Remember this, because you are doing this continuously, and it is being done by society continuously. The whole mechanism of propaganda consists of repetitions. Politicians go on repeating certain things. They go on repeating them, and they don’t bother whether you listen or not. Listening is not the point, because if they just go on repeating, by and by you are convinced, persuaded; not logically, not rationally – they never argue with you – but just through repetition you are hypnotized.
Hitler went on repeating that the Jews were the reason for the misery and fall of Germany: “Once the Jews are destroyed, there will be no problem. You are the owners of the whole world, you are a special race. You have come here to dominate; you are the master race.”
Even his friends never believed it in the beginning, and he himself never believed it in the beginning, because this was such a patent lie. But as he continued, by and by people started believing in it: they were hypnotized. And when other people were hypnotized by it, he too was hypnotized into thinking that there must be some truth in it: “When millions of people believe it, there must be something true in it.” Then his friends started believing it, then it became a mutual hypnosis, and then the whole of Germany got into it.
One of the most intelligent races behaved very foolishly. Why? What happened to the German mind? – just repetition, propaganda. Hitler has written in his autobiography, Mein Kampf, that there is a simple process for transforming a lie into a truth: just go on repeating it; and he knew from his own experience. If you go on repeating a particular thing – you smoke, you go on smoking every day – it becomes a hypnosis. Then, even if you come to know that it is useless, futile, foolish, dangerous to health, nothing can be done, because now it is an autohypnosis.
Mulla Nasruddin’s wife was reading an article to him against smoking. Experts were quoted as saying that cancer and tuberculosis and other diseases are possible through smoking. He heard it and then said, “Stop this nonsense! This is all silly, and I tell you, I intend to continue smoking till I die!”
His weary wife said, “Okay then, have it your own way. But what makes you think that even then you will stop? What makes you think that even then, when you die, you will stop?”
Really, if you are under hypnosis, it never stops. Death doesn’t make much difference: in the next life you start again the same way, because the next life starts from where the last was discontinued; it is a continuity. So when a child is born, he is not really a child, he is very, very old, very ancient. He brings all his ancient karmas with him, all the samskaras and conditionings. He starts as an old man; he already has his hypnosis. This is what Hindus call samskaras, karmas.