What is the meaning of Shankara's concept of the illusory world?

Questioner. It is said that shankara's mayic world, illusory world, really means a changing world, not a false one. What do you say?

Shankara says that which is observed is maya, false. Buddha says just the opposite, and Buddha's philosophy finds its culmination in Nagarjuna. Nagarjuna says that the one who observes is false, the observer is false. If the world is false in the eyes of Shankara, the soul is false in the eyes of Nagarjuna. This giant among the Buddhist thinkers says that between the observer and the observed the former is much more basic, and this basic element itself is false. All that is false flows from this basic falsehood. When I close my eyes, the world becomes invisible, but then I begin to dream with eyes closed. I am the basic lie; even when the world is absent 1 can create another world by dreaming. The most amusing thing is I can create dreams within dreams. Sometimes you too might have dreamed that you are dreaming. It is really…

Osho, could Shankara’s maya mean not falsehood but changeability?

You can assign any meaning you like. But Shankara calls change itself false. What Shankara is saying is precisely this: that which is not the same forever is untrue; that which was one thing yesterday, is something else today, and will be something else tomorrow—this is mithya, the unreal. In Shankara’s definition, change is the very synonym of falsehood, and the unchanging the synonym of truth. For him, truth is that which is eternal—eternity itself—what simply is, as it is, without ever undergoing any change and in which change is not even possible. What does this imply? It means that what was one thing a moment ago and becomes something else a moment later—what does that mean? It means what it was a moment ago, it truly wasn’t; and what it becomes a moment later, that too it isn’t—because in the next moment it will be something else again. That…

Osho, while refuting Adi Guru Shankaracharya’s aphorism “the world is illusory, Brahman alone is true,” you said the world is true and Brahman is true. But the definition of truth is: that which is not perishable. Since the world is perishable, how can it be true? It must be illusory. Brahman is imperishable, therefore true. I request you to define truth and shed light on this aspect.

Call a rose “rose,” or give it another name—there are thousands of languages, so the rose has thousands of names. Does the rose care? Call it beautiful or ugly—does it change the rose? Fashions change daily. A hundred years ago, who would imagine you would place a cactus in your drawing room, that a cactus would be called beautiful? Tell a villager today that a cactus is beautiful—he will stare: “What nonsense!” He plants cactus as a fence to keep animals and thieves out. He cannot imagine putting it in his house. He’ll say, “Am I mad?” Roses were beautiful—but now to insist “the rose is beautiful” sounds old-fashioned. The modern, cultivated people keep cactus. New poetry sings of cacti; new painters paint them. The rose has become passé. Nobility is out; the cactus is the proletariat. This is the age of socialism. To praise roses—aren’t you ashamed? Kings are…

You have been told again and again: maya is false. Escape maya. Be free of maya. Maya is sin. Maya is bondage. Maya is birth and death. Every abuse imaginable has been hurled at maya. Listen to what Shandilya says. He says: the power of the Divine is called maya. It is not false. How could it be false? Maya is the name of God’s energy. What issues from God cannot be untrue. In our dictionaries maya has come to mean “false”—that which is not, yet appears to be. We have begun to think of maya as a synonym for illusion. So many times we have been told: maya, maya, maya—it is all false; this world is all maya. Nothing is maya in that sense. Hear Shandilya’s revolutionary proclamation. He says: maya is the energy of the Divine. It is his power.

Osho, what is the fundamental anguish of human life?

There is only one anguish: that a human being cannot become what he was born to be. There is only one anguish: that the seed remains a seed and does not bloom like a flower; that it cannot scatter its fragrance to the infinite winds; cannot converse with the moon and stars; cannot offer its colors to the sky; cannot be expressed. If the poem within the poet cannot be revealed—anguish. If the painter cannot paint—anguish. If the dancer cannot dance—if chains lie on his feet—anguish. Anguish means only this: that what we are meant to be—our innate nature and destiny—does not come to fruition, and we are forced to be something else. Then anguish is born. Then melancholy gathers over life. And all those countless people you see burdened with sorrow, living in a kind of hell—the reason is only this: each has come carrying the seed of becoming…