Let the Ego go

Others gave you the idea, and the idea is ego. Try to understand it as deeply as possible, because the ego has to be thrown away. And unless you throw it you will never be able to attain to the self. Because you are addicted to the center, you cannot move, and you cannot look at the self. Remember, there is going to be an interim period, an interval, when the ego will be shattered, when you will not know who you are, when you will not know where you are going, when all boundaries will melt. You will simply be confused, a chaos. Because of this chaos, you are afraid to lose the ego. But it has to be so. One has to pass through the chaos before one attains to the real center. If you are afraid, and you fall back to the ego, and you again start arranging it, then it can be very, very long and time can be wasted.

A four year old child was visiting his grandparents and at night, when the grandmother was putting him to sleep, he suddenly started crying and weeping and said, "I want to go home. I am afraid of the dark." But the grandmother said, "I know well that at home you also have darkness. So why are you afraid here?" The boy said, "Yes, that's right - but that is MY darkness." This darkness is completely unknown. So even with darkness one feel, "This is MINE." Outside - an unknown darkness. With the ego you feel, "This is MY darkness."

It may be troublesome, maybe it creates many miseries, but its still mine. Something to hold to, something to cling to, something underneath the feet; you are not in a vacuum, not in an emptiness. You may be miserable, but at least you ARE. Even being miserable gives you a feeling of 'I am'. Moving from it, fear takes over; you start feeling afraid of the unknown darkness and chaos - because society has managed to clear a small part of your being. It is just like going to a forest. You make a little clearing, you clear a little ground; you make fencing, you make a small hut; you make a small garden, a lawn, and you are okay. Beyond your fence - the forest, the wild. Here everything is okay; you have planned everything. This is how it has happened.

Society has made a little clearing in your consciousness. It has cleaned just a little part completely, fenced it. Everything is okay there. That's what all your universities are doing. The whole culture and conditioning is just to clear a part so that you can feel at home there and then you become afraid. Beyond the fence there is danger. Beyond the fence you are, as within the fence you are - and your conscious mind is just one part, one-tenth of your whole being. Nine-tenths is waiting in the darkness. And in that nine-tenths, somewhere your real center is hidden.