How can I prepare myself for losing my ego?

Osho, I understand that none of your disciples have yet achieved. How can I consider the idealism of preparing myself for losing my ego better than the idealism of which you spoke today?

You would like to suffer rather than not be. This is the problem. ou would like to be in hell rather than not be. At least one is. If these are the two alternatives for you: one that you disappear, and the other that you live eternally in hell, just think -- and you will choose hell. 'At least I will be there. But this utter disappearance? This complete non-being?...' That's what Buddha means when he says nirvana. He says consciously choose non-being; only then will you be able to drop the ego. That's what I mean when I go on praising the beauties of ecstasy... the blissfulness, the benediction of enlightenment. I am trying to create a situation in which nonbeing can be chosen. Not to be is the most beautiful moment. Buddha called it anatta,: non-being. He dropped the old word, atma, the self. He used the contrary…

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…

Osho, do I have to forget myself to lose my ego?

Eva, IT IS NOT A QUESTION OF FORGETTING YOURSELF -- on the contrary, it is a question of remembering yourself.What is the ego? Ego exists because you have forgotten yourself, because you don't remember who you are. And it is very difficult to live without SOME idea of who you are. Not knowing the reality of your being, you have to create a false substitute. What is the ego? Ego is the false substitute that you have created for the self. It is not your self, but it is very difficult to live without a self -- it will be almost impossible to live without a self some kind of self is needed, is a must; otherwise, how will you keep yourself together? You will start falling apart. Even if the center is false, it helps you. Even a false center keeps you at least somehow together. You have forgotten…

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.

Beloved Osho, I feel that through developing an attitude of endurance towards difficulties, I have become resigned to much of life. This resignation feels like a weight pushing against my effort to become more alive in meditation. Does this mean that I have suppressed my ego, and that I must find it again before I can really lose it?

If you are simply ignorant because you never attained to any knowledge, your ignorance cannot be wise, it cannot be wisdom -- it is simply absence of knowledge. And the hankering will be inside: How to gain more knowledge? How to gain more information? When you know too much -- you have known the scriptures, you have known the past, the tradition, you have known all that can be known -- then suddenly you become aware of the futility of it all, suddenly you become aware that this is not knowledge. This is borrowed! This is not your own existential experience, this is not what you have come to know. Others may have known it, you have simply gathered it. Your gathering is mechanical. It has not arisen out of you, it is not a growth. It is just rubbish gathered from other doors, borrowed, dead. Remember, knowing is alive…