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Because you are special; there is no need to be special. You are special, you are unique – God never creates anything less than that. Everyone is unique, utterly unique. There hasn’t been a person like you before, and there will never be a person like you again. God has taken this form for the first time and the last time, so there is no need to try to become special, you already are. If you are trying to be special, you will become ordinary. Your very effort is rooted in misunderstanding. It will create confusion because when you try to become special, you have taken one thing for granted – that you are not. You have become ordinary already. You have missed the point.

Now, once you have taken it for granted that you are ordinary, how can you become special? You will try this way and that, and you will remain ordinary because your base, your foundation is wrong. Yes, you can go to the dressmaker and can find more sophisticated clothes. You can have your hair style done again, you can use cosmetics, you can learn a few things and become more knowledgeable, you can paint and start thinking that you are a painter; you can do a few things, you can become famous or notorious, but deep down you will know that you are ordinary. All these things are on the outside. How can you transform your ordinary soul into an extraordinary soul? – there is no way. God has not given you an ordinary soul anyway because he never makes ordinary souls, so he could not think about your problem. He has given you a special, extraordinary soul. He has never given it to anybody else. This is just made for you.

What I would like to say to you is: recognize your specialness. There is no need to get it, it is already there – recognize it. Go into your self and feel it. Nobody’s thumb print is like yours – not even the thumb print. Nobody’s eyes are like yours, nobody’s sound is like yours, nobody’s flavor is like yours. You are absolutely exceptional. There is no double of you anywhere. Even twins are different – howsoever alike they look, they are different. They go different ways, they grow different ways; they attain to different kinds of individualities. This recognition is needed.

You ask: “How can I stop wanting to be special?”

Just listen to the fact. Just go into your being and see, and the effort to be special will disappear. When you know that you are special, the effort will disappear. If you want me to give you a technique so that you can stop being special, that technique will be a disturbance. Again you are trying to do something; again you are trying to become something. First you were trying to become special, now you are trying not to become special. But trying… Trying… Improving in some way or other, but never accepting the you that you are.

My whole message is to accept the you that you are, because God accepts it. God respects it and you have not respected your being yet. Be immensely happy that God has chosen you to be, that God has chosen you to exist, to see his world, to listen to his music, to see his stars, to see his people – love and be loved – what more do you want? Rejoice! I say again and again rejoice in it. In that very rejoicing, by and by, it will explode in you like lightning that you are special. But remember, it will not come as an ego that you are special as compared to others. No, in that moment you will know that everybody is special.

The ordinary doesn’t exist. So this is the criterion. If you think, “I am special” – more special than that man, more special than that woman – you have not understood yet. It is the ego game. Special, not comparatively; special, not in comparison with anybody – special just as you are.

A professor went to see a Zen master and asked, “Why am I not like you? This is my desire. Why am I not like you? Why am I not silent like you? Why am I not wise like you?” The master said, “Wait. Sit silently. Watch. Watch me, and watch yourself. When everybody else has gone, if the question still remains, I will answer.”

The whole day people were coming and going, and disciples were asking, and the professor was getting very restless – time was being wasted. And this man said, “When everybody is gone…” Evening came and there was nobody left. The professor said, “Now enough is enough. I have been waiting the whole day. What about my question?”

The moon was rising – it was a full-moon night. The master said, “Haven’t you got the answer yet?” The professor said, “But you never answered me.” The master laughed. He said, “I have been answering many people the whole day. If you had watched, you would have understood. But come out. Let us go into the garden, the full moon is there in the garden and it is a beautiful night.” The master said to him, “Look at this cypress tree” – a big cypress tree, standing high, almost touching the moon. The moon was intertwined in its branches – “and look at this small bush.” But the professor said, “What are you talking about? Have you forgotten my question?”

The master said, “I am answering your question. This bush and this cypress tree have lived for years in my garden. I have never heard the bush asking the cypress tree, ‘Why am I not like you?’ I have not heard the cypress tree ask the bush, ‘Why am I not like you?’ The cypress tree is the cypress tree and the bush is the bush; they are both happy in being themselves.”

I am myself, you are you.

Comparison brings conflict, comparison brings ambition, and comparison brings imitation. If you ask, “Why am I not like you?” you will start trying to be like me and that will be the undoing of your whole life; you will become an imitator, a carbon copy. When you are an imitator, you lose all respect for yourself. It is very rare to find a person who respects himself. Why is it so rare? Why isn’t there reverence for life – your own life? If it is not there for your own life, how can it be there for others? If you don’t respect your own being, how can you respect the rosebush and the cypress tree and the moon and the people? How can you respect your master, your father, your mother, your friend, your wife, your husband? How can you respect your children if you have not respected yourself?

It is very rare to find a person who respects himself. Why is it so rare? – because you have been taught to imitate. From childhood you have been told, “Become like Christ” or “Become like Buddha.” But why? Why should you become like Buddha? Buddha never became you. Buddha was Buddha. Christ was Christ. Krishna was Krishna. Why should you become like Krishna? What wrong have you committed, what sin have you committed that you should become like Krishna?

God never created another Krishna. He never created another Buddha, another Christ – never! He does not like to create the same things again and again. He is a creator, he is not an assembly line – one Ford comes, another Ford, another Ford – Ford cars go on coming, all alike, on the assembly line. God is not an assembly line. He is an original creator; he never creates the same. The same will not be valuable.

Just think, a Krishna walking again – the same type of man. He will look like a joker. He will only get a place in a circus, nowhere else, because he will be repetitive. He will say the Gita again – whether Arjuna is available or not, whether the Mahabharata, that great war, is happening or not – but he will have to repeat his Gita. He will walk in his clothes and they will look very odd. Just think of Jesus amidst you again. He will not fit. He will be out of date, he will be antique, he will be useful only in a museum, nowhere else.

God never repeats.

But you have always been taught to become somebody else. “Become somebody else – the neighbor’s son… Become like the neighbor’s son. Look how intelligent he is.” “Look at that girl, how gracefully she walks. Be like that!” You have always been taught to be like somebody else. Nobody has told you to be yourself and to be respectful to your being; it is God’s gift. Never imitate – that’s what I say to you. Never imitate. Be yourself – that much you owe to God. Be yourself. Be authentically yourself and you will know that you are special.

God has loved you so much, that’s why you are. That’s why you are in the first place, otherwise you would not have been. It is indicative of his tremendous love for you. But your specialness is not in comparison with anybody else, it is not that you are special in comparison to your neighbors, friends, wife, husband. You are simply special because you are alone. You are the only person just like you. In that respect, in that understanding, efforts to become special will disappear.

All your efforts to become special are like putting legs on a snake. You will kill the snake. Just think… Because of compassion you are putting legs on the snake: “Poor snake, how will he walk without legs?” Just as if the snake has fallen into the hands of a centipede. And the centipede has great compassion for the snake, he thinks, “Poor snake. I have one hundred legs and he has none. How will he walk? He needs at least a few legs.” If he operates and puts a few legs on the snake, he will kill it. The snake is perfectly okay as he is, he need not have any legs.

You are perfectly okay as you are. This is what I call respect toward one’s own being. To respect oneself has nothing to do with the ego, remember. To respect oneself is not self-respect. To respect oneself is God’s respect. It is to respect the creator because you are just a painting – his painting. Respecting the painting, you respect the painter. Respect, accept, recognize, and all those foolish efforts to be special will disappear.