"Anything can be used as a prop for the ego, and that's certainly wrong, particularly for the sannyasin, because the whole effort of sannyas is to drop the ego in all its possible forms, subtle or gross, manifest or unmanifest, direct or indirect.

"One has to be constantly aware of the tricks of the ego; its ways are subtle. If you throw it out from one door it enters from the other door – and in a new disguise. Unless you are really alert it is going to grab you from the back.

"Many times you feel the misery that is created by the ego and many times you have dropped it, but it again creates new temptations. And because the temptations are new you think it is not the old ditch you are falling in. It is the same ditch – of course painted with fresh colors, changed a little bit here and there, renovated…

"Beware of the ego! Pride is not good for a sannyasin. That's the only difference between a sannyasin and a non-sannyasin. The old idea of sannyas was to renounce the world; my idea of sannyas is to renounce the ego, because even if you renounce the world the ego will go on hidden within you wherever you go. In fact, when it starts taking on spiritual colors it becomes far more difficult to get rid of it.

"Just like if your chains are made not of ordinary steel but of purest of gold, studded with diamonds – then you will not like to drop them. To you they will appear like ornaments, and if somebody says, 'These are chains,' you will be offended, you will be angry.

"A Hindu is offended if you say to him that to be a Hindu is to be in a prison. A Mohammedan is angry if you say to him that to be a Mohammedan means to be a slave. The same is true about the Christians and the Jains and the Buddhists.

"But to be proud simply means you are thinking yourself separate from existence. Secondly: you are thinking of yourself as special.

"To be a sannyasin means to be just natural."