Sweet Mother, how can we cut the knot of the ego?
How to cut it? Take a sword and strike it, {laughter}, when one becomes conscious of it. For usually one is not; we think it quite normal, what happens to us; and in fact it is very normal but we think it quite good also. So to begin with one must have a great clear-sightedness to become aware that one is enclosed in all these knots which hold one in bondage. And then, when one is aware that there is something altogether tightly closed in there – so tightly that one has tried in vain to move it – then one imagines his will to be a very sharp sword-blade, and with all one's force one strikes a blow on this knot {imaginary, of course, one does not take up a sword in fact}, and this produces a result.
