"And I am not only talking about lotuses and roses – of course, they too are extraordinary – but an ordinary grass flower is not ordinary. All that exists is divine, how can it be ordinary?

"Don't try to be ordinary, otherwise you will go on failing and you will create misery for yourself. Even I cannot help, even I cannot go against the Tao, against the fundamental law of life. Existence only creates the extraordinary; this whole existence is special. These raindrops, this morning, the people around you, this moment, is extraordinary; it can't be repeated again. No, never – not even in the whole of eternity can it be repeated again. You will never find these raindrops falling again, this sound, this morning, these people. This whole situation is extraordinary; it only happens once.

"You will not find another Sudha all around the world. You can go on searching, and not only in the present time but even in the past or in the future, and no Sudha will ever be repeated. This is how we are. Once you start trying to be extraordinary you will get into difficulty. To accept yourself as you are, and to accept the whole as it is – if you can understand the extraordinariness of everything that is – you have become ordinary.

"It is not that you want to be extraordinary, you want to be special compared to other people. That too is absurdity – no comparison is possible, how can you be compared with anybody? Nobody is like you. You don't compare a dog with a parrot, or do you? There is no similarity, there is no likeness. How can you compare a dog with a parrot, or a tree with a man, or a rock with a river? In fact, no two individuals are alike; hence they are incomparable. You are you, and the other is the other.

"To understand this is to be both extraordinary and ordinary. Extraordinary in the sense that existence only creates unique people, and ordinary in the sense that everybody is extraordinary. There is nothing extraordinary in being extraordinary; everybody is so. The comparison disappears; and when there is no comparison, there is no possibility of the ego."