Recently, there was one report published in Amar Ujala, a daily Hindi newspaper: We would not have believed in this information if it was mentioned in the context of mythology, but now even the modern science is agreeing that the practice of meditation creates a protective armour around the meditators. The physical body of the meditator gets protected from the infections in the atmosphere.
There is so much evidence we are living in the most stressful and depressing time with so many viruses like Corona and fatal diseases like cancer and whatnot. It is not so easy to relax and mind our own business–and, by the way, our businesses are also going down the drain because of our unmeditative life-style.
Just the other day, I happened to see an article by Ann MacDonald, who is a contributor, Harvard Health in the USA. It was archived content. The article was about the benefits of 20-minute meditation daily. She wrote: I had attended a lecture by Dr. Herbert Benson. A pioneer in mind/body medicine, Dr. Benson is currently director emeritus at the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind-Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. I would love to say that the lecture was eye-opening, but it was really more eye-closing—and I mean that in a good way. Rather than a lecture in the traditional sense, Dr. Benson gave us some tips on how to elicit the relaxation response—starting with having us close our eyes. As its name implies, the relaxation response is meant to counter the stress (or “fight or flight”) response.
A scientific solution is offered in an article published in The Psychology Today: The Relaxation Response is a helpful way to turn off the fight-or-flight response and bring the body back to pre-stress levels. Dr. Benson describes the Relaxation Response as a physical state of deep relaxation which engages the other part of our nervous system—the parasympathetic nervous system. Research has shown that regular use of the Relaxation Response can help any health problem that is caused or exacerbated by chronic stress such as fibromyalgia, gastrointestinal ailments, insomnia, hypertension, anxiety disorders, and others.
Twenty-five centuries ago in India, Gautama the Buddha had given the simplest method of Vipassana meditation and earlier than him, Lord Shiva had given 112 methods, and Vipassana is also one of them. All these methods work wonders. But most people of the West remained suspicious about these methods, they scoffed at these methods, and now when the whole world has started suffering in spite of having the best comforts provided the science, they are compelled to study the meditation and relaxation techniques. Vipassana has got a new name in the form of Mindfulness, which has swept the Western world in the last few years. The East had already known meditation as real medicine. Sixty years ago, in one of his discourses, Osho gave a profound statement: “Man is a disease. Diseases come to man, but the man himself is also a disease. That is his problem, and that is also his uniqueness; that is his good fortune, and that is also his misfortune. No other animal on earth is such a problem, such an anxiety, such a tension, such a disease, such an illness as man is. But this very condition has given man all his growth, all his evolution, because dis-ease means one cannot be happy with where one is; one cannot accept what one is. This very disease has become man’s dynamism, his restlessness – and at the same time, it is also his misfortune because he is agitated, unhappy, and in suffering.
“Two methods have been tried in order to understand and cure the disease called man. One is medicine, and the other is meditation. Both of them are treatments for the same disease. It will be good to understand here that medicine takes a micro view of man. It considers each disease in man separately, as a separate happening, and meditation considers man as a whole to be a disease. Meditation sees the personality of man as the disease, and medicine believes diseases come to man, that they are something foreign, alien to man. The difference has slowly started to diminish, and medical science is also beginning to say: “Don’t treat the disease, treat the patient.”
This is a very important statement because it means that disease is nothing but an indication of the way in which a patient is living his life. Every man does not fall sick in the same way. Diseases also have their own individuality, their own personalities. It is not that if I suffer from tuberculosis and you also suffer from tuberculosis, we will both be the same kind of patient. Even our tuberculosis will present itself in two different ways because we are two different individuals. It can also happen that the treatment that cures my tuberculosis does not bring any relief to your tuberculosis. So deep down, the patient is at the root, not the disease. Medicine catches the diseases in man superficially. Meditation takes hold of man from deep within. In other words, it can be said that medicine tries to bring health to a person from the outside, and meditation tries to make the person healthy from deep within. Neither can the science of meditation be complete without medicine, nor can the science of medicine be complete without meditation, since man is both body and soul.”
According to Dr. Benson, one of the most valuable things we can do in life is to learn deep relaxation — making an effort to spend some time every day quieting our minds to create inner peace and better health. This is also true with healing. During the energy healing process, the patient is able to relax, quiet their mind, and experience calming effects while the healer does his or her work. Energy healing patients have experienced profound results, not unlike the results seen in Dr. Benson’s studies.
I would like to conclude this article with a simple method of meditation Protective Aura given by Osho to a disciple: Every night before you go to sleep, just sit in the bed and imagine an aura around your body, just six inches away from your body, the same shape as the body, surrounding you, protecting you. It will become a shield. Just do it for four, five minutes, and then, still feeling it, go to sleep. Fall into sleep imagining that aura like a blanket around you which protects you so that no tension can enter from the outside, no thought can enter from the outside; no outside vibrations can enter you. Just feeling that aura, fall asleep.
This has to be done the last thing at night. After it, simply go to sleep so the feeling continues in your unconscious. That is the whole thing. The whole mechanism is that you start by consciously imagining, then you start falling asleep. By and by when you are on the threshold of sleep, a little imagination continues, lingers on. You fall asleep but that little imagination enters the unconscious. That becomes a tremendous force and energy.
In the morning the first thought has to be again this. The moment you remember that now sleep Is gone, don’t open your eyes. Just feel your aura all over the body protecting you. Do it for four, five minutes again, and then get up. When you are taking your bath and your tea, go on remembering it. Then in the daytime also whenever you feel you have time – sitting in a car or a train, or in the office doing nothing – just again relax into it. For a single moment feel it again.
Between three weeks and three months you will start feeling it almost like a solid thing. It will surround you and you will be able to feel that you can now pass amidst a crowd and you will remain unaffected, untouched. It will make you tremendously happy because now only your problems will be your problems, nobody else’s. It is very easy to solve one’s own problems because they are one’s own.
It is very difficult when you go on getting others’ problems; then you cannot solve them, because in the first place they don’t belong to you. Many people come to me and they say they had some problem but suddenly here it is gone. It was never their problem – otherwise, it cannot go. It must have been somebody else’s. They must have been step-fathering it, fostering it. It must have entered from somebody else’s mind. But people are so unaware that they don’t know what is theirs and what is the others. Everything goes on getting into a mess. You don’t have many problems, and you will be able to solve your problems; that is not a big thing.
This time try to create a protective aura – and you will be able to see it and its function. You will see that you are completely protected. Wherever you go, things will be coming to you but they will be returned; they will not touch you.
