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Part V : Osho’s experiences with Hypnosis
Hypnosis can be dangerous. In wrong hands anything can be dangerous;
otherwise hypnosis is a simple form of relaxation. But it can
be dangerous, because the man, if he is bent upon cheating you,
in those states when you are under hypnosis can suggest to you
things that you don't want to do. But you will have to do them
when you wake up.
I used to work with one of my students. I lived in his house
for six months. His brother was my friend, and I was alone and
there was no point in getting a house - and who was going
to take care of it? So he said, "You'd better stay with me."
And I discovered really a beautiful medium in his younger brother.
I started hypnotizing him. Just to give an example to you: one
day I told him, "Tomorrow, exactly at twelve o'clock, you
will kiss your pillow madly." The second day, nearabout quarter
to twelve, he started looking a little strange, afraid, watching
everybody, everywhere, and just in front of him I took his pillow
and locked it in my suitcase. I could see tears coming into his
eyes. I said, "What is the matter? Why are you crying?"
He said, "I don't know, but something like this has never
happened to me. It is so strange...I cannot describe."
And exactly at twelve he came to me and he said, "Please
return my pillow."
I said, "What will you do at twelve? In the evening I will
return it."
He said, "You have to return it to me right now."
I gave him the pillow and before six other people he started kissing
the pillow madly, and looking at people thinking that he must
look mad...and he himself thinking that he is mad - what
is he doing?
I said, "Don't be worried, that's what everybody is doing.
When a man is kissing a woman, a woman is kissing a man, that
is a natural hypnosis, a biological hypnosis; the biology has
hypnotized your chromosomes. It is not that you are doing it...and
feeling so awkward, you don't want to do it before others, you
want some lonely place of your own. Don't be worried! It makes
no difference whether it is a pillow or a woman. What you are
doing, you are not doing - it is your unconscious which is
forcing you to do it."
He said, "That is the trouble. That's what I feel. Something
in me says, `Kiss,' and I know that this is stupid. This is only
a pillow. Why should I kiss it?"
You can, under hypnosis, manage anything if you are a person who
is just trying to cheat people. You can even tell the person to
murder someone and he will murder - and he will be punished.
He may be sentenced to death, and he will not have any explanation
to give. And nobody can touch you who hypnotized him, because
nobody will ever know what you did in hypnosis, while he was asleep.
Hypnosis can be misused. Everything great can be misused. Perhaps
that is one of the reasons why most of the countries and cultures
have tried to avoid any entanglement with hypnosis. And the word
`hypnotism' has become a condemnatory word. But that is not right;
it can do immense good too. Somebody who has some difficulty in
any subject can be simply hypnotized and told, "You don't
have that difficulty. That subject is simple, and you have enough
intelligence to understand it." And the man will start behaving
differently from the next day - his unconscious got it. There
is no need to fear.
People can be helped with diseases, because almost seventy percent
of diseases are mental. They may be expressed through the body,
but their origin is in the mind. And if you can put in the mind
the idea that the disease has disappeared, that you need not worry
about it, it does not exist any more, the disease will disappear.
I have tried very strange experiments with it. My work was concerned
with something else. For example in Ceylon, Buddhist monks every
year on the birthday of Gautam Buddha, dance on red-hot burning
coal - and they don't burn. One professor from Cambridge University,
a professor of psychology, had gone especially to see it, because
he could not believe that it is possible. But when he saw twenty
monks just dancing in the flames, and that they were not burned,
he thought, "If these people can do it, why cannot I do it?"
So he tried...just coming a little closer it was so hot that
he ran away. He would have died if he had jumped into the pit
where the fire was burning and the monks were dancing. Now, it
needs a tremendous effort of hypnosis.
I tried it on the same boy, because he was a good medium. Thirty-three
percent of the whole population are good mediums, and you should
remember this thirty-three percent. Thirty-three percent of the
people are the most intelligent too, and this thirty-three percent
is the more creative, most innovative people too. These are the
same people who can go into deep hypnosis; it needs immense intelligence.
People with greater intelligence - if they are ready to go
into it - can go to very deep layers. And the deeper the layers
are, then things can be done which look almost miraculous.
With this boy - his name was Manoj - I tried putting
a hot burning piece of coal on his hand and telling him that it
is a beautiful roseflower. He saw it and he said, "So beautiful,
and so fragrant," and it did not burn. I tried otherwise
also: putting a roseflower on his hand and telling him it is a
burning hot piece of coal. He threw it immediately, but it burned
his whole hand.
Mind has tremendous power over your body. The mind directs everything
in your body. Seventy percent of your diseases can be changed
by changing the mind, because they start from there; only thirty
percent of diseases start from the body. You fall down, and you
have a fracture - now, that fracture cannot be helped by hypnosis
saying that you don't have any fracture. You will still have the
fracture. The fracture has started from the body and the body
cannot be hypnotized. The body has its own way of functioning.
