Hypnotherapy (group)

Hypnotherapy was a Pune One therapy / meditation group led by Santosh. It was also known as "Dehypnotherapy", indicating the work to be done on the hypnotic nature of our conditioning. The Community to Provoke God brochure had this to say as a brief description:

The purpose here is to give participants the chance to experience altered states of consciousness usually experienced only in the very deepest stages of meditation. Individuals are helped not only to clear away old psychological problems that are obstructive to meditation but given the opportunity to delve deeply into the subconscious and to experience the collective consciousness.

The brochure also mentioned a further "Deeper Hypnotherapy" group for which this Hypnotherapy group was a prerequisite, quite possibly also led by Santosh.

Maneesha writes about it in the Darshan Diary Hammer on the Rock, 10 Jan 1976:

One of the newest therapies to begin in the ashram recently is Hypnotherapy.

The idea behind this technique is to help people to unlock unpleasant memories that have been pushed back into the inaccessible parts of their minds. When these feelings surface, the individual is encouraged to face and experience them and the old situation, in the light of his present growth.

Bhagwan talked recently in the morning discourse about Hypnotherapy, saying that it could be helpful in gaining insights and glimpses of one's past lives.

The implications of this are very important for one's growth, because once one sees that one is repeating a pattern of many lives past, patterns instantly change ....

Hypnotherapy shows up in The Sound of Running Water's groups chart as starting in Apr 1976 and offered all the way through till Dec 1977. It may seem that this start date is much later than Maneesha's report, and Maneesha even talks about the group-leader Santosh, but it is clear from Osho's words in the discourse she refers to (on 7 Jan) that the new therapy (Hypno) is still in the future. And about the "end date" of Dec 1977, it seems likely that this was just a break, not an end, and that it resumed some time later beyond the period covered by TSORW.

Later, on 1 May, in Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 10, Osho talks of this group as a current phenomenon, playing with calling it Dehypnotherapy. A few days later, in ch 7 of Yoga, Osho goes on at length about the depths to which Hypnotherapy can penetrate, comparing it -- using Patanjali's five-body system as a yardstick -- to Allopathy, able to touch only the outer body, the physical, while Acupuncture can touch the second or vital body, Homeopathy the third or mental body, Hypnotherapy the fourth or consciousness body and meditation the fifth or bliss body. He says meditation goes furthest because all other tools are grosser, and even Hypnotherapy requires an "other" to give the suggestions. But he still puts it one step higher than homeopathy:

Hypnotherapy goes still deeper. It touches the vigyanmayakos: the fourth body, the body of consciousness. It does not use medicine. It does not use anything. It simply uses suggestion, that's all. It simply puts a suggestion in your mind call it animal magnetism, mesmerism, hypnosis or whatsoever you like -- but it works through the power of thought, not the power of matter. Even homeopathy is still the power of matter in a very subtle quantity. Hypnotherapy gets rid of matter altogether, because howsoever subtle, it is matter. Ten thousand potency, but still, it is a potency of matter. It simply jumps to the thought energy, vigyanmayakos: the consciousness body. If your consciousness just accepts a certain idea, it starts functioning.

Hypnotherapy has a great future. It is going to become the future medicine, because if by just changing your thought pattern your mind can be changed, through the mind your vital body and through the vital body your gross body, then why bother with poisons, why bother with gross medicines? Why not work it through thought power?

Maneesha writes about it again in A Rose Is a Rose Is a Rose (Jun 28 1976), with some input from Santosh:

The Hypnotherapy group is a five-day workshop which is conducted by Santosh, a sannyasin who has had extensive training and experience in a variety of the humanistic movement therapies, as well as hypnosis. In talking of the use of hypnosis, Santosh said he found that it took people into blank spaces similar to those experienced in deep meditation, so he uses hypnotherapy to help people to experience this state. He also uses hypnosis in what he describes as "the usual therapeutic way" and for fantasy work. Using hypnosis for a group is quite different than for individual work and requires a lot of preparation, including breathing exercises, concentration and relaxation exercises.

"One of the problems of hypnosis is learning how not to do something, or learning how to do nothing, and that is difficult for most people. In the workshop I teach people how to hypnotise themselves and then they can use this later for a lot of different things.

"One of the main things I emphasise is learning to let go. And once people realise that they can be hypnotised, and once they see what happens to a person who is hypnotised, then they start asking themselves questions about their own actions. They realise -- and I try to stress this very much -- that actually we are all products of a certain type of hypnosis, what I call a type of programming. But I also make them aware that they can change their programmes. This, combined with their ability to hypnotise themselves, helps them -- if they want to use it -- to change their whole programme. We can programme ourselves for optimism, ecstasy, lack of fear, and for different attitudes about everything".

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