How the ego exists

The ego can exist only when it fights. The ego can exist only when there is resistance. The ego can exist only when you have some private goal against the whole. Try to understand this, how the ego exists. People come to me and they say, "We would like to drop the ego," and I tell them, "If you like to drop the ego you cannot drop it, because who are you to drop? Who is this who is saying,'I would like to drop?' This is the ego. Now you are fighting with your ego also."

You may pretend to become humble, you may force humility on yourself, but the ego will exist. You may have been a king, now you may become a beggar, but the ego will exist. It existed as a king: now it will exist as a humble beggar. Your very way of walking -- seeing will show it. The way you will move -- you will announce it. The way you will talk -- you will announce it. You may say, " I am the most humble man in the world," that makes no difference. Before, you were the greatest man in the world, now you are the humblest -- but you are extraordinary. You are there.

If you start fighting with the ego you will create a subtler ego which is more dangerous, because that subtler ego will be a pious ego. It will pretend to be religious. In the beginning it was at least this-worldly, now it will be that-worldly -- greater, powerful, subtle -- and the grip will be more dangerous, and it will be difficult to come out of it. You have moved from a smaller danger to a greater one. You are more in the trap. The prison has closed upon you, even in a stronger way.

All control belongs to the ego; otherwise who will control? Ego is the controller, the manipulator. If you understand this, ego will disappear -- there is no need to drop it.

You cannot drop an illusion, you can only drop a reality -- and ego is not real. You cannot drop maya. Illusions cannot be dropped because, in the first place, they are not. You have only to understand, and then they disappear. A dream cannot be dropped. You have just to become aware that this is a dream, and the dream disappears. The ego is the subtlest dream: the dream that I am separate from existence, the dream that I have to achieve some goals against the whole, the dream that I am an individual. The moment you become alert, the dream disappears.

You cannot be against the whole, because you are part of the whole. There is no way to go against the whole. There is only one way: to be with the whole.

Even when you are fighting you cannot go against -- that is just your imagination. Even when you think that you are moving against the whole or separate from the whole or you have a different dimension of your own, that is just a dream; you cannot do that. It is just like a ripple on the lake thinking to go against the lake: absolutely stupid -- not the least possibility there of it ever happening. How can a ripple on the lake move somewhere on its own? It will remain part of the lake. If it is moving somewhere it must be the will of the lake, that's how it is moving.

When one understands, one knows. One starts laughing that "I was in a great dream -- now the dream has disappeared. I am no more. I was the dream and the dreamer, both. Now the whole exists."

There are people in the world who are fighting with others in deep competition -- in business, in politics, this and that. Then they become tired. If they are a little intelligent, they are bound to become tired. Then they start fighting with their own ego, which is the cover. One day that cover also disappears, then there is nothing to fight. Once there is nothing to fight, it becomes impossible for the ego to move even an inch, because the whole training of the ego is to fight with somebody -- either somebody else or your own ego, but fight. When there is nothing to fight, the hindrance no more, one stops. There is nowhere to go now...

[Osho - 'Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega']