Have you really thought about it, have you ever meditated on it: Do you want to drop it? Do you really want to become a non-being, a nothing? Even in your religious projections you want to be something, you want to achieve something, reach somewhere, be something. Even when you think of being humble, your humility, your humbleness is just a secret hiding place for the ego and nothing else.

Look at so-called humble people. They say they are humble and they will try to prove that they are the most humble in their town, in their city, in their locality – the most humble. And if you argue and if you say: “No, somebody else is more humble than you,” they will feel hurt. Who is feeling hurt?

I was just reading about one Christian saint. He says every day to his god in his prayer: “I am the most wicked person on this earth, the greatest sinner.” Apparently he is a very humble man, but he is not. He says he is the greatest sinner on the earth, and even if God is going to dispute it he will argue. The interest, the deep interest, is in being the greatest, not in being the sinner. You can be a sinner if you are allowed to be the greatest sinner. You can enjoy it. The greatest sinner – then you become a peak. Virtue or sin is immaterial; you must be someone. Whatsoever the reason for it, your ego must be at the top.

George Bernard Shaw is reported to have said: “I would rather be first in hell than second in heaven.” Hell is not a bad place if you are the first and foremost. Even heaven will look dull if you are just standing somewhere in a queue, a nobody. And Bernard Shaw is right. This is how the human mind functions.

Nobody wants to drop the ego. Otherwise, there is no problem – you can simply drop it right now. And if you feel that time is needed, then time is needed only for your understanding that you are clinging to it. And the moment you can understand that it is your clinging, the thing will happen.

You may take many lives to understand this simple fact. You have already taken many lives and you have not yet understood. This looks very weird; something which is a burden to you, which gives you hell, continuous hell, but still you cling to it. There must be some deep reason in it, a very deep-rooted cause. I would like to talk about it a little. You may become aware.

The way the human mind is it will always choose occupation rather than being unoccupied. Even if the occupation is painful, even if it is a suffering, it will choose to be occupied rather than to be unoccupied – because unoccupied you start feeling that you are dissolving.

Psychologists say that when people retire from their work, their job, their service or business, they die soon. Their life is reduced immediately by almost ten years. Before their death they start dying. There is no more occupation, they are unoccupied. When you are unoccupied you start feeling meaningless, futile. You start feeling that you are not needed, that without you the world can go on easily. When you are occupied you feel that the world cannot continue without you, that you are a very essential part of it, very significant – without you everything will stop.