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Part IX : World Tour - Experiments in meditation with Hypnosis
Osho emphasises using hypnosis to relax deeper into meditation.
Experiments are made with techniques of hypnosis, which continue
to be an integral part of the Meditation Academy
As far as I am concerned, hypnosis is going to be one of the
most significant parts of the mystery school. Such a simple method,
which only demands a little trust, a little innocence, can bring
miraculous changes in your life—and not in ordinary things
only. Slowly it can become the path of your meditation.
You meditate, but you don't succeed. You don't succeed in watching;
you get mixed up with thoughts, you forget watching. You remember
later on, "I was going to watch, but I am thinking."
Hypnosis can help you; it can make the watcher and the thoughts
separate.
For spiritual growth I don't think there is anything more important
than hypnosis. psycho44
We are going to use hypnosis for many things—for meditation
too. If you are finding difficulty in meditation, then first go
through hypnosis so that it gets deep into your unconscious that
meditation is a simple thing and you are perfectly capable of
it. Hypnosis can create that conviction in you. And then sitting
you will simply go into meditation without any difficulty, because
your whole unconscious will be supporting it; there will be no
opposition, no objection. mystic23
Hypnosis should not be understood as meditation. Hypnosis is
of the mind, and good for the mind, good for the body. Meditation
is neither of the body nor of the mind, but belongs to the third
within you—your being. It is good for the being, it is nourishment
for the being. psycho04
Wherever we establish our school, I would like trees to be hypnotized
for curing people. Trees can be hypnotized for other purposes
too—for helping people, encouraging people. If people are
learning music, they can help them so they learn fast, so they
get better in their subject matter. If they are learning mathematics
and they are stuck…or they feel that they cannot learn any
subject. Hypnosis can remove any obstacle without any trouble.
mystic23
I have been attempting to hypnotize myself. While I have been
able to relax very deeply, that's all that has happened. I am
not aware of any resistance to letting myself fall into the unconscious.
On the contrary, it feels like a whole new trail that I would
love to explore, yet for some reason hypnosis hasn't happened.
The problem is that the very idea of self-hypnosis creates a subtle
tension of which you are not aware.
Just think of the idea that you are trying to hypnotize yourself.
Who is trying?—because you are trying to hypnotize yourself,
your very trying is the barrier. And naturally without trying,
it will not happen, so you are in a dilemma: if you don't try,
nothing happens; if you try, your very trying keeps you alert,
and that alertness will not allow hypnosis to happen. Hypnosis
needs no effort on your part.
So self-hypnosis has a different process. The process is: first
be hypnotized by somebody else whom you can trust. If you don't
trust then you will hold yourself against being hypnotized. Second,
the person you choose to hypnotize you should not be a friend,
a lover, with whom you are very intimate, because then you won't
take him seriously. You will giggle and laugh, and that will destroy
the whole thing. You should choose a person you respect, you trust.
You feel a certain integrity in the person…then let him
hypnotize you.
Relaxation is happening, so there is no difficulty. On your part
you relax. Just a small part cannot relax, because you are trying
to hypnotize yourself. That part also will become relaxed because
somebody else is doing it. Or if you are afraid of people hypnotizing
you…Centuries of condemnation of hypnosis have made people
afraid that if you are hypnotized by someone you will be under
his power and that then he can manage to make you do anything,
and you will have to do it. In that case then you can use a tape
recorder.
Nobody disrespects a tape recorder. Nobody distrusts a tape recorder,
nobody is intimate with a tape recorder, nobody loves a tape recorder.
So all the conditions that are needed, the tape recorder fulfills.
And it is your tape recorder. Close the door and put in the tape
recorder all the suggestions that you have been making to yourself.
Then relax and let the tape recorder do the hypnotizing.
So either a tape recorder or a person, whichever you feel better
with. I would suggest a person, because a person will take care.
The tape recorder is poor: whatever you have suggested, it will
repeat. It cannot do anything else. It is a pundit, a rabbi. Choose
anybody from here—Kaveesha will be helpful to you.
So let the other person hypnotize you and while you are in deep
hypnosis, the other person simply gives you one suggestion—that
if you count from one to seven slowly…Any time you want
to be hypnotized, you simply relax and count from one to seven,
and you will be hypnotized. So there is no effort on your part
to hypnotize; you don't have to do anything, you simply have to
count—and that too comes from your unconscious, not your
conscious. The conscious is completely relaxed.
This suggestion has to be given in at least three to seven sessions.
Have a ten minute session every day for seven days, but only one
suggestion again and again in those ten minutes—that whenever
you want to hypnotize yourself, just count from one to seven very
slowly, but not suddenly.
First relax, focus your eyes on something. A light bulb is good.
Don't blink your eyes, and when you feel you are relaxed, and
your eyes are droopy, tending to fall asleep, start counting from
one to seven very slowly, in a very sleepy way, not very loudly,
whispering to yourself. And by the number seven you will be deep
in hypnosis, and this hypnosis will last for ten minutes.
