If the wife escapes, divorces you, goes to somebody else, you are completely shattered - because she had been paying attention to you, caring, loving, moving around you, helping you to feel that you were somebody. Your whole empire is lost, you are simply shattered. You start thinking about suicide. Why? Why, if a wife leaves you, should you commit suicide? Why, if a husband leaves you, should you commit suicide? Because you don't have any center of your own. The wife was giving you the center; the husband was giving you the center.

This is how people exist. This is how people become dependent on others. It is a deep slavery. Ego HAS to be a slave. It depends on others. And only a person who has no ego is for the first time a Master; he is no longer a slave.

-Rajneesh

You can clash with an Enlightened man, but that is your problem, not his. And if you are hurt in that clash, that too is your own problem. He cannot hurt you. And it is like knocking against a wall - you will be hurt, but the wall has not hurt you.

-Rajneesh

The ego has a certain quality - it is dead. It is a plastic thing. And it is very easy to get it, because others give it. You need not seek it. There is no search involved. That's why unless you become a seeker after the Unknown, you have not yet become an individual. You are just a part of the crowd.

You are just a mob. When you don't have a real center, how can you be an individual?

The ego is not individual. Ego is a social phenomenon - it is society, it is not you. But it gives you a function in the society, a hierarchy in the society. And if you remain satisfied with it, you will miss the whole opportunity of finding the Self.

And that's why you are so miserable. With a plastic life, how can you be happy? With a false life, how can you be ecstatic and blissful?

-Rajneesh

Just a few days ago, the almond tree outside became completely naked. All the leaves fell down.

This is the way. Now it is young again. Now new leaves have come. The old have gone, the new leaves have come. But the leaves are not the tree. The tree is that source from which leaves come, and that source is hidden.

The old drops so that the new can come. The old body dies so that the new body can come. This is how existence exists eternally, always dying always coming back. It is a wheel; the spokes go up, then they go down. This is how the wheel moves.

-Rajneesh

The eternal has its own way of being eternal. The way of the eternal is to be born again and again and to die. Through death it refreshes itself, rejuvenates itself. To us it appears that the real flower has died - it never dies. It simply changes bodies, so it is ever fresh. It leaves the old body, it enters a new body. It flowers somewhere else; it goes on flowering. But we cannot see the continuity because the continuity is invisible. We see only one flower, another flower; we never see the continuity. It is the same flower which flowered yesterday. It is the same sun, but in a different garb.

You need very penetrating eyes to see the invisible continuity. The invisible continuity is God. If you can see, this is the same flower in a different body. That's what Hindus call the theory of reincarnation. Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism, they all miss the beauty of it, so all the three religions by and by became materialistic. They had to, because the invisible had been missed.

-Rajneesh