Dick: He won't do it

And rightfully so. If I were Dick's unconscious mind, I wouldn't tell him either. He'd try to interfere. What did he do earlier? His unconscious part wouldn't release specific information, and he immediately had a feeling of failure! I wouldn't communicate with his conscious mind if it were going to behave like that either. It's just as convincing to have your unconscious say "No, I won't tell you what any of the new choices are," if it's an involuntary signal. Right?

Dick: Right.

Now let me mention in passing the paradoxical nature of the request that we made in step two. The question is "Would you be willing to communicate with me in consciousness?" Any signal that he detects has to be a response in consciousness. Even if the part says "No, I would not," that's still a communication in consciousness.

If he had gotten a "no" response, I would understand that in the following way: the intent of that part is not to not communicate with him in consciousness. It's a statement that it doesn't trust him. That is, it's not willing to release content information to his conscious mind. And I respect that. I really believe that unconscious minds should have the freedom, and in fact have the duty, to keep out of awareness material which would not be useful for the conscious mind to deal with.

We had a period when we did nothing but deep, deep trance hypnosis. A man came in once and said that there were all kinds of things standing in the way of his being happy. I said "Would you like to tell me what those things are?" And he said "No, I want to go into a trance and change it all, and that's why I came for hypnosis." So accepting all behavior, I did an induction, put him into a deep trance, sent his conscious mind away, and said "I want to speak privately with your unconscious mind." I have no idea what that means. However, when you tell them to, people do it. They talk to you and it's not the one you were talking to before, because it knows things the other one doesn't know. Whether I created that division or whether it was there already, I have no idea. I asked for it, and I got it.

In this particular case, his conscious mind was, to put it as nicely as I can, inane. His unconscious resources, however, were incredibly intelligent. So I said "What I want to know from you, since you know much more about him than I do, is what change is it that he needs to make in his behavior?"

The response I got was "He's a homosexual."

"What change does he need to make?"

"He needs to change it, because it's all based on a mistake."

"What mistake?"

The explanation that I got from his unconscious mind was the following: The first time he had ever asserted himself physically, in terms of trying to defend himself against violence, was when he was five years old in a hospital to have his tonsils out. Someone put the ether mask on his face, and he tried to push it away and fight back as he went under the anesthetic. Anesthesia became anchored to the feeling of being angry. After that, every time he began to feel angry or frightened and started to strike out, his body went limp. As a result of this, his conscious mind decided that he was a homosexual. He had lived as a homosexual for about twenty-five years.

His unconscious resources said "You must not let his conscious mind know about this mistake, because knowing that would destroy him." And I agreed with that. There was no need for him to know that he had goofed in all of his relationships for twenty-five years. The only important thing was that he make a change, because he wanted to get married. But he couldn't marry a woman because he knew that he was a homosexual. His unconscious mind would not allow him in any way to become conscious of the fact that he had made this mistake, because it would have made his whole life a mistake and that knowledge would have utterly destroyed him. It wanted him to have the illusion that he grew out of it and grew into new behavior.

So I arranged with his unconscious mind to have him blossom as a heterosexual person and to make the changes as a result of a spiritual experience. His unconscious mind agreed that that was the best way to go about it. He changed without any conscious representation of either the hypnotic session or where the changes came from. He believes it came as a result of a drug experience. He smoked marijuana and had a cosmic experience. He assumed that it was the quality of the grass, and not a post-hypnotic suggestion. That was adequate for him to make the changes that he wanted.

There are many parts of people that do that same kind of thing. A part doesn't want the conscious mind to know what's going on, because it believes the conscious mind can't handle it, and it may or may not be right. Sometimes I've worked with people and I've made a deal with a part to allow the conscious mind to slowly become aware of something a little at a time, to discover if in fact the conscious mind can handle it or not. And usually the part discovered that the conscious mind could accept the information. At other times I've gotten an emphatic "No, there's no way I will do that. I don't want the conscious mind to know. I will change all behaviors, but I will not inform the conscious mind of anything." And people do change. Most change takes place at the unconscious level anyway. It's only in recent Western European history that we've made the idea of change explicit.

If Dick's part had said that it was unwilling to inform his conscious mind what the intention was, we would have just gone ahead anyway because it isn't relevant. We would have just told that part to go directly to his creative part and get the new choices. In fact, informing his conscious mind is probably what made it take so long. I'm serious. Being conscious, as far as I can tell, is never important, unless you want to write books to model your behavior. In terms of face-to-face communication, either internally or with other people, you don't need consciousness. We essentially limit his conscious participation to receiving and reporting fluctuations in his signal system, and asking the questions which stimulate those responses.

It's quite possible—not only possible but quite positive—for him not to know what the intention of his unconscious part is, as well as for him not to know what the new choices are. The changes will still be as profound and as effective as if he knew all that. In fact, in some ways the changes will be more effective.

Man: What if you get no response at all at the beginning?

Well, if you get no response at all, your client is probably dead. But if he doesn't get a response that convinces him, I'd ally myself with his unconscious mind and say "Look, this part is unwilling to communicate with you and I agree with it, because I wouldn't want to communicate with you either. What you haven't realized yet is that this part has been doing something vitally important for you. It's been doing you a service and you've spent all this time fighting your own internal processes when they've been trying to do something positive for you. I want to salute them and compliment them. And I think you owe them an apology." I'll literally tell people to go inside and apologize for having fought with the part and having made it that much harder for that part to do what it's trying to do for them.

If that doesn't work, you can threaten them. "And if you don't start being better to your parts, I'm going to help them destroy you. I'm going to help them give you a terrible headache and make you gain twenty-five pounds." Then typically I begin to get really good unconscious communication. The person will be saying "Well, I don't think this is really accurate" at the same time that their head is nodding up and down in response to what I've said.