Question
– How can i distinguish between Enlightened Self-Love and Egomania?
Osho
– The distinction is subtle but very clear, not difficult; subtle, but not
difficult. If you have egomania, it will create more and more misery for you.
Misery will indicate that you are ill. Egomania is a disease, a cancer of the
soul. Egomania will make you more and more tense, will make you more and more
up-tight, will not allow you to relax at all. It will drive you towards
insanity.
Self-love
is just the opposite of egomania. In self-love there is no self, only love. In
egomania there is no love, only self. In self-love you will start becoming more
and more relaxed. A person who loves himself is totally relaxed.
To
love somebody else may create a little tension, because the other need not be
always in tune with you. The other may have his or her own ideas. The other is
a different world; there is every possibility of collision, clash. There is
every possibility of storm and thunder because the other is a different world.
There is always a subtle struggle going on. But when you love yourself, there
is nobody else. There is no conflict — it is pure silence, it is tremendous
delight. You are alone; nobody disturbs you. The other is not needed at all.
And to me, a person who has become capable of such deep love towards himself
becomes capable of loving others. If you cannot love yourself, how can you love
others? It must first happen at close quarters, it must first happen within
you, to spread towards others.
People
try to love others, not being at all aware that they have not even loved
themselves. How can you love others? That which you don’t have you cannot
share. You can give to others only that which you have already with you. So the
first and the most basic step towards love is love of oneself; but it has no
self in it.
Let
me explain it to you. The ‘I’ arises only as a contrast to the ‘thou’. ‘I’ and
‘thou’ exist together. The ‘I’ can exist in two dimensions. One dimension is
‘I-it’: you — your house, you — your car, you — your money; ‘I-it’. When there
is this ‘I’, this ‘I’ of ‘I-it’, your ‘I’ is almost like a thing. It is not
consciousness; it is fast asleep, snoring. Your consciousness is not there. You
are just like things, a thing amidst things: part of your house, part of your
furniture, part of your money.
Have
you watched it? A man who is too greedy about money, by and by starts having
the qualities of money. He becomes just money. He loses spirituality, he is no
more a spirit. He is reduced to a thing. If you love money, you will become
like money. If you love your house, by and by you will become material.
Whatsoever you love, you become. Love is alchemical. Never love the wrong
thing, because it will transform you. Nothing is so transforming as love. Love
something which can raise you higher, to higher altitudes. Love something
beyond you.
That
is the whole effect of religion: to give you a love-object like God so that
there is no way to fall down. One has to rise. One sort of ‘I’ exists as
‘I-it’; another sort of ‘I’ exists as ‘I-thou’. When you love a person, another
type of ‘I’ arises in you: ‘I thou’. You love a person, you become a person.
But
what about self-love?. — there is no ‘it’ and there is no ‘thou’. ‘I’
disappears because ‘I’ can exist only in two contexts: ‘it’ and ‘thou’. ‘I’ is
the figure, ‘it’ and ‘thou’ function as the field. When the field disappears
the ‘I’ disappears. When you are left alone, you are, but you don’t have an
‘I’, you don’t feel any ‘I’. You are simply a deep AMNESS. Ordinarily we say ‘I
am’. In that state, when you are deep in love with yourself, ‘I’ disappears.
Only amness, pure existence, pure being remains. It will fill you with
tremendous bliss. It will make you a celebration, a rejoicing. There will be no
problem in distinguishing between them.
If
you are getting more and more miserable, then you are on the trip of being an
egomaniac. If you are becoming more and more tranquil, silent, happy, together,
then you are on another trip — the trip of self-love. If you are on the trip of
ego you will become destructive to others — because the ego tries to destroy
the ‘thou’. If you are moving towards self-love, the ego will disappear. And
when the ego disappears, you allow the other to be himself or herself; you give
total freedom. If you don’t have any ego you cannot create an imprisonment for
the other you love; you cannot create a cage. You allow the other to be an
eagle in the high heavens. You allow the other to be himself or herself; you
give total freedom. Love gives total freedom. Love IS freedom — freedom for you
and freedom for the object of your love. Ego is bondage — bondage for you and
bondage for your victim. But ego can play very deep tricks with you. It is very
cunning, and subtle are its ways: it can pretend to be self-love.
Let
me tell you one anecdote. Mulla Nasrudin’s face lit up as he recognized the man
who was walking ahead of him down the subway stairs. He slapped the man so
heartily on the back that the man nearly collapsed, and cried, “Goldberg, I
hardly recognized you! Why, you have gained thirty pounds since I saw you last.
And you have had your nose fixed, and I swear you are about two feet taller.”
The
man looked at him angrily. “I beg your pardon,” he said in icy tones, “but I do
not happen to be Goldberg.”
“Aha!”
said Mulla Nasrudin, “so you have even changed your name?”
The
ego is very cunning and very self-justifying, very self-rationalizing. If you
are not very alert it can start hiding itself behind self-love. The very word
‘self’ will become a protection for it. It can say, “I am your self.” It can
change its weight, it can change its height, it can change its name. And
because it is just an idea, there is no problem about it: it can become small,
it can become big. It is just your fantasy. Be very careful. If you really want
to grow in love, much carefulness will be needed. Each step has to be taken in
deep alertness so ego cannot find any loophole to hide behind.
Your
real self is neither I nor thou; it is neither you nor the other. Your real
self is altogether transcendental. What you call ‘I’ is not your real self. ‘I’
is imposed on reality. When you call somebody ‘you’, you are not addressing the
real self of the other. Again you have imposed a label on it. When all the
labels are taken away, the real self remains — and the real self is as much
yours as it is others. The real self is one.
That’s
why we go on saying that we participate in each other’s beings, we are members
of each other. Our real reality is God. We may be like icebergs floating in the
ocean — they appear to be separate — but once we melt, nothing will be left.
Definition will disappear, limitation will disappear, and the iceberg will not
be there. It will become part of the ocean. The ego is an iceberg. Melt it.
Melt it in deep love, so it disappears and you become part of the ocean.
I
have heard…. The Judge looked very severe. “Mulla,” he said, “your wife says
you hit her over the head with a baseball bat and threw her down a flight of
stairs. What have you got to say for yourself?”
Mulla
Nasrudin rubbed the side of his nose with his hand, and meditated. Finally he
said, “Your Honor, I guess there are three sides to this case: my wife’s story,
my story, and the truth.”
Yes,
he is perfectly right.
“You
have heard about two sides of a truth,” he said, “but there are three sides” —
and he is exactly right. There is your story, my story, and the truth; I and
you and the truth.
The
truth is neither I nor you. I and you is an imposition on the vastness of the
truth. ‘I’ is false, ‘you’ is false; utilitarian, useful in the world. It will
be difficult to manage the world without ‘I’ and ‘you’. Good — use them, but
they are just devices of the world. In reality, there is neither ‘you’ nor ‘I’.
Something, someone, some energy exists with no limitations, with no boundaries.
Out of it we come, and into it we disappear again.
Source
– Osho Book “The Beloved, Vol 1″
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