These suggestions have to be given in three to seven sessions.
Don't try it after one session is finished. Don't try it, because
if you fail that failing leaves a suggestion in you that you are
not going to succeed. So for seven days don't try—just let
the other person do it. Try on the eighth day. The eighth day
the other person can simply sit by your side, just to give you
the feeling that you will be taken care of, and then slowly the
other person is removed. You become perfectly capable of hypnotizing
yourself.
The difficulty in self-hypnosis is because the self is involved;
it has to hypnotize itself. It is like pulling yourself up by
holding onto your legs and trying to reach to the sky. You won't
reach, you will fall flat on the ground. You may hop, but hopping
is not the question; you wanted to fly.
Self-hypnosis has an intrinsic difficulty; hetero-hypnosis is
always simple, very simple. But when you succeed for the first
time in self-hypnosis, you will feel great joy. You have been
able to do something which is contradictory. To avoid the contradiction,
the other person is needed. mystic36
I had my first hypnosis session yesterday. As I came out of it
I gazed at the trees being blown about by the wind. In comparison
to their movement, I felt such a stillness that I thought, "If
I had with me always even a fraction of that peace what a different
person I would be, how differently I would perceive my surroundings."
It felt like the most amazing revelation to discover that relaxation
is the key to all that I hold most precious. Is this the essence
of the beautiful biblical phrases, "Be still and know,"
and "The peace that passeth all understanding"?
Yes. Relaxation is the key to your own innermost being. And relaxation
consists of stillness, consists of peace; and certainly this stillness,
this peace, passeth understanding. You can know it, you can be
it, but you cannot explain it. You cannot theorize about it. It
remains the most mysterious experience.
The Bible is right. If you are still, you will for the first time
know who you are—your being—and your being is divine.
You are part of a godliness that surrounds everything.
Just these small moments of relaxation, slowly, slowly will make
you aware that they need not be moments; they can become your
whole lifestyle. All twenty-four hours you can be silent and peaceful,
doing everything in life that is necessary. Still doing these
things will not be disturbing your peace or your silence; it will
not distract you from your being.
That is one of the most significant points that I want to emphasize,
because in the past what has happened is that people who became
silent and still became afraid of the world. It was a natural
reaction. They thought that now how can they be just a shopkeeper,
a clerk, a stationmaster, a father, a teacher?—with all
these responsibilities their silence will be lost, their peace
will be disturbed. So all the old religions of the world became
antilife: "Renounce the world. Escape to the mountains, to
the caves, where you can protect your treasure of peace and silence."
But it was a fallacy.
The real peace, the real silence, needs to be tested here in the
world, in the marketplace. If it is disturbed that simply shows
it was very superficial—you have to go deeper into it. And
the marketplace is helpful to show you….
The world is a great school.
Experiment, meditate, and be constantly in touch with things which
disturb you. One day nothing will be disturbing, and that will
be the day of great rejoicing. mystic41
After two weeks of hypnosis sessions, I can now see my resistance
to relaxation. In looking for a cause for this, I saw that to
me, to relax means to be lazy and useless….Would you please
explain what relaxation really is?
I am not telling you to relax the whole day. Do your work, but
find out some time for yourself, and that can be found only in
relaxation. And you will be surprised that if you can relax for
an hour or two hours out of each twenty-four hours, it will give
you a deeper insight into yourself.
It will change your behavior outwardly—you will become more
calm, more quiet. It will change the quality of your work—it
will be more artistic and more graceful. You will be committing
fewer mistakes than you used to commit before, because now you
are more together, more centered.
Relaxation has miraculous powers.
It is not laziness.
The lazy man may look, from the outside, as if he is not working
at anything, but his mind is going as fast as it can; and the
relaxed man—his body is relaxed, his mind is relaxed, his
heart is relaxed.
Just relaxation on all three layers—body, mind, heart—for
two hours he is almost absent. In these two hours his body recovers,
his heart recovers, his intelligence recovers, and you will see
in his work all that recovery.
He will not be a loser—although he will not be frantic anymore,
he will not be unnecessarily running hither and thither. He will
go directly to the point where he wants to go. And he will do
things that are needed to be done; he will not be doing unnecessary
trivia. He will say only that which is needed to be said. His
words will become telegraphic; his movements will become graceful;
his life will become a poetry.
Relaxation can transform you to such beautiful heights—and
it is such a simple technique. There is nothing much in it; just
for a few days you will find it difficult because of the old habit.
To break down the old habit, it takes a few days.
So go on using the hypnotic technique for relaxation. It is bound
to come to you. It will bring new light to your eyes, a new freshness
to your being, and it will help you to understand what meditation
is. It is just the first steps outside the door of the temple
of meditation. With just deeper and deeper relaxation it becomes
meditation.
