The unnamed institute you mentioned that makes the promise for attendees to know the future with the use of hypnosis is not using the hypnosis I know about.

You can't even know the past with hypnosis (as you mentioned)!

There are groups who promise such all-knowing (assessing/reading 'Akashic records,' for one.) and they most usually report that they feel they enter some special state as they do it. The people I've seen "accessing Akashic records" were most disappointing and incorrect.

I bet there are a lot of self-diluted participants in such workshops who hope and want to have some control of reality in that way and perhaps convince themselves that they are getting there. It is very hard to teach juggling to a group and have more than a few get it. It is harder to teach aikido or guitar and have more than one person get ~anything~ from such teaching in the course of a 'workshop'. And those things are quantifiable, measurable, definable, and pretty darn tangible. So...can a workshop teach a batch of folks to see/know the future? I remain very very very much more than unconvinced.

Certainly some rare individuals have, on occasion, had a remarkably high 'hit rate' for gleaning the future most specifically. I have a few stories about some of these individuals I've run into in my life. And they most often (but not always) report a special state they attain when they do their thing. But the MASS reproduction and marketing of this 'skill' or 'sensitivity' or 'talent' or 'luck' or whatever it is, is preposterous in my experience and opinion. And too the fact that this 'skill' relies on a 'trance state' does not mean that learning a trance state can lead to the skill. A well groomed person may wear a neck tie but wearing a neck tie will not make you a well groomed person.

My deep trance identification with Erickson results in my producing comments (playing Erickson) that I (as Steve) would never have thought or have said. I'm sure the same is true for Steve Gilligan in this regard. (I don't know his Bateson story, sorry). As for gambling...I'd stick with a limit of losing $50- $100 or less, if I were you! Oh yes, and be sure to check the credentials of the 'institute' leaders before gambling on that workshop.