According to Osho, personality traits, memories, and conditioning persist because your astral body—a subtle body of light holding the mind—survives death and moves from womb to womb, forming the continuum called individuality. Your untouched center witnesses this, but until realized through meditation, the astral mind carries scars and patterns across lives; enlightenment cuts this continuum, ending rebirth.
It’s like a glowing backpack that carries your habits and memories from one body to the next until you wake up and put it down.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, regarding the mind—as you say it continues from lifetime to lifetime and remains the same—does any subtle memory remain after a person dies?
Yes, the mind remains the same, and after a person dies all the memory remains with them. But layers settle over it. Imagine we don’t clean this room for seven years: today dust will come, and it will keep coming every day for seven years. After seven years, when we return, the top layer will be today’s, and below it the earlier layers will be pressed down. The seven-year-old layer will still be there, but buried very deep. It’s possible the top layer won’t even know that seven years of dust lie underneath. So the mind is traveling, and the journey is progressive. Every day you add something to it. Yesterday gets buried under today; then today will be buried under tomorrow. The previous birth gets buried under this birth, and the one before that under two births, and so on—down into what psychologists call the unconscious. Sometimes it happens…
Maneesha has asked a question: BELOVED OSHO, HAS ONE ONLY RECEIVED A HIT IF IT HURTS?
Maneesha, a master hits not to hurt but to heal. And a disciple receives the hit with tremendous gratitude, not with anger. Unless a hit is received with gratitude it cannot do its work of healing. You are all full of wounds, and they all need to be exposed to the sun, to the open sky. Unless you allow yourself to be exposed completely, you cannot get rid of those wounds. The normal way in the world is to hide the wounds so nobody knows about them -- go on hiding them deeper and deeper in the unconscious, so even you forget them. But to work on the consciousness, cleaning it from all the wounds is absolutely necessary. Those wounds have to be brought into the open. You are asking, "Has one only received a hit if it hurts?" No, Maneesha. If it hurts you have missed. If it does…
Beloved Osho, does the being, or self, in the person die with the death of the person; or does it live beyond death in another body?
Parents teach children that there is a God -- and they know nothing of God. They tell their children that there is heaven and there is hell -- and they know nothing of heaven and hell. I have heard: it happened one day in New York, in New York's biggest church, that as the cardinal came in he found a young man, and he was puzzled whether he was a hippie or Jesus Christ. He looked like Jesus Christ, but you don't find Jesus Christ like this! He must be a hippie. The cardinal was afraid because Jesus was not his own experience -- he could not recognize him. He went close to him and asked, "Who are you?" And the young man said, "You can't recognize me? And daily you pray to me, `My Lord, Jesus Christ,' and now I have come and you have some nerve to ask…
That very mind is the source of your endless births. The body falls here; the mind continues the journey. Desire goes along. Ego goes along. The memory of deeds done goes along. The craving for deeds that were left undone goes along. The entire psychic-body travels on. Only the gross physiological frame falls in death. But the mind goes on. That very mind grasps a new body. That mind has grasped countless bodies before and will go on grasping them. Hence the wise do not call death a real death, because in truth nothing dies—only the garment changes. The body is no more than a garment. Understand this well too. Ordinarily we think the body comes first, and then the mind is born within it.
Now let my spirit meet the absolute pervading all throughout the vital air, and let my body be reduced to ashes.
In spite of all this, why do we hold on to the mind so tight? If the mind is the root of all these illnesses -- as those who know tell us -- then what is the reason for clinging so tightly to it? For the answer, look to the sage's challenging remarks. The reason we cling to it so tightly is that we are afraid that if the mind is not then we also shall not be. In fact, intentionally or unintentionally, we have identified ourselves with it. We have come to believe, "I am the mind." As long as this is our understanding we will continue to cling to all those illnesses. You are not the mind! You are that which knows the mind, which sees it and which is fully conversant with it. To realize this you will have to move a little away from it, you…