According to Osho, past lives are not fiction but a lived reality once directly experienced; until then they seem like stories. He says he remembers his own past lives, and that in deep, relaxed meditation the unconscious reveals these memories like a movie. The test: true recollections repeat consistently, unlike dreams which shift; repeated sameness indicates genuine memory, not fantasy.
They seem made-up until you directly see them; get very quiet, and if the same old story appears again and again, it’s memory, not a dream.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, you have recently said many startling and shocking things. I would like to hear more. One question I would like to ask is: are past lives a fiction?
But this is not going to be shocking. It is fiction to you; it is reality to me. It will remain a fiction to you unless you experience it. And I don't want you to believe before you experience; and of course, after experiencing there is no need to believe. I don't believe in past lives -- I know. I remember my own past lives, so it is not a question of belief. When you become utterly silent and meditative, it is such an easy thing to look backwards. Your unconscious carries all the memories -- not only of this life, but of your past lives too. I was just joking with a German journalist. He became excited when I said this.... He was asking me, "Why is German youth attracted so much towards you?" I said to him, "In one of my past lives I was a German." He…
Osho, the talk of remembering past lives has become a thing of the past.
Yes—of the past, of the past indeed. But if it occurs to you what all you did in the past, how many times you did it, then a fundamental difference will arise in what you are doing today. If it becomes clear that I have earned wealth many times—again and again—and found nothing in it, then today’s race to earn money will at once grow faint. Its force will drain away. The difference will be basic, immediate. If it becomes clear to you that this body has been had many times and each time it perished, then living centered around the body has no meaning—the body will perish again. So the center of my living should not be the body, because the body comes many times and dies, and nothing really changes. For the first time, the center of your living will become the soul, not the body. Yes, it…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, HOW CAN WE FIND OUT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN IMAGINATION AND REAL PAST LIFE EXPERIENCES? It is very easy. First, imagination cannot be repeated again and again, but the past life experience will be repeated the same in detail again and again. Second, the imagination will start from A, go to B, then to C, from the beginning to the end. The past life experience will start just in the reverse order -- from Z. First you will die; when you go into the past life, what you will come across first will be your death. Then you will move as if you are reading a novel from the back, or seeing a film backwards. Imagination will be direct; it will start from birth and move towards death.
In this connection, a friend has also asked: Osho, can we know our past lives?
All the truths of life, all the experiences up to today, are turning false. All the heights of life that were touched till now are becoming imaginary. They are turning into ancient stories. In a hundred or two hundred years children will deny that people like Buddha, Mahavira, and Christ ever existed—they will say these are all stories. In the West a man has written a book in which he says that no one like Christ ever was; it is merely an old drama. People slowly forgot it was a drama and began to think it was history. Even today we stage the Ramlila. We think Rama existed and therefore we stage the Ramlila. A hundred years later children will say that Ramlila was written and performed, and people were deluded into thinking that Rama existed—it must have been a play long performed. Because when before our eyes men like…
Beloved Osho, are there two kinds of memories, a factual memory, and a spiritual memory? If yes, is there a connection between them?
It seems there is an automatic reversal process. You have to reverse a tape, but your brain reverses immediately. When you put the needle on the dream center again it starts from A B C, not from the point where it has stopped. If you take the needle away again, it reverses so quickly that no time is lost. Put the needle back and it starts from A B C again. If the man was saying, "I am Alexander the Great..." -- if you have touched his past life memory center and he was saying, "I am Alexander the Great," and if you take the needle away and put it back again, he will again start with, "I am Alexander the Great." Your brain contains all the memories, psychological memories of your past lives. But the more you meditate, the more you go on erasing all psychological memories. Begin first…