25 A great surgery in the right hands

‌CHAPTER 25

A great surgery in the right hands

14 April 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

Question 1 BELOVED OSHO,

I UNDERSTOOD FROM PAST DISCOURSES WHEN YOU HAVE TALKED ON HYPNOSIS, THAT ONE BECOMES, TO ALL INTENTS AND PURPOSES, TOTALLY UNCONSCIOUS, AWARE ONLY OF THE HYPNOTIST’S VOICE.

I HAVE NOT EXPERIENCED THIS STATE, BUT SOMETHING MORE AKIN TO WHAT I FEEL IN DISCOURSE, EXCEPT MORE SO: I FEEL MENTALLY AND PHYSICALLY TRANSFIXED, WITHOUT ANY VOLITION TO MOVE, TALK OR THINK; BUT I AM DEFINITELY PRESENT AND AWARE OF EVERYTHING GOING ON AROUND ME.

HAVE I NOT GOT THE HANG OF HYPNOSIS YET, OR ARE THERE DIFFERENT LEVELS OF TRANCE?

Maneesha, hypnosis – the very science of hypnosis – has passed through very disastrous times. It is one of the most beautiful arts and it has been used for centuries in the East. It is referred to by Pythagoras, who said that it was even used in Atlantis, the continent which has drowned in the ocean.

Its purpose was to help you, from the outside, to come to a peace, tranquility, silence. In Sanskrit we have a special name for it, tandra. In this state of tandra, or hypnosis, you are very close to the

consciousness of the awakened one; just a very thin layer, almost transparent, divides you from the awakened. And that can be broken very easily.

If you are working under a master, that requires immense trust. You are going into deep sleep, to such an extent that you will not be able to hear any other voice or noise. Only the master remains a very fragile thread between you and the world, between you and existence. If the master is authentic, this is the moment he will give you a post-hypnotic suggestion that, “When you will wake up you will really wake up. Whatever you have known up to now as wakefulness was only so-called. It was not true awakening.”

He will also give you the post-hypnotic suggestion that, “When you come back to your consciousness, become aware of all that is around you. You will be always able to reach this deepest point of silence within you just by closing your eyes.”

A few sessions of hypnosis in the right hands can help you to grow into consciousness. It is a very strange experience that through deliberately creating a deeper sleep, your ordinary sleep – which you call being awake – can be removed. You can actually become awakened. You can know reality as it is and you can know yourself, the being.

But this is true only if the master is authentic. There lies the whole danger. If the master is not authentic, he can exploit you to any extent, because in the deep state of trance you will hear only him. And you are so deep in your being that if he puts some ideas in you, you are bound to do them, howsoever they may go against your ordinary morality, ordinary consciousness. Even if consciously you know this is not right, you will have to do it. Because the unconscious is so forceful, once it gets some idea... and it is not argumentative. It does not doubt.

So in the hands of a wrong person, hypnosis can be a very dangerous phenomenon. He can convert you into anything he wants: into a murderer, into a thief, into a rapist; it does not have any limits.

Because of this danger all the religions have been against hypnosis. The danger is certainly there. But I am not against hypnosis, because my own understanding is that if you start living out of fear – just because something is dangerous, you don’t do it – your life will shrink absolutely to nothingness. Each breath that you take is dangerous. It may be carrying a virus, any danger, any disease. Each love which you follow can lead you into insane confusion.

Why do so many people commit suicide, and why are so many people insane? They were not born to be insane, they were not born to commit suicide, but they got entangled in such a situation that they did something against their own better self.

I am all for hypnosis and I am all against the pseudo-masters. Rather than destroying the pseudo- masters, to destroy a valid science of awakening is sheer nonsense.

On your own you can also go into your deeper consciousness. That’s why we insist on meditation. Meditation is nothing but an effort to reach the same depths as hypnosis can make available very easily. And your experience – that listening takes you to deeper silences of the heart... Then even a hypnotic session... Maneesha right now is doing hypnotic sessions.

