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Chapter 6 - The Irrational Rationalist
If these are ill people, then who is healthy? Adolf Hitler? Mao Tse-Tung? Genghis Khan?
Tamurlane? Nadir Shah? Who is healthy?
He says meditation only creates derangement. He does not know even the ABCD of meditation. He has not even read about it. Experience is not the question at all; he has not even read about it. Or whatsoever he has read must have come from some people who are just like him. Maybe he has been reading Karl Marx on meditation! Or Betrand Russell on meditation.
If you want to know about meditation, ask the meditators. If you want to know about meditation, the real, rational way is to go into meditation and see what happens because the proof of the pudding is in its tasting.
He has no idea what meditation is. He calls it a technique of hypnosis. It is just the opposite, let me tell you. Hypnosis means sleep, induced sleep. The word HYPNOS means
"sleep". Hypnosis means "suggesting to you to fall asleep". Meditation means AWARENESS.
Meditation means helping you to become more aware. Meditation is not hypnosis. Meditation is a process of de-hypnosis; it is a dehypnotization. You are hypnotized already by the society, by the schools, by the priests and the politicians. Meditation is a way to dehypnotize you, to uncondition you, so that you can attain to your childhood innocence again. And the difference is so vital and so clear and so distinct that unless one is absolutely closed to understanding there is no way to miss it.
Hypnosis is sleep; when you hypnotize a person he falls asleep, he loses consciousness.
When a person meditates he becomes conscious -- he attains consciousness. He becomes MORE conscious. In fact a meditator by and by starts feeling that he needs less sleep than before; and with less sleep he feels more vital. If he was
sleeping for eight or ten hours before, now he feels five or six or even four or three hours are enough; that gives him enough rest.
And a meditator by and by comes to know that even in sleep something remains aware in him.
But these are experiences, Dr. Kovoor. I cannot invite you into my sleep. I am helpless.
Otherwise I would have invited you into my sleep to see what is happening. The only way to know is to meditate.
And I am not saying something for the first time. Down the ages thousands of mystics have said the same thing. Krishna says in Geeta, "When everybody is fast asleep, the yogi is awake." Buddha's disciple Ananda asked Buddha, "I have a feeling that in your sleep you remain alert." Buddha said, "You are right. Body goes to sleep, mind goes to sleep; I remain aware." In fact modern psychology says that a layer of your consciousness is there which is always alert, always awake.
Have you not watched? A mother is sleeping. There are thundering clouds in the sky, or airplanes are passing by, and her sleep will not be disturbed. But her small child -- just a small movement or the child starts crying -- and she is fully awake. What happenend? She was not disturbed by the airplane passing, she was not disturbed by the thundering in the clouds. What happened? Just a small noise from the child, and she is fully alert. A part of her being is aware and keeps caring for the child. She closes herself against the thundering clouds, but she cannot close her awareness from the child. She is alert.
If you fall asleep here and I come and I suddenly call a name, "Is Ram here?" nobody will listen, but the man whose name is Ram will say, "Who is disturbing my sleep? Yes, I am here what do you want?" Everybody heard it, but nobody responded; only Ram responded. A part of his mind -- even in sleep -- knows this is the name, somebody has called him.
Osho - The First Principle 104
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