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Main Index
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If a wave in the ocean can become aware, the wave can create an ego different from the ocean that very moment. If the wave can become aware and think "I am", then the wave cannot think itself to be one with the ocean, one with other waves. It becomes different -- separate. Ego is created. Knowledge creates the ego.
Children are without egos because they are without knowledge. They are ignorant, and ego cannot come up in ignorance. The more you grow, the more you grow toward ego. Old men have very strengthened, deep-rooted egos. It is natural. Their egos have existed for seventy or eighty years. They have a long history.
If you go back in memory and try to remember your childhood you may be surprised to know why you cannot remember. You cannot regress beyond your fourth or third year. Ordinarily, you can remember facts which belong to your fifth year or fourth year, or at the most to the third year, but the first three years are just vacant. They were there and many things happened, but why can we not remember? It is because the ego was not there, so it is difficult to remember. In a way, you were not, so how can you remember? If you were there you would remember, but you were not.
You cannot remember. Memory exists only after the ego has come into existence, because memory needs a center on which to hang. If you are not, where will the memory hang? Three years is a big thing. and for a child every moment is an event. Everything is something phenomenal; nothing is ordinary. Really, he should remember more. He should remember the first years, the first days of life, because then everything was colourful, everything was unique. Whatsoever happened was new. But there is no memory of it. Why? Because the ego was not there. The memory needs an ego on which to hang.
The moment the child begins to feel himself as separate from others, he will begin to feel shame. He will begin to feel the same shame that came to Adam. Adam found himself naked -- naked like animals, naked like everything else. You must be different and unique, you must not be like others; only then can you grow in ego. The first act was to hide nakedness. Suddenly Adam became
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