'Schmuck' is a Yiddish word, a very beautiful word. It has two meanings, and very relevant meanings. One meaning is 'the idiot'; another meaning, in the beginning looks very far-fetched, means the male genital organ. But in a way both meanings are very deeply related. Idiots live only as sexual beings -- they don't know any other life. So 'schmuck' is beautiful. If a person has known only sex as life, he is stupid, he is an idiot.
Now, people were saying, "Look at that idiot on the camel!" but the man thinks they were talking about the male genital organ of the camel, not about him.
The ego is very deceptive. It goes on hearing what it wants to hear. It goes on interpreting what it wants to interpret. It never sees the fact. It never allows the fact to reveal itself to you. People who live in the ego live behind curtains. And those curtains are not inactive -- they are active curtains. Whatsoever passes through the curtain, the curtain changes it.
People go on living in a mental world of their own creation. Ego is the center of their world, of the false world -- call it 'illusion', 'maya' -- and around the ego they go on creating a world... which is nobody else's world. Only they live in that world.
When you drop the ego, you drop a whole world that you have created around it. For the first time you are able to see things as they are -- not as you would like them to be. And when you are capable of knowing the facts of life, you become capable of knowing the truth.
The facility of life is the first step towards truth. And ego is the most falsifying agent.
-Osho, "A Sudden Clash of Thunder, #5"