Then what is surrender? How is it going to happen at all? Surrender is the understanding that the ego is false. In that very understanding, the ego evaporates – is not found anymore – and the surrender has happened. Not that it has been done by you; it happens without your doing. Only then is it true, authentic; it has immense beauty and tremendous power, because then you become a vehicle of the whole. You are no longer a part, you simply represent the whole.

You are the wave in the ocean – and the wave in the ocean is the ocean itself! If the ocean contains the wave, the wave contains the ocean in a similar way. They are inseparable, they are one. The wave is the manifestation of the unmanifest, a finite expression of the infinite. So are you just a wave. The moment you start thinking yourself separate, the wave has gone insane.

The first sutra:

If you determine your course
with force or speed,
you miss the way of the law.

The ego is always aggressive; it can exist only through aggression. It creates such fuss, such dust, such smoke, that you can’t see. It makes you blind. It whirls you round and round, it makes you dizzy. That’s why the ego is always hankering for more and more power, more and more force. It wants to do things with absolute force.

The ego is a fascist, it is totalitarian, it is dictatorial. It does not want any rebellion against itself. It immediately destroys any possibility of you becoming free of it. Just the seed of a rebellion…and it starts destroying it. It is constantly watching. It is constantly trying to keep you so occupied that you never become aware of the great slavery you are living in. And the ego is very cunning: it convinces you that “I am you.”

So whenever the idea of dropping the ego arises you start feeling as if you are losing your identity. The ego is not your identity. It is because of the ego that you are not able to know who you really are. The ego is the barrier. It keeps you running and it keeps you at such a speed, in such a hurry, that you don’t have any time to think things over, to ponder, to meditate, to see what you are doing, why you are doing it.

It does not give you any time to see. It keeps you crazy, engaged, constantly engaged in one desire or other. Before one desire is spent it creates ten more. It keeps new desires ready so there is never a gap, never an interval left between two desires – because in that gap you will be able to see and recognize the stupidity of your life, the utter madness of your life. And once you have seen it you cannot remain part of it anymore. You will jump out of it! You have seen that the house is on fire.