Hypnosis a doorway to meditation

Amrit Sadhana, November 9

This is the scenario of a hypnotic trance. Traditionally hypnosis has been used to exploit others, therefore hypnosis is commonly known as 'hypnotism.' But in reality hypnosis has a tremendous potential of leading people into meditation, because trance is a natural state of mind. Whether walking on street, or watching a cricket match or reading a book,  the mind goes into an unintentional trance. Hypnosis uses this ability of mind to induce an intentional trance. In this state the resistance is at the lowest, and the conscious mind becomes very vulnerable.

The conscious mind is the part of our mind that is in contact with society. The unconscious mind is not in contact with the outside world. It operates like a 24/7 support mechanism - making sure our heart keeps beating, that we continue to breathe, that exactly the right amount of blood reaches each part of our body, that every meal we consume is totally digested…. So the unconscious mind is full of qualities and resources that support the individual.

Trance can be used to let the conscious mind sit happily on one side for a while and not interfere. Then there is an opportunity to provide space for the unconscious mind to start digesting the phenomena of life. Osho, for the first time in the history, has used hypnosis for meditation. And he calls it "Dehypnosis", because, according to Osho, human beings are already hypnotised by religions, culture, society, education system into many beliefs and ideologies. Dehypnosis removes the effects of society which has hypnotised us with false ideas. Most hypnotherapists use hypnosis in a conventional therapeutic way: to fix people's problems so that they can be returned to a so called "normal " social life.

Osho says that the real value of the process is to use the same methodology to reverse this indoctrination - and moreover to use hypnosis to support meditation. He describes hypnosis as a false thorn that can be used to remove another false thorn, to get rid of the belief systems which prevent us from meditating. By self-hypnosis it is much easier to bypass the confused conscious mind and dive straight into the vast space of the unconscious which is  forever relaxed.