MANILA, Philippines?Reader Lorenzo Tan wrote to say he has also encountered criminals in the Binondo area who use hypnosis to rob people.

?My few encounters,? he said, ?included chanting of prayers and the use of hypnotic eyes. You won?t notice their eyeballs or even see their mouths open during the chanting. I was hearing words that seemed foreign, as though they were coming from my own brain.

?Although I have managed to avoid previous hypnotic attempts, in my third encounter, I was forced to look deep into one?s eyes and that had a bad effect on me. I couldn?t help recalling the face of this person and the chanting during sleep.

?Fortunately, I recalled from one of my readings on visualization how to counter such condition. I made a visualization of fire, burning his face repeatedly until his face ceased to appear in my mind.

?An encounter with these types of people is really scary. Avoid looking into their eyes, and distract them. That?s the only thing I can recommend.?

Thank you for that suggestion. The problem is in practice, one realizes only too late that he or she has been hypnotized. It comes without warning.

Mr. Tan followed his letter with the following questions:

1. ?Is the future fixed?? Is it true we can?t change our future??

My answer is ?yes? and ?no.? If the future depends on the will of man to be fulfilled, and is not yet completed in the astral or spiritual realm, it can still be changed. However, if the future event is already completed on that higher plane, it cannot be changed anymore.

For example, Edgar Cayce, the late American psychic and prophet who died in 1945, was in a building waiting for the elevator door to open. When it opened, he saw three or four persons inside. Instead of entering the elevator, he stepped backward. The elevator door closed. After a few seconds, he heard a loud crash. The elevator cable broke and everybody inside crashed to death.

When asked how he knew the elevator would crash, Cayce replied that when he looked at the people inside the elevator, they had no more aura.

In other words, they were already practically dead and there was nothing he could do about it. Cayce could see the aura and knew that only living beings have auras.

2. ?Why do some people have the gift of seeing the future even if they can?t change it??

There are several reasons. First, to prepare the person emotionally and mentally to accept the inevitable. Second, since we really cannot tell for sure whether the future, even if seen, can be changed or not, seeing it beforehand can serve as warning to avoid it, if possible.

Some say the future is just a bunch of probabilities and really not fixed. It can still be changed by us.

3. ?Are spirits given the rights to influence the future??

Not really ?rights,? but the fact that they?re spirits let them see things happen before they actually do. Before anything happens on the physical plane, they appear or happen on the mental and spiritual planes.

There is no exception to this. Before a chair or a table becomes a physical reality, it must exist in the mind of the carpenter or designer.

So if one can see what?s happening on the spiritual plane, he or she can influence its becoming a physical reality.

Why 30% of people can?t be hypnotized

Reader Mary Ann Ong asked why 30 percent of people can?t be hypnotized. What prevents them from being hypnotized?

Actually, there?s no definite answer hypnosis experts can give us. What some say is these people who can?t be hypnotized either cannot focus or concentrate. Their mind or attention span is flighty or of short duration. They may be emotionally disturbed.

They may be too skeptical or too analytical and can?t relax. Or it could be the other way around. Others are not easily distracted and may be too focused on other more important things.

The next Inner Mind Development seminar is Dec. 6-7, 9 a.m.-5 p.m., Rm. 308 Prince Plaza I Cond., 106 Legaspi St., Greenbelt, Makati. Call 8107245; visit www.jaimelicauco.com; or e-mail jaimetlicauco@yahoo.com.

I?ll have a series of seminars in Poland in November, so I may not be able to answer e-mails immediately.