No, Tilopa cannot mean that you renounce the world and go to the mountains. He is not so foolish. He cannot mean it; he is an awakened man. What he means is this: he says if you renounce the dreams, the bridges, and the relationships, not the relations; if you renounce your mind, suddenly you are in the woods and in the mountains. You may be sitting in the market but the market has disappeared. You may be sitting in your house; the house has disappeared. Suddenly you are in the woods and in the mountains. Suddenly you are alone. Only you are there, nobody else.
You can be in the crowd and alone, and you can be alone and in the crowd. You can be in the world and not of the world. You can be in the world, but you belong to the mountains and the woods.
This is an inner phenomenon. There are inner mountains and inner woods, and Tilopa cannot say anything about the outer mountains and woods, because they are also dreams. A Himalaya is as much a dream as the marketplace in Pune, because a Himalaya is as outer a phenomenon as the marketplace is. The woods are also a dream. You have to come to the inner; the reality is there. You have to move deeper and deeper, into the depths of your being, then you will come to the real Himalayas, then you will come to the real woods of your being, peaks and valleys of your being, heights and depths of your being. Tilopa means that.
- Osho (Tantra: The Supreme Understanding)
Medium: Oil colours on Canvas