What happens when hypnosis is used in the service of meditation?

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…

Beloved Osho, I understood from past discourses when you have talked on hypnosis, that one becomes, to all intents and purposes, totally unconscious, aware only of the hypnotist's voice. I have not experienced this state, but something more akin to what I feel in discourse, except more so: I feel mentally and physically transfixed, without any volition to move, talk or think; but I am definitely present and aware of everything going on around me. Have I not got the hang of hypnosis yet, or are there different levels of trance?

The authentic master... and the East has known so many authentic masters that it was very difficult for anyone to compete with the authentic ones. It was impossible because of the sheer fact that the one who was not authentic had no hypnotic presence. He had no fragrance of the real flower, he was just plastic. You cannot deceive people with a plastic flower. People try.... I used to live in a place in Raipur -- not many days, just six months and the university got rid of me. The professor living next door had a beautiful flowerpot in his window and every day... I was surprised, because I could see that the flowerpot was not true: the flowers in it were not authentic, they were plastic, because I never saw them disappearing, their petals falling. And he used to water them to deceive me -- I was the only…

A friend has asked: Osho, a guru has traditionally been used to understand a person’s structure, his personality. But can we not learn our type, our inner structure under someone’s hypnosis? Can using hypnosis for spiritual practice also be dangerous?

Hypnosis is a very ancient process. It is beneficial, and it is dangerous. In fact, anything that can benefit you can also endanger you. Danger arises precisely from that which has the power to help. Wherever there is the power to heal, there is also the power to harm. So hypnosis is not some homeopathic remedy that only helps and never hurts. There are many misconceptions about hypnosis. In the West those misconceptions are breaking down; in the East they are still strong. The irony is that the East was the first to discover hypnosis, but we gave it another name. We called it yoga-tandra, yogic trance. Our name sounds finer; just hearing the name makes a difference. Hypnosis too means trance; it comes from the Greek word hypnos, which means sleep. Two kinds of sleep are possible. One is the sleep that comes when your body is tired at…