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

Remain in wonder if you want the mysteries to open up for you. 

The mysteries never open up for those who go on questioning. 

The questioners sooner or later end up in a library.

 The questioners sooner or later end up with scriptures,

 because scriptures are full of answers.

 And answers are dangerous, they kill your wonder.

Osho

The less people know, the more stubbornly they know it.

Osho

LOVE

During my whole life, I always thought that I loved somebody. Now, being here for the first time with you, I ask myself: have I ever really been in love? Am I even able to love? Am I able to love you? Or has life brought me to a point where happiness in love does not happen anymore?

The basic fallacy that you are carrying within you is that you always loved somebody.

This is one of the most significant things about all human beings; their love is always for somebody, it is addressed – and the moment you address your love, you destroy it. It is as if you are saying, “I will breathe only for you – and when you are not there, then how can I breathe?”

Love should be like breathing. It should be just a quality in you – wherever you are, with whomsoever you are, or even if you are alone, love goes on overflowing from you. It is not a question of being in love with someone – it is a question of being love.

People are frustrated in their love experiences, not because something is wrong with love…they narrow down love to such a point that the ocean of love cannot remain there. You cannot contain the ocean – it is not a small stream; love is your whole being – love is your godliness. One should think in terms of whether one is loving or not. The question of the object of love does not arise. With your wife, you love your wife; with your children, you love your children; with your servants, you love your servants; with your friends, you love your friends; with the trees, you love the trees; with the ocean, you love the ocean.

You are love.

Love is not dependent on the object, but is a radiation of your subjectivity – a radiation of your soul. And the vaster the radiation, the greater is your soul. The wider spread are the wings of your love, the bigger is the sky of your being.

You have lived under a common fallacy of all human beings. Now you are asking, “Am I able to love you?” – again, the same fallacy.

Just ask: Am I able to become love?

When you are in my presence, you need not think of loving me; otherwise, you have not come out of your ordinary fallacies. Here, you have to learn…just being loving. Of course your love will reach me too; it will reach others too. It will be a vibe surrounding you, spreading all over; and if so many people are simply broadcasting their love, their song, their ecstasy, the whole place becomes a temple. There is no other way of making a temple. Then the whole area is filled with a new kind of energy, and nobody is at a loss – because on you is showering the love of so many people: on each single person, so many people’s love is showering.

Drop that fallacy. And because of that fallacy, another question arises in you: “…or has life brought me to the point where happiness in love does not happen anymore?” Life is nothing but an opportunity for love to blossom. If you are alive, the opportunity is there – even to the last breath. You may have missed your whole life: just the last breath, the last moment on the earth, if you can be love, you have not missed anything – because a single moment of love is equal to the whole eternity of love.

Osho, The Rebellious Spirit

Only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core into the other person without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without creating "the other", reducing the other into a thing, and without becoming addicted with the other. They allow the other absolute freedom, because they know if the other leaves, they will be as happy as they are now. Their happiness cannot be taken by the other, because it is not given by the other.

Osho

Painting credit: Steve Henderson

You go on dreaming, imagining beautiful things for the coming days, the future. But in moments when danger is imminent, then suddenly you become aware that there may be no future, no tomorrow, that this is the only moment you have got. So times of disaster are very revealing. They don´t bring anything new in the world; they simply make you aware of the world as it is. They wake you up. If you don´t understand this, you can go mad; if you understand this, you can become awakened.

Osho