"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" - unam.

don't consider such analogs meaningful."
In the great big dining hall with stained­glass windows, where we always ate, in
our steadily deteriorating academic gowns, Dean Eisenhart would begin each dinner by
saying grace in Latin. After dinner he would often get up and make some announcements.
One night Dr. Eisenhart got up and said, "Two weeks from now, a professor of
psychology is coming to give a talk about hypnosis. Now, this professor thought it would
be much better if we had a real demonstration of hypnosis instead of just talking about it.
Therefore he would like some people to volunteer to be hypnotized. . ."
I get all excited: There's no question but that I've got to find out about hypnosis.
This is going to be terrific!
Dean Eisenhart went on to say that it would be good if three or four people would
volunteer so that the hypnotist could try them out first to see which ones would be able to
be hypnotized, so he'd like to urge very much that we apply for this. (He's wasting all this
time, for God's sake!)
Eisenhart was down at one end of the hall, and I was way down at the other end,
in the back. There were hundreds of guys there. I knew that everybody was going to want
to do this, and I was terrified that he wouldn't see me because I was so far back. I just had
to get in on this demonstration!
Finally Eisenhart said, "And so I would like to ask if there are going to be any
volunteers. . ."
I raised my hand and shot out of my seat, screaming as loud as I could, to make
sure that he would hear me: "MEEEEEEEEEEE!"
He heard me all right, because there wasn't another soul. My voice reverberated
throughout the hall ­­ it was very embarrassing. Eisenhart's immediate reaction was,
"Yes, of course, I knew you would volunteer, Mr. Feynman, but I was wondering if there
would be anybody else."
Finally a few other guys volunteered, and a week before the demonstration the
man came to practice on us, to see if any of us would be good for hypnosis. I knew about
the phenomenon, but I didn't know what it was like to be hypnotized.
He started to work on me and soon I got into a position where he said, "You can't
open your eyes."
I said to myself, "I bet I could open my eyes, but I don't want to disturb the
situation: Let's see how much further it goes." It was an interesting situation: You're only
slightly fogged out, and although you've lost a little bit, you're pretty sure you could
open your eyes. But of course, you're not opening your eyes, so in a sense you can't do it.
He went through a lot of stuff and decided that I was pretty good.
When the real demonstration came he had us walk on stage, and he hypnotized us
in front of the whole Princeton Graduate College. This time the effect was stronger; I
guess I had learned how to become hypnotized. The hypnotist made various
demonstrations, having me do things that I couldn't normally do, and at the end he said
that after I came out of hypnosis, instead of returning to my seat directly, which was the
natural way to go, I would walk all the way around the room and go to my seat from the
back.
All through the demonstration I was vaguely aware of what was going on, and
cooperating with the things the hypnotist said, but this time I decided, "Damn it, enough
is enough! I'm gonna go straight to my seat."