Chapter Eight:
Beloved Master,
I feel that by developing an attitude of endurance towards difficulties, I am being resigned to a lot of life. This resignation feeling, is acting as a weight which is pushing against my efforts to become more alive in my meditation. Does this mean that my ego is being suppressed? And in order to overcome it, must I find it again?
I can say that this is one of the greatest problems. Before you can lose the ego, you must attain it first. You must understand this: only a ripe fruit can fall from a tree to the ground. In the same way, an unripe ego cannot be dropped. So your efforts to drop the ego; this struggle which you are feeling is of no use.
The ego must reach its peak, it must become strong, only then can you dissolve it. A weak ego cannot be dissolved. And this becomes a problem.
We have continuously been taught, we have continuously heard to be against the ego. And because of this attitude, the ego never becomes strong. Now this is both a good thing, as well as a bad thing. The good thing is that a person with a smaller ego will be much more pleasant to talk with compared to a person with a larger one! The bad thing is that it will be harder to drop.
The ego like many other things will become its largest right before it disappears. It is just like a candle light. Right before the flame goes out; it flickers to its largest and then only goes out. The ego works in the same way. It must reach its heights before dissolving.
This is why, when you are here, you will experience many ups and downs in your emotions. And your emotions are controlled by the ego. So your ego is going through many fluctuations.
We have been taught to reject the ego. And instead of trying to overcome it, we start suppressing it. We try to hide it and through this, hypocrisy starts. You have the ego inside you and you try to hide it through showing yourself humble on the outside. Be very clear: this surface humbleness cannot deceive anyone. It will deceive only you, but no one else. This kind of a thing is nothing more than a self deception. This happens when you try to drop the unripe ego.
Now, this whole thing may appear very contradictory. You will be wondering why I am telling you to strengthen the ego. See, I am telling you to stop trying to drop the ego because as of now, it is an unripe ego. When the ego becomes ripe, it will drop you.
Life is full of contradictions. Here I am telling you to be egoists so that you can become egoless. I am not telling you to hide it because then it will become a hypocrisy. And there is no need to fight with the unripe ego. Let it ripen; bring it to its peak! When the ego is brought to its peak, only then you will understand the disturbance which it is creating.
When it is brought to its peak you will not need anyone one to tell you that it is a disturbance, you will come to understand yourself.
A small story:
A Master and his disciple were sitting together and talking. The Master pointed to a big stone and asked his disciple to tell him whether it was inside or outside of his mind. The disciple replied, 'Our Vedic teachings tell us that everything is a projection of the mind. So the stone must be inside my mind.'
The Master then remarked, 'Don't you get tired of carrying such a heavy weight?'
So in order to drop this weight, you must first make it heavy enough to drop. You must first realize the heaviness of it for yourself. And when you realize this weight, it will be difficult to carry on in the same way. You will simply have to drop it!
You become fed up with the ego, and when it reaches its peak, you suddenly begin to see the falsity of the whole thing. Everything you have been doing, the way in which you have been living will seem pseudo. You will see that you have never been at your center. You will see that you have never lived in reality.
Once a person can realize that he is not at his center, he will also realize that there is no center. The whole of Existence is the center. Existence exists as a totality. It exists as one big center.
Life is just like a dream. If a dream comes to its peak, you suddenly wake up. Whenever the dream reaches its climax, you are awakened. Right when you feel that the dream has become real, the so- called reality is broken. And it can never become real because it is a dream!
The ego is the greatest dream. Just as you are awakened in a dream when you have reached its peak, you will be awakened when you reach the peak of the ego.
You must understand one thing: as long as you think that you have dropped the ego, be very clear that it is still there. If the ego is no more, there is no you at all. So who is there to drop the ego? As long as the idea of you exists, understand that the ego is there.
When you think that you have dropped the ego, the ego is only playing a different game with you. Now it is playing a cunning game with you. Now it is creating the illusion that you have dropped it. Just see what is happening! The illusion is creating one more illusion!
If you are unconscious of the ego, it will manipulate you. If you can be conscious of it, it will be just a game. See, there is nothing wrong with the game. It is only when you forget that it is a game that it becomes a problem.
Become aware of the game. Become aware of the path that the game is traveling. The rest will be taken care.