What is the truth if the dream is false?

Osho, in the Dwarka camp you said that all practices are false, because we have never been separated from the Divine. Then is unconsciousness false? Is the development of body and mind false? Is the shedding of samskaras false? Is the practice of moving from the gross to the subtle false? Is the arrangement of the journey from the first body to the seventh body false? Is the long process of kundalini practice false? Kindly explain these things.

First, when I call something untrue or false, I do not mean that it does not exist. The false too exists. If it did not, even falsity could not be spoken of. A lie has its own kind of existence; a dream has its own kind of existence. When we say a dream is false, we do not mean it does not exist; we mean its existence is mental, not real—an undulation of mind, not a fact. When we say the world is maya, we do not mean the world is not. If it were not, to whom are we saying this? Who is saying it? And for whom? When someone calls the world maya, he already grants that there is a speaker and a listener, someone to explain and someone to understand. That much is true. No—the meaning of calling the world maya is only this: it is not…

He had devised many methods; one of them was this: for three months—walk, rise, sit, go to the market, go to your shop, go to your office—but keep one thing in awareness: whatever you are seeing is false. Remember it. Deepen this remembrance. Practice that whatever you see, all is false. It is very difficult. You are walking on the road: the people walking—false; the cars running—false; the buses moving—false; all false. At first there is resistance. Again and again you forget, because for lifetimes you have taken it as true. But Gurdjieff says, keep trying. After a month of experiment, this begins to settle. The feeling that all is false remains. By the end of three months, one night suddenly you will find—in the midst of a dream—there arises remembrance: false! And the dream collapses right there. Silence descends.

Why do you find it false? What is the basis? What grounds your claim that the dream was false? First, the dream is no longer present for you to weigh against waking; it is gone. When the dream was, waking was not. You slept in a room and in the night you saw in dream that you were in a palace. In the morning you awoke and found yourself in your room. You say the palace was false. But how do you measure it? The palace is no longer present to weigh against this room—which is false, which true? And when you were in the palace, this room was not present. For two things to be weighed, both must be present together.

Only then will we see what is; otherwise we will see what we want to see. We constantly see what we want—and when reality breaks in, disillusionment follows. Then it seems, “Ah!” So those who have known truth have said, “All is maya.” They did not call existence maya; they called their world—what they had woven—maya. Because they found it to be a dream. We dream wondrously about everything; concerning everything we fabricate dreams. Fifty years ago you could not find a cactus in any home. Now, in an educated home, a cactus must be present; the rose has been sent outside. Once the rose was the Brahmin and the cactus the Shudra; now the cactus has taken the Brahmin’s place, the Brahmin stands guard outside. The cactus has entered the house—this was never so.

Osho, in the lives of us heedless people there are only dreams upon dreams—but what is the truth of dreams? Can we know it while we remain heedless?

You have understood by listening to me that it is dreams upon dreams. Don’t accept so quickly. Knowing is needed, not believing. If I say it and you accept it, it won’t work; it remains borrowed. You yourself must discover that they are dreams. Many people go astray by believing others. Because I may say a thousand times that it is a dream, yet if inside it feels true to you, you will go on believing me and still moving in the direction of what feels true to you. This is the human tangle. Buddha says: anger is madness. You have heard it and can’t even deny it. And Buddha is powerful; when he speaks there is weight in his words; his whole presence is their proof. You cannot deny him. You cannot argue with Buddha. And deep within, your own sleeping buddhahood nods “yes”—that it is so. However much…