It is true: a man of integrity, a man who knows himself, his every word and his every gesture is hypnotizing; it is not different. People condemn me, and they are afraid to enter this campus... although their reason is absolutely absurd, but there is some truth in it.

I am not deliberately hypnotizing anybody, but if you get hypnotized, what can I do? Should I disturb you? You are moving so silently, so deeply into yourself.

It is nothing new. As far back as one can remember, people have gathered around masters, just to sit silently. In the East we call it darshan. The West has never understood the meaning of it. It looks stupid to say “I am going to see the master.” Why not have a picture in your house, and okay, go once and see and be finished! But every day going to see the master, are you mad or something?

The West has never understood that seeing – that is the actual meaning of the word ‘darshan’ – means being in the energy field of a man who has come to know himself. To drink out of his well, to look into his eyes, to feel his hands, to listen to his silences, to his words. Everything, once you know yourself, strangely becomes an expression of the truth of your realization.

It happened, I was giving a meditation camp. It was my first meditation camp, far away, deep in the desert of Rajasthan in an old castle. A woman, very old, almost ancient, was known to thousands of people as one who has reached. She was uneducated, a poor woman, but she had thousands of followers and when I came to give the camp the woman said to them, “I know, but I cannot say. You all come with me to the camp.”

I had never heard about the woman. It was a seven-day camp. She came every day in the morning, sat silently, and after that, the whole day she disappeared into the cottage where she was staying. She did not participate in any other meditation.

Her disciples were a little puzzled, they asked her – she was nearly eighty years old or perhaps more and she used to call me babu, father. I told her, “This is not right, and anyway I am not a Christian priest and I don’t believe in any father there above in the clouds.” But she never listened, she always called me Babu. Her disciples told her, “You call him Babu, but you only go in the morning and sit there for a few minutes. And the whole day meditations are happening, five meditations per day. You don’t participate?”

The old woman said, “Don’t ask me, ask Babu.” And at that time my age was not more than thirty-five. Her disciples said, “We asked and she says we should ask you.”

I said, “She is right. She understands, so she comes every morning to have darshan, to see the master, to refresh the feeling of being with a buddha. It is not necessary to remain twenty-four hours harassing him.”

They said, “This is strange, you think we are harassing you?”

I said, “You are harassing me and I am harassing you. Until everything becomes silent, this harassment is going to continue. I know that you cannot be silent just sitting by my side. But the old woman takes a drink and that is enough. She knows the taste. She is uneducated, a villager, but she is in the same category of the awakened people who have always been condemned as hypnotizing people.”

Gautam Buddha is condemned for hypnotizing people, Mahavira is condemned for hypnotizing people. Nobody is hypnotizing, but their very state of being is such that if you are loving enough, open enough, receptive enough, if you are silently sitting by their side, it is enough. You will become silent: a synchronicity will happen.

Something in you will start disappearing – the clouds of the mind – and the heart will start vibrating with a new wavelength, a dance, a joy, a feeling that the home is not very far away; that “What has happened to this man can happen to me also, just I have never entered deep enough into myself.”

Hypnosis was used, and I accept it as a valid means. The only question is... and that question applies to everything. The method is valid, but the question is whether the person is valid.

I know of one very great surgeon in Nagpur, not very far from here. He was perhaps the best heart surgeon in the whole of Maharashtra, but a very wrong man. He would ask too much money – that was accepted – and in the middle of the operation after he had opened the chest, he would go out and tell the relatives or the friends that five lakh rupees more would be needed. He has opened the chest, it has been decided before how much money he wants, and now this blackmail! And they have to accept, otherwise the man is going to die. Without this opening of the chest he might have lived for a few days more. Now he is finished, with an open chest – this is real open heart surgery! – he cannot go back home and he is in a coma.

He used to come to listen to me, and when I came to know about his practice I said to him, “This is not right. You can ask any amount of money you want, but not when the patient is on the table and you have already opened his chest. This is sheer blackmail. And certainly you are one of the best surgeons in the country. There is no doubt about it, whatever money you want you can have, but your practice... first you ask for five lakhs and they have agreed and now in the middle of the operation you ask for five lakhs more because you say, ‘More complications have arisen. Without opening the heart, it was a blind gamble to agree on five lakhs; five lakhs more will be needed.’ Now this is sheer robbery.”

