Ego

 

 

Let me tell you first what ego is. Everybody is born without the ego. When a child is born, he is simply consciousness: floating, flowing, lucid, innocent, virgin -- no ego exists. By and by, the ego is created by others. The ego is the accumulated effect of others' opinions about you. Somebody comes, a neighbor, and says,'How beautiful a child,' and looks at the child with a very appreciative look. Now the ego starts functioning. Somebody smiles, somebody does not smile; sometimes the mother is very loving, sometimes she is very angry; and the child is learning that he is not accepted as he is. His being is not accepted unconditionally; there are conditions arouncl. If he cries and weeps and visitors are there in the house, then the mother is very angry. If he cries and weeps and there is no visitor, the mother doesn't bother. If he does not cry and weep, the mother always awards with a loving kiss and caress. When the visitors are there, if he can keep quiet and silent, the mother is tremendously happy and awarding. He is learning others' opinions about himself; he is looking into the mirror of relationship.

You cannot see your face directly. You have to look in a mirror and in the mirror you can recognize your face. That reflection becomes your idea of your face, and there are a thousand and one mirrors all around you -- they all reflect. Somebody loves you, somebody hates you, somebody is indifferent. And then, by and by, the child grows and goes on accumulating the opinions of others. The total essence of the opinions of others is the ego. Then he starts looking at himself the way others look at him. Then he starts looking at himself from the outside -- that s what ego is. If people appreciate and applaud, then he thinks that he is perfectly beautiful, accepted. If people don't applaud and don't appreciate, but reject, he feels condemned. Then he goes on seeking ways and means to be appreciated, to be assured again and again that he is worthy, that he has a worth, a meaning and significance. Then one becomes afraid to be oneself. One has to fit with the opinion of others.

If you drop the ego, suddenly you become a child again. Now you are not worried about what others think about you, now you don't pay any attention to what others say about you. You are not concerned, not even a bit. Now you have dropped the mirror. It is pointless - you have your face, why ask the mirror? And there are many types of mirrors: some make your face look long, some make your face look big, some make your face look small, some make your face look horrible, distorted.

Don't ask the mirror, because then the quality of the glass will always be there in the reflection. And there are millions of mirrors all around you, millions of relationships, and you go on gathering. That's why ego is always inconsistent. It is a crowd; it is a heap with no inner coherence. Somebody says that you are beautiful, then somebody says that you are just homely. Somebody says,'You? -- and beautiful? You make me feel horrible, terrible. You are nauseating. You? -- and beautiful? You are a nausea. I feel like vomiting whenever I see you.' Now what to do? You collect all these opinions -- inconsistent, contradicting each other -- and they all become part of your ego.

Ego is a crowd. It is a marketplace because you have gathered it in the marketplace, because you have gathered it from the crowd. It is not you, it is others' opinions about you. Why be bothered? Drop all opinions of others about you. Why not be direct and immediate? Why not see within yourself, in your own nature? Why not face yourself? Why bring a mediator, a mirror into it? When you start looking into your own nature with closed eyes, you are moving beyond the ego. And once you know who you are -- even a slight glimpse -- then you will start laughing at the whole ridiculousness of it: that you were asking others who you are. They don't know themselves who they are, so why ask them? You become free; a freedom is attained. Without the ego, you come back to your own nature.

 

-Osho, "Come Follow To You, Vol 4, #3"