Osho on Drugs Deaddiction with Meditation and Hypnosis

Question : I have a very specific question for one of my friends, and he wanted to know our Meditation can be used in the context of the Craving Phenomenon, when you really need it, when you do anything in order to get the Drugs.
Osho - It will be difficult on anybody's own efforts. If he really wants to get out of drugs, then he should not be in a hurry. He should join a group where people are meditating. He should take the drug and meditate under the impact of the drug. He cannot just drop the drug and start meditating. Drugs get so deep in your body chemistry that now it is no more in your hand. So one has to be very skillful.

Take the drug, be initiated into some kind of meditation, and under the impact of the drug, meditate. Slowly slowly cut the dose of the drug and grow the time for meditation. It will take a little while to move from drugs to meditation, but it is possible. That's why I am saying we need guidance centers where nobody is condemning you because you have been taking drug.

Perhaps you have done the right thing rather than becoming just a robot, so nobody should condemn. What* should help, the drug can be used as a stepping-stone. So you take the drug and we will teach you meditation. And give him post-hypnotic suggestions that, "Every day your meditation will be growing deeper and your need for the drug will be growing lesser."

It may take a three-week time at least for the changeover to take place, but it is not possible to do just when you are hankering for drug. That is the most difficult moment to do meditation. That is the worst time -- you will not be able to meditate because your whole body will be crying for the drug, your whole mind will be gravitating towards the drug. How can you meditate? And in this situation never tell anybody to meditate, because that may put him
off.

The change has to be very slow, very smooth, and the drug has to be used for the change. And he has been taking so long, so three weeks more. But while he is in drug, he can do anything. He can meditate, he can accept any post-hypnotic suggestion. The post-hypnotic suggestion is the most important thing for changeover. It is really one of the greatest techniques, which has not been used generally to change man about anything: drugs, habits, crime, morality, intelligence -- anything.

The post-hypnotic suggestion is such a great technique, but hypnotism has been condemned so much that people have become afraid even of the word hypnotism. They think it is something evil. This is such a stupid idea. Hypnotism is nothing evil. Hypnotism comes from a root HYPNOS , which means deliberate sleep. It has nothing to do with evil. It is just a created sleep, not ordinary sleep, and because it is a deliberate sleep it goes deeper. And because it is deliberate sleep, there remains a certain communication between the person who has been hypnotizing and the person who has been hypnotized.

For example, if I hypnotize you -- which is just a three-minute process -- you will not listen anybody else, but you will listen my voice. So the whole world disappears for you. The only communication is with me. Your whole mind is concentrated, and that is a very beautiful thing because whatever I say, your whole mind is listening in total concentration, which it never can do ordinarily. Thousand other thoughts are moving in.

And post-hypnotic suggestion means when you are in such a state, which can be easily judged whether you are in hypnos or not. For example, your face will immediately lose a certain quality that comes with waking, and it will start looking sleepy. It is very clear cut. Your eyelids can be opened and your eyes would have turned upward. Only white will be seen. That is the deepest sleep, when your eyelids show only the white if opened.

You may have observed around the world the tradition that whenever somebody dies, people immediately close his eyelids, for the simple reason that nobody looks at their eyes because that will be a frightening experience: just whites. Eyes have disappeared. They have gone up. They start going up six months before you die. That's why in the East it is known that if a person is going to die within six months, he will stop seeing his own nosetip.

And I have experienced this with many people who were going to die. I asked them, can they see their nosetip? They tried hard; they could not see it. They said, "What is the matter? We can't see it."

I said, "Nothing is the matter. Everything is perfectly good. Things are happening as they should happen."

The eyes start moving upwards slowly. At the time of death they completely turn up. The same happens in the deep sleep, and hypnosis is the deepest sleep you can get into. You can just look; open the eyelid and see the white. Now the person is completely only open to you. And, secondly, he is not in a state of argument. He is not in a state of reasoning. He will simply listen whatever you say and will do it.

Post-hypnotic suggestion means you say that, "Tomorrow at twelve o'clock you are going to do something. Don't forget it. Exactly twelve o'clock." And you will be surprised, and he himself will be surprised.... I was working on one young man. He was the brother of one of my friends.

My friend was a professor in the university where I was professor. Just by chance I found his brother, who was very suggestible. Only thirty-three percent people are greatly suggestible. They are great hypnotic mediums. They can do miracles. I hypnotized him many times. One day I gave him a post-hypnotic suggestion that, "Tomorrow I am going to remain in your house. Your brother has invited me."

It was a Sunday. "And I am going to eat here and sleep here, so it is a good time. Exactly at nine o'clock in the morning you will take your pillow, make a cross on it, and start kissing the cross madly."

I repeated it three times. At nine o'clock, just before fifteen minutes, the boy became uneasy, because he started feeling a great urge to kiss the pillow and that looked absolutely stupid. And why the cross? He must be thinking that, "Why the cross?" They were not Christians, they were Hindu Brahmins. "Why the cross? And why should I kiss the cross? And the pillow?"

