The body does not have beliefs

Question 1:

Hypnosis is such a simple, innocent experience, that even hearing about it can give you a taste of it. And that's what happened. Even when I am not talking about hypnosis, the same is happening to those who are really listening to me. A softness, a calmness, a silence starts surrounding them. That is a signal that whatever is being said is being heard too, that I am not talking to the walls.

About your experience with Santosh and his dehypnotherapy, I can only say one thing:

Santosh knows nothing about dehypnotherapy. He himself is so tense, so continuously worried, has so many problems... but he had studied hypnosis as a student for years in Germany so he knows the technique; but he has never been in those spaces himself.

It is just like... you can read the map of the whole world and you have never been to those places, ever. Knowing where Constantinople is does not mean that you have been there.

Knowing about it is one thing; being there is a totally different phenomenon. And in the schools only the technique, the know-how, is being taught.

So when Santosh came to me he had the know-how of hypnosis. I engaged him in hypnotherapy, and I tried my best to make him understand that we have first to create a state of de-hypnotherapy -- because every child is being hypnotized, from the very childhood. That's how conditioning happens; that's how you get your mind. Your parents may not know, your teachers may not know, your priests may not know what they are doing: they are practicing hypnotic techniques. By the time you leave the university, you know all the techniques for conditioning others. So whoever comes to me is already conditioned.

I was trying to make Santosh understand, "First dehypnotize these people, let them get rid of what society has forced upon them, and only then will hypnosis be clean, young, fresh, just born."

He was only a student, so he changed the name of his therapy to dehypnotherapy on my suggestion. But what he has been doing is still the same techniques that he had learned in Germany. And those techniques can create horror, because first you are filled with social conditionings, and on top of it you are hypnotized.

In hypnosis you reach to your unconscious mind, where all conditionings exist. You are in a volcanic state. There are going to be horrors because you may remember your childhood, and all that has happened to you since your childhood, which you have repressed. Remember, nobody represses any pleasant experience -- why should one repress a pleasant experience? In fact one tries to exaggerate it, to himself and to others, as much as he can. One represses only things which are unpleasant.

So your unconscious is full of serpents and scorpions and dragons that you have repressed because you did not want to know about them and you did not want others to know about them. Without unconditioning you, if you are lead into hypnosis directly you will reach a hell of your own creation: whatever is repressed will show its true face to you -- and it is natural that you will become terrified.

The problem of these therapists like Santosh is that they have never gone through the process themselves; they have simply studied from a teacher. They have never been part of a mystery school, which would have cleaned them. And in a mystery school the technique is given to you only when you are able to use it, and not get into dark spots, horror spaces, terrible states. They are all imaginary, but when you are in them they are real.

So with Santosh, what happened with you was a nightmare that was repressed, and he opened the bottle and the djinn came out. These kind of people are dangerous. I told him again and again, to the point that he was angry with me... because he used to think that he was a hypnotist, and he had studied for twelve years in Germany -- what more could anybody teach him? I said, "It is not a question of teaching. You have not gone through these spaces into which you are leading other people, and you don't know what will happen to them."

Now all these therapists are befooling themselves. Because the commune has been destroyed by the American government, it has been a tremendous blessing to the therapists.

We had a property of the commune in Laguna Beach in America, and our sannyasins were running it; we had made a board of directors. It was a three million dollar property.

What Santosh did was, he took three hundred sannyasins from the ranch to Laguna Beach, and all the sannyasins became members of the Laguna Beach commune -- and of course they changed the whole board of directors. Santosh brought his own directors, his own board, and he opened a dehypnotherapy institute in Laguna Beach. My name is not mentioned. He has appropriated the property without thinking of its legal implications.

And we had been fighting for years, four years, to win the case....

It was a strange case. There used to be a Christian Church, but of a very independent character. The man who was leading the church, the priest, did not belong to any organization; it was independent, it had four hundred members. But the priest became interested in me. He and his wife came to Poona and became sannyasins, and then he went back. Instead of THE BIBLE he started teaching through my books. His congregation could not believe what had happened.

