Whether you go out of your home into the world… it is the same door you open; or you come into the home… it is the same door again you have to open. The door is not different; your direction is just different.
When you are moving inwards — that's what is happening to you — the outside world is going farther and farther away from you. The doors are open, but your back is towards the outside world and your face is towards the inner. You are more ready to listen to the smallest sound inside than to all the noise outside. It is simply shifting your gear from outside to inside.
You have a reverse gear in your consciousness, but you have not used it. You have always been going out, out, out, with as much speed as possible — not knowing where, but one thing is certain: you are going with really great speed.
Once you understand that there is a possibility of going inwards too, that you can go to yourself, then the whole world is left far behind. Then the noise of the world will not reach you.
It is not that the doors are closed. It is simply the depth of your own being. The silence is so much that it is capable of absorbing all kinds of noise; it will not be disturbed.
What is happening, allow it to happen. Don't interfere. If you can help it, help. If not, then at least don't interfere. It is happening on its own. Soon you will start enjoying the flowers that grow only in the innermost core of your being, the fragrances that are only of the inner.
And when you are at the very center of your being, there is no world outside. That has all gone so far away that the mystics have thought that it is an illusion, it is a dream.
It is not a dream; that is not true, it is not illusory. The world is real. But the mystic's feeling is also very authentic. His feeling that the world is illusory, maya, is because when he is centered in himself, the whole world disappears as if it has never been there — just the way you wake up in the morning and the dreams and the whole world of dreams disappears.
That's why all the mystics of the world have agreed on one point, that the world is illusory. I do not agree with them. The world is not illusory, the world is very much real. Still, what the mystics say is an authentic feeling.
The world goes so far away and you are so much immersed in silence and peace that as far as you are concerned, the world is almost illusory. But remember, I'm saying "almost illusory."
I teach a scientific mysticism. The old mysticism is one-sided: it takes account of the inner and condemns the outer as illusory. I don't say that the outer is illusory; neither do I agree with the materialist who says the inner is illusory. The inner is as real as the outer. But the materialist has a point — absorbed in materialism, the inner is so far away it is almost illusory.
To a scientific approach, both are real. The inner and outer are two aspects of the same coin. But the trouble is, you can see only one side of the coin at one time. When you see the other side of the coin, then the first side has disappeared, seems to be illusory. When you move around and come to the first side, the second side has become illusory. There is no way of seeing the coin with both sides together simultaneously.
But it does not mean that one side is illusory. Because if one side is illusory, then the other side cannot be real. Either both are unreal or both are real. And both cannot be unreal. The only possibility is both are real.
OSHO