If you want to invent a self you will have to ask others; that's the only way to invent it - to gather opinions of what people think about you. That's what we go on doing our whole lives. That's why we are so afraid of people's disrespect. That becomes our bondage. We want to be respectable, because if we are respectable then people's opinion about us is beautiful. They praise us and we can have a better self. If we are not respectable people condemn; and then you will not ever have a beautiful self, you will have an ugly self. Your self consists only of the opinions of others; it is a patchwork. A has said something, and B has said something else, and C something else, and so on, so forth. You collect all these things, these paper cuttings. Then you make an image out of them - you fix them together, you glue them together.
From the very beginning the child starts collecting this rubbish. The mother says something, the father, the brother, the neighbors: if it is gratifying he starts feeling proud, if it is not gratifying he starts feeling depressed. To avoid depression he goes on flattering everybody that he meets. The flattery is nothing but an arrangement: "I will flatter you so that you can give me a good certificate. I will flatter you more if you are willing to give me an even better certificate." But all these certificates are just from the outside, and nobody knows you, who you are - not even you yourself.
So what others say about you is almost irrelevant to your reality. They only know your appearance, and appearances can be very false. The person who looks very gentle on the outside may be very egoistic inside. That gentleness may be just a camouflage, a protection, an armor. The man who looks very clever on the outside may be just the opposite - he may be utterly stupid. The stupid person has to pretend cleverness; it hurts to know, "I am stupid." The man who goes on bragging about his knowledge is bound to be ignorant. But who wants to be known as an ignorant person?
-Rajneesh
