The first question:

Question 1

OSHO, FIVE YEARS AGO I HAD A DREAM IN WHICH YOU LOOKED AT ME AND SAID VERY STERNLY, "WHY DON'T YOU GO AWAY?

NOW WHENEVER I AM IN FRONT OF YOU, AND AT OTHER TIMES ALSO, I FEEL ME SO STRONGLY... I WISH I WOULD GO AWAY.

Yoga Pratima,

YOU are just holding on to something which is no more there. You are clinging to a shadow. You are. just clinging to a memory. And that is the case with many of my sannyasins -- their egos are gone, just the traces, footprints, past memories are there. And they go on clinging to those past memories, thinking these are their egos.

It takes time to recognize the fact that "I am no more." Sometimes it can take years to understand that the ego has been left somewhere on the path long before.

And Pratima, about you I can say it absolutely: that it is only a shadow that is torturing you. The ego HAS disappeared, but you have not yet been able... alert... The ego has disappeared in deep love with me.

The ego disappears in two ways. When it disappears because of meditation one immediately becomes aware that it is gone, because meditation means awareness and nothing else, so there is no gap. On the path of awareness the disappearance of the ego and the recognition is instantaneous, simultaneous.

But on the path of love ego disappears and the recognition comes only later on. The path of love is the path of the drunkard. He is utterly drunk, so how can he recognize what has happened or what is happening? And when you are in love so much goes on happening that even to take note of it all becomes more and more difficult. And when deeper things happen, it really takes time for them to reach to your recognition.

Meditation is the way of the head. Recognition also is part of the head-function, so meditation happens, immediately recognition happens. Love happens in the heart, and there is a great distance between love and logic, the heart and the head.

Pratima, in the heart you are no more; the head is still clinging to an old idea. The bird has left the cage long before.... You are drowning in me more and more every day.

Dad was pretending to be asleep. "Maybe the kids will go away'' he thought, "if I play possum." But they persisted in their efforts to try and rouse him from his delicious sleep. Finally his little daughter tried to open one of his eyelids, looked intently in, and reported to her brothers, "He is still in there!"

I have looked into you, Pratima, and I say you are not there. It will be difficult to believe what I am saying, because how can you believe it unless it becomes your own recognition? But my saying it will help; it will help the recognition to happen sooner than otherwise. The news has started travelling from the heart.

Physiologically the heart and the head are very close -- maybe the distance is not more than eighteen inches -- but spiritually the head and the heart, these two points, are FARTHEST apart. Even stars are closer to you than your own heart. This is the greatest distance that exists in existence, between the heart and the head, between love and logic, between intuition and intellect. Recognition happens in the intellect and love happens in the world of intuition.

And Pratima, you are in love. Your path is that of love. Don't be worried at all -- you are gone and gone forever. You cannot return even if you want to return. And this is so with many of my sannyasins who are in deep love with me, who are following on the path with tremendous drunkenness, who have abandoned themselves, whose trust is total -- but they will also need time. But who cares about the recognition? The real thing is the realization, not the recognition!

On the path of love it is always the Master who makes the disciple aware that "It has happened! Now don't worry about it. It is already dawn and the night is gone." It is always the Master who reminds, who helps the disciple to recognize.