Osho states, “Ego is a false notion of something which is not there at all. ‘Self’ means a center which can promise. This center is created by being continuously aware, constantly aware.”
Maulungputra, a seeker of Truth, came to Buddha.
Buddha asked him, “What are you seeking?”
Maulungputra said, “I am seeking my Self. Help me!”
Buddha asked him to give a promise that whatsoever was said would be done by him. Maulungputra began to weep and he said, “How can I promise? ‘I’ am not. ‘I’ am yet not. How can I promise? I do not know what I am going to be tomorrow. I do not have any Self which can promise, so do not ask me the impossible. I will try. I can say this much at the most: I will try. But I cannot say that whatsoever you say I will do, because who will do it? I am seeking that which can promise and which can fulfill a promise. ‘I’ am yet not.”
Buddha said, “Maulungputra, to hear this I asked you that question. If you had promised, I would have turned you out. Had you said, ‘I promise that I will do it,’ then I would have known that you are not really a seeker for the Self, because a seeker must know that ‘he’ is yet not. Otherwise, what is the purpose of seeking? If you are already, there is no need. You are not! And if one can feel this, then the ego evaporates.”
Ego is a false notion of something which is not there at all. ‘Self’ means a center which can promise. This center is created by being continuously aware, constantly aware. Be aware that you are doing something – that you are sitting, that now you are going to sleep, that now sleep is coming to you, that you are falling. Try to be conscious in every moment, and then you will begin to feel that a center is born within you, things have begun to crystallize, a centering is there. Everything now is related to a center.
Osho, The Ultimate Alchemy – Discourses on the Atma Pooja Upanishad, Vol 2, Ch 1
Series compiled by Shanti
All excerpts of this series can be found in: 1001 Tales
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