Whatsoever you do is meaningless, unless somehow it is related to your beginning and your end. If you go on doing things which are not related to your beginning and to your end – that means if they are not related to God – then your life will be trivia, a heap of rubbish: it won’t carry any meaning. Meaning belongs to the whole, meaning belongs to the source and the culmination.

If you forget the source and the end, your life will be just a drifting thing – meaningless coincidences. There will not be a running theme in it, and there will not be significance in it. You will not really exist; you will just live. You may continue living, but your life will not have a rhythm, it will not be a song, it will not have inner consistency, it will not be relevant.

“Howbeit we know this man from whence he is…”

Nobody knows. You don’t even know from where you come. But those people thought they knew well.

“…from whence he is: but when Christ cometh, no man knoweth whence he is?”

The scriptures speak absolute truth, but nobody knows from where anybody comes. The source is mysterious; it is shrouded. And there is no way to know it, because you are the knower and you can never become the known. Let me repeat it: you are the knower and you can never be reduced to be the known. You are the subjectivity and you can never become the object. So how can you know yourself, who you are? How can you know yourself, from where you come? How can you know the beginning?

This feeling that I don’t know who I am, this feeling that I don’t know from where I come, this feeling that I don’t know where I’m going – if it becomes intense, the ego drops. Because then there are no props for it – then the ego cannot stand.

The ego needs three props. It is a three-legged stool. Who am I? From where do I come? Where am I going? These three legs are needed for the ego. If these three legs disappear, the ego falls.

Once it happened: One of the greatest rich men of this century, Andrew Carnegie, was asked by a man, “What do you think, sir, is the most important thing in industry – money, labor or banks?”

Andrew Carnegie said, “It is a three-legged stool.”

And which leg is more important? In fact, if you withdraw one leg, the stool will fall. The two legs won’t be able to help it. If you withdraw one thing, if you start feeling, “I don’t know who I am,” immediately the other two legs will be useless. Or, if you withdraw the first leg, “I don’t know from where I come,” then the other two will not be of any use. The props will drop and the ego will fall. Ego is a three-legged stool.