In a single word, 'ego', the whole past is present. Hence it is so difficult to drop the ego because it means your whole history, your whole biography. So people go on thinking and they go on asking about how to drop the ego — but they are not ready. When they understand that it means to drop the whole history, all that you have been up to now, all that you have been thinking yourself up to now, all that you have dreamed, done, imagined, fantasised, whatsoever — bodily, mentally, spiritually — your successes, failures, frustrations.... They are all bundled up into a single word, ’ego’.

Dropping the ego, one becomes free of the past. They mean the same — the past or the ego. And sannyas is an effort to get out of the past, to get out of the ego — just like a snake slips out of its own skin. It does not even look back — it simply slips out.

So slip out of your past — the past is dead. There is no meaning in it, because there can never be any meaning in the dead. Meaning is always in the alive, in the flowing. Get out of the past... and this needs only a certain courage.

It is not a question of making much effort — a certain courage, a certain understanding... and I can see it is there. It can flare up. Just a little support and it can flare up. And in that flare-up the whole past has disappeared. Suddenly you start from ABC – fresh, young, virgin, uncorrupted.

And then remember always that it is not that you have to do it once — you have to do it every day, every moment from now. Otherwise again the past will accumulate. It is natural that the past accumulates, because past is every moment accumulating. Every moment you are making the past, creating the past out of the present, out of the future. The present will turn into past... all present moments will turn into past. If you go on collecting them, again it will be piled up. Again a new ego will arise.

So this moment you have to take two things very decisively: one, slip out of the past; second, never accumulate it again. And that is the meaning of sannyas — not to live in the past, not to accumulate past... always to live herenow. My 'now' contains timelessness, and my 'here' has the hint of everywhere.'Here' does not mean just here — 'here' means all that is present right now. The faraway stars — they are part of this here. The whole existence that is, is contained in the herenow.

A sannyasin is a person who has taken a decision not to live in the past, not to live through the past, not to live through the future, not to go roundabout, but to be immediate... in the present.

And from that immediacy, all bliss. From that immediacy, all delight. From that immediacy, all beauty and benediction..