Beloved Osho,
While using hypnosis in the service of meditation, I have noticed that the line between therapy and meditation is dissolving. As witnessing can become easy and natural in hypnosis, it seems to provide the ground for a quantum leap into no-mind.
Beloved Master, would you speak on the transformation of hypnosis into meditation?

Prem Purna, it is one of those crimes that Christianity is responsible for. There was a day when hypnosis was a recognized door towards meditation, but Christianity in the Middle Ages condemned hypnosis alongside witchcraft. That condemnation still lingers on, even in the minds of those who are not Christians but who are influenced without their knowing by Christian ideas.
Why was Christianity against hypnosis? You will be surprised to know it was against hypnosis because it leads directly to meditation; neither the priest is needed nor the church is needed - not even God is needed. This was the trouble.
If meditation succeeds in the world there are not going to be any religions anymore, for the simple reason that you will be in direct contact with existence and yourself. Why should you go through brokers and all kinds of agents who know nothing, except that they are knowledgeable, except that they have been disciplined for years in how to influence people and win friends.
It is not something religious that they are doing. What they are doing is the politics of numbers: gather as many numbers as possible into your fold; that becomes your strength and your power.
Hypnosis was a danger to the priesthood, and Christianity is absolutely based from the very beginning on priesthood. Jesus does not declare himself to be enlightened, nor has any other Christian after him declared him to be enlightened. He declares something nonsensical - that he is the only begotten son of God. God is a hypothesis, and hypotheses are not Indians who go on producing children. Hypotheses are barren; they produce nothing.
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Hypnosis can be used, should be used, without any fear. Either together, by people who trust each other and love each other, so there is no fear that they will exploit... you are with your very intimate friends; you know that they cannot harm you, you can open yourself, you can be vulnerable. Or just yourself... by yourself it will take a little longer, because you have to do two persons' work yourself. That is a little disturbance.
But now, because tape recorders are available you can dispose of the other person completely, and give the suggestion part to the tape recorder. And the tape recorder certainly cannot misuse it; it cannot tell you to kill your wife, unless you have put that on the tape. Then I cannot help; whatever you put in the tape recorder it will repeat!
You can put the whole process in the tape recorder, all the suggestions of falling into sleep, heaviness of the lids, going deeper. And then when you are deepest - a gap of four, five minutes, so you settle in your deepness, then from the tape recorder comes the voice saying that your meditation will become deeper from today, that you will not have to struggle with your thoughts. The moment you will close your eyes, the thoughts will start dispersing themselves.
The tape recorder can be immensely helpful because there is no question of anybody to trust. You can trust your tape recorder without any fear. And you can lock the door so that nobody plays with your tape recorder - otherwise somebody may trick you!
Self-hypnosis has to be in the service of meditation; that is its greatest use. But it can serve health, it can serve long life, it can serve love, it can serve friendliness, it can serve courage. All that you want, self-hypnosis can help you with. It can dispel your fears of the unknown, it can dispel your fear of death; it can make you ready for being alone, silent, peaceful. It can make you able to continue an undercurrent of meditation the whole twenty-four hours.
You can even suggest, "While I am asleep my small flame of awareness will continue all through, the night without disturbing my sleep."
Purna, you are saying, "I have noticed that the line between therapy and meditation is dissolving. That has been my deep desire for long. Therapy should dissolve into hypnosis, and hypnosis should dissolve into meditation. Then we have created one of the greatest forces for enlightenment, which has never been used in the past.
Therapy has never been used. Therapy will cleanse you of all garbage, it will take away all your conditionings; therapy will help you to cathart anything that has been there and you have been repressing inside. Therapy will throw it out.
Therapy is a beautiful cleansing process, and a mind cleansed will fall into hypnosis more easily, without any struggle. Perhaps even those who are not easily available to self-hypnosis or to hypnosis - the people who don't belong to the thirty-three percent - With therapy even they may start belonging to the group which is available for hypnosis. Therapy can change one hundred percent of people into authentic candidates for hypnosis.
So therapy has to be used in such a way that it slowly dissolves into hypnosis, and then hypnosis has to be used so that it can become steps going towards meditation.
These three things together I propose to be my trinity. God and the holy ghost and Jesus Christ... forget all that nonsense. That is not a trinity. But something scientific, something that you can do yourself, something that is possible to be practiced... Except for that, religion is so full of garbage, and people have become more interested in the garbage and forgotten the essential. In fact, the essential has become so small in comparison to the Himalayan garbage that has accumulated on top of it down the centuries that it is even difficult to find where it is.
What I am proposing is a simple thing: you don't need any priest, you don't need any church, you don't need any holy scripture. All that you need is a little understanding and a little courage. Cathart totally in therapy. You don't know how much crap there is inside you. When you start catharting, then you will know - "My God, is this me or somebody else? What am I doing? What am I saying?"
Sometimes what you say does not even make any sense. But it has been there, otherwise it cannot come to you. It has been a hindrance to your meditation, and it will be a hindrance to your going deep into hypnosis. It will become a barrier somewhere in-between.
So therapy has to be the first thing. The second thing is hypnosis, and the third thing will grow out of it - your meditation.
The ultimate in meditation is enlightenment.
When meditation comes to its completion, then your whole being becomes full of light, full of blissfulness, full of ecstasy.

From: Osho, Satyam, Shivam Sundram

Beloved Osho, why is it so difficult to be in a state of let-go?
Meditation surely leads to no-mind