But if the process starts from the mind and extends to some point
in the body, then it can be easily changed. psycho40
The conditioning of the conscious mind has gone so deep that
even in sleep it won't allow a few things. Even in deep hypnosis
it won't allow a few things.
For example, people have been worried that a hypnotist hypnotizing
a woman can rape her under hypnosis. But unless the woman herself
is willing it is not possible, she will wake up.
I was working with one of my cousin-brothers. He was a very talented
boy; he is now a professor in a university. But he is very cowardly.
So whatever he clings to, it is very difficult to persuade him
to drop it if something better is available - because what
he is clinging to is safe, he knows it.
He was from a very poor family. His mother died and his father
married again, and the woman started torturing the boy. So I told
the boy to come and live with me so he lived with me. He was studying
and he was also working part-time in an office.
The principal of his college was a friend of mine. I told him,
"He has great talents and it is stupid that he should be
working in an ordinary office as a typist. You can employ him
also in the college part-time as a librarian, or something you
can find." And he was willing.
The boy was getting only seventy rupees per month from the office,
and the principal was ready to give two hundred rupees for the
same time - and almost no job, just being a librarian.
And I said to him, "It will be good, you can read while
there is nobody disturbing you, and you can become acquainted
with the great literature; it will all be available to you. And
you will remain in the college. You can study, you can work there.
"Show your talents, so finally I can manage to tell the principal
when you pass your M.A. that it will be good to make you a lecturer
in the college." But he would not leave the part-time typist
work in the office. It was very difficult for him to move from
anything that he has become accustomed to and was secure in.
Finally I tried hypnotizing him - and he was a good medium,
he did everything that I told him to do. When I became perfectly
satisfied that he goes really deep and forgets everything, I said
to him one day, "Now is the time. Tomorrow you resign from
your post."
He immediately opened his eyes and woke up. He said "I was
afraid continuously for all these days. I can do everything else,
but not this resignation. I knew that you would one day tell me
to resign from that post."
"But," I said, "how did you manage it, because
you were so deep in hypnosis?"
He said, "I was deep in hypnosis, but it was with my willing
cooperation. On this point I was not willing."
So even in dreams the long training of your mind will interfere
to change the dream, to make it as if you are chasing the best
friend of your sister. But your unconscious desire is for your
sister, the best friend is only a substitute. But the conditioned
conscious has deep roots which have gone even into the unconscious.
So if a woman is willing the hypnotist can rape her; but she if
is not willing, the moment he suggests anything against her will,
she will wake up - however deep the hypnosis may be.
It was really a revelation to me, because he was doing everything
else. I would tell him, "You just get up. It is morning and
you have to milk the cow." And he would sit in the posture,
as in India they do for milking the cow - and there is no
cow. He will start milking the cow. And he will not remember anything
about what happened. But to resign from the post...he was
keeping his conscious censor alert about it.
You cannot tell somebody to go and murder, unless that person
really wants to murder. Anything that the hypnotized medium does
is his willing cooperation - not that he is conscious, but
even in unconsciousness the conscious mind is alert so that nothing
goes against the conditioning. transm20
Every day a part of your mind must become blank so that it can
receive new impressions, otherwise how can it work? As the future
arrives, the past disappears every day. And as soon as this future
becomes the past, it disappears too so that we are free to receive
what lies ahead. This is how the mind functions.
We cannot carry the full memory of even one life. You won't
be able to recall anything if I ask you what you did on January
1, 1960. You did exist on January 1, 1960, and you must have done
something from dawn till dusk, yet you will be unable to remember
anything. A small technique of hypnosis can revive the memory
of that day. If you are hypnotized, and a part of your consciousness
is put to sleep, and then if you are asked to describe what you
did on January 1, 1960, you will recount everything.
For a long time I experimented on a young man. But my problem
was how to be sure of the details he gave of January 1, 1960.
He was able to narrate that day only under hypnosis: in the waking
state he would forget everything. So it was difficult for me to
determine whether or not he really took a bath at nine o'clock
on the morning of January 1, 1960. There was only one way to do
it. I wrote down everything he did on a certain day. After a few
months when I asked him to describe his activities of the same
day, he couldn't recall anything.
When I put him under a deep state of hypnosis and asked him
to narrate the particular day, he not only recounted all that
I had noted down, but described many other things which had not
been written. He did not miss anything from what I had written
down; rather he added many more things. Obviously I could not
have noted everything. I had written only what I saw or what had
occurred to me.
In hypnosis you can be taken as deeply inside your self as one
would like to go. But it will be done by someone else; you will
be unconscious. You won't know a thing. Under hypnosis you can
be taken even into your past lives, but it would essentially be
in a state of unconsciousness. now14
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