And that is the state in which you are, in which Jesus finds you, in which I find you. But nobody has hypnotized you; this is an autohypnosis. You are both the wise man who hypnotized the sheep and the sheep who was hypnotized; you have autohypnotized.

There is a certain method of autohypnotizing yourself: if you think a particular thought continuously you will be hypnotized by it; if you look at a thing continuously you will be hypnotized by it; if you brood on something continuously you will be hypnotized by it.

It happened that a French poet went to the United States. He was shown around New York and the guide brought him to the Empire State Building. The poet looked amazed. He looked again and again, and then said, “It reminds me of sex.”

The guide was puzzled. He had heard many types of reactions, but this was something new. Nobody had ever commented, looking at the Empire State Building, that it reminded them of sex. So he asked, “If you don’t feel offended, please tell me why it reminds you of sex?”

The Frenchman said, “Everything does!”

If you continuously think of sex you become hypnotized, then everything is sexual to you. Even if you go into the temple, the temple reminds you of sex. Where you move is not the question, because you carry your mind with you and your mind goes on creating a world around you. Somebody is hypnotized through sex, somebody is hypnotized through wealth, somebody is hypnotized through power, but everybody is hypnotized. And nobody has done this to you, you have been doing this yourself, it is your work. But you have been doing it so long that you have completely forgotten that you are both the magician and the sheep.

Once a man realizes, “I am the magician and I am the sheep,” then things start changing, because then the first spark of transformation has entered. Now you can never be the same again, because the hypnosis has started to drop. A breaking point has come; something of awareness has entered you.

You may have different objects of hypnosis; find out which is the object of your hypnosis, which one attracts you most, which one has become the focal point of your being, and then look at it, at how you got hypnotized by it. Repetition is the method of hypnosis: looking at anything continuously, or thinking about it continuously. If you go to a hypnotist he will say, “You are falling asleep, falling asleep, falling asleep, falling asleep.” He will go on repeating the same thing in a monotonous voice, and soon you will be fast asleep. He was not doing anything but simply repeating something. Hearing it again and again and again, you will fall asleep; you have hypnotized yourself.