According to Osho, there’s nothing to recognize: all past—“real” or imagined—is illusory dream-stuff. Sorting memories from madness misses the point. Only the witnessing consciousness is real; experiences themselves are maya. Shift concern from analyzing yesterdays to cultivating present wakefulness. Through meditation become the witness, remain alert, and don’t slip into future fantasies; then illusions lose their grip without any need to classify them.
Don’t sort past-life stories—see them as dreams and stay awake now by calmly watching your mind.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
How to recognize past life experiences from illusion, madness?
Become more alert; the world becomes more real. Become even more alert; the world becomes even more real. When you are at the peak of your awareness, the world is so radiantly real that it is difficult to call it matter. One has to call it God; nothing else will do. It is so radiantly real, it is so eternally real that one has to say that time has ceased. Reality is neither past, nor present, nor future; it simply is. It is herenow. Now is not part of time. In fact, you should not use the word 'now'. Only enlightened people should be allowed to use it, because your now is just not there. What do you call 'now'? The moment you call it 'now' it is already past. Or, if you call it 'now' before it is past, then it is in the future. You are so asleep…
Osho, why can I not forget my past? Even though in my past there is nothing but suffering.
Perhaps for precisely that reason. Man keeps scratching at his sorrows to remember them—because there is a certain pleasure in suffering. You will be surprised. You will say, “Pleasure in suffering? What kind of pleasure?” There is a pleasure in suffering: suffering is the food of the ego. In a state of bliss the ego dissolves; in a state of suffering the ego becomes very dense. People have not chosen suffering for nothing; they have chosen it cleverly, knowingly. People are not miserable by accident; they are miserable because only in suffering does the ego survive. “I am somebody!”—this remains only in pain. The moment a wave of bliss comes, you are swept away; the ego cannot remain. So people talk about bliss, but they do not want to be blissful; they are afraid. If they become blissful, this sense of “I” will not survive. That is why all the…
Beloved Osho, it seems as if everything I perceive in or out of meditation is my own creation or projection. I can't distinguish between what I see, feel or am creating. Osho, what is?
There is no need to distinguish between thoughts, dreams and reality. If you try, you will feel more confused. There is no way to distinguish, because as far as mind is concerned everything appears in the mind as a thought. It may be real, it may not be real; but the moment anything appears in the mind it appears in the form of thought. You cannot distinguish, and there is no need. And don't go on that journey, because that journey becomes a journey of thinking, and meditation is lost. Rather, on the contrary, remain centered in your witnessing. Don't be worried by the objects in the mind; whatsoever they are, they are mind stuff. You simply remain more centered in your witnessing. Just be the watcher. Don't try to distinguish. Whatsoever appears in the mind, just watch it. Watch it appearing, watch it being there, watch it disappearing. Sooner…
Another friend has asked: Osho, what is the relationship between the method of meditation and jati-smaran (recollection of past lives)?
But the one who becomes skilled in this—who can fully awaken any day’s memory up to the age of five—will find that the memories begin to awaken completely. And you should test it. As today passes, note down some events and lock them up. After two years, try to recall today. Most of it will have been forgotten. Then remember—and after remembering, break the lock and compare whether what you recalled matches what you had written. You will be amazed—astonished—that besides what you wrote, many more details have come back which you did not even note at the time. They will all be there in memory. Buddha called this alaya-vijnana. There is a corner of the human mind he called the storehouse of consciousness. Like a junk room in the house where we keep all the odds and ends, there is a storehouse that collects memories—where everything from birth after…
Osho, I either drown in memories of the past or in imaginations of the future. The present, for me, is just an empty word. What should I do?
This is not your condition alone; it is everyone’s. This is the very nature of the mind. The mind is either in the past or in the future; it cannot be in the present. Hence, for the mind, the word “present” is an empty word. Just inquire a little: whenever you are thinking, you either think of the past—what has happened, what is gone—or you think of what is going to happen. But how can you think about what is? It simply is. Where is the scope for thinking? What is, is. What difference will your thinking make? And if you think, you will miss—because thinking creates an interference. You ask, “What should I do?” Become a mirror. As long as the mind remains, you will keep swaying between past and future. The mind is like a clock’s pendulum—swinging from one end to the other, never resting in the middle.…