"You don't hanker for them, howsoever sweet they may have been, you don't even think about them. Just within two or three seconds you start forgetting, and after a few minutes it as if they had never existed at all. You don't cry because in your dream somebody died, and you don't feel very sad because in your dream you became bankrupt. Whatever has happened in the dream, the moment you wake up it becomes meaningless.

"So the false known as false is immediately no longer a problem. Now another problem arises which is far bigger, far more profound: the real remains. Up to now, because you were lost in the illusory you were not aware of the real. Suddenly you become aware of the real; now you have to come to terms with the real.

"The world remains outside – the same world, the same people, although your projections will not be there. You were thinking of somebody as immensely beautiful, somebody a great wise man, somebody the most religious person: if these were your projections, they will disappear, but the person whom you were thinking beautiful or religious or enlightened will remain. Now you will have to cope with his reality. And the only way to cope with reality is to create a tremendous harmony with the real. You cannot avoid it, it is inescapable, there is no way to disperse it.

"That which was dispersible, you have dispersed; almost ninety percent of your world will have disappeared, and this ninety percent was your projection. But ten percent is not your projection, and you have to be with it in total harmony.

"Ta Hui makes a very remarkable statement. Ordinarily to be in harmony means to go with, not to go against. But Ta Hui makes harmony something far deeper – neither to go with, nor to go against. Even in going with, there is some reluctance: you are still thinking of yourself as separate, that you are going with the current, you are no more fighting with the current. But you are there – and your very being is a resistance. The very idea that you are going with the current is enough of a disturbance in the harmony."