But many of his congregation were thrilled -- they were tired of listening to THE BIBLE, bored. Many of his congregation came to Poona and became sannyasins, almost thirty persons became sannyasins. And then there was a conflict. The conflict was... the non- sannyasins left the congregation because it was no longer Christian, and they had joined it because it was Christian. So they left the congregation; it became purely a sannyasin commune.

Then the old priest retired.... He used to come to festivals in the commune with his wife - - he was still alive and still had love for me -- but he wanted to retire, he was old. So he retired, appointing sannyasins as the priests of the congregation. When he retired, the people who had left the congregation went to the court, saying that the buildings and the grounds -- and it is a beautiful place, Laguna Beach -- belong to them, and these people are not the owners of it. We had to fight the case for four years continually.

The case was decided in our favor for the simple reason that these people had left the congregation; they were no longer members of it, and they had no right.... They should have remained part of the congregation and appealed to the court, then the situation would have been different. They were the majority, but they had left, and now seeing that sannyasins had captured the whole property and the church, they wanted it back. The court dismissed the case because they had no right any longer. The moment you leave the congregation, you have no right....

So we were keeping that property, fourteen sannyasins were there, and we wanted to sell it; for the new mystery school you will need money!

Santosh has done a great service to us. Now he is the head priest. He knows nothing as far as experience is concerned, and he will destroy many people. So I have informed our people that something has to be done and Santosh has to be removed from there; or he has to pay three million dollars, and then he can do whatever he wants to do in the property. And our sannyasins have to be informed that his hypnotherapy is not going to help them.

I have told you about a world festival that Teertha, Rajen, Poonam and others were arranging in Italy. Just yesterday the news came that very few people reached there; they have made a great loss of fifteen thousand dollars, and the whole thing was absolutely dead and flat. All these great therapists were on stage, but there was no celebration, there was no feeling that you are in the presence of someone who is enlightened. People left disappointed, disgusted with the whole thing.

I told you just a few days before that they will soon be in trouble. People will desert them, because people were not coming for them -- these therapists had got a wrong idea.

But for fifteen years... one can get easily into a wrong idea, that people are coming for them. Soon they will be lost in the crowd. And it is good that they should be lost; otherwise they will play with people's psychology, no knowing what they are doing and what is going to happen.

Hypnosis is really a very soft method... very mellow music. It can happen just sitting by my side in silence. It can happen just by listening so intently that all your worries, tensions disappear, and you start moving deeper into your being. But those worries, tensions, anguishes, anxieties should disappear first.

And `hypnotherapy' is an old word. `dehypnotherapy' is my construction. I told Santosh to make it dehypnotherapy, and he never asked, "What will be the difference between dehypnotherapy and hypnotherapy?" He simply made it dehypnotherapy. Now he has become the director of a dehypnotherapy institute, and he does not know what the difference is between dehypnotherapy and hypnotherapy.

The process is going to be totally opposite. Hypnotherapy can take you into a deliberate sleep; dehypnotherapy can take you into a deliberate awakening. But I was puzzled: he did not even ask what the difference between the two will be.

It is unfortunate, but I will have to make my people aware of the dangers of these therapists, because they will exaggerate their claims, saying that they have been with me for fifteen years. But they have not been with me for fifteen seconds. They were playing their own small role of being a guru to a small group of people. They had come for themselves, but they forgot completely. This is what happens to accidental people: they come for one thing and buy something else.

I have heard about a real estate agent who was thought to be the top man in that profession, in a big city. He was part of a big company. The boss was very angry that day and was waiting for the man. And when the man came the boss burst out in anger and said, "This is too much. The man to whom you have sold land at double price has just gone. That we can understand; you are clever and intelligent and you managed that, and that's why we pay you so much. But the man had come to say, `It has rained, and now the land you have sold me is under eight feet of water. What kind of company is this? This is really cheating!'" The salesman said, "Don't be worried boss, I will take care of him. I am going." And after an hour he came back, smiling, and he said, "You have to give me some reward today."

He said, "First you tell me what happened to that man and his land?"

