Can the ego commit suicide?

Can the ego commit suicide?

NO, BECAUSE IT IS NOT. To commit suicide it is needed to be there. Let me put it in another way: can a shadow commit suicide? A shadow cannot commit suicide because a shadow doesn't exist. If you commit suicide, if you cut off your head, then the shadow will be without a head. It simply follows you. The ego is just a shadow, it cannot commit suicide. If you cut off your head, the ego commits suicide -- not that it commits, it happens. Try to understand that the ego is not substantial; the ego is just like a shadow. The body moves -- a shadow is created, a physical shadow; the mind moves -- a mental shadow is created. That mental shadow is the ego. When the mind stops there is no ego, when the mind is not functioning there is no ego. When the mind is functioning…

Osho, does the ego have some elixir of life? Even on the verge of dying it seems to revive—who knows from where, how, and why?

Haven’t you seen that the harder it is to obtain the woman you fall in love with, the more your love seems to grow? Had Majnu got his Laila, you would never even have heard his name. The whole crux of the Majnu-Laila story is that he never got her. Quite possibly, had he got her, they would have ended in divorce. Stories proceed in strange ways. Because he did not get her, he kept weeping, aching, wandering deserts and mountains, calling “Laila, Laila!” Have you ever seen any husband doing that? Ask a husband and perhaps he hasn’t even properly looked at his wife’s face in twenty years. You too are a husband or a wife—try this: close your eyes and try to recall your spouse’s face. You will find it difficult. The faces of film actresses will come, but your wife’s face will not come clearly. And if…

Can the mind commit suicide?

THE MIND CANNOT COMMIT SUICIDE, because whatsoever the mind can do will strengthen the mind. Any doing on the part of the mind makes the mind more strong. So suicide is impossible. Mind doing something means mind continuing itself -- so that is not in the nature of things. But suicide happens. Mind cannot commit it -- mm? -- let me make it absolutely clear: mind cannot commit it, but suicide happens. It happens through watching the mind, not by doing anything. The watcher is separate from the mind, it is deeper than the mind, higher than the mind. The watcher is always hidden behind the mind. A thought passes, a feeling arises -- who is watching this thought? Not the mind itself -- because mind is nothing but the process of thought and feeling. The mind is just the traffic of thinking. Who is watching it? When you say,…

How to sacrifice the ego?

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE. THE EGO CANNOT BE SACRIFICED because the ego exists not. The ego is just all idea: it has no substance in it. It is not something -- it is just pure nothing. You give it reality by believing in it. You can withdraw belief and the reality disappears, evaporates. The ego is a kind of absence. Because you don't know yourself, hence the ego. The moment you know yourself, no ego is found. The ego is like darkness; darkness has no positive existence of its own; it ii simply the absence of light. You cannot fight with darkness, or can you? You cannot throw darkness out of the room; you cannot take it out, you cannot take it in. You cannot do anything with darkness directly. If you want to do anything with darkness, you will have to do something with light. If you put the light…

Question: OSHO! KILL ME, O LORD, KILL ME! KILL ME, I CRAVE DEATH. KILL THAT DEATH OSHO DIED AND SAW. I AM SUCH A STONE, I CAN NOT COMPLETELY MELT. I AM UPSET. WHAT SHOULD I DO? How does the ego die? The ego dies by accepting what you are. You say, I am fine as I am, where I am is good. I remain just as god made me. Whatever his will is, is my will. If you let go of tension for the future -- this should be, that should be -- the ego is gone. The ego lives on a foundation of past and future. Consider the fact a little. The ego claims that in the past I did this, I did that: it is all past. And ego says I will go on doing it, I will do it and show you. It is all future.