According to Osho, one who has attained knowing can choose to be born or not, but by selecting a womb he also accepts the body’s limits, including its lifespan. Hence freedom over death is only partial: he knows when the body will end and moves with urgency within that frame. An ordinary person has no freedom about death.
An enlightened person can choose birth, but not fully choose death, because choosing a body means accepting its built‑in end.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
And you have asked: If a person can choose birth, can they also choose their death?
Even so, for such a person many things are clear; therefore he can decide things. For example, if he knows he will leave at seventy, he can set things in order. He does not entangle. He does only such work as will be settled within seventy years. That which can be finished tomorrow, he finishes. He does not spread so many nets that they extend beyond tomorrow. Therefore he is never anxious. As he lives, so he keeps preparing for death as well. Death too is a preparation. In one sense he is in a great hurry—so far as others are concerned. So far as he himself is concerned, there is no hurry—because nothing remains for him to do. And still, he can choose how this death happens. He can arrange when it happens—within limits. If his body is to last seventy years, then within those limits he can give…
A friend has asked, Osho, one can die with awareness, but how can one be born with awareness?
Most fasters spend twenty-four hours repeating, “I am hungry; I have not eaten,” with their minds absorbed in planning tomorrow’s menu. Then the fast is wasted; it is merely a hunger-strike. That is the difference: a hunger-strike means not eating; upavasa means “dwelling nearer and nearer.” Nearer to whom? To oneself. Away from the body, closer to the self. Even the word upavasa carries no implication of starving; it means nearer-dwelling. Thus one could be in upavasa even while eating—if one knows the eating is at a distance and “I am elsewhere.” And one could not be in upavasa even while not eating—if one keeps thinking, “I am hungry; I’m dying of hunger.” Upavasa is a psychological knowing of one’s separateness from hunger. Other sufferings too can be invited voluntarily. A man can even lie on thorns, simply to see that the thorns do not pierce me; they pierce elsewhere,…
Would it be possible for you to describe what happens to the soul after death, where it moves about, what it does and in what condition it is during the interval between the giving up of one body and the taking of another? In this connection, you had previously discussed the freedom of the soul to take birth whenever it so desired. Please enlighten us as to whether the soul also has a freedom to choose whether to give up or not give up the body.
It will be easier if we understand two or three things about the interval between the giving up of one body and the taking of another. First, the fact is that the experiences of that interval are like dreams. Whenever one experiences something, at that moment the experience is that of a real happening. But when one recalls it in memory, it becomes like a dream; it is dreamlike because there is no use of the senses. Your feeling and your conviction that a happening is real come through your senses and your body. If I feel that I am seeing you, but then I try to touch you and find you cannot be touched, then I say that you are a mirage: you are not here. If I try to touch this table and if my hand passes through it without touching anything, then I would say this table…
One friend has asked: one can die fully conscious, but how can one be in full consciousness at birth?
Remember, the darker the night, the brighter the stars. The flash of lightning stands out like a silver strand, the darker the clouds are. Similarly, when, in its full form, death surrounds us from all sides, at that moment the very center of life manifests in all its glory -- never before that. Death surrounds us like darkness, and in the middle, that very center of life -- call it atman, the soul, shines in its full splendor; the surrounding darkness makes it luminous. But at that moment we become unconscious. At the very moment of death, which could otherwise become the moment to know our being, we become unconscious. Hence one will have to make preparations towards raising one's consciousness. Meditation is that preparation. Meditation is an experiment in how one attains to a gradual, voluntary death. It is an experiment in how one moves within and then leaves…
What degree of choice do we have as far as reincarnation is concerned?
There is no destiny that is forcing you in a particular direction, no past that is pushing you, no future that is pulling you -- only you. You can turn around this very moment and change. You can be different, completely different. You can be a soul, not a body. There are no degrees of freedom. And when I say that there are no degrees of freedom, no degrees of choice, I am also saying that there are no degrees of enlightenment. You become enlightened suddenly. Just as there are degrees of slavery but no degrees of freedom, there are also degrees of ignorance but no degrees of knowing. Either you know or you do not know. People come to me and ask, "Who is more enlightened, Buddha or Mahavira or Krishna or Christ?" As if there were degrees! People who write in the scriptures that there are degrees of…