Is there a connection between the qualities of the invented self and the real self?

Beloved Osho, in your experience, is there any connection between the qualities of the invented self, and those of the real self? Is the ego like a shadow or a distortion of the authentic being; or is there a total discontinuity? Looking back, do you see any traces in the one you are now of the man you once were?

The ego is not a shadow of the self, because in even being a shadow it will have a certain reality, a certain connection with the real self. It is not a distortion of the real self either, because the self cannot be distorted; there is no possibility of that. The ego is simply false, a substitute created by society to give you a feeling that you have a center, that you have a self, that there is no need for any search -- you have already got it. To prevent you from reaching the real self, this is the most cunning device. It is completely made up -- from the very beginning, the child is being fed with things which will make its ego. They will appreciate you, they will say you are beautiful, you are good, you are nice -- but only when you don't assert your real…

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…

Question: BELOVED OSHO, AND WHAT IS IT BUT FRAGMENTS OF YOUR OWN SELF YOU WOULD DISCARD THAT YOU MAY BECOME FREE? IF IT IS AN UNJUST LAW YOU WOULD ABOLISH, THAT LAW WAS WRITTEN WITH YOUR OWN HAND UPON YOUR OWN FOREHEAD. YOU CANNOT ERASE IT BY BURNING YOUR LAW BOOKS NOR BY WASHING THE FOREHEADS OF YOUR JUDGES, THOUGH YOU POUR THE SEA UPON THEM. AND IF IT IS A DESPOT YOU WOULD DETHRONE, SEE FIRST THAT HIS THRONE ERECTED WITHIN YOU IS DESTROYED. FOR HOW CAN A TYRANT RULE THE FREE AND THE PROUD, BUT FOR A TYRANNY IN THEIR OWN FREEDOM AND A SHAME IN THEIR OWN PRIDE? AND IF IT IS A CARE YOU WOULD CAST OFF, THAT CARE HAS BEEN CHOSEN BY YOU RATHER THAN IMPOSED UPON YOU.

These four (truth, knowledge, infinity and bliss) are the characteristics, and that which is changeless, in spite of symbolic objects like space, time, et cetera, is called tat or that, which is the equivalent of paramatma or the supreme self.

Then there are so-called teachers who will say, "Be humble. Be egoless" -- and then we begin to cultivate humility. With the ego on the throne, we begin to cultivate humility; then the ego takes on the garb of humility. And really, it is difficult to find a more egoist person than the so-called humble one. So what to do now? I feel it as a necessity: ego has to be developed. As far as the child is concerned, ego has to be developed -- it is a necessary evil. It has to be developed, but a moment comes where it becomes useless. The moment you are mature, the moment you are conscious, the moment you are alert, grown-up, you need not have the ego -- you can step beyond it. One has to be on the step of the ego, and then one has to step out of it.…

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…