He said, "Nothing happened. We have had two rotten boats for many days; I have sold them to that man. I told him, `You are a fool. Such beautiful land, which becomes a lake in the rainy season... have two boats. Make a house high enough so you will have both things together. When it is the rainy season you enjoy the lake -- and the boats I have brought with me.' And those boats are so rotten that they will drown the man the first time he sits in them. You don't be worried. They had been lying with the company for no one knows how many years. And we got a good price for them."

The boss said, "This is too much! You have still cheated that man -- and now you have put him in a dangerous situation. Those boats will kill him."

The man said, "This world goes on this way. You don't have to think about what happens to others; you have to just think about your own pockets."

And that seems to be the state of these therapists: they are thinking about their own pockets. They are not worried about what happens to the people. What they are suggesting, they themselves have not lived; it is not their experience. And it is dishonest to tell somebody something that is not your experience, and put him into a state which can drive him crazy.

Hypnosis can be dangerous too. In wrong hands anything can be dangerous; otherwise hypnosis is a simple form of relaxation. But it can be dangerous, because the man, if he is bent upon cheating you, in those states when you are under hypnosis can suggest to you things that you don't want to do. But you will have to do them when you wake up.

I used to work with one of my students. I lived in his house for six months. His brother was my friend, and I was alone and there was no point in getting a house -- and who was going to take care of it? So he said, "You'd better stay with me." And I discovered really a beautiful medium in his younger brother.

I started hypnotizing him. Just to give an example to you: one day I told him, "Tomorrow, exactly at twelve o'clock, you will kiss your pillow madly." The second day, nearabout quarter to twelve, he started looking a little strange, afraid, watching everybody, everywhere, and just in front of him I took his pillow and locked it in my suitcase. I could see tears coming into his eyes. I said, "What is the matter? Why are you crying?"

He said, "I don't know, but something like this has never happened to me. It is so strange... I cannot describe." And exactly at twelve he came to me and he said, "Please return my pillow."

I said, "What will you do at twelve? In the evening I will return it."

He said, "You have to return it to me right now."

I gave him the pillow and before six other people he started kissing the pillow madly, and looking at people thinking that he must look mad... and he himself thinking that he is mad -- what is he doing?

I said, "Don't be worried, that's what everybody is doing. When a man is kissing a woman, a woman is kissing a man, that is a natural hypnosis, a biological hypnosis; the biology has hypnotized your chromosomes. It is not that you are doing it... and feeling so awkward, you don't want to do it before others, you want some lonely place of your own.

Don't be worried! It makes no difference whether it is a pillow or a woman. What you are doing, you are not doing -- it is your unconscious which is forcing you to do it."

He said, "That is the trouble. That's what I feel. Something in me says, `Kiss,' and I know that this is stupid. This is only a pillow. Why should I kiss it?"

You can, under hypnosis, manage anything if you are a person who is just trying to cheat people. You can even tell the person to murder someone and he will murder -- and he will be punished. He may be sentenced to death, and he will not have any explanation to give.

And nobody can touch you who hypnotized him, because nobody will ever know what you did in hypnosis, while he was asleep.

Hypnosis can be misused. Everything great can be misused. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why most of the countries and cultures have tried to avoid any entanglement with hypnosis. And the word `hypnotism' has become a condemnatory word. But that is not right; it can do immense good too. Somebody who has some difficulty in any subject can be simply hypnotized and told, "You don't have that difficulty. That subject is simple, and you have enough intelligence to understand it." And the man will start behaving differently from the next day -- his unconscious got it. There is no need to fear.

People can be helped with diseases, because almost seventy percent of diseases are mental. They may be expressed through the body, but their origin is in the mind. And if you can put in the mind the idea that the disease has disappeared, that you need not worry about it, it does not exist any more, the disease will disappear.

I have tried very strange experiments with it. My work was concerned with something else. For example in Ceylon, Buddhist monks every year on the birthday of Gautam Buddha, dance on red-hot burning coal -- and they don't burn. One professor from Cambridge University, a professor of psychology, had gone especially to see it, because he could not believe that it is possible. But when he saw twenty monks just dancing in the flames, and that they were not burned, he thought, "If these people can do it, why cannot I do it?" So he tried... just coming a little closer it was so hot that he ran away. He would have died if he had jumped into the pit where the fire was burning and the monks were dancing. Now, it needs a tremendous effort of hypnosis.

