"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."