And exactly five minutes before, I went into his room and I took the pillow out into the garden and sat with the pillow on my lap in the garden. Exactly at nine he came running, snatched the pillow, made a cross on it, started kissing it. I said, "What are you doing?"

He said, "That's what I have been thinking the whole morning, but it seems I have to do it. If I don't do it, the idea will drive me crazy. Please, don't ask me why, because that's what I have been asking. I don't know why. I have never done this."

His brother was sitting there, he said, "He has never done such a thing. He has gone crazy, or what? Why you made this cross?" He said, "I don't know." "And why you are kissing the pillow?" I said to his brother, "Is there something wrong in your family?"

He said, "No, because I never have done any such thing. Never he has done anything. But I suspect your hand. Because why you are keeping his pillow? I can understand he has gone crazy. But why you are keeping his pillow?"

I said, "That's right, because I was waiting for nine o'clock." And I told him and his brother that, "You don't know, because now you are in your conscious mind. But yesterday when you were hypnotized you were in your unconscious mind, and I have put the idea in your unconscious mind.

"And conscious mind is very small: one-tenth of the unconscious mind. The unconscious mind is nine times bigger. Nine times more powerful. And it knows no reason, no why. I have put the idea in your head, don't be worried. That's why I was keeping the pillow here, because you may have done it in your room and nobody would have seen it. I wanted your brother to see it. I wanted to see myself whether it works or not."

The professor said to his brother, "I have been telling you that, `Don't get too much in contact with this man.' Now, he can put some strange ideas in your mind. If he had said, `At nine o'clock hit your brother,' you would have hit me and there was no way to resist. And if you had hit me then I would have hit you, and that will be unnecessary fight and for no reason at all. And this man will be sitting here laughing at the whole scene. It is good that he tried the pillow."

I have tried on many people post-hypnotic suggestion. It can help both the ways: reduce the drug, increase your meditation. And just three weeks continuously and the man will be out of drugs, and without any struggle -- as smoothly as a snake leaves its old skin and simply slips out. But still hypnosis is not an accepted science. I would like it to be accepted by every university of the world, that every person knows....

And then one can auto-hypnotize. It is not necessary that somebody else should hypnotize you. The post-hypnotic suggestion can be given to you that if you try, this is the method: look at the light for three minutes. And only thing, that you are getting hypnotized. And you will be hypnotized. You can hypnotize yourself for a particular period of time. And hypnotizing yourself, you can get in ten minutes as much sleep as you cannot get in ten hours time. Because it is so relaxing, and it goes to the very deepest core.

Hypnosis should become part of all medical schools, medical colleges, universities, psychology departments, psychotherapies, all kinds of therapeutic methods, because it can help in every possible way. And the same thing that you cannot do by the conscious mind in years....

For example, the habit of smoking. You may not be able to drop it in years time. In fact, it becomes more strengthened. You try to drop it one day, then you fail. Finally by the evening you have to smoke. You don't know the point, that that failure is recorded in you. Tomorrow you will be weaker. The cigarette has won one battle. You have lost one battle.

Tomorrow you will smoke earlier than the first day. The third day you are even more weaker, and after trying few days you drop it. Then again after few months you try... and drop it. But you don't know that it is better not to try, because each time you try and you fail, you are degrading in your own eyes. You are coming to know that you are a very weak person.

So not only in relationship with cigarettes, it is a generalized feeling within you that you are a very weak person. You cannot even drop a cigarette, then what else you can do? So your inferiority becomes stronger, and your struggle in life.... You know from the very beginning you are a loser. You cannot win. Never try anything in which you think you can be a failure. First make every surety that you are going to win, because it is a question of your whole personality. And that's what hypnosis can do.

Just it can make you so strong, because it is coming from the unconscious now. The cigarette has not reached to the unconscious. It is just a conscious habit. And if dropping comes from the unconscious, the conscious cannot win. I have been working in many dimensions on man. And this is my experience, that before trying anything, make it absolutely certain that the victory is yours. Otherwise it is better not to try.

The cigarette is not going to do that much harm, but being defeated by it.... The cigarette will do the harm that it was going to do, and the defeat unnecessarily will destroy your integrity. And through hypnosis we can change any habit, but one should go very skillfully. It is an art. One should not be in a hurry.

So if you are working with people who are addicted with drugs, the first thing is: take the burden of condemnation from them. Let them feel that "It is something as ancient as man and it fulfills something immensely necessary, so you are not doing anything perverted, that you are not immoral, that you are simply more intelligent than others.

"Those who go on dragging on without ever thinking what meaning their life has, what joy, what beauty, what love, these things don't matter to them. You are far more intelligent, far more sensitive." So create self-respect in them. And then slowly via the bridge of hypnosis transfer them from the drug to the meditation. And they will prove greater meditators than ordinary meditators, because their very addiction to drug shows they were searching for meditation -- but they found something hallucinatory in the way.

But they are really religious seekers. If we can make them feel that, "You are seekers and not the condemned and the cursed, but really the salt -- very salt -- of the earth" we can manage to bring all drug people towards meditation very easily. And they will prove far greater than others. Okay?

Source: from Osho Book "The Last Testament Volume 4"