Hypnosis Technique and its Danger

 

 

 

The process, the technique, is very simple. The hypnotist hangs a crystal from a chain just over your eyes, and tells you, ”Don’t close your eyes until you cannot keep them open. Fight to the last, keep your eyes open! ”And the crystal shines in your eyes. Naturally, eyes have to blink continuously to keep themselves from getting dry. They are the most delicate part of your body. You blink your eyes because your eyelids function like windshield wipers on a car: they bring liquid to your eyes and they clean your eyes of any dust, or anything that may have entered.

 

They keep your eyes fresh and always showering. The hypnotist says, ”Stop blinking; just stare at something shiny!” – shiny because anything shiny will soon make your eyes tired. If you are told to look at a powerful enough electric bulb just hanging above your head, naturally your eyes will get utterly tired. And you are told that you are not to close them, unless you feel they are closing by themselves.

 

This is one part. The other part is that the hypnotist is continuously saying that your eyes are becoming very heavy, your eyelids seem to be utterly tired... Just by your side he is repeating these words continuously, that your eyes are becoming tired, the lids want to close – and to you just the opposite direction has been given so that you go on fighting to the last. But how long can you fight?

 

It takes no more than three minutes at the most, because double processes are going on. You are focused on the light which is tiring your eyes, and the hypnotist goes on repeating like a parrot, in a very sleepy voice, that sleep is coming over you. You cannot resist; it is impossible now to keep your eyes open.

 

Now these suggestions... and the person is fighting, he knows that his eyes are becoming tired, and the eyelids are becoming heavy, burdened. A point comes within three minutes, not more than that, when he cannot resist the temptation to let them close. The moment the eyes are closed, the man starts repeating, ”You are going into deep sleep, and you will be able only to hear my voice and nothing else. I will remain your only contact.”

 

The person goes deeper and deeper into sleep, with continuous suggestions. There is a point when he stops hearing anything else except the sleepy voice of the hypnotist saying, ”You are going deeper, deeper, deeper” – and then he tests whether you have gone deeper or not. He will prick your hand with a safety pin, but you are so asleep that you cannot know about it, you will not feel it.

 

In fact, in the Soviet Union they have started hetero-hypnosis even for operations; no anesthesia is needed. A person can go so deep given the right conditions: a very sleepy atmosphere, dim, neither dark nor light, and a shining, forcefully shining light focused on his eyes; a very subtle music in the room, beautiful fragrance... all these help him to go into such a deep sleep that operations can be done, have been done, and the person knows nothing.

 

So the hypnotist tries a few things: he takes your hand up and lets go of it, and the hand falls because you cannot hold it, you are fast asleep; in sleep you cannot hold it up high. He lifts your eyelids up, he looks into your eyes and only the white of your eyes is seen; your pupils have moved upwards.

 

The deeper the hypnosis, the higher your pupils will move upwards. That happens in deep sleep every day, and that also happens when somebody dies. That’s why all over the world people immediately close the eyelids of a dead person, for the simple reason that it is so frightening to see somebody with completely white eyes. In India it has been known for centuries that when a man is going to die, his eyes start slowly moving upwards, and the sign and symbol is that he cannot see the tip of his own nose.

 

You can see... Remember: the day you cannot see your nose – because when the pupils of the eyes are moving upwards; they cannot see the tip of the nose – six months at the most. So the hypnotist opens the eyelid and sees whether underneath it is white, and all that used to be there, your pupil, has moved upwards. Then he is certain that you are no longer capable of hearing anybody, you are no longer capable of disobeying him; whatever he will say, you will do.

 

This is the danger. He can say to you, ”Just take out all your money and hand it over to me,” and you will immediately take out all your money and hand it over to him. He can take your ornaments or he can tell you to sign any document that may create trouble for you, for example that you have sold your house, or donated your house.

 

There is one thing more to be understood, which is very dangerous: he can give a post-hypnotic suggestion. A post-hypnotic suggestion means that he can say to you, ”After ten days you will come to me, you will have to come to me, bringing all your money, all your ornaments, anything valuable that you have. Leave it on my table and simply go back.”

 

It is possible to give a post-hypnotic suggestion that after twenty-four hours you will shoot somebody. All these orders will be followed because the person does not know... as far as his consciousness is concerned, he has no idea what has happened under deep hypnosis. Deep hypnosis reaches your unconscious.

 

These were the dangers that Christianity exaggerated, saying that this is against religion, against morality. A woman can be raped and she will not know, or a woman can be told, ”You have fallen in love with me,” and a great romance will begin from the moment she wakes up. She will feel a little hesitant because her conscious mind will not understand what has happened, but there is no communication between the conscious mind and the unconscious.

