The hypnotized person is seeing and hearing thought forms that ARE there...in the consciousness of the hynotized person.

It's rather like experiencing a dream. It's a real event in consciousness, though not in an outward sense of physicality in this physical world of phenomena.

I have been in hypnotic trance, and it's quite interesting, because it's like experiencing 2 completely different realities at the same time...at least it was for me. On the one hand, I was experiencing events in some other lives I appear to have lived (in the past), while at the same time I was fully aware that I was HERE in the here and now, lying on a couch in a hypnotic trance, going through the experiences of a previous lifetime in my mind.

In that sense, it was a more aware situation than most dreams are, because in dreams I am generally ONLY aware of the "dream" reality.

Under hypnosis both realities seemed absolutely real to me...right down to the physcial sensations. Naturally, the one that was more dramatic tended to take up the greater part of my attention at any given time, but I never forgot that I was still in this present reality too, lying there on the couch.