According to Osho, yes—really intelligent people are actually more hypnotizable. Hypnotic susceptibility rises with intelligence: geniuses can be hypnotized very easily, while people of low intelligence cannot be hypnotized at all. The widespread idea that hypnotizable people are unintelligent is baseless and wrong; in fact, higher I.Q. correlates with greater capacity to enter hypnosis.
Smart people can be hypnotized more easily; it’s not a sign of a weak or stupid mind.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Isn't the reverse the case? That a really intelligent person cannot be hypnotized?
A person of lower intelligence cannot be hypnotized; it is impossible. The greater the intelligence, the greater the hypnotizability. The more intelligent you are, the higher your I.Q., the more susceptible you are. A genius can be hypnotized very easily, but an idiot cannot be hypnotized at all. Your conception is wrong, but it's a prevalent mistake. What you are saying is wrong, it is absolutely unfounded, there are no grounds for it, but it is a very prevalent concept -- that people who can be hypnotized are not intelligent. It is absolutely wrong.
Beloved Osho, why is it difficult for some people to be hypnotized? Is it because we do not trust the person who is doing it to us, or are we not as receptive as those who can be?
He was immensely excited. He said, "Do whatever... but I want to be celibate before I die, because this is the only thing in which I have failed in my life. I have never failed in anything." He gave millions of dollars to the freedom movement. So all the leaders who became prime ministers, and presidents and cabinet ministers looked to him as a father figure. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, who was the prime minister, told him, "It was okay not to give taxes to the British government, but now it is your own government." He said, "Remember, it does not matter to me which government it is. I can donate twice the amount that you think I should pay in taxation, but taxation? -- that I cannot do. And you cannot catch hold of me, because I don't have any books. Except for me, nobody knows how much money I…
Beloved Osho, in the past hypnosis has been tried on me, but I could not be hypnotized. Please explain why many persons are not hypnotizable.
Once the woman feels -- and the suggestion is there -- that this is going to be a very ecstatic feeling, she will achieve a peak. And I think that in the past women used to achieve that peak; they have lost that capacity. Not only lost -- birth has become painful. This is again a suggestion. You can see: the more civilized a society, the more pain in childbirth; the less civilized a society, the less pain. In India there are many primitives who don't know any pain in childbirth, no pain at all. And there are some tribes on the earth even today in Tibet and in other interior parts of Mongolia, where women go simply mad in ecstasy when the child is born. And that may be the reason why every woman deeply longs to be a mother. No man longs to be a father, he wants…
Question: OSHO, IS THE THEORY OF REINCARNATION NOT TRUE? The hypnotist goes on saying, "Your whole body is numb. You cannot even move your hand if you want, you cannot move your leg if you want: your body has become almost a stone," and your eyes are just about to close. You make a last effort, just as a drowning man makes his last effort for help, and then drowns and is gone. You can see that now you cannot keep your eyes open, they are really heavy; stones are hanging from your eyelids. This takes not more than three minutes; you fall asleep. But the difference between ordinary sleep and hypnosis is that in ordinary sleep you are oblivious of everything around you. In hypnosis, you are available to the hypnotist and oblivious of everything else.
Beloved master, although what you say seems to be the very truth, when I tell this to my friends who belong to the higher levels of society -- doctors, professors, engineers and administrators in the city -- they think I have been hypnotized or brainwashed. Every time I apply logic to this then they are at a loss. But why can't they accept you when they are unable to argue? Why are they so against you?
Hypnosis can transform you very easily without any drugs. There are people who are suffering from smoking -- they don't want to smoke but they are addicted. They go through a torture. They know perfectly well that it is harmful, they are killing themselves, but no wise counseling can be of any help. They know all that you are saying: that it will destroy your health, your lungs may go wrong, you may get tuberculosis, you may even get cancer, and certainly you will die at least two or three years earlier. Everybody knows it, but still the addiction is there. Hypnosis is so simple. In three weeks' time, just a three-week course, one hour every day -- and your smoking disappears. Just for three weeks, one hour a day, you have to be told, "You don't need cigarettes, you don't need smoking." There is no need for somebody to…