Dharana

Osho, are dharana and autosuggestion the same? What is the difference between dharana and svabhava, or bodh? Was Ramakrishna Paramahansa’s Kali purely a matter of dharana, or does she have her own existence? Is communion or dialogue with divine powers or with God not possible?

Ashtavakra’s sutra is precisely this: become free of all dharanas, all beliefs, all imaginations, all projections—of ritual as such! Ritual as such is bondage. When no one remains within—not devotee, not God—there abides a vast emptiness. In that emptiness, day and night, there is a shower of bliss. In that hour, what dialogue, what debate? No—every dialogue is only imagination. Sometimes the night surrounds me, sometimes I call out to the day. Sometimes a radiance ensnares me, sometimes I scatter particles of light. How shall I recognize when the life-voice is resounding and when the mind is speaking? I will tell you: the recognition is simple. Whenever anything speaks, it is the mind speaking. Whenever anything appears, it is the mind appearing. When nothing appears and nothing speaks—what remains is no-mind; that is samadhi. As long as there is experience, it is mind. Therefore “experience of the Supreme”—these words are…

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 said, Osho, last night what you were calling samadhi felt like auto-hypnosis or hypnotism, like mesmerism.

It didn’t merely seem so; it is. The “I” is a hypnosis. What we call “I” is a hypnosis we ourselves have created. To break this “I,” we must give it a contrary, anti-hypnotic suggestion and shatter it. The I is our hypnosis, nothing more. It is our delusion that “I am.” What is, is the vast, the boundless. What is, has no limits. What is, was before “me” and will remain after “me.” But “I am” is only a hypnosis. It is a habit of life we have gripped since childhood—a makeshift habit we cling to. If you have ever seen a hypnotic experiment you would be amazed: under hypnosis, whatever we accept becomes true for us; the mind agrees to whatever we concede. Hypnosis produces “truths” in our consciousness that in fact are not there. We all live like this. If a woman or a man begins to…

Are belief and auto-suggestion one and the same thing? What is the difference between belief and inner-nature or awareness? Was the mother kali of ramakrishna paramahansa purely his belief, his projection, or does she have her own reality? Is dialogue not possible with the supernatural or god?

Belief and auto-suggestion are the same thing. Auto-suggestion is the scientific name for belief. There is no difference between them. However inner nature and belief are very different. Inner nature is that which becomes manifest when all beliefs have been dropped. When all thoughts and all beliefs have disappeared from your mind, you experience your inner nature. Inner nature is not to be made a belief. Once a sannyasi was a guest at my house. He would sit morning and evening chanting "aham brahmasmi -- I am the ultimate. I am not the body, not the mind, I am the ultimate." I listened to this for two or three days. I said, " If you are, you are. Why repeat it again and again? If you are not, what will repeating it do? It is possible to create an illusion by repeating it over and over. By repeating I am…