According to Osho, attributing survival in a deadly situation to the presence of a virtuous soul is an imagined cause, not a proven one. Nothing is accidental, but true causes must withstand inquiry and experiment, not our moral projections. Without rigorous testing, linking safety to someone's goodness is superstition; we should seek the real, reproducible factors behind outcomes.
People surviving near a ‘good’ person isn’t magic—the real causes need to be found and tested.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, in that story you went on to tell—I am referring to what happened after the cart overturned. The cart overturned, and all of you survived. So everyone said that because a virtuous soul like you was in it, everyone was saved. Everyone accepted it: since you were there, all were saved. What is the explanation for that?
No. What really happens is this—what really happens is this: we all want to be saved. We all want to be saved, and whether we are saved or not, we will find a reason for it. To install a reason is one thing; to inquire into the cause is quite another. Do you see my point? One thing is that we invent a reason for what we want to happen. And behind even that there is a basic premise working within us: how could anything happen without a cause? That fundamental principle is at work in us. If four people come through without even a scratch, then there must be some cause. If you understand it rightly, up to that extent the matter is scientific, because even that cannot be without cause. But we don’t know what the cause is, so we imagine anything. We can say there was a…
Question: Second question: Osho, the events of the twenty-second have brought earlier memories back vividly. We were taking you from Poona to Kalyan to put you on a train when, at the crossroads of Khopoli village, a truck suddenly slammed into our car. All the windows shattered into tiny pieces and fell on you. For a moment it seemed you were badly hurt, but neither you nor any of us was injured. Once, coming to Poona from Nasik with Pungaliya-ji in his car for your discourse, the car rolled three or four times and fell into a ditch. In such a condition anyone could have been badly hurt, yet neither you nor your companions received any injury. In Bombay, at Woodland, there was an unsuccessful attempt to attack you. The roof of Lao Tzu Hall collapsed badly; a few hours later your discourse was to be there.
Someone is asking, Osho, what is the reason that Meera did not die even after drinking poison? What kind of devotion was that? What kind of love? The same is said about Prahlad—that he did not burn in fire. But why did Socrates die after drinking poison? And why did Jesus not survive the crucifixion?
Meera sees the whole world as nectar, as Krishna. She must have seen the poison as Krishna too and drunk it, tasting the very rasa of Krishna in it. In such a state, the poison has no effect. It remains untouched; it cannot reach Meera. And if a hand does not blister even when a live coal is placed upon it, the scientific point is settled: Prahlad too can be saved from burning. It is a question of inner state. No God is standing there saving Prahlad—that is a story, not science. If some God were going around saving this one, instructing that one, and blocking poisons, what a complicated racket that would be! No God is sitting and doing all that. It is Prahlad’s inner state. His trust is absolute that he will not burn, that God will save him. Whether God is saving him is not the question.…
Osho, in an earlier talk you said that God—meaning Existence, the Whole, Totality—is one. But in this verse, how are beings and God, or nature and God, spoken of as two distinct categories? What is the reason?
I moved the pillow farther away. When I touched it, he reacted as if someone had touched his beloved; it showed on his face. As twenty minutes approached, I picked the pillow up to lock it in a cupboard. He rushed over, and totally outside his conscious control, he snatched the pillow, kissed it, and hugged it. Everyone burst out laughing. “What are you doing?” He began to cry, “I myself don’t understand what I’m doing. But now I feel such relief. A restlessness was building so that I just couldn’t stop myself—I had to hug and kiss this pillow. I am absolutely mad!” He had no idea what had been said to him under hypnosis. Isn’t the attraction between man and woman just like this? No one has hypnotized you—you are already hypnotized by the journey of lifetimes. It is nature’s hypnosis. The old word is maya; the new…
There have always been poor, wretched, miserable, sick people in the world. Their lifespan was short: they neither had good food to eat nor proper clothes to wear. But from the point of view of the soul, the number of poor has never been so great as it is today. This is only because man has come to believe there is nothing within, and so, for him, the question of turning in doesn't arise. Once humanity believes there is nothing within, the whole idea of reaching inside is finished. The future may turn out to be terribly bleak and dangerous.