When James Esdaile created his “Esdaile coma” state to perform surgery in India before the days of chemical anaesthetics, he managed to perform operations with a high success rate as well as a high survival rate.
After James Esdaile died, his state was almost forgotten, except by the occasional stage hypnotist who would hypnotise someone too deep and find they ignored all suggestion and appeared as if they couldn’t come out of hypnosis. In fact, leave anyone long enough and they exit hypnotic states naturally.
Dave Elman discovered something interesting about the Esdaile state. Reports Elman, “I quickly learned that the coma state was one of euphoria and that the subject merely didn’t want to be disturbed. That was the reason he wouldn’t come out of it. He had never had such a pleasant experience and he didn’t want his enjoyment to be interrupted.” (Hypnotherapy, p. 121. Emphasis supplied.)
“Rather than being a state which is to be avoided, we found that patients described it as ‘the best state of hypnosis there is. It’s wonderful. I don’t know when I was so beautifully relaxed.’