The ego is a make-believe illusion, but very utilitarian. It gives you some idea of your being centered, although that idea is very chaotic. The ego cannot really give you the idea of being centered. In the first place it is only a combination of many opinions that have been expressed about you by others.
Somebody has said you are very great and somebody has condemned you. Now both the ideas are there. Somebody has said you are beautiful and somebody has said that you are ugly; now both the ideas are there.
Your ego is a patchwork: all the opinions that have been expressed about you, good and bad, favorable, unfavorable, are collected there. Out of these ideas you have created a kind of person in your mind, an image: “Who am I?” This image is very hotch-potch; that's why your life remains a chaos, a mess. And because this image has come from the outside, from people who don't know your center – can't know our center, because even you don't know your center, how can they? It is always something which is opposite to your real center – you become two persons instead of one.
You become a duality. You are something and you believe yourself to be something else. You do one thing; you think you are doing it because of this motivation, but there is some other motivation of which you are completely unaware. You can never become integrated. You will go on becoming more and more schizophrenic.