The man had a hand, the perfect hand of a surgeon, but the mind of a criminal. People knew it; still people came from faraway places, knowing perfectly well that they were going into the den of a lion far more dangerous than the disease itself.

It is very difficult to avoid wrong people, using right methods for wrong means. We should try, but they cannot be completely eliminated.

Christianity burned thousands of witches in Europe in the Middle Ages. Their only fault was that they were all practicing hypnosis. And a woman is far more capable of hypnotizing you than a man. She has a natural capacity that will allow her to be trusted. She has a natural beauty that will allow her to be loved, and one cannot think that such a beautiful woman is going to do any harm.

And the problem for Christianity in Europe was that because of these witches nobody was coming to the churches. Because churches have never solved anything. These witches were really solving people’s problems. Perhaps they were exploiting through money, but they were not doing any harm; they were helping people to be more alert and more aware through hypnosis. The Christian priest was simply exploiting people without giving them anything except consolations.

Even religion is a marketplace. Those witches were great competitors, and man knows nothing else but to kill. Thousands of women were burnt alive and with those women hypnosis became condemned; it remains con-demned.

In the East we have never condemned hypnosis, because we have never practiced it. In the East we have practiced a far superior method. The presence of the living master is enough to intoxicate you. No alcoholic beverages are needed. The presence of one who knows is automatically hypnotic. It is not that he is doing anything, it is just his being.

You cannot say to a roseflower, “You hypnotize me – you are dangerous, you look so beautiful.” Now what can the poor rose do? He is not trying to do anything to you, he is just being himself, enjoying in the wind, in the sun, in the rain, almost unaware of you.

The authentic master... and the East has known so many authentic masters that it was very difficult for anyone to compete with the authentic ones. It was impossible because of the sheer fact that the one who was not authentic had no hypnotic presence. He had no fragrance of the real flower, he was just plastic. You cannot deceive people with a plastic flower. People try.…

I used to live in a place in Raipur – not many days, just six months and the university got rid of me. The professor living next door had a beautiful flowerpot in his window and every day... I was surprised, because I could see that the flowerpot was not true: the flowers in it were not authentic, they were plastic, because I never saw them disappearing, their petals falling. And he used to water them to deceive me – I was the only one around.

I could not resist the temptation, although I was not acquainted with him and I had arrived just three or four days before. I went close to the window and I wondered: that man was watering the plant, but the plant was not real.

I said, “I just want to know who you are trying to deceive? Except yourself, nobody can be deceived and here only I am living by your side. Nobody passes by. And I have concluded already that these flowers cannot be true, because they never change; they remain just as they are.”

He used to water them just to remove the dust that gathers – and Raipur was a very dusty place, storms of dust almost every day. So he had to water – there were no roots – just to clean the plastic flowers.

I said, “You are an idiot! With this much care, watering every day, you can have real, authentic flowers which will give fragrance, which will give joy to you, which will give a living experience of a bud opening into a flower.”

When there were hundreds of authentic masters in this country, it was impossible for the pseudo ones; they would be exposed immediately because their presence would not have the fragrance. They could deceive a few people, but soon they would be exposed by their own actions.

I am reminded of a beautiful, historical incident:

Nanak, the master of the Sikhs – the word sikh simply means disciple. It is unfortunate that it became a religion. Nanak had no idea to make a religion, he was only creating disciples to become

masters. He was not creating an organized religion, a church, but that’s what happened. Such is the unconsciousness of man.

Nanak was passing through Lahore, which is now in Pakistan. And there was a pseudo-mystic, a false Sufi, a pretender, and he had a great following. When he saw Nanak, he became afraid... and there was nothing to be afraid of. Nanak was alone with his one disciple Mardana, with a musical instrument. Mardana would play and Nanak would sing. They were innocent people.

