There are only two difficulties on the path of meditation: one is the Ego and the second is the Chattering Mind.
The Ego: the whole idea of modern psychology, modern education, is that unless a person has a very strong ego he will not be able to struggle in life where there is so much competition that, if you are a humble man, anybody will push you aside; you will always remain backward. You need a very steely strong ego to fight in this competitive world; then only you become a success and our whole society is geared up to produce the assertive personality in the child. He starts the journey with these ideas, and his ego goes on becoming bigger and bigger as he succeeds. And if the ego is very small it becomes a wound which also prevents you. In each case the ego is one of the problems.
In the mother’s womb each child is profoundly blissful. Of course he is unaware of it, not knowing anything about it. He is so one with the bliss that there is no knower left behind. Blissfulness is his being, and there is no distinction between the knower and the known. So the child is not aware that he is blissful. You become aware only when you have lost something.
It is very difficult to know something without losing it, because when you have not lost it you are so totally one with it. There is no distance: the known and the knower are one.
Every child is in a profoundly blissful state. Psychologists also agree with this. They say that the whole search of religion is nothing but a way to again find the womb of the mother.
The child is absolutely in tune with his mother. The child does not know that he is separate from the mother. If the mother is healthy, the child is healthy. If she is ill, he is ill. If she is happy, he is happy. The child has no boundaries of his own yet. This is the purest bliss, but it has to be lost.
Excerpted From Meditation – The First And Last Freedom PG No: 201 to 205
