Of course, as you know, fear is the antithesis of love. Fear could be from many things, for example: the existence of ego alone might pull you out, not to lose your identity. That response would be prominent in anyone. That basis—whether it is fear, insecurity, remembrance of duties and commitments—could be from a hundred things, but the most common in everyone will be fear of losing the identity or existence of ego. That’s the ultimate fear that pulls you out. Ego is very dear. On one side it is so darling, one with us—me!—and on the other side, by losing the ego even partly, we feel so joyful. Does it make any sense? By losing ego, if you were not feeling joyful, if you were feeling loss or pain, then I can understand why you would want to save it. That would be proper. Let’s see if there is any other alignment with this.
      You have also experienced that when you lose part of ego, even in some kind of assimilation, you feel joyful; not unwillingly giving up ego—unwillingly ego is not given up—but in that melting we are talking about. So we see that losing ego is joyful; saving ego is safe. Ego security, to save the existence of ego, I agree with that one hundred percent. Is there any other reason why we do this nonsense still? It is not a new word. You have probably heard it hundreds of times. The popping up of ego is mostly habit. Your ego certainly has its own identity to save, when it experiences its own joyful melting, which normally it would be tempted to do, but sheer habit mechanically brings you out. 
      The more you melt, the more you are conscious, in direct proportion. When you really touch the bottom, you rise from there an Awakened soul.

This melting, meditating, serenely allowing yourself to be resigned and surrendered, means what? It means you are fully concentrated at that time. That full concentration, when you touch the very bottom line, makes you zero. From there you awaken. Every time you accept, in a sense, the melting or resignation or humbly dissolving of your ego to any degree, you are actually integrating yourself. When that integration gradually becomes full, there comes a point when, all of a sudden, you come to Transcendental Awakening—Turiya. This is a part of Samadhi.¹ When you do something repeatedly, after some time it becomes a habit. Since you have cherished and allowed your ego to exist birth after birth, now it has formed its own reality, its own existence so that even when you want to give it up, by sheer habit it won’t go.

HIS BRINGS UP ANOTHER TOPIC: sometimes, even when you want to give up ego, it is not going. Therefore to break that habit we have to bring in counter-practices. That is the main reason we do practices, whether it is yoga or mantra or meditation or pranayama² or whatever techniques. We bring in those habits as counter-habits to cancel the previous ones. Now one could stretch a point and ask whether the new habits or practices would form their own habits. However, in spite of making these new habits of practices, we know the results are different: while the ego makes its existence by habit, these practices will pull you out of ego-existence. We have a saying in India: “To take out one thorn from the flesh, you need another thorn. After that you throw both thorns away.”

¹ Spiritual absorption, merged in God Consciousness
² Yogic breathing exercises