What happens to the sense of self when one feels like a nobody?

Question: BELOVED OSHO, I AM AFRAID OF BEING NOBODY. WOULD YOU PLEASE COMMEND? Shunyam Anukant, everybody is afraid of being nobody. Only very rare and extraordinary people are not afraid of being nobody. A Gautam Buddha is needed to be a nobody. A Nobody is not an ordinary phenomenon; it is one of the greatest experiences in life -- that you are and still you are not, that you are just pure existence with no name, with no address, with no boundaries... neither a sinner nor a saint, neither inferior nor superior, just a silence. People are afraid because their whole personality will be gone; their name, their fame, their respectability, all will be gone; hence, the fear. But death is going to take them away from you anyway. Those who are wise allow these things to drop by themselves. Then nothing is left for death to take away.

Not only in meditation but in routine life also, I constantly feel a oneness with the existence, egolessness, timelessness. Yet I feel myself ordinary. And I do not find in me the total transformation about which you talk very often.

When you are somebody, you become a rock, you disturb the flow -- life cannot move through you. There is a struggle, a resistance, and of course you create much noise. And you may think that because you are creating so much noise that you are something extraordinary. Be an empty vessel, passage, with no resistance, so that life can flow through it, flow through it easily. Then no noise will be created. You may not be able to feel that you are, because you only feel that you are when you fight. The more you fight, the more you feel. Life flows so smoothly through you that you may even completely forget that you exist. There is no barrier, no resistance, no rejection, no negation. And you are so welcoming that you even forget that you are. It was heard about one Zen master that he would call his…

Osho, what is the fundamental anguish of human life?

There is only one anguish: that a human being cannot become what he was born to be. There is only one anguish: that the seed remains a seed and does not bloom like a flower; that it cannot scatter its fragrance to the infinite winds; cannot converse with the moon and stars; cannot offer its colors to the sky; cannot be expressed. If the poem within the poet cannot be revealed—anguish. If the painter cannot paint—anguish. If the dancer cannot dance—if chains lie on his feet—anguish. Anguish means only this: that what we are meant to be—our innate nature and destiny—does not come to fruition, and we are forced to be something else. Then anguish is born. Then melancholy gathers over life. And all those countless people you see burdened with sorrow, living in a kind of hell—the reason is only this: each has come carrying the seed of becoming…

Beloved Osho, lately I find that I am desperately trying to find or do or learn something in order to give myself an identity, knowing perfectly well that this is a trap of the mind. Why is it so painful and shocking to not have any identity, to be nobody?

The psychology of the crowd is the problem. Your whole upbringing teaches you to be identified as a certain personality. Nobody is worried about who you are; everybody is putting different labels on you. And that is a very easy job, because the search for your own self can be done only by you; nobody else can do it on your behalf. The child comes into the world utterly innocent, a blank sheet of paper. He does not know even his own signature. We have to teach him his name, which is a fiction; and with this fiction every individual starts as a novel. One fiction leads to another. The whole life becomes fictitious, and we have to cling to it because that's all we have got. Otherwise, there is utter emptiness, nothingness, abysmal. We will be lost. A story will help you.... A man had lost his way in…

Beloved Osho, I have hoped to become more sure of myself, stronger and more relaxed through meditation. On the contrary, although I am less anxious, I feel more and more empty, uncertain and vulnerable. Why does this happen?

Every desire leads not to the goal it has promised you; it leads to just the opposite of it. You want to be special? you have already accepted your ordinariness. One who is special does not want to be special; he's not even aware that he is special. Whatever you want, one thing is certain: you are not that. And from where are these desires and wants coming? -- imitation. All around, you see people: somebody is so rich, somebody is so intellectual, somebody is a wrestler, somebody is a boxer. And you are nothing -- it hurts. It hurts because of your wrong conceptions about life. So you have to note down a few things in your being: one, you cannot be anybody other than who you are. If you try to be somebody other than who you are, you will never be somebody else, but you will miss…