According to Osho, the timing of your return is entirely your own choice. Any liberation given from outside breeds dependence and is not real freedom. The soul enjoys supreme freedom—even to wander through suffering, jealousy, and hells—and returns only when it chooses. Responsibility, awareness, and willingness to end the journey are yours alone; no one can do it for you.
Only you can decide when to come back; if someone else does it for you, you won’t be truly free.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Does it depend only on me—when to return?
Absolutely, it depends only on you. Otherwise you will become dependent; then your liberation can never happen. If someone were to liberate you, that would be a new kind of dependence; you could never truly be free. And this is what I call the soul’s supreme freedom—to suffer sorrow, to journey through hells, to descend into pains; into envies, into jealousy—into everything; it has complete freedom. And no one can bring it back unless...
A friend has asked: If the soul is beyond all pleasure and pain, then what is the use of the prayers offered for the peace of others’ souls?
This is a very important question, and it will be useful to understand it. First, the soul is certainly beyond all pleasure and pain, all peace and unrest, all likes and dislikes—in essence, beyond all dualities and opposites. The soul is neither restless nor peaceful, because only that can be peaceful which can also be restless. It is the mind that becomes peaceful and the mind that becomes restless. Properly understood, the very existence of mind is unrest; the disappearance of mind is peace. But the soul is, in itself, never peaceful and never restless; neither in happiness nor in sorrow. The soul abides in a third state altogether, which is called bliss. Bliss means: where there is neither sorrow nor pleasure. Bliss does not mean pleasure. Sorrow is a tension, and pleasure too is a tension. One can die from sorrow; one can also die from happiness. Sorrow brings…
Osho, as with the ocean: clouds rise from it, its water rains down, ice forms, and then it all returns to the ocean—so there is a cycle. In the same way, would liberated souls, in some manner, keep going back even to nigod?
No, no. There is no such cycle, no such cycle. Because water, steam, and the ocean are not three things. They are not three things; they are a single thing in a mechanical cycle. A mechanical cycle. No droplet can free itself from water and be outside it; the wheel keeps turning. As far as moksha is concerned, returning from there is difficult. Only when mechanicalness breaks, when the mind becomes fully conscious—wholly conscious—can one reach moksha. From total consciousness, returning is impossible. Yes, within the world one can go round and round—many rounds. A human being can be born a human a thousand times, repeating the same rounds, because he is asleep. If he awakens, he stops circling; he steps out of the wheel. Since moksha means being outside all cycles, one cannot go back into the cycle. And a drop of water is in a stupor; we should…
Beloved Osho, we are part and parcel of god, and indestructible too. Please explain when, why and how this part got separated from the root? And reuniting the part to the root -- is it possible there is a union that cannot be separated? If it is possible then please join this part to the root so that I don't have to be frightened in this chaos again and again.
If you ask me I will say that meditation is not a method to attain God; God can be attained without meditation too. Meditation is a training to endure God. Meditation gives you the capacity to withstand. When you enter ultimate aloneness you will be completely alone. No radio, no television, no newspaper -- no friend, no club, no society -- nothing at all. You will be completely alone. Prepare for that aloneness. I am ready to take you out of this chaos, but are you ready? When you sit alone your head starts creating this same chaos. The friends that renounce their homes start talking to themselves. In their head they start talking to the wife they left behind. The whole crowd is collected again. Webs of imagination are woven. You cannot remain alone; hence you return again and again. You do not return to the world without cause.…
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…