Can the ego be dropped progressively?

Question: BELOVED OSHO, YOU SAID THE EGO CAN BE DROPPED THIS VERY MOMENT. CAN THE EGO ALSO BE DROPPED PROGRESSIVELY? The dropping always happens in the moment and always in THIS moment. There is no progressive, gradual process for it. There cannot be. The happening is instantaneous. You can't get ready for it, you can't prepare for it, because whatsoever you do -- and I say whatsoever -- will strengthen the ego. Any gradual process will be an effort, something done on your part. So you will be strengthened more and more through it. You will become stronger. Everything gradual helps the ego. Only something absolutely non-gradual, something like a jump, not like a process, something discontinuous with the past, not in continuity with it -- only then the ego drops. The problem arises because we cannot understand what this ego is.

Osho, can there be an egoless program?

Yes, certainly there can be; it has nothing to do with ego. Ego is quite another matter. Ego is quite another matter. For example, we have decided that at five o’clock we will all sit with such-and-such preparations. In this, there is no question of the seeker’s being egoless; the only question is that the one who is to become the medium be egoless. And egolessness is not such a thing that you can sometimes be it and sometimes not. If it has happened, it has happened; if it hasn’t, it hasn’t—isn’t that so! If I am egoless, I am; if I am not, I am not. It is not that tomorrow morning at five I will become egoless. Do you understand what I am saying? How will I become? There is no method. If I am now, I will be at five as well—whether I make some arrangement or…

Before it comes into existence one lives moment to moment. Who cares to remember the past? So the child up to the third or fourth year remains spontaneous, wild, natural, outside society, on the fringe. It is a cultivated phenomenon, hence it can be dropped. If it were natural there would be no way to drop it. Because it is put together by society it can be easily dismantled. And that's what sannyas is all about, dismantling the ego. The process is painful because you have to become too attached to it. But once you understand that the ego is the root cause of all your misery, you are ready to go through the surgery. It is better to be finished with it in one stroke rather than to go on being miserable for your whole life.

Shibli was asked: `who guided you in the path?' shibli said: `a dog. One day I saw him, almost dead with thirst, standing by the water's edge. Every time he looked at his reflection in the water he was frightened and withdrew, because he thought it was another dog. `finally, such was his necessity, he cast away fear and leapt into the water; at which the reflection disappeared. `the dog found that the obstacle, which was himself, the barrier between him and what he sought, melted away. `in this same way, my own obstacle vanished when I knew that it was what I took to be my own self. And my way

because when you jump into the water, the mirrorlike river is no more mirrorlike. The reflection disappeared. The dog was no more there. And Shibli must have been watching, sitting by the bank, looking at this dog -- his fear, his continuous effort to go and then withdrawing again and again and again. He must have watched very keenly for what was going to happen. And then the dog jumped. The reflection disappeared. `THE DOG FOUND THAT THE OBSTACLE...' was not outside, it was he himself. The dog was not there in the water. The dog in the water was not preventing him, as he was thinking before. It was he himself `... WHICH WAS HIMSELF, THE BARRIER BETWEEN HIM AND WHAT HE SOUGHT, MELTED AWAY.' He was himself the barrier between his thirst and the water, his hunger and the satiety, his discontent and the contentment, his search and…

Osho, ego is the greatest obstacle to taking sannyas. How can it be removed? The ego-sense does not go.

Ego has no reality. Then how to define it? Understand ego in this way: when you look outward, there is ego; when you look inward, ego departs. Enter meditation; drop the very worry of fighting with ego. Fighting the ego is like someone fighting darkness—pushing at it, trying to throw it out. No, I say, light a lamp. Enter meditation, enter prayer; light the lamp—turn within. Close your eyes and begin to look inside—what is there? You will discover one thing: you will never find the ego. And where there is no ego, there is the Divine. The Divine is your true nature; ego is your delusion. As someone sees a rope and takes it for a snake—or sees a snake in a rope—so is ego: a mis-seeing. To see what is, as it is—that is God-experience. And certainly, ego is the greatest obstacle to taking sannyas. But sannyas is…