Hypnosis

 

 

Hypnosis and meditation are the same process in diametrically opposite directions. You can use hypnosis to awaken you; you can use hypnosis to fall deep into sleep. And if you become master of the art of hypnosis, you have got the key to open all the doors of life.

 

If you are not the master of the key of hypnosis, then you are a victim of many, many forces. This is worth understanding: if you don't know what hypnosis is then you are a victim. Everybody is trying hypnosis on you -- I say everybody! They may not be doing it knowingly, but everybody is trying. There are different ways, methods. The whole world is filled with hypnotic tricks: the same advertisement in the newspaper, on the television and on the radio. It goes on hammering, it becomes a hypnotic thing.

 

In the mind you go on repeating, "Lux is the best soap." You go on repeating it. Wherever you move it is written on the walls; in films you see it, on the T.V. screen it is there, on the radio it is there, in magazines, in newspapers, in anything: "Lux Toilet Soap." It goes on and on. You become hypnotized by it. Then you go to the shop and the man behind the counter asks you, "What soap do you need?" You say, "Lux Toilet Soap." You are asleep. You are not saying it consciously, it has been hammered in and now it is built in.

 

Crores of rupees are spent on advertising just to hypnotize you. Those advertisements have to be repeated continuously. Repetition is the way. Then there is imprint, and you become unconscious about it; then suddenly it comes out of your mouth, "Lux Toilet Soap." And you think that you are choosing. You are not the chooser.

 

The whole education system is hypnotic. That's why for the teacher a higher place is needed. It must be measured scientifically because there is a particular point -- the way I am sitting here is at a wrong point, this is not right. Your eyes should be in a tension looking at me, in much tension, not relaxed -- then you are easily hypnotized.

 

Hitler used every proportion. He had an expert committee to measure how much distance from the audience and how much height was needed so that the eyes are correctly at a tension where they become easily hypnotized and sleepy. And then all the lights would be put off -- in Hitler's lecture hall the only lights would be on Hitler. Nobody could see anywhere else, and so you were forced to look only at him. In a particular situation a particular tension was created. In this tension he would go on saying something for a while. The things that he wanted to put into you would be said later on, when the whole audience had become sleepy. Then the words would simply move into the unconscious and start functioning.

 

Now they have invented subliminal advertisements in films. As you watch a film, between two scenes, just for a fraction of a second, the advertisement will be flashed. You will not be able to read it, you will not even know what has happened. Simply watching the film, suddenly for a few seconds the advertisement will be there -- but you will not be continuously aware of it.

 

Only two persons in a hundred can feel that something has happened. Only those who have very keen eyes can feel that something was in-between. Ninety-eight per cent will not feel it, but the unconscious has read it. It has entered you.

 

There was one experiment about it in an American film. They flashed a particular brand of cold drink on the screen, something new. Only two per cent of the people became aware that there was an advertisement, ninety-eight per cent were fully unaware, but in the interval many people went out and asked for the drink. They were not aware that there had been an advertisement because it had been so fast.

 

Hypnosis is all around. Education uses it, politics uses it, the market uses it -- everyone is using it. And if you are not aware then you are a victim. Become aware. If you become aware, you can use it; not to hypnotize others, but to de-hypnotize yourself. And if you can become completely de-hypnotized, you are free, you are liberated.

 

And there is no conflict between meditation and hypnosis. The conflict is in the directions -- the process is the same.

 

-Osho, “Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 2, #26”