What is the difference between meditation and autogenic training?

Medical doctors are now trying to use the medical autogenic training to help patients. What is the difference between meditation and autogenic training?

Autogenic training is good, but it is not meditation. Autogenic training is a very superficial relaxation, but it is basically mind over body, mind telling the body, "Relax." You lie down silently, you close your eyes, and you start feeling where the tense points are in your body. Your knees are tense and you order the knees to relax; your hands are tense, you order the hands to relax. And this way you go on all over the body, giving each part which feels tense the order to relax. Slowly, slowly your whole body feels absolutely relaxed. This is good. This is helpful for the body, but it is not meditation because it is still mind in control; it is mind dominating the body. Meditation is mind no more in control. Something beyond mind, your being has taken control both of mind and body. Autogenic training can be helpful for…

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…

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…

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…

Another friend has asked in this connection: you say that revolution can only be nonviolent. But he says that revolution is always violent; a nonviolent revolution never happens.

In Russia, those who gained power were good men; before a revolution, everyone looks good. After power comes into hand, then it is revealed who is truly good and who is not. There is even the possibility that Stalin poisoned Lenin. And there is the possibility that one by one, all who had led the revolution were eliminated. Trotsky was killed in Mexico. Those who made the revolution were picked off by Stalin, one after another—because now the game of power had begun. In India, many fine, innocent-looking people made revolution with Gandhi—white as freshly washed garments they appeared. But once power came into their hands, we saw they had changed; they proved to be different men. Only their clothes were white; within, they were not. What happened the moment power was in their grasp? The real man inside showed himself. As long as there is no power, the real…