The second thing to remember is: the ego gets identified with a role, with a function. Somebody is a clerk, somebody is a Commissioner, somebody is a gardener and somebody is a governor. These are functions, these are things that you do; they are not your being.
When somebody says “Who are you?” and you say “I am an engineer” your statement is existentially wrong. How can you be an engineer? That is what you do, that is not what you are. Don’t get too enclosed by your function because to become too enclosed by the function is to become imprisoned. You are doing the work of an engineer or the work of a doctor or the work of a governor but that does not mean that you are that. You can drop the work of an engineer and you can become a painter, and you can drop the work of a painter and you can become a sweeper…you are infinite.
When born a child has infinity available, but by and by that infinity is no longer available, he starts getting fixed in a certain direction. A child is born multi-dimensional but sooner or later he will start choosing. And we will help him to choose so that he will become somebody.
There is a Chinese saying that a man is born infinite but only very rare people die infinite. Man is born infinite and dies finite. When you were born you were just pure existence, when you die you will be a doctor or an engineer or a professor. You have been a loser in life. When you were born all alternatives were open, infinite possibilities were open – you could have become a professor, you could have become a scientist, you could have become a poet – millions of opportunities were available, all doors were open. Then by and by you settled, you became a professor – you became a professor of mathematics, you became an expert, a specialist. Narrower and narrower you went on becoming. And now you are like a small tunnel which goes on becoming narrower and narrower. You were born like the whole sky, but soon you entered into a tunnel and you will never come out of it.
The tunnel is the ego. It is getting identified with the function. It is very insulting to think about a man as if he is a clerk. It is very insulting to think about yourself as if you are just a clerk, it is very degrading. You are gods and goddesses, nothing less than that is true. Maybe more but not less. When I say that you are gods and goddesses I mean that your possibility is infinite, your potentiality is infinite.
Maybe you don’t try to make that whole potentiality actual – nobody really can because it is so vast it will be impossible. You are the whole universe; even in eternal time you would not be able to exhaust your potentiality. That’s what I mean when I say you are a god – you are inexhaustible.