 

The unconscious is so powerful – nine times more powerful – that when the unconscious wants to do something, the conscious may start protesting but that protest is futile. All these things were spread, wildly exaggerated among man. But the purpose of the church was not to save you from these dangers; the purpose was that hypnosis should become condemned so that nobody can enter from that door into the ultimate realm of satyam shivam, sundram.

 

Christianity kept people completely ignorant about another kind of hypnosis; that is self-hypnosis, not hetero-hypnosis. Only hetero-hypnosis can be misused; autohypnosis or self-hypnosis cannot be misused. There is nobody; you are alone. You can do the same thing by yourself. You can put an alarm clock on, and then repeat three times that within fifteen minutes, when the alarm goes off, you will come back from your deep hypnotic sleep. And then the procedure is the same.

 

You look at the light, and you do what the hetero-hypnotist was doing. Looking at the light, you go on repeating inside, ”My eyes are becoming heavy, heavy... heavier, heavier. I am falling into sleep. I cannot keep my eyes open anymore; I am trying my best, but it is impossible” – and it also takes exactly three minutes. That is the maximum; it may happen in two minute, it may happen in one minute, but the longer you struggle, the deeper will be the hypnosis.

 

I have heard about a man, an old man, who was torturing his family. Every day he would figure out how many diseases he had. The doctors were tired; they said he had no diseases. He listened to the medical program on the television and learned the names of the diseases. Then he started torturing the family, ”I am suffering from this, I am suffering from that. Nobody is taking care of me.”

 

This was simply a way for an old man to attract attention. Nobody gives attention to the old people, so they find their own ways. They become more irritable, more angry, more fussy; they have their own techniques to attract attention. Their whole lives they were nourished by attention, but now nobody looks at them, nobody even bothers whether they exist or are finished.

 

One Indian singer, who loves me, Jagjit Singh, tells a beautiful joke. One of his friends who lives in London had come, so he asked him, ”How are you?”

He replied, ”Alright.”

Jagjit Singh said, ”And how is your wife?”

He replied, ”She is also alright.”

”And how are your children?”

”They are also alright.”

 

Jagjit Singh finally asked, ”And what about Daddy?”

And the man said, ”Daddy? – he has been alright for almost four years.” Four years ago he had died, so the friend is saying that he has been alright, completely alright, forever alright since four years ago!

 

Old people have only these methods to attract attention – that they are suffering from migraine, that they have a stomachache. The greater their medical vocabulary is, the more they will manage. Finally, doctors started refusing, saying, ”He is a mad person. He has no sickness, no disease; we have checked him so many times.”

But the son said, ”What can we do? – we should bring the doctor.”

 

So the doctors finally suggested that perhaps a hypnotist may be helpful: ”Bring the hypnotist, so he can hypnotize him and tell him that he is absolutely alright. That is the only medicine he needs. If his unconscious grips the idea of being alright, then there is no problem.”

 

The sons were very happy, and they brought the hypnotist. He looked like a doctor with his bag and paraphernalia, with his small Sigmund Freud beard, with one glass on one eye – one has to be properly dressed according to his profession, and this is impressive! – and he asked the old man, ”What are your troubles?”

 

The old man listed so many troubles. The hypnotist said, ”Okay, you just lie down. I will be holding this pendulum which shines because it has a battery attached. You have to keep your eyes on it until you cannot keep them open.”

 

Old people become very cunning and very clever after a long life’s experience. The old man thought, ”This seems to be a con man by the way he is dressed... and what kind of treatment is going on?”

 

He thought, ”Let us see.” He did not wait for three minutes, he immediately closed his eyes, and when the hypnotist took his hand, he dropped it. He knew all the tricks... an old man, he has seen everything in the world! The hypnotist said, ”He is completely at ease and asleep. Now I will give him the suggestion that ‘you are perfectly alright, you don’t have any disease and you will not harass your children with diseases that don’t exist!’” And the old man remained silent.

 

His sons were very happy: ”Why have we never thought of the hypnotist? We have been wasting so much money paying the doctors, and all that they say is ‘You harass us. Although you give us money, it is sheer harassment. The man is not sick at all.’ This man is the right man!”

 

The old man was lying completely still. All suggestions over, the hypnotist collected his fee. One of the sons went out the door to see him off to his car, but even before he returned, the old man opened one eye and asked, ”Has that crackpot gone or not?”

 

If you immediately close your eyes, nothing will happen because you will remain conscious.

 

Whatever the hypnotist is saying, he will look like a crank: What nonsense is he talking? ”Your eyes are becoming heavy” – they will not become heavy. ”You are falling deep in a sleep” – you are not falling, you are perfectly alert. And he is cheating; he is saying that you don’t have any diseases!

 

-Osho, "Satyam Shivam Sundram, #29, Q1"