I have to come to meet you all here. I had to get out of the house, I had to change, I had to drive, whatever it is. Then I came. I had to put in effort. I had to plan out how I’m going to talk to you, that I don’t do normally, but I’m saying in generally people do it. And I put in the effort to come in. Now how am I to justify this? All this effort? What is the satisfaction that one gets out of doing this effort, this kriya, this action? We go on doing some action, and why should we do it? After all, action means—any activity means—exertion, botheration, problems. Best is to sit at home and do nothing of the kind. But we do not do that. We take up challenges. We rush up to it. All this we do with our kriya shakti, with our right action.

Because we do action, we have to have a satisfaction about it. As a reaction to that, ego develops. If we do not have the ego we would not do anything. Is a fact. But ego is the one that rationalizes all our madness—the rat race we are running into. If we did not have the ego we would not go into this nonsense.

The more we try to rationalize our activities, the more ego develops, to satisfy: “All right, very good, very good. Now you are a successful man. See? You’re a very successful man, you have got this, you have got that.” Lots of misunderstandings creep in when we pamper our ego like this—or, I should say that when we are satisfied with our ego—that we really get lost. We get identified with our ego and not with our Selves.

So, if you do some work very well—supposing you have, say, made a beautiful poetry or, say, not piece of poetry but say you have made a very good painting, then you would like people to appreciate. If they do not appreciate you, you think you have done nothing, though you have done a beautiful poem or canvas. But still you’ll be so dissatisfied with yourself unless and until people appreciate you. They must garland you. They must say, “Oh, you are great, you are really unique. You are a genius.” You know many artists who created great art got trapped into this kind of misidentification. When they created some great art, the art could not give them satisfaction. They had to go to ego. And Mr. Ego would not be satisfied unless and until everybody says, “Yes, yes, you are very good. You have done this, you are a genius. You are this, you are that.” That’s how the ego develops then within us.

But a situation can arise where, even when we have done nothing, we want to take the credit. Then we call such a person egoistical, who says, “I will do this, I have done this, I, I, I, I.” Then we call him an egoistical person. Because he gives words to his ego, that’s why we call him egoistical. But all of us have got this Mr. Ego there, sitting on our heads. Then it starts bloating and the more successful you are, the worse it is. The more you indulge into planning and thinking, the worse it is. The balloon goes on, you see, pumped, as if you are pumping a balloon. The more you pump, the more it becomes. And you can never realize that you are not that ego. Then you start feeling very nice about it, because everybody says, “Oh, what a great man he is.” The whole society develops on those lines.

Today only I was discussing about the way people give you C.O.B., I don’t know, V.I.P., M.A.D.—like that. And we carry those banners with us. And we expect everybody to respect those banners which have been given to us, because we’ve done some work, somebody has recognized us, branded it, stamped it, so we believe really this must be something great. So we accept that brand and we want to keep it up. So it’s a doubly fixed thing that you are really rewarded for what work you are doing.

That’s why people start becoming nuisance also. Supposing in a society some people do not find any significance to their lives: then they will go to Oxford Street, stand there, wear funny dresses, start jumping and singing something nonsensical, and people make a nuisance out of themselves. We have seen people who paint their hair in different colours, put pencils in the noses and do all kinds of mad things just to attract the attention of others; because we want to attract the attention of others, because our ego is not yet satisfied. But this ego is never satisfied.