No one is special, or, everyone is special. No one is ordinary, or everyone is ordinary.

I FEEL THAT I AM A VERY SPECIAL PERSON. I AM SO SPECIAL THAT I WANT JUST TO BE ORDINARY. PLEASE CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THIS?

Anand Sangito, everybody here thinks exactly the same. And not only here, but everywhere else. Everyone deep in their heart knows that he is special. This is a joke God plays on people. When he makes a new man and pushes him down towards the earth, he whispers in his ear, "You are special. You are incomparable, you are just unique!"

But this he goes on doing to everybody and everybody goes on carrying it deep in the heart, although people don't say it as loudly as you are doing, because they are afraid others may feel offended. And nobody is going to be convinced, so what is the point of saying it? If you tell somebody, "I am special," you cannot convince him because he himself knows that he is special. How can you convince anybody? Yes, maybe sometimes somebody may be convinced, at least pretend to be convinced. If he has some work with you, as a bribe he may say, "Yes, you are special, you are great." But deep down he knows business is business.

A braggart is telling his friend about his three cars, etcetera, etcetera. When he also mentions that he has two kept mistresses in New York, but that he has made his ravishingly beautiful and terribly passionate private secretary pregnant, and must therefore take his gorgeous blond stenographer with him on his business trip to Rio de Janeiro to see the carnival, the listener suddenly begins to pant, grabs at his own necktie, and has a heart attack.

The braggart interrupts his tale, gets water, pats the victim on the back, etcetera, etcetera, and he asks solicitously what the matter is. "Can I help it?" the man gasps. "I am allergic to bullshit."

It is better to keep such bullshit hidden deep down inside yourself, because people are allergic. But in a way it is good that you exposed your mind.

If you think you are special then you are bound to create misery for yourself. If you think that you are higher than others, wiser than others, then you will attain to a very strong ego. And the ego is poison, pure poison. And the more egoistic you become, the more it hurts, because it is a wound. The more egoistic you become, the more you become unbridged from life. You fall separate from life; you are no longer in the flow of existence, you have become a rock in the river. You have become ice-cold, you have lost all warmth, all love. A special person cannot love, because where are you going to find another special person?

I have heard about a man who remained unmarried his whole life, and when he was dying, ninety years old, somebody asked him, "You have remained unmarried your whole life, but you have never said what the reason was. Now you are dying, at least quench our curiosity. If there is any secret, now you can tell it, because you are dying; you will be gone. Even if the secret is known, it can't harm you."

The man said, "Yes, there is a secret. It is not that I am against marriage, but I was searching for a perfect woman. I searched and searched, and my whole life slipped by."

The inquirer asked, "But upon this big earth, so many millions of people, half of them women, couldn't you find one perfect woman?"

A tear rolled down from the eye of the dying man. He said, "Yes, I did find one."

The inquirer was absolutely shocked. He said, "Then what happened? Why didn't you get married?"

And the old man said, "But the woman was searching for a perfect husband."

Your life will become very difficult if you live with such ideas. And yes, the ego is so tricky, so cunning, it can give you, Sangito, this new project: "You are so special, become just ordinary." But in your ordinariness you will know you are the most extraordinarily ordinary man. Nobody is more ordinary than you! It will be the same game, camouflaged.

That's what so-called humble people go on doing. They say, "I am the most humble man. I am just the dust on your feet." But they don't mean it! Don't say, "Yes, I know you are," otherwise they will never be able to forgive you. They are waiting for you to say, "You are the most humble man I have ever seen, you are the most pious man I have ever seen." Then they will be satisfied, contented. It is ego hiding behind humbleness. You cannot drop the ego in this way.

You ask, "I feel that I am a very very special person. I am so special that I want just to be ordinary. Please can you say something about this?"

No one is special, or, everyone is special. No one is ordinary, or everyone is ordinary. Whatsoever you think about yourself, please think the same about everyone else, and the problem will be solved. You can choose. If you want the word 'special', you can think you are special -- but then everybody is special. Not only people, but trees, birds, animals, rocks -- the whole existence is special, because you come out of this existence and you will dissolve into this existence. But if you love the word 'ordinary' -- which is a beautiful word, more relaxed -- then know that everybody is ordinary. Then the whole existence is ordinary.

One thing to be remembered: whatsoever you think about yourself, think the same for everybody else and the ego will disappear. The ego is the illusion that is created by thinking about yourself in one way and thinking about others in another. It is double thinking. If you drop the double thinking, ego dies of its own accord.