According to Osho, past-life meetings are irrelevant—and flattering fantasies of the mind. We haven’t even truly met in this life, because you keep escaping behind ideas, ceremonies, and knowledge. What matters is meeting now: risking immediacy, dropping the mind, becoming childlike and innocent, and looking directly. That existential encounter—not ritual or memory—is the real initiation and the doorway to enlightenment.
Forget past lives; meet reality and the master right now with a fresh, childlike heart and no ideas.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, kindly tell me -- have we met in a past life?
CHIDVILAS, WE HAVE NOT even met in this life. What are you talking about -- the past life? You have been here, I have been here, but meeting has not happened YET. I go on trying to meet you, and you go on escaping. You are very artful, skillful, clever. And you KNOW it! And to avoid THIS encounter you are interested in thinking about past lives. Ask me why we have not met in this life. How is it going to help whether we met in the past life or not? Now we cannot go back to it; we cannot make anything out of it. It is finished. But this is how mind works. It escapes from the present. It finds ways either in the past or in the future. Those are tricks, strategies of the mind to save itself. Why should you be interested in-'past life'? It is…
Osho, when I listen to you it feels as if I’ve heard you before. When I look at you it feels as if I’ve seen you before. Yet this is my very first time here. It’s the first time I’ve heard you, the first time I’ve seen you. What is happening to me?
Eyes closed, keep advancing—such is the law of the love-mad; Do not bow your head, keep fighting—such is the law of the brave; There is motion in the breath, motion in the heart—here progress alone is the rule; Become motion, and in motion dissolve—such is the law of the motioned ones! I am a challenge—a call! I shake you. I question you. Eyes closed, keep advancing—such is the law of the love-mad; Do not bow your head, keep fighting—such is the law of the brave; There is motion in the breath, motion in the heart—here progress alone is the rule; Become motion, and in motion dissolve—such is the law of the motioned ones! You missed before—do not miss this time. Yes, fear comes. Satsang brings fear. Ah—to see and hear That which truly Is here; Love, in a single instant, effaces its own devotees! Love annihilates. Love burns. But the…
Beloved Osho, when I took sannyas and I first met you, it was like meeting again with an ancient beloved, as if I had known you for a long time. Is it so, or is every meeting with an enlightened being so much a reminder of one's own inner self that it feels as if one has met before?
Purna, the experience of remembering as if you have been with me before in the past lives has two dimensions -- one, which you mention in your question itself. Each meeting with an enlightened person is meeting with a mirror. You see yourself as in reality you are -- not the mask but the original face, not the personality but your universal being. The meeting with the enlightened person creates a resonance, a certain vibration that reaches to the very depths of your being. Because you don't know your self, it seems you have met this enlightened being before -- because you don't know your own enlightenment. It is your self nature. This is one dimension. But there is another dimension also. You have lived many lives, and it is impossible that you have not come across the awakened, the enlightened, the illuminated beings -- perhaps many times. You have…
Beloved Osho, in poona I remember you would sometimes say to sannyasins, "good! Finally you have come. I have been waiting for you." Osho, do you know our past lives?
If I want to know, I can know, but ordinarily I avoid knowing because your present is enough!
So somewhere deep in your unconscious you are carrying all the memories of all the past lives. It is very, very possible that again and again you will come to situations which are alike and suddenly you feel as if it has happened before. And it has happened before! Maybe the actors were different, but how can they be very much different ? Human beings are human beings after all. For example, just listening to me, you can be surrounded by a sense of deja vu: you can start feeling you have listened to me before, the same way. I may not have been with you before but you may have listened to some other master. And they have all the same look in the eyes, the same scent to their being, the same song to sing. Words differ but the rhythm, the constantly running underground rhythm is the same.