The Real India

[A new sannyasin agrees to do the groups Osho suggests, but says she would like to travel around
India first.]

I think the better course will be that first you be here and then travel... First groups. Then you will have a better vision to see the country; you will have a better attitude. Otherwise you can go traveling....Yes, you will see the same things – nothing much. In fact you will see a very, very poverty-stricken country, starving, and you will feel only miserable, nothing else. First go a little inwards, explore the inner country first, have something settled there, and then go. 

India has many mysteries, but one needs eyes to see them. Otherwise you will see the buildings, and in the west better buildings exist. You will see the roads, and the west has better roads. Everything you see, the west has it better. And you will simply feel cheated: for what are you going here and there, traveling in crowded trains and suffering a thousand and one things unnecessarily ?

Once you have a meditative eye you will see something which does not exist in the west. Then you have come to this country.... It is disappearing from here too; the west is too overpowering. It is always so: the gross is more powerful than the subtle. If you clash a flower against a rock it is the flower who is going to lose, not the rock. And there is a clash between the spiritual values and the materialist values, and of course the spiritual values are going to suffer they are suffering.

The East is no more east only fragments here and there. Somewhere you will find a few people who are still eastern and a few places that are still eastern and a few spaces where you can have a contact with the real India... otherwise India is a legend, a myth. it is just a poor reflection of the West. If you go right now you will find a poor reflection of the West, and of course, it is better to see the original than to see the reflection; the reflection is meaningless.

So first attain to a certain vision, a different kind of approach, a different way of looking at reality. And then I will tell you to go; then I will tell you where to go, because just traveling anywhere is of no meaning.

And the tourists go on going to places wherever guides lead them; they will take you to the tourist places. Mm mm, so just wait. Let me be your guide, and when you are ready I will tell you to go. You will be here for one year so there is no hurry, mm? First be here, get in tune with things here, get ready. Learn the language, the language of the heart, the language of intuition little glimpses. Then you will be able to go and I will tell you where to go. 

Yes, hidden somewhere still, the undercurrent exists but it is no more apparent, it is no more on the surface. It has gone underground – it had to go underground. On the surface it will be killed and destroyed. It cannot survive there; it can survive only in hiding. So I will send you to the places where it is hiding, the real India, and then something will be of meaning, significance, and it will help your transformation....

The No Book

Osho