According to Osho, coincidence is the realm beyond cause-and-effect and beyond Jung’s synchronicity—a space where no law binds events. It is the 'law of freedom' of your innermost core, where things happen without mechanical necessity or psychological resonance. Coincidences are pure, uncaused occurrences, revealing that life includes an open field of spontaneity and free possibility.
Sometimes things just happen for no reason at all—they aren’t caused by anything and don’t depend on your mood; that free space is coincidence.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Question: BELOVED MASTER, WHAT IS "COINCIDENCE"? Anand Viramo, there are three things to be understood. One is the law of cause and effect. That applies to the material world and because science believes only in the law of cause and effect, it denies everything else. The law of cause and effect is mechanical, there is no coincidence. You heat the water to one hundred degrees and it evaporates, there is no coincidence. It is not that one day it evaporates at ninety-nine degrees, another day at ninety degrees. There is no question of the mood, the water cannot decide, the water is mechanically ruled by a law of cause and effect. Those who believe in the law of cause and effect, they will not believe in any coincidence. Everything is predetermined, there is nothing like coincidence. Everything has an inevitability.
Osho, can’t this be called a coincidence?
It will appear to us as coincidence, because the causes are not visible to us. That is exactly—exactly—what Hume says: that everything is coincidence. Hume says so because where are the causes seen? Where the causes are visible to us, we agree. Where they are not, it seems like coincidence, like chance. But such a “coincidence” would be quite astounding—that a man says, “Let my life end,” and at that very moment his life ends. Coincidence is not that simple. It may happen, but even then it does not seem so easy. And he falls right there and collapses. A man of such resolve—if he sets his mind on a lottery number—it would not be very difficult for that number to come up. All I am saying is that there are many causes we do not see. Because we do not see them, we keep groping in the dark and…
Question: OSHO, ARE THERE REALLY ANY COINCIDENCES? Prem Doug, MAN WHILE HE IS UNCONSCIOUS lives only in coincidences; his life consists of only coincidences and nothing else. The unconscious life is an accidental life. Only the conscious man goes beyond the accidental and enters into the intrinsic. The conscious man transcends coincidences. Without being totally conscious you are a victim of all kinds of unknown forces that surround you. You don't know why things are happening to you, why you have done this and why not that, why you have chosen this and why not that. When I passed my matriculation and went to university I wanted to fill in my form, but I had no fountain pen with me.
Osho, are there any meaningless coincidences, or is everything a gigantic, precise mechanism?
If somebody asks you why you have fallen in love with a woman or a man, what you are going to say? And whatsoever you will say will look very silly. The color of the eyes, somebody will say -- now, what nonsense is this? -- or the length of the nose, or the shape of the eyes, or the way she walks... or the way he stands . .. What nonsense! What it has to do with love? You are just finding something so that you can pretend to be rational, conscious, in control. And just as people fall in love they fall out. And when they fall out it is the same nose, the same color of the eyes, the same hairstyle, the same woman, the same man. And what has happened now? Nothing has changed. You can fall in love today and you can fall out tomorrow.…
The friend agreed, but on the way when the sun started rising the guest forgot. It was so beautiful by the side of the lake, the reflection of all the colors, the birds singing and the lotuses blossoming, opening, he could not resist, he forgot. He said, "What a beautiful sunrise." His host was shocked because he has broken the condition. Lao Tzu did not say anything, nothing was said there. Back home he called his friend and told him, "Don't bring your guest again. He is too talkative. The sunrise was there, I was there, he was there, you were there -- what is the need to say anything, any comment, any interpretation?" And this is my attitude: you are here, every individual is here, the whole existence is available. All that you need is just to be silent and listen to existence.