. Please remember that any hesitations would be immediately perceived when looking into somebody else’s eyes. You also need to awake what is rightly called "personal magnetism" in yourself. This is a prerequisite to the most powerful hypnotic fascinations.
Please do not hesitate to email me at paret@neurolinguistic.com if you begin to try this method, I will appreciate your feedback and I will give you many additional hints.

Dr. Marco Paret is the founder and Director of the ISI-CNV International Institute for NLP (NeuroLinguistic Programming), Hypnosis, NCV (Non Verbal Communication), Leadership and Coaching and Mesmerismus in NICE - French Riviera (France) and operating in Europe (http://www.neurolinguistic.com). He is also a NLP Master Trainer and is an authority in this field where he developed his personal approach called NLP3.
He has an in depth knowledge of hypnotic techniques and authored many books in english (Easy Guide to Hypnotism and Mesmerism, NLP3 and Quantum Psychology), french, italian and spanish.
Dr. Paret applies with incredible success the ancient methodology of fascination into which he was personally initiated and present it in his site http://www.hypnotisme.com/hypnotisme/hypnotism-mesmerism.htm.