Autohypnosis

 

 

A French psychologist, Emile Coue, used to treat people. His method was simply repetition, suggestion, autohypnosis. You could go to him and say, "I have a headache, a constant headache, and no medicine helps. I have tried all the 'pathies,' even naturopathy, and nothing helps."

 

He would say that there was no need of treatment because there was no headache. You have simply believed in it. And in going to this doctor and that, all have helped you to believe that yes, a headache is there -- because if they don't believe in your headache they cannot live. Doctors cannot say that you don't have a headache. When you go to a doctor, even if you have nothing wrong he will find something. A doctor exists by it.

 

Talking with Coue would help you immediately, almost fifty percent of the headache would disappear just by talking to him -- without any medicine. And he would feel the relaxation coming over your face and then he would know that the trick had worked. Then he would give you a formula that you had to repeat continuously day and night, whenever you remembered -- that there was no headache. Every morning when you got up you had to repeat: "I am getting better and better every day." And within two or three weeks the headache would disappear.

 

A real headache cannot disappear that way. In the first place the headache was created by words; in the first place, you hypnotized yourself that you had a headache, and then you dehypnotized yourself. A real illness cannot disappear. But your illnesses -- ninety percent of them -- are unreal. Through words you have created them. Coue helped thousands, Mesmer helped thousands, just by creating the feeling that you are not ill. It doesn't show that autohypnosis cures illness; it only shows that you are such great autohypnotists already that you create illnesses! You believe in them.

 

And doctors cannot say that your diseases are mental. You don't feel good if someone says that your disease is mental, you feel very bad, and you immediately change your doctor. Whenever a doctor says that you have a very great disease, very serious, you feel very good -- because a man like you, so great, a somebody, he MUST have a big disease! Small diseases are for small people, ordinary diseases for ordinary people. When you have cancer, tb, or something dangerous, you feel superior, you are somebody. At least as far as illness is concerned you are not ordinary.

 

-Osho, “The Empty Boat, #9”