You do not need to be a philosopher or a Buddhist monk to know that there is no “you”.
Who “you” is changes, sometimes from one moment to the next.
It’s more like there’s a parliament of voices, each trying to influence you in different ways.
By looking at the basic substrate of our brain, it becomes clear how different networks of neurons can “compete” for control.
Your ‘artistic’ self calms down in a gray and beige office, while your ‘loving and romantic’ self dies down during …
In fact, I can’t complete that sentence. No matter the situation, someone’s romantic instincts will come to the fore. But I’m sure you can think of situations that for you, personally, don’t do it for you.
Anyway …
As different aspects of your personality go up and down, you notice something:
Some of them are simple, like the urge to eat even more cake.
Others are complex, like when you fantasize about elaborate revenge plans … only to cool down your planes a bit later.
Could some aspects be so complex that they are intelligent, even self-aware?
Sure, that’s probably what you are, anyway.
File it on a different subnet by considering this:
Hypnosis works with these different voices. Silence some neural networks while enhancing others. Hypnotherapy, like using hypnosis to consciously solve problems, involves selecting which networks to improve or decrease.
And yes, I am speaking both literally and metaphorically here.
So …
Can we combine these two?
Can you use hypnosis to improve a subnet so much that it becomes self-aware?
What is a fancy way of asking, can hypnosis install multiple personalities?
Safe.
Multiple personalities are possible: they arise spontaneously in people. Hypnosis simply recreates this process.
That can be used for good. Even the tamest mouse has a lion inside it, desperate to roar.
If you think your problems are too difficult to deal with, you can create a new “you” who can easily handle them.
But it can also be used for sinister purposes.
In fact, this is the classic nonsense you see in Hollywood, where someone is hypnotically reprogrammed to be a murderer or something.
I’m not going to say it’s impossible … but I’m not convinced it happened. All the ‘conclusive !!!’ experiments and documentaries always have simpler explanations and gaps in the experiments.
But it does not matter.
Most people don’t want to make you a Manchu candidate anyway.
But they would happily install a more tame personality in you.
More willing to give them what they want.
Creating a new personality in someone else just to make a sale may seem like a stretch … but sales are life and death.