How can my real suffering be caused by something that does not exist?

You said we suffer because of the ego. And then you also say that the ego does not exist. My suffering is real. How can it be caused by something that is not real, that doesn't exist?

YOU can suffer in a dream, you can suffer in a nightmare. While it lasts, to all practical purposes, it appears real. But when you awake, then you know it was not real, and even then you know that you had suffered. You may still be perspiring, you may still be trembling because of the nightmare. Your heart may still be beating faster than usual. Awake, you know that it was just a dream, but still you suffered. Not only that, but even now when you are awake, there is a hang-over. The after-effects are still continuing. You suffer from an ego which does not exist. In fact, you suffer because it does not exist and you go on believing that it exists. If you believe in something which is not, you are bound to suffer because you will try in every possible way to feel that it exists. But…

Osho, there is no reason for the ego to be, and yet why is there ego?

Chuang Tzu was passing by a cemetery. It was evening; darkness was falling. His foot struck a skull lying there. He immediately knelt and folded his hands. His disciples were startled. Chuang Tzu was an enlightened man. What is he doing—has he gone mad? But the disciples stood silently, watching. He offered a long prayer. He said to the skull, Forgive me! You are not an ordinary skull, because I know for certain this is a cemetery of the great. Here only kings, high priests, mahatmas are buried. You must be the skull of some great saint or king. It is sheer coincidence that today you have no skin on the outside and the drum of ego is not beating within; otherwise I would have been in trouble. It is sheer coincidence that I have been spared. Life saved and a fortune made… If the drum of ego were beating…

Beloved Osho, I come from a family where there are four suicides on the maternal side, including my grandmother. How does this affect one's death? What helps to overcome this perversion of death which runs as a theme through the family?

Heidegger has said: "Death isolates me and makes of me an individual." It is my death, not that of the multitude to which I belong. Each of us dies his own death; death cannot be repeated. I can sit an examination twice, or thrice; compare my second marriage with my first, and so on and so forth. I die only once. I can get married as many times as I like, I can change my jobs as many times as I like, I can change my town as many times as I like... but I die only once. Death is so challenging because it is at once certain and uncertain. That it will come is certain, when it will do so is uncertain. Hence there is great curiosity about death, about what it is. One wants to know about it. And there is nothing morbid about this contemplation of death.…

Osho, according to what you say and what all enlightened ones say, the ego has no existence—and yet you tell us to witness the ego! Please kindly help us understand this baffling riddle.

To live through that moment is tapascharya, spiritual austerity. It is a great austerity when you have absolutely no sense of who you are. When all the palaces built by your concepts have collapsed, when you stand in dense darkness, in emptiness, with not a single ray of light about who you are—the Christian mystics have aptly named this the Dark Night of the Soul. And only after this dark night does the dawn come. Whoever is afraid to pass through it never reaches the morning. So first the false notions have to be dropped, false identifications abandoned. A time will come when you will forget who you are; it will be a state like madness. If you are courageous and pass through this, then another time will come when the morning sun rises; for the first time you will know who you are. When it is revealed to you…

Beloved Osho, why is there an ego? It seems so absolutely meaningless, and not necessary at all -- non-existent actually. Do you know?

I do not know, because I don't have any ego. To know it one has to have it. I have looked within myself, searched within myself; I have not found it anywhere. And your question is strange. You say, "The ego is non-existent." Then why are you asking questions about things which don't exist? No, it is not non-existent for you, hence the question. Don't try to deceive yourself. You say, "It is meaningless, it serves no purpose." That is not right. It serves great purpose. The purpose of the ego is to give you a false self -- because the society, the religion, the country, the race in which you are born, does not want you to know your real self. That is dangerous, because the person who finds his real self is a rebel -- and all the religions teach obedience. What was the fault of Adam and…