They were staying outside Lahore when the pseudo-teacher was informed that “A great master has come. They are staying outside the city and many people have already started going towards them.”

The pseudo-Sufi was certainly worried. He sent a cup full of milk – so full that you could not put even a single drop more of milk in it. The disciple who took it said, “What is the meaning?”

The Sufi said, “You don’t be worried about the meaning. Take it to Nanak and let us see what happens.”

Nanak was offered the cup – a beautiful cup – full of milk and he was told, “The Sufi master sends his salutations.”

Nanak asked Mardana, “Just there, nearby, are wildflowers. Take up one flower” – Mardana could not understand what was happening – and Nanak put that wildflower in the cup and gave it back to the man who had brought it. He told him, “Take it to your master.”

He said, “But I don’t understand – what is the meaning?” Nanak said, “Your master will understand.”

The Sufi had sent the cup full of milk to show that “Here there is no need of any other master; the place is full of Sufis. You are not welcome – go somewhere else!”

But Nanak floated a flower in the cup, meaning that, “You need not be worried about me. I will not disturb anything – even in a full cup I will be simply floating like a flower. I am above – you need not be worried. You can continue your shop, I will not take your customers.”

The Sufi was exposed completely to his disciples, because they could compare the presence of those two persons. They sat with Nanak and they immediately saw, as if an arrow had penetrated their being, that some strange joy has arisen in them which has never happened with that Sufi. Soon the Sufi master himself had to come to Nanak to ask forgiveness.

Nanak said, “Who am I to forgive you? Ask forgiveness from existence itself. You have been deceiving thousands of people, delaying their enlightenment. Your crime is great, although nobody will call it a crime because it is so invisible.”

Do you know how much is the crime of the popes and the cardinals and the bishops and the rabbis and the shankaracharyas? It is invisible. The crime is that they are preventing people from going towards an authentic source, a living master.

With a living master, hypnosis is his air. There is no need, but if you are doing hypnotic sessions it will be good; it will give you a clear perception of what is happening when you are sitting with me. When you are singing and clapping and rejoicing, what is happening to you cannot happen in the deepest hypnotic way.

I am not against hypnosis. In the right hands it is a great surgery. But a right person will not use it, because his very presence gives what hypnotic sessions can give, if you are fortunate enough, over a long time under a right master.

This has to be remembered, that if the master is right, anything around him becomes a transforming force. And if the master is not authentic and true, then even the right things simply become exploitation, destruction, slavery.

That’s what the false teacher has created in the world – so many religions... The real teacher will create only religiousness. How can religiousness be Christian, how can religiousness be Hindu?

Religiousness is a quality of the heart – the mystic rose opening, giving you the sense of your eternity, giving you the sense that you are not this mortal body but an immortal god, that you are pure light and pure love.

And you can share it – you will have to share it, because when one becomes aware of one’s treasures, one becomes like a raincloud. Too heavy, it has to rain; it has to become unburdened of its treasures.

So what you are experiencing, Maneesha, is perfectly right.

Your second question is about your several sessions of hypnosis:

Question 2

WITH A VIEW TO INSTILLING IN MYSELF THE REMEMBRANCE OF WITNESSING, SO FAR THE RESULTS HAVE BEEN LESS THAN SPECTACULAR. IS IT NOT POSSIBLE TO HYPNOTIZE ONESELF TO WITNESS BECAUSE THE WITNESS IS NOT PART OF THE MIND AND THEREFORE CANNOT BE INFLUENCED BY SUGGESTION?

The witness can never be influenced; the witness can never go to sleep. But the witness can be overwhelmed by a sleeping mind. Just as a small candle can be covered and its flame will go on therein, but outside there will be no light; there will be simply darkness.

Mind is simply covering your alertness, your awareness. It has that quality, just like a cloud can cover our vision of the sun. It does not destroy the sun – the whole sky may be covered with black clouds, but the sun remains in its glory and in its light, in its suchness. But if these clouds are gone, then the sun can spread its light and its rays far and wide.

