Between lives there’s just a quiet pause with no events; if you were awake you’d notice the silence, if asleep you’d notice nothing.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
You have said that you remember your former life seven hundred years ago. Can you remember your name at that time and the occasion of your death? What I am interested in is what happened between your last life and your present life.
The question seems meaningful, but it is not. Life means that something is happening, and between two lives, there is nothing happening. Between two lives there is a gap. If something is happening, then again it is another life. Nothing happens in the gap. You can remember it only as a gap, not filled by anything. When we say that someone is alive we mean that something is happening in him. Life is the realm of happenings. Without a body, nothing happens: the body is the medium for things to happen. The moment you are beyond the body, or not in the body, nothing happens. Then you can either be aware or unconscious: these are the two possibilities. If you are unconscious then you cannot remember. If you are conscious then you can remember. But the remembrance is only of the gap; there are no events.
Beloved Osho, in discourse the other night you said that at one's death there is but a two or three second gap between which the soul travels from one body to the next. Master, you have said that your last life was seven hundred years ago. Where were you for all those years?
Just here, in Uruguay! Where else could I be? The whole existence is available. When you are not in a body, you are just part of the whole existence without any partition. The reason why I had to remain seven hundred years... A few people don't get into the next life immediately. Either the person is so wicked, so animalistic, so murderous, like Adolf Hitler... He is not yet reborn because he needs a certain kind of womb which may not be available for thousands of years: he has to wait. Or if you have attained a certain evolved consciousness there is the same problem: you need a certain womb. Unless that is available, you cannot get another birth. Ordinarily it is two or three seconds, because for the sleeping humanity the same kind of wombs are available. All day long millions of people are making love, and they are…
Osho, you have told us what happens to the soul during that timeless interval between two births. But some points remain unresolved, regarding the bodiless soul: in that bodiless state, does the soul remain stationary or can it move about? And how does it recognize other souls? In that state, is there any possibility of a dialogue between souls?
Sometimes different types of events may also happen, but these kinds of experiences will differ. Occasionally, it may so happen that souls which are neither stationary nor in movement will enter other bodies. But to say that the souls will enter is a linguistic fallacy. It would be better to say that some body may behave in such a way that it will cause a soul to enter into it. The world of such souls is not different from ours. That world exists also beside us, close by. We are all residing in the same world. Every inch of space that is here is filled with souls. The space right here which appears empty to us is also full. There are two types of bodies which are in a state of deep receptivity. One is of those that are in great fear. Those who are in great fear cause their…
Osho, in that timeless interval you have described what happens to the soul. But what is the soul’s disembodied form? Is it still or does it wander? How does it recognize other familiar souls? And is there any possibility of dialogue in that state?
Ask: in a dream are you still or moving? It is hard to say. Waking, you find you lay still in bed; yet within the dream there was great movement. Strictly speaking, even movement in dreams is not real. If you understand precisely, in dreams you are not a participant but only a witness. You can see yourself dying in a dream; you can see your own corpse. Even when you see yourself walking, what you see walking is only the dream; you remain the seer. Properly understood, in dream you are only the witness. Hence religion devised a maxim: one who comes to see the world as dream-like attains the supreme realization. Philosophies calling the world maya or dream arose for this reason: if we can see the world as a dream, we become the witness. In dreams there is never a participant; there is always a witness. You…
Osho, when the soul leaves the body and has not yet assumed another one, is it possible to describe what happens in that timeless interval, and the kind of environment in which it moves? And, along with this, since you have spoken of the soul’s freedom to take birth by its own will, does it also have the freedom to leave the body whenever it wishes—or not to leave it?
If you look at descriptions of hell’s fire, you’ll find this: people are burned in the fire, yet they do not burn up. The inconsistency doesn’t occur to you at that time—that you are being burned, the fire is terrible, the heat unbearable, yet you are not actually burning! That inconsistency may occur later, not in the midst of it. In the interval between two bodies there are two kinds of souls. First, those very bad souls for whom finding a womb will take time; I call them pretas. Second, the good souls for whom finding a suitable womb will also take time; they need a worthy womb—I call them devas. There is no fundamental difference in species—only differences of personality, character, quality of mind. Their experiences are different. The bad souls come back from this interval with such painful memories that the memory itself is the fruit called hell.…