I tried it on the same boy, because he was a good medium. Thirty-three percent of the whole population are good mediums, and you should remember this thirty-three percent.

Thirty-three percent of the people are the most intelligent too, and this thirty-three percent is the more creative, most innovative people too. These are the same people who can go into deep hypnosis; it needs immense intelligence. People with greater intelligence -- if they are ready to go into it -- can go to very deep layers. And the deeper the layers are, then things can be done which look almost miraculous.

With this boy -- his name was Manoj -- I tried putting a hot burning piece of coal on his hand and telling him that it is a beautiful roseflower. He saw it and he said, "So beautiful, and so fragrant," and it did not burn. I tried otherwise also: putting a roseflower on his hand and telling him it is a burning hot piece of coal. He threw it immediately, but it burned his whole hand.

Mind has tremendous power over your body. The mind directs everything in your body.

Seventy percent of your diseases can be changed by changing the mind, because they start from there; only thirty percent of diseases start from the body. You fall down, and you have a fracture -- now, that fracture cannot be helped by hypnosis saying that you don't have any fracture. You will still have the fracture. The fracture has started from the body and the body cannot be hypnotized. The body has its own way of functioning. But if the process starts from the mind and extends to some point in the body, then it can be easily changed.

Religions have exploited it. There are many religions in India -- Mohammedans do it, Tibetans do it, Burmese do it... dancing in the fire without being burned. But these are not ordinary people, they are monks. For years they have been hypnotized, and this thing has settled in their unconscious -- that fire cannot burn them. But remember, only seventy percent... And that reminds me of a strange phenomenon that physiologists, medical people, and others who are concerned with man's body, are very much disturbed about and have no answer...

Allopathy succeeds only in seventy percent of cases; homeopathy succeeds only in seventy percent of cases; ayurvedic medicine succeeds only in seventy percent of cases; Greek medicine succeeds only in seventy percent of cases; Tibetan medicine succeeds only in seventy percent of cases; Chinese acupuncture succeeds only in seventy percent of cases -- all the methods for curing the body succeed only in seventy percent of cases.

This is a very strange coincidence.

Looked at from the outside it is a mystery. Homeopathy has nothing in it -- just small sugar pills -- but it succeeds, and succeeds to the same percentage. The only factor is: it succeeds if the person believes in homeopathy. The only difference in allopathy is that you need not believe in it and still it succeeds. Naturopathy, homeopathy, ayurveda -- their basic need is that you should believe.

I had one ayurvedic physician, a man of rare intelligence, a nice man. He used to take care of me, and he was very famous in that area. But he became a victim of tuberculosis.

When I heard it, I went to his house and there I found out he was in the hospital. I said, "This is strange. He is such a great ayurvedic physician, why should he go to allopathy?"

I went to the hospital; I asked the physician, "This is strange behavior. You have helped so many people through your medicines, can you not help yourself with your tuberculosis?"

He laughed and he said, "No I cannot, because the basic thing in ayurvedic medicine is that you have to have faith in it. I don't have faith in it. I know all about it -- it is nonsense. But if people are healed, I keep my mouth shut. I don't say anything to anybody, but one thing is certain, it won't help me. I will die if I take those medicines -- which cured innumerable people, even of tuberculosis! So don't be surprised, and don't tell anybody anything, because if I survive I will have to continue my practice. If I die then you can tell the truth."

But the truth is, you need faith. It is the faith that changes the mind and affects the body - - but not vice versa. The body is not superstitious, nor is it faithful; it is simply natural. It doesn't care about anything else.

There used to be a sect in America... I think it still survives in a few places, but in the beginning of this century it was very prominent. It was a Christian group, they used to call themselves Christian Scientists. They believed that everything can be cured, you just have to believe in Jesus Christ, and that your diseases are nothing but your beliefs -- you believe that you have tuberculosis, so you have tuberculosis.

One young man met on the road with one old woman and she asked, "I don't see your father in the meetings..." They used to have meetings every Sunday.

He said, "He's sick, very badly sick."

The old woman said, "Nonsense, because we are Christian Scientists. He is a Christian Scientist; he only believes that he is sick."

