Why is it difficult for some people to be hypnotized?

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…

I am too much in control of my body. My mind is too strong. It would never happen with me.

If you are co-operative, it is very easy. What is the problem? It is the easiest thing in the world if you are co-operative. But if someone is not able to co-operate with his own energy, if he is not able to allow his body suppressions to be released, then he can be hypnotized and under hypnosis he can be told to allow what is in the unconscious to be expressed. Then, he can begin. Only rarely can someone not be hypnotized. Only someone who is insane or who is below normal, someone who is not intelligent enough, cannot be hypnotized. You cannot hypnotize a madman; you cannot hypnotize an idiot.

Is there not a possibility of hypnosis and illusion in your new method of dynamic meditation? With many participants nothing is happening; are they not on the right track? There are others in whom a lot of processes are happening; are they on the right path? Could some of these be just putting on an act?

There are two or three things which have to be properly under-stood. Hypnosis is a science and it can be easily used for creating deceptions. However, hypnosis can also be used to help you. Science is always a two-edged sword. Atomic energy can produce wheat in the fields; it can also wipe out the whole humanity at a stroke. Both the possibilities are there. The electric current that moves the fans in your house can also kill you, but you will not hold electricity responsible for it. If an egoist makes use of hypnosis he will do so to suppress, destroy and delude the other. But the opposite of this is also possible. Hypnosis is a neutral energy; it is a science. It can be used to break the dreams that go on inside you, and your deep-rooted illusions can also be eradicated by it. The method I am using…

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…