Authenticity

Osho, how can one differentiate between a projected experience and an authentic feeling?

The old woman said, "I have served him for thirty years, but still I feel that his purity is a maintained purity. It is not yet effortless. So before dying I want to know whether I was serving a right man or whether I was just deluded as he is deluded -- because I have been a part in this. So just before my death, let me know it. I want to know." So the prostitute went. It was midnight and the monk was meditating -- the last meditation of the night. The moment he saw that the prostitute was coming... he knew her, and he knew well. She belonged to the same village. And he knew well, moreover, because he had been attracted to her so many times before. Really, he was fighting against this prostitute for years. He was bewildered. He just ran out of the hut and…

How can I be authentic? How can I speak and act the truth when the society and the world on which I have to depend for my worldly needs are based upon lies and untruth

Then be untrue. Then don't create any misery for yourself. But the life for which you are going to be untrue will be taken away from you sooner or later. Death is certain. So if you want to live in an untrue society, comfortably -- then live comfortably. But that comfort is not leading you anywhere except death. Whatsoever you call a comfortable and convenient life, I call only a comfortable way to die. It is slow suicide. But the choice is yours. I am not forcing any goal, any structure on you. I am simply stating bare facts: that if you want to be comfortably, conveniently dying, compromise with the lies that surround you. But you will never feel comfortable deep down. An unease will remain inside your heart. And I know well that if you become authentic and true, it is going to be arduous. Otherwise, why should…

Beloved Osho, what is the meaning of an authentic man? What is his nature, and his way of life?

Those who are dominating may have good intentions. Nobody is doubting their intentions. And perhaps if you had followed their intentions you would have been the richest man in the country, and now you are just a beggar with your guitar on the street. But I say to you that to follow your own nature and to be a beggar with a guitar in the street is more fulfilling, more blissful than to be the richest man in the country, if it is not your desire. One great surgeon, the greatest in his country, was retiring, and his friends had gathered to celebrate. His students had gathered -- because he was really a master surgeon; there was no comparison at all with anybody else. He was a brain surgeon. Even at the age of seventy-five, his hands were not shaking a bit -- because while you are performing surgery on…

You say, remove all your masks and be authentic. I think only of sex, love and romance. I don't know anything else except this. Am I on the wrong track?

I don't see anything wrong in sex, in love, in romance. You are on the right track. Love is the right track, and only through a lived life of love, prayer arises -- never otherwise. Only out of deep experiences of love, sweet and bitter, pleasant and painful, high and low, heaven and hell; only out of deep experiences of pain and pleasure through love does one become aware. They are needed to make you aware. Pain is as much needed as pleasure, because both work. And by and by, between the pleasure and the pain, you become a tightrope walker. You attain to balance. But for centuries love has been condemned, sex has been condemned. So of course, the idea arises in your mind that you must be on the wrong track. You are simply natural. To be natural is not to be the wrong track. If you think…