The young man said, "If you say so, perhaps he only believes that he is sick."

After two, three days, he came across the same woman again and she asked, "What happened?"

The young man said, "Now he believes he is dead, so we had to take him to the graveyard. We tried to shake him and shouted, `Don't believe such a thing. You are a Christian Scientist. Believe that you are alive!' But nothing happened and the whole neighborhood laughed. Now the poor man is in a grave, still believing that he is dead."

The body does not have beliefs or disbeliefs, but the mind has. And mind has immense control over the body.

One of the greatest sincerities in working with people is to take care that what you are saying or what you are doing is not going to destroy them. And I am afraid all those therapists... While they were working in the commune in my presence there was no danger. I could have put anybody back into his right position. But now they are working without any understanding, they can prove to be very dangerous.

All the sannyasins all over the world have to be informed: beware of the therapists. In my presence I allowed them to do anything because there was no problem; if something had gone wrong I would have taken care. But now if something goes wrong -- and it is bound to go wrong because they themselves are wrong -- then who is going to take care?

The master's work is not easy. He has to change you, he has to transform you. But he has not to cripple you, he has not to destroy you. It is almost like walking on a razor's edge, because anything that can be helpful can also be used in such a way that it can be disastrous.

Question 2:

The ordinary response will be to become even more hard, but you are not in an ordinary situation. Even a small touch of meditativeness, of silence, of love, of compassion, a small touch of the master's presence, will mean you have totally different responses.

Seeing the hardness of the world, you will feel more compassionate towards them, you will feel softer. You will not react violently because that will be joining them in their same stupidity. Being with me, whether you know it or not you are learning thousands of things. One of them is that you cannot react.

The world may be hard -- that hurts. It makes one sad that unfortunately man is still barbarous, but it does not give you the idea to curse them. On the contrary, it gives you the idea to help them, to be compassionate to them, so they can come out of their hard shells. Perhaps they are also suffering in their hardness, and there is nobody to tell them how to get out of this hardness. They are also miserable. It is out of their misery that they misbehave, because they have been mistreated. They know only that violence is power.

Seeing the world you will see that violence is not the real power. The real power is love, and that love will make you softer, forgiving, without any anger; in fact laughing at the whole hilarious situation that this world believes that it is civilized, that Charles Darwin thought that we have evolved from animals. But our behavior shows that we are still animalistic. There has been no evolution at all. Perhaps we have lost the tail, but that is not evolution; perhaps we can stand on two feet, but that is not evolution. We are still behaving so crudely, so cruelly. And nobody is there to say it, because whoever is going to say it will be crushed, will be killed.

And you have chosen to be with a man who is saying it, and who is going to say it to the very last breath.

But as far as you are concerned, this whole experience of world travel, and finding the politicians the same everywhere, finding the nations, governments, the police behaving in the same manner... it seems that we are living in a nightmare. Only someone who is out of it can say, "This is a nightmare!" But when somebody in a nightmare is shouting and screaming, you don't feel hard towards him; you feel soft, you want to help him.

It has been a good experience. Later on when you will recapitulate, you will see it has given you a maturity which takes lives to gain.

Question 3:

The sannyasins I have worked harder on are not the ones who have the best potential -- they were the worst; hence they needed hard work. Those who are the best I have not worked on at all. Just my presence has been enough for them, just my love has been enough for them.

So it is not that I worked hard on them because they had more potential to go high, and then to fall even below the ordinary. I worked on them because they had no possibility to go high. Even with hard work, at the most I could bring them to the normal. And they are behaving normally -- I am not disappointed in them.

Whenever a person of higher potential has come to me, he has received my love, but there has been no need to work on him. He needs just a slight push, and he will be flying in the sky. None of those people have fallen, or will fall down, because one who has known the freedom of the sky cannot go back to the state where he was not even aware of his wings, and he cannot be disgraceful towards the master who helped him. It is impossible, simply impossible.

His gratitude will grow more and more because the master has not only made him aware of his wings but has pushed him into the sky and has given him total freedom. How can you be ungrateful to a person who has given you total freedom to be yourself, who has not tried in any way to impose any image, any ideal on you? Most of the sannyasins are feeling more loving than ever, more grateful than ever -- and it is really a time of difficulties, when your mettle is tested.

