“Everybody has made a palace of the ego. Everybody is too full of it.”
Whenever you are awake, you become a space. Because whenever you are awake you are not filled with the ego. You are an empty space, a valley, a low ground. It rushes. It fills you.
I have heard:
A very rich man asked a Hassidic Master to come to his palace. The palace was tremendously valuable. It was unique. It was full of valuable things: paintings, carpets, antiques, furniture of every kind and of every age.
The rich man took the Hassidic Master from one room to another. They moved around for hours and hours; the palace was vast. The rich man was bragging very much. He was feeling very deeply contented in his ego.
When the whole palace was shown to the Hassidic Master, the rich man said, ‘Now tell me, what is your impression?’
The Hassid said, ‘The fact that the earth is strong enough to carry the burden of such a massive palace, plus you – this has impressed me tremendously.’
Plus you!
Everybody has made a palace of the ego. Everybody is too full of it. Once you become awake, ego disappears; ego is the sleep. To feel ‘I am’ is to be sleepy. Suddenly to be without any feeling of ‘I am’ is to be awake. To be without any ‘I am’ is an opening.
To feel ‘I am’ is a closed monad-like phenomenon; it has no windows, no openings. You live in a cocoon, dead inside.
Once you are awake, you become empty. You become a nothingness, a nobody. God rushes to you from all directions; he comes and fills you.
Osho, The True Sage: Talks on Hassidism, Ch 7 (excerpt)
Series compiled by Shanti
All excerpts of this series can be found in: 1001 Tales
Featured image by Dorian Mongel on Unsplash
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