Will we recognize our original face, when we encounter it?
Maneesha, encountering the original face simply means realizing what is real and what is reflection.
You become a reflection when you see the real. It is just like standing before a mirror. It seems you are standing in the mirror. When you realize the fact that you are standing outside the mirror – in the mirror is only the reflection and the reflection is not a truth – then you encounter your original self.
Suddenly you realize that up to now you have lived a false face, this is your original face.
Up to now you have been living as a reflection, a shadow, an unreality. You disappear, only the original face remains. Your question is logical, relevant, because how will you recognize that this is your original face? You will not be there. You will disappear as the original face appears; you will not have to recognize it; you will not be there at all. The original face itself will know that up to now a false personality has been representing you.
Now the false has disappeared and only the truth remains. There is no question of recognizing. You are the false, how can you recognize? When the real comes, the false disappears: they never meet.
This is the fear of searching for oneself; because the moment you find yourself, the way you know yourself now will disappear like a shadow, as if it had never been – just a dream.
I have told you… A drunkard had been fighting in the pub, and had got many scratches on his face. He came home very much afraid of his wife. So very silently, taking his shoes in his hands, he entered into the room, went into the bathroom, looked at his face and said, “My God! So many scratches! How am I going to hide them? In the morning she will find out.”
So he tried somehow to cover up. He could not find anything else but the lipstick of his wife. So he covered his scratches with the lipstick and went back silently to bed. In the early morning his wife shouted from the bathroom, “Who has tried to make a painting with my lipstick on the mirror?”
That drunk had thought that he was putting it on his face, but he was putting it on the mirror because there was the face. He could not see his own face!
We are almost in exactly the same situation. When the original appears, we will suddenly see the false going away. They never meet so there is no question of recognition.
-Osho
From Nansen: The Point of Departure, Discourse #10
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Sat Sangha Salon 