Those who have fallen from grace were expected to. They never reached to the point where they could open their wings. If they are not grateful towards me, the simple reason is that they have not experienced anything that would make them grateful towards me.

They have remained closed in their own darkness, in their own ego.

Vivek goes on asking me again and again, "Why don't you work on me?" And it is difficult to explain that there is no need of any work on her. She has to work for me, and in that work, in that care, she is growing, she is maturing.

It is a very complicated situation. I have to choose to work on the worst; they need the attention. Even if they can grow a little bit it will be good. I don't hope that they will become enlightened. Even with hard work they will not become enlightened, because the work on the worst people has a difficulty: they fight with you. While working on them, they are continually fighting you! On each single step they don't want to grow; you are doing something against them. With the best quality people it is different. They want to grow.

You need not do any hard work. Just looking in their eyes is enough, just being with them is enough; it is nourishment. It is nourishment to open their wings -- and they will be grateful.

The people on whom one has to work hard are not going to be grateful; they will be revengeful, because you were working against them. They never wanted to fly.

I remember an old story of a man who loved freedom immensely, who had made his country free from foreign rule, but was so much in love with freedom that he would not take the reins of the government in his own hands. Once the country became free, he left the country towards the mountains. He said, "My work is done."

The last stop was a caravanserai. It had a beautiful parrot, and the owner of the serai was also in love with the idea of freedom. If he had really been a lover of freedom he would have made the parrot free, but the parrot was in a golden cage. His idea of freedom was just a mental luxury. Because he loved freedom so much -- just the idea -- he had taught the parrot to repeat the word, "Freedom, freedom, freedom." The whole day, the parrot would suddenly burst into shouting, "Freedom, freedom!" He knew only one word. And this man who had fought for the freedom of his country, had been in jails, had been in dangers, he was staying there.

He thought, "This poor parrot wants freedom. He is not happy in this golden cage, nobody listens to him. The whole day he is shouting `Freedom!'" He decided that in the night he would open the cage and let him be free, so in the middle of the night he came to the cage, opened the door of the cage, and tried to pull out the parrot. But the parrot was hitting the man with his beak, and with one of his legs he was holding onto the cage.

The man could not understand: the door was open, and he was still shouting, "Freedom!"

But the man was also a strong fighter for freedom; he somehow pulled the parrot out of the cage and threw it into the sky. He had damaged both of his hands; there was blood on both of his hands where the parrot had scratched. But he was happy that the poor parrot who longed so much for freedom was at last free.

He went to his room, went to sleep, but in the morning he woke up with the sound of the parrot who was shouting, "Freedom!" He said, "Strange! Where is the parrot?" He opened the window: the parrot was sitting in the cage and the door was open, and he was repeating his routine: "Freedom... freedom!" It was just a word.

The owner came out; he knew this famous man. He looked at his hands, he looked at the open cage. He said, "You don't understand, he is only a parrot. I have taught him the word `freedom' because I like the idea of freedom. He is a parrot; he does not even know the meaning of freedom. You should not have unnecessarily tried and got harmed. A few other people have tried it before, but he always comes back. Who wants to leave the golden cage?

"As far as I am concerned, it is only an idea; otherwise I would have thrown him out of the cage and removed the cage. But I love to hear the word `freedom'. It is my idea; I don't want to do anything about it, it is simply philosophical -- neither does the parrot want to do anything about it. For him it is not even philosophical, for him it is simply a recording, memory... not even mind. You are a man who has sacrificed his whole life for freedom. You are in a different category. You should not have bothered about this parrot -- he is an idiot. It is just that he has learned the word."

The sannyasins who think they have betrayed me.... They have not betrayed me: they have betrayed themselves. How can they betray me? I had no involvement of any kind. I was not in any way expecting anything from them. I worked because I enjoyed, loved it.

They cannot betray me, they can only betray themselves. It does not affect me, it will only affect their lives. They will get again into their cages and start shouting, "Freedom, freedom!" and the door will remain open.