According to Osho, when the leap happens, memory is not wiped out; only your identification with it breaks and distance increases. You clearly see memory as a mechanical instrument and consciousness as separate, so knowledge becomes sharper while the past no longer corrupts the present. This inner 'virginity' allows fresh, unconditioned response; memory remains a useful tool rather than your identity.
Your memory stays, but you stop thinking it’s you—you use it like a tool and meet each moment fresh.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, when it happens—when the leap takes place—will memory completely vanish, go far away? But words should still be remembered, right? Technical words, technical education—these should remain in this process.
So today when you come, I will see you—not the one who abused me yesterday. Where is he now? Much water has flowed down the Ganges. For all I know, you may be coming to ask forgiveness, and I am thinking you are the same man who abused me. Who knows what you have become in twenty-four hours! In twenty-four hours one has no certainty about oneself—how can one have certainty about another? So memory is a corrupting element. If you identify yourself with it, you are finished. In the end you will go mad if you are completely caught in its corruption. But if you stand entirely outside it and memory remains only a mechanical device that serves you—where the house is, where the shop is, where what you have read is kept—then it is merely a mechanical device you use. Soon enough, we have already made small computers…
Osho, in a sequence-bound life and in a spontaneous life, will memories come to an end?
No. In a sequence-bound life, your very being will emerge from your memory. In a spontaneous life, your being will use your memory. That is the difference. In a spontaneous life you will be new every moment; if you wish, you will use memory! Memory will remain stored in the treasury of your consciousness—present, not erased; it will remain. But it will be like the basement of your house filled with many things: when needed, you take something out. That is why Buddha gave it a name; he called it agara—an abode. Smriti-agar: a storehouse, the storehouse of consciousness. A repository of consciousness, set aside. When you need it—even your spontaneous existence will need memory—you will use it. If you have to return home, you will need the memory of your home; you will use it.
Beloved Osho, you said that to live moment to moment one must throw away one's dead past and memories. Does it mean that all the memories have to be dissolved and destroyed to transcend the mind? But one needs a strong mind and an intense and sufficient accumulation of memories to function in this world.
The atom bomb is not such a great danger as these secrets are because the very soul of man can be enslaved through them. If Jesus is born now in Soviet Russia or communist China, they will not crucify him; first they will try to destroy his memory. They cannot be successful with Jesus but they can be successful with you. They cannot succeed with Jesus because he is already unidentified with the memory. If you destroy the memory nothing is really lost because he lives in his consciousness, not in his memories. You don't really have any consciousness separate from the memories, so if your memory is destroyed your consciousness is destroyed. You don't know how to function without the memories. So for the new generation, the coming world, meditation is a must because only that can protect you from political dictatorship -- nothing else. They will not put…
What has gone wrong? Why is it that people meet everything new reluctantly, and with fear, rather than with eager joy?
The new does not arise out of you, it comes from the beyond. It is not part of you. Your whole past is at stake. The new is discontinuous with you, hence the fear. You have lived in one way, you have thought in one way, you have made a comfortable life out of your beliefs. Then something new knocks on the door. Now your whole past pattern is going to be disturbed. If you allow the new to enter you will never be the same again, the new will transform you. It is risky. One never knows where you will end with the new. The old is known, familiar; you have lived with it for long, you are acquainted with it. The new is unfamiliar. It may be the friend, it may be the enemy, who knows. And there is no way to know. The only way to know…
The audio recording of the question is not clear.
I did not say—please, listen to me; no, no, listen to me—I did not say that it is a comedy; I said that it is not a tragedy. I have understood your point. Consider it in two or three parts. First, I did not say that because death came it was a good thing. I did not say that, not even by mistake. I only said that we are not entitled to decide whether it was good or bad. We know nothing about what happened.