In the night you dream. While dreaming you start believing in the dream, that it is true. Your senses are reporting the dream -- your eyes are seeing it, your ears are hearing it, you may be touching it. Your senses are reporting to you; that's why you fall under the illusion that it is real. Here you are; it may be just a dream. How can you be certain that I am speaking to you in reality? It is possible it may be just a dream, you are dreaming me. Every dream is true while you dream.

Chuang Tzu once saw a dream that he has become a butterfly. And in the morning he was sad. And his disciples asked, "Why are you so sad?" Chuang Tzu said, "I am in trouble. In such a trouble I have never been before. This puzzle seems to be impossible; it cannot be solved. Last night I saw a dream that I have become a butterfly!"

The disciples laughed. They said, "What is there? This is not a riddle. A dream is just a dream." Chuang Tzu says, "But listen. I am troubled. If Chuang Tzu can dream that he has become a butterfly, a butterfly may be dreaming now that she has become Chuang Tzu. So how to decide whether I am now facing reality or again a dream? And if Chuang Tzu can become a butterfly, why can't a butterfly dream that she has become a Chuang Tzu?"

But Chuang Tzu is missing one thing -- the dreamer. He is thinking only of dreams, comparing dreams and missing the dreamer -- the one who dreams that Chuang Tzu has become a butterfly, the one who is thinking that it may be quite the reverse: that the butterfly is dreaming that she has become Chuang Tzu. Who is this observer? Who was asleep and is now awake? You may be unreal, you may be a dream to me, but "I" cannot be a dream to myself, because even for a dream to exist a real dreamer is needed. Even for a false dream a real dreamer is needed. Even a dream cannot exist without a real dreamer. So forget dream. The whole world is illusion, you are not. So don't go after the world, there is no possibility to gain certainty there. And now this appears to be proven even by scientific research.

For the last three centuries Science was certain, and Shankara looked to be just a philosophical mind, poetic. For three centuries Science was certain, but now, during these two last decades, Science has become uncertain. Now the greatest scientists say nothing is certain, and with matter we will never be certain. Everything has again become uncertain. Everything looks like a flux, changing. Only appearance looks certain. The deeper you go, the more everything becomes uncertain, indefinite. Shankara says, and tantra has always been saying, that the world is illusory. Even before Shankara was born, tantra was preaching one technique -- that the whole world is illusory, so think of it as a dream. If you can think of it as a dream -- and if you think at all, you will come to realize it as a dream -- then your whole focus of consciousness will turn inwards, because there is a deep urge to find the truth, the real.

If the whole world is unreal, then there is no shelter in it. Then you are moving after, following shadows, and wasting time and life and energy. Then move inwards One thing is certain: "I am." Even if the whole world is illusory, one thing is certain: there is someone who knows this is illusory. The knowledge may be illusory, the known may be illusory, but the knower cannot be. This is the only certainty, the only rock on which you can stand.

Look at the world: it is a dream, illusory, and nothing is as it appears. It is just a rainbow. Go deep in this feeling. You will be thrown to yourself. With that coming to one's own self, you come to a certain truth, to something which is indubitable, which is absolute.

If you have an urge to go back somewhere to a place where you believe that golden age exists, search not the dream but the dreamer, not that which is seen but the seer.

http://www.oshoworld.com/tantra_medi/otantra.asp?news_id=56

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