Your awareness cannot be destroyed but it can be confined, imprisoned. That’s why I call you the imprisoned splendor. You are an immortal being, encaged. The cage cannot destroy you, but it can create a dark night of the soul. And lives may pass and you may completely forget yourself

and you will become so much identified with your prison that you may start thinking, “This is me.” Identification is possible.

Even in identification, awareness is not destroyed. But it loses the dance, the joy, the truth, the beauty of its whole sky, its immense freedom.

A little seriousness before we go into our own beings. A little laughter beforehand is always cleansing, rejuvenating, making you feel young.

I call it a little seriousness.

Little Ernie is pulling his new cart past the local priest, when one of the wheels falls off. “Shit!” says Ernie.

“Young man,” scolds the priest severely, “don’t you ever say that again. If something goes wrong, you say, ‘Help me, Lord,’ instead. Do you understand?”

“Okay, Father,” says Ernie. But the very next day, a second wheel falls off just as the priest is walking by.

“Shit!” says Ernie.

“What did I tell you?” shouts the priest. “Okay, okay!” says Ernie.

Two days later, the remaining two wheels fall off. The priest happens to be in the bushes, listening carefully.

“Help me, Lord,” says Ernie. And immediately all four wheels jump back on the cart. The priest leaps out of the bushes in amazement, and cries,

“Shit!”

The Kowalski family are returning from a trip to Mexico in a Cadillac.

As they are crossing a bridge, they are flagged down by the local police chief and surrounded by TV cameras.

“Congratulations!” says the top cop, “you are the millionth car to drive across our new bridge and you have just won the grand prize of one million dollars. May I ask you what you plan to do with all that money?”

“Well,” replies Jan Kowalski, from behind the steering wheel, “the first thing I am going to do is to get my driver’s license.”

“Don’t listen to him,” snaps his wife, Gertie. “He always talks like that when he is drunk!”

Granddad Kowalski, who is a little deaf, shouts out from the back seat, “I knew we wouldn’t get far in this stolen car!”

And then two Mexicans climb out of the trunk, and one of them asks, “Are we over the border yet?”

Farmer Jones has a cat called Moggy, who is a bit constipated. One night, Moggy is making so much noise outside Jones’ window that he phones the vet. The vet is a bit deaf, and also angry at being woken in the middle of the night. He tells Jones to give the animal a bottle of castor oil and he will call around in the morning.

“A whole bottle of oil?” cries Jones.

“Don’t argue,” shouts the vet, “just do as I say!”

So Jones grabs the unfortunate Moggy, and with the aid of a funnel manages to force the liquid down his throat.

The next morning the vet arrives and says, “Now, how is that sick cow of yours?” “Cow?” asks Jones. “I said cat.”

“My god!” cries the vet, “did you give him the whole bottle of castor oil?” “You wouldn’t let me argue!” replies Jones.

“Where is the cat now?” asks the vet.

“Well,” says Jones, “he is up in the big field with twelve of his friends... four digging, four filling in, and four searching for fresh ground.”

Little Ernie stands up in class one morning, waves his arm and says, “Miss Goodbody, I won’t be in school next Friday because of my father’s funeral.”

“My god!” exclaims Miss Goodbody,” what happened?”

“Well,” says Ernie, “he tried to hammer a nail into the wall and hit his finger.” “But he couldn’t die from that,” says Miss Goodbody.

“I know,” replies Ernie, “but he kept on howling like a mad dog, so we had to shoot him.” Paddy and Sean plan to go on a fishing trip and are all excited about it.

Paddy says to Sean, “I will bring the fishing gear, and you go to the grocery store and buy the provisions.”

On the morning they are going to leave, Sean shows up at Paddy’s house with two loaves of bread and six bottles of whiskey.

“I can’t believe it,” says Paddy, “I leave the supplies to you and what happens? You bring two loaves of bread and six bottles of whiskey. Now, what the hell are we going to do with all that bread?”

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

Close your eyes, remain like unmoving statues; just for two minutes let absolute silence prevail. Now... let go.

... Now come back.

Okay, Maneesha?

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