~DROPPING THE EGO IS THE WAY BACK HOME~FLOATING IS A TOTALLY NEW WAY OF LIFE~

By Osho

You are accustomed to fight, you are accustomed to swim upstream. The ego feels nourished if you fight with something; if you don't fight, the ego simply evaporates.

IT IS VERY ESSENTIAL FOR THE EXISTENCE OF THE EGO TO CONTINUE FIGHTING. This way or that, in worldly matters or in spiritual matters, but go on fighting. Fight with others or fight with oneself, but continue to fight. The people you call worldly are fighting with others, and the people you call spiritual are fighting with themselves. But the basic thing remains the same.

THE REAL VISION ARISES ONLY WHEN YOU STOP FIGHTING. Then you start disappearing -- because WITHOUT FIGHT, THE EGO CANNOT EXIST FOR A SINGLE MOMENT -- it needs constant pedaling. It is just like a bicycle. If you stop pedaling, it has to fall; it cannot continue for long -- maybe a little while because of the past momentum. But your cooperation is needed for the ego, to keep it alive. And the cooperation is through fight, resistance.

When I say to you to float, I mean that YOU ARE SUCH A SMALL, TINY PART OF THE COSMOS, it is absolutely absurd to fight with it. With whom are you fighting? ALL FIGHT IS BASICALLY AGAINST GOD, BECAUSE HE SURROUNDS YOU. If you are trying to go up-current, you are trying to go against God. If he is flowing downwards to the ocean, go with him.
 

ONCE YOU START FLOATING WITH THE RIVER, you will have a totally different quality arising in you -- SOMETHING OF THE BEYOND WILL DESCEND. You will not be there; you will become just an emptiness -- tremendous emptiness, a receptivity. WHEN YOU FIGHT, YOU SHRINK; when you fight, you become small; when you fight, you become hard. WHEN YOU DON'T FIGHT -- you surrender, you open, like a lotus opening its petals -- THEN YOU RECEIVE. Unafraid you start moving -- moving with life, moving with the river....

It is good if you drown -- because ONLY THE EGO CAN BE DROWNED, NOT YOU. When you are fighting, in fact, the ego is fighting with your innermost core -- you will drown. But by that drowning, for the first time you will be able to float, for the first time you will be. Choose and you choose the ego. BE CHOICELESS, LET LIFE CHOOSE FOR YOU, AND YOU BECOME EGOLESS. Choose, and you always choose hell. CHOICE IS HELL. DON'T CHOOSE. Let this prayer of Jesus resound in your hearts: "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done." Let Him do for you.

Drop yourself, drown yourself. Disappear from that plane of being. And then suddenly you are no more human; you are superhuman. Your whole life will become a life of beautitude....

IF YOU CHOOSE, YOU CHOOSE HELL. Choice is hell. That's how you have created you hell all around you -- by choosing. WHEN YOU CHOOSE, YOU DON'T ALLOW GOD TO CHOOSE FOR YOU. Kristhamurti goes on insisting for choicelessness. That is just one end of the whole story. THE OTHER END IS: IF YOU ARE CHOICELESS, GOD CHOOSES FOR YOU. Become choiceless. The moment you are choiceless, life continues. You will not be there -- life will continue.

And you are nothing but a hell. ONCE YOU DON'T STAND BETWEEN YOU AND GOD, HE CHOOSES. He has always been choosing for you. There is a proverb which says: Man proposes and God disposes. The reality is just the opposite: GOD PROPOSES AND MAN GOES ON DISPOSING.

ONCE YOU HAVE FELT THAT BEAUTITUDE OF NON-CHOOSING and floating with Him, you will never choose again. Because whenever you choose, you choose hell; and whatsoever you choose, you choose hell. So I would like you to drown, drown with my blessings.

When Jesus says that those who cling to themselves will lose themselves, and those who are ready to lose will gain, he means exactly the same thing. When Sufis say, "Die before your death, and then you will become deathless," they mean the same. THE DEATH OF THE EGO HAPPENS ONLY THROUGH SURRENDER....

You cannot do anything to change it. You can simply see the point that NOTHING IS NEEDED ON YOUR PART. And once you drop it -- or rather it will be better to say: once in your deep understanding, it drops -- you are open to life. Then life starts flowing through you, like a cool breeze in an open room.

You are like a windowless room: all doors, windows closed, no ray of light enters in you, no new breeze passes through you. You are caved-in within yourself, closed. And, of course, if you start feeling suffocated it is natural.

But I know it is difficult to allow yourself to drown; it takes time. Just few glimpses will be needed. SOMETIMES FLOAT, DON'T SWIM; and just feel the river taking you over. Sometimes just sit in the garden. Don't choose: don't say what is beautiful, what is ugly. Don't divide, just be there, present to everything. Sometimes move in the marketplace, not saying, not condemning, not appreciating. IN MANY WAYS LEARN HOW JUST TO BE, WITHOUT ANY EVALUATION. Because the moment you evaluate, you have chosen. The moment you say this is good, you are saying, "I would like to have it." The moment you say this is bad, you say, "I don't want it; I would not like to have it." The moment you say this woman is beautiful, you have desired. The moment you say this woman is ugly, you have already felt repulsion. You are already caught in the duality of good and bad, beautiful and ugly; and the choice has entered in you.

SUBTLE ARE THE WAYS OF THE EGO. One has to be very alert.

And once you know -- once if even for a single moment the ego is not there, you are not creating it -- SUDDENLY ALL DOORS OPEN; and from everywhere, from all directions, LIFE RUSHES TOWARDS YOU. That rush is very fragile. If you are not alert, you will not be able to see it, you will not be able to feel it. God's touch is very delicate. Great sensitivity is needed to feel it....

IN DEEP SURRENDER, SENSITIVITY, AWARENESS, suddenly you are full of something which you had never known before. It has always been there, but you were too gross to know it. It has always been there, but you were too occupied in fighting, in the ways of the ego, that you couldn't look back and feel it. It was always there, but you were not present. It was always waiting for you, but you had forgotten how to come back home.

DROPPING THE EGO IS THE WAY BACK HOME.

So drown yourself. That's the whole art I am teaching you here. If I am teaching anything, I am teaching you death, because I know only through death is resurrection.

OSHO
Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega