Why do I identify with my body and ego, and what prevents me from seeing through the eyes of other beings?

5. Lack of awareness is taking the transient for the eternal, the impure for the pure, the painful as pleasurable and the non-self for the self. 6. Egoism is the identification of the seer with the seen.

7. ATTRACTION, AND THROUGH IT, ATTACHMENT, IS TOWARDS ANYTHING THAT BRINGS PLEASURE. 8. REPULSION IS FROM ANYTHING THAT CAUSES PAIN. A sutra means a seed. It has to be worked from many, many dimensions, then it will become a tree of understanding in you. A sutra is a very condensed message. It had to be so in those days because when Patanjali created Yoga Sutras, there was no writing. They had to be memorized. In those days you could not write big books, just sutras. Sutra means an aphorism, just a seed-like thing which can be memorized easily. And for thousands of years the sutras were memorized by disciples, and then their disciples. Only after thousands of years were they written, when writing came into existence. A sutra has to be telegraphic; you cannot use many words, you have to use the minimum. So whenever you want to understand a…

Osho, I want to be happy. Whatever I do, I do it in the hope of being happy. Now I have come to practice religion also in that same hope. You say: dissolve the ego. It seems to me that if I dissolve the ego, I myself will be dissolved; then I won’t be there—so how will I be happy? Wouldn’t a miserable existence be preferable to losing my very existence?

They entered the city; people began removing turbans and caps, bowing. But the farmer said nothing. He remained silent. The emperor asked, “What is the matter? Do you understand?” The farmer said, “I am in a fix. You don’t remove your turban—and I don’t remove mine. So who is the emperor—you or I? This is a serious tangle.” Ego is such a delusion. Ego mistakenly believes itself to be the soul. Ego is not the soul—but both ride the same horse, very close. As a man rides a horse, his shadow too rides the horse. Similarly, with the soul rides the ego’s shadow. If the soul does not remove its hat, how will the shadow remove hers? The shadow too has a hat; she too struts, enjoying the full fun. You have taken the shadow to be yourself. When the shadow disappears, you will not. And the shadow must vanish…

Question: FOCUS ON FIRE RISING THROUGH YOUR FORM FROM THE TOES UP UNTIL THE BODY BURNS TO ASHES BUT NOT YOU. MEDITATE ON THE MAKE-BELIEVE WORLD AS BURNING TO ASHES AND BECOME BEING ABOVE HUMANAS, AS SUBJECTIVELY, LETTERS FLOW INTO WORDS AND WORDS INTO SENTENCES, AND AS, OBJECTIVELY, CIRCLES FLOW INTO WORLDS AND WORLDS INTO PRINCIPLES, FIND AT LAST THESE CONVERGING IN OUR BEING When you are silent, the ego is not. And when you are not silent, the ego is. So ego is the disease, all diseases combined together, hence the emphasis to surrender the ego. The emphasis is to surrender the disease. Secondly: if in silence, for even a single moment you have the glimpse of your existence as egoless, then you can analyze it, and then you can enter the phenomenon of ego, of what it is. Thew mind is accumulated past.

Osho, it is not clear to me how the conscious witness can become identified with the inert three gunas!

That is why cars are designed—because we know human nature—so that you use the same foot for the accelerator and the brake. We fear you might try to do both at once. If you could press both together, trouble would arise. So to press the brake, your foot must come off the accelerator. But with the mind we do not manage this. With the mind we try to do both things at once. I asked that friend, “What is the trouble? Why are you restless?” He said, “The cause of my unrest is that my son does not obey me.” Whose son obeys whom? The son is not the cause here. Why do you want him to obey? The son will live his own life. I asked, “Did you obey your father?” Who obeys his father? A son will walk paths the father never walked. He will live in a…

Osho, in the morning meditation the body disappears completely. What remains feels immense, beyond all limits and ends. But after meditation, through the rest of the day, the sense of the body returns; once again the small, limited body is experienced. So is all this only the play of the ego?

Three things should be kept in mind in this regard. First, as meditation deepens, the body will disappear; or sometimes it will become very vast; or sometimes it may feel very minute, very small—smaller than it “is.” The body’s appearance depends on the mind. If the mind expands greatly, the body seems expanded; if the mind contracts, the body seems small. In fact, the boundary of the body is perceived through the boundary of the mind. This is confirmed by experience. And it is not the play of the ego; it is the outcome of meditation. After meditation it is natural that the body again appears as it ordinarily is. There is nothing to worry about in this. For friends to whom this is happening, whenever during the day they have the opportunity—even for a moment or two—close your eyes and again keep experiencing the body’s vastness. Do this two…