Meditation is the name of the deepest relaxation. transm33
In discourse the other morning I had a realization that was so
obvious I cannot believe I just got it: I've been dehypnotized…can't
believe how deeply programmed we are against hypnosis, and how
ever so gently you have been pointing that out to us—so
much so that we even think it is an insult when people say, "Osho
has hypnotized you," when in fact it's the greatest gift
on the earth. Your patience, brilliance, compassion, mastery and
wisdom has me in constant awe.
What you are saying is exactly true. My talking to you has not
the ordinary purpose that talking serves: indoctrination—that
is not the purpose of my talks. I don't have any doctrine; my
talking is really a process of dehypnotization. Just listening
to me, slowly, slowly you will be free of all the programs that
the society has forced you to believe in. Just by listening with
an open heart, with a receiving gratefulness, it is bound to happen.
There have been hypnotists but nobody has ever tried speaking
itself as a method of dehypnotizing. It can become a music in
you; it can relax you, can make you silent, can give a new rhythm
to your heart…a new feeling of my presence, a new perception
of reality.
And I may be talking about anything. It is not the question that
I am talking about these things; these are by-products. I may
be talking about A or B or C—which are absolutely unrelated
to dehypnosis. The question is your way of listening. If it is
right, then whatever I am saying will relax your being totally,
and slowly, slowly your conditionings will start falling apart.
And I want to do it this way. I don't want to hypnotize you—that
means to make you first unconscious. This way there is no need
to make you unconscious. You become more conscious, more alert.
You are becoming conscious and alert in order to listen to me.
But my purpose is not to teach you something, but to use teaching
as an excuse to make you conscious, alert, so you can start touching
the superconsciousness in you.
And from superconsciousness a higher quality of hypnosis arises.
The ordinary methods of hypnosis can be dangerous; you can be
in the hands of a person who can use you against yourself, because
you are unconscious. You are not in a better state than your normal
consciousness.
Nobody before has used speaking to help you to become superconscious,
so I need not say to you, "Drop this, drop that"—I
do not have to give you post-hypnotic suggestions. Everything
will be happening here-now, and it will be happening in your fully-alert
state, so you cannot be used, cannot be misused; you cannot be
exploited.
Hypnotism became condemned because people started exploiting it.
Anybody who is as unconscious as you are can use the technique
of hypnotism. That's why it became condemned; otherwise such a
beautiful phenomenon which can help you towards meditation would
not have been condemned.
My way cannot be misused. And when people say to you that you
are hypnotized, don't feel hurt. Tell them, "Yes, we have
been hypnotized to wake up. We have been hypnotized to enter into
superconsciousness. We have not been hypnotized to go into lower
realms of the mind, but to the higher superconscious or collective
superconscious"—and finally if you simply go on listening
to me, doing nothing, the cosmic consciousness is going to be
your experience.
But I have never said it before, and people have always wondered:
if I don't have a religion, don't have a doctrine, don't have
a teaching, then why do I go on talking to people? I could not
tell them; they would not understand. Only those who will experience
the relaxation of superconsciousness will be able to see the point.
And then certainly, as you say, they will understand how long
I have been waiting, and how long I have been patient, and how
I have been condemned for things which have nothing to do with
me. But I have remained silent—because it does not bother
me; the only thing that I am interested in is that my people should
attain to the state from where they cannot fall before I leave
the body.
I cannot give you anything more precious. psycho42
Just a few days ago, Anando brought me a press clipping. The
man was authentic in writing it…he was puzzled, he could
not understand what is happening. He had been listening to me—he
had come as a journalist to report—he had never heard such
long discourses, and on subjects which were not his area! So he
reports on me: "What is striking," he reports, "is
Osho speaks very slowly, with gaps—sometimes with closed
eyes, and sometimes he looks very intensely at you. He speaks
so long that one feels bored, but the strange thing is that after
this boredom one feels a deep serenity, a silence—which
is strange, because usually out of boredom one feels frustration,
one feels angry."
But he has observed well his own mind…one feels a certain
serenity, silence, peacefulness, and finally it seems that a kind
of hypnosis has happened: "Perhaps this is Osho's method—to
speak slowly, to speak with gaps, so that you start feeling bored.
But out of that boredom comes a serenity."
It is strange for him—it is strange for Western psychology
too—that if boredom is used rightly it is going to create
serenity, peacefulness and a state of hypnosis. And hypnosis is
healthy: It is not meditation, but it still somehow reflects meditation.
psycho04
I am not even telling you to meditate. I am just talking to you
and creating a certain atmosphere in which meditation happens
to you.
So while you are here, see the difference between doing and happening.
Alone also, let it happen. If you become accustomed to my voice,
perhaps you can put on the tape recorder: forget about meditation;
you just listen and the meditation will come. And, slowly slowly,
this coming of meditation can be detached from listening to me.
mystic24
There are moments I can see—perhaps many times you see
them too—when there is utter silence. Then you cannot count
how many people are here. There is only one consciousness, one
silence, one nothingness, one selflessness. And only in that state
can two persons live in eternal joy, can any group live in tremendous
beauty; the whole of humanity can live in great benediction. psycho18
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