How can hypnosis and meditation come together?

Question: BELOVED MASTER, HOW CAN HYPNOSIS AND MEDITATION COME TOGETHER? Amrit Nirjan, hypnosis has been condemned by all kinds of ignorant people. They don't understand anything about it, but you will find people everywhere condemning it. The word is used without knowing even the meaning of it. People will say to you, "You are hypnotized, that's why you go to Osho!" But just ask them what hypnosis is. They cannot even tell you the literal meaning of it, nor can they tell you what is the technique of it. Just the word is enough to condemn anybody, "You are hypnotized." Hypnosis is a tremendously beautiful art, and there is nothing wrong in it. But everything can be used in a wrong way or in a right way. You can have a sword and cut somebody's head. That is not the fault of the sword; the sword is neutral.

Beloved Osho, while using hypnosis in the service of meditation, I have noticed that the line between therapy and meditation is dissolving. As witnessing can become easy and natural in hypnosis, it seems to provide the ground for a quantum leap into no-mind. Beloved master, would you speak on the transformation of hypnosis into meditation?

Hypnosis was the door, has always been the door to meditation. Once a man enters into the world of meditation, he has such clarity, such a strength, so much life arising in him that he no longer needs any father in heaven. He no longer needs any priest to pray for him. He himself has become prayer -- not prayer to any God, but simply a prayerfulness, a gratitude to the whole. It was absolutely necessary for Christianity to condemn hypnosis and to condemn it as something created by the devil. For the same reasons witchcraft was brutally destroyed; millions of women were burnt alive because they were also doing the same thing. They were trying to contact the ultimate on their own without going through the proper channel of the church. Your question is very significant, Purna. You are asking, "While using hypnosis in the service of meditation..." Hypnosis…

Osho, how is your meditation different from auto-suggestions and hypnosis? And if it is different, how? Please clarify.

It is not different from auto-hypnosis and hypnosis; it is more. As far as auto-hypnosis goes, the path of meditation goes along with it, on the same road. But where auto-hypnosis stops, this path goes beyond. And because of that going-beyond, even in the stretch where it runs alongside hypnosis there remains a fundamental difference. The very basis of hypnosis is that your conscious mind goes to sleep. To become stupefied, to fall into a trance, is hypnosis. The process of hypnotic suggestion takes you into drowsiness. The more drowsy you become, the more sleep-like you become, the more you can be hypnotized. Then in that hypnotic state anything can be made to happen through you, because your discrimination is asleep. In this process of meditation you are not to go into trance; in fact, you cannot—because the whole process is active. That is why a hypnotist will lay you…

Another friend has asked: What is the difference between meditation and samadhi?

Remember, there is none other than the Divine all around—inside and out, only that One is. He is in the sky, in the earth, in the winds, everywhere—inside and out, only the Divine is. When we were not, He was; when we will not be, He will be. The wave rises and subsides; the ocean is eternal. Remember, recognize: this ocean of bliss and light all around is the Divine. This inner existence of bliss, this inner light, is the Divine. Other than the Divine, there is nothing. Everything other than the Divine is untrue. Only the Divine is truth. Remember, remember. Recognize, recognize—this is the doorway to Him; this is the path to Him. Only bliss, only light, only the Divine. All around, only He is—within as well, without as well. Be submerged, become one. That which you have been seeking for lives upon lives—this is that place. That…

A friend has asked: Osho, if through meditation or spiritual practice one can conquer death, does not the same state occur in sleep? And if it does, why can’t death be conquered through sleep?

But meditation and hypnosis are not the same. Understand me carefully. I said: up to this point it is hypnosis, mesmerism—so long as we are manufacturing suggestions. When the manufacturing of suggestions stops and you awaken—where awareness begins—there meditation begins. Where witnessing begins, meditation begins. And the reason for this hypnosis is that you have fallen into a reverse hypnosis. In scientific language, this is not hypnosis but de-hypnosis. Not mesmerism, but the breaking of mesmerism. We are the ones mesmerized—but we don’t know it. In life we have become hypnotized, and we have no idea how many kinds of hypnotic trances we have taken on, by how many devices we have produced them. A large part of our life is hypnosis. And when we want to be hypnotized, we don’t notice what we are doing. For example… we live like this all our lives. If we became aware of…