Protection of Joy

Step 1: Preparation

“For the first seven days, the first step: Lying down on the bed, or sitting, put the light off, be in darkness. 

Step 2: Remember a Beautiful Moment

“Just remember any beautiful moment that you have experienced in the past. Any beautiful moment — just choose the best. It may be very ordinary…because sometimes extraordinary things happen in very ordinary grounds.

“You are just sitting still, doing nothing, and the rain is falling on the roof…the smell, the sound...you are surrounded, and something clicks. You are in a sacred moment. Or one day walking along the road, suddenly the sunlight falls on you from behind the trees...and click! something opens. For a moment you are transported into another world.

“Once you have chosen it, continue it for seven days. Just close your eyes and relive it. Go into the details. The rain is falling on the roof...the drip drip — the sound...the smell...the very texture of the moment...a bird is singing, a dog is barking...a plate has fallen, and the sound….

“Go into all the details, from all sides; multi-dimensionally, from all the senses. Every night you will find that you are moving into deeper details — things that you may even have missed in the real moment, but that your mind has recorded. Whether you miss the moment or not, the mind goes on recording.

“You will come to feel subtle nuances which you were not aware that you had experienced. When your consciousness is focused on that moment, the moment will be there again. You will start feeling new things. You will suddenly come to recognize that they were there but you had missed them at that moment. But the mind records it all. It is a very very reliable servant, tremendously capable.

“By the seventh day you will be able to see it so clearly that you will feel that you have never seen any real moment as clearly as this one.

Step 3: Week 2: The Climate of Joy

“After seven days do the same thing but add one more thing. On the eighth day, feel the space around you; feel the climate is surrounding you from all sides…up to three feet. Just feel an aura surrounding you of that moment. By the fourteenth day you will almost be able to be in a totally different world, although conscious that beyond that three feet a totally different time and a totally different dimension is present. 

Step 4: Week 3: Live the Moment

“Then the third week, something more has to be added. Live the moment, be surrounded by it, and now, create imaginary anti-space. For example you are feeling very good; for three feet you are surrounded by that goodness, that divinity. Now think of a situation — somebody insults you but the insult comes only up to the limit. There is a fence, and the insult cannot enter you. It comes like an arrow...and falls there. Or remember some sad moment: you are hurt but that hurt comes to the glass wall that is surrounding you, and falls there. It never reaches you. You will be able to see — if the first two weeks have gone right — by the third week, that everything comes up to that three-foot limit, and nothing penetrates you.

Step 5: Week 4: Carry the Aura Everywhere

“Then from the fourth week continue to keep that aura with you; going to the market, talking to people, continuously have it in the mind.

“You will be tremendously thrilled. You will move in the world having your own world, a private world, continuously with you. 

“That will make you capable of living in the present, because, in fact, you are continuously bombarded by thousands and thousands of things, and they catch your attention. If you don’t have a protective aura around you, you are vulnerable. A dog barks: suddenly the mind has been pulled in that direction. The dog comes into the memory. Now you have many dogs in the memory from the past. Your friend has a dog: now from the dog you go to your friend. Then to the friend’s sister with whom you had fallen in love. Now the whole nonsense starts. The barking of this dog was in the present, but it led you somewhere else into the past. It may lead you into the future — there is no way of saying. Anything can lead to anything; it is very complicated.

“So one needs a surrounding, a protective aura. The dog goes on barking, but you remain in yourself — settled, calm, quiet and centered. 

Step 6: Dropping the Aura

“Carry that aura for a few days or a few months. When you see that now it is not needed, you can drop it. Once you know how to be herenow, once you have enjoyed the beauty of it, the tremendous bliss of it, you can drop the aura of it.” 

Osho, Be Realistic: Plan for a Miracle