According to Osho, not everything is an illusion; realities have levels—outer things are real, but inner love and awareness are more real. Therefore your relationship with me is not imaginary; it is a love-intelligence communion, more real than objects, because it unites subject and experience and serves as a bridge to the greatest reality: your own self-realization.
Our relationship is real love that helps you discover your truest self; the world isn’t fake—your inner truth is just more real.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, if everything in life I see, I feel, I touch, is illusion, what kind of relationship do I have with you?
Who has said to you that everything that you touch and you see and you feel is an illusion? Just hit your head on a pillar and then you will know it is not illusory. And if any saint says so, just bring him close to a pillar and tell him, "hit your head." Even the people who have been talking their whole lives -- the Vedantins who are the most fascinated with the idea of the world being illusory -- just watch them: they don't pass through the walls, they always go through the doors. One shankaracharya was staying in the same temple where I was staying, and he was very insistent that everything is illusory. And he used to have a walking stick -- it was lying just by his side. I took the walking stick in my hands and I said, "I will hit you on the…
What is not illusion?
But the whole emphasis -- always remember -- is on the mirror that reflects. Don't become too attached to that which is reflected. You look in the mirror; your image looks so real, but it is unreal. Don't get too obsessed with the image. The image is unreal in the mirror and the person who is standing before the mirror is also unreal. Only one thing is real: the consciousness that knows 'I am standing before the mirror', the consciousness which knows that the mirror is reflecting the one who is standing. That transcendental consciousness is reality, and through that descends the benediction, SATCHITANAND; through that one becomes true, conscious and blissful. Why do we call the world illusory? Let me remind you again: by 'illusory' we don't mean unreal, we mean temporarily real, only for the time being real. Why do we call the outer world unreal? Because it…
Beloved Osho, are you self-realized? And how do you explain your relationships with existence and with people?
So whatsoever is being said, be sympathetic with it. Do not try to understand it, let it go deep in you. Be vulnerable, open to it. Let it go deep into the heart. Do not create intellectual barriers to it. Then with your full being in participation, you will know. You may not understand, but you will know. And understanding is not enough, knowing is needed. Sometimes you understand or think that you have understood, thus you create a barrier to the knowing. The intellect understands; the being knows. The intellect is just a part, it is your being that is the real. When you know, you know with your blood, you know with your bones, you know with your heartbeats. But if you understand, you understand only with the mechanism of the mind, which is not so deep. It is only a device, a utilitarian device which is needed…
[A sannyasin says: Sometimes I wonder whether you're real or not.] Everything is unreal -- I am too -- because reality is not a thing. All things are unreal. Reality is a nothing, no-thing. Things are only appearances, forms of something which is formless. That formlessness is real but that cannot be seen by the eyes and cannot be touched and felt is unreal; it is all dream stuff -- and I am included in it. All that can be experienced is a dream. Only the experiencer is not a dream. I am just a dream to you, but the witness of the dream is not unreal. and the witness is one. that witness is called god. Everything else is fictitious. The question is not strange; the question is worth asking.
Question: BELOVED OSHO, ILLUSION SPEAKING OF "EMPTY ILLUSION," IT IS ILLUSION WHEN CREATED, AND ILLUSION WHEN EXPERIENCED TOO; IT'S ILLUSION WHEN YOU'RE KNOWING AND AWARE, AND ILLUSION WHEN YOU'RE LOST IN DELUSION TOO. PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE ARE ALL ILLUSIONS. TODAY, IF WE REALIZE OUR WRONG, WE TAKE AN ILLUSORY MEDICINE TO CURE AN EQUALLY ILLUSORY DISEASE. WHEN THE DISEASE IS CURED, THE MEDICINE IS REMOVED, AND WE ARE THE SAME PERSON AS BEFORE. IF YOU THINK THAT THERE IS SOMEONE ELSE OR SOME SPECIAL DOCTRINE, THEN THIS IS THE VIEW OF A MISGUIDED OUTSIDER. IN THE INSTANT OF MAITREYA'S FINGER-SNAP, SUDHANA WAS EVEN ABLE TO FORGET THE MEDITATIVE STATES FOSTERED IN HIM BY ALL HIS TEACHERS: HOW MUCH MORE SO THE BEGINNINGLESS HABIT ENERGY OF EMPTY FALSEHOOD AND EVIL DEEDS!