What is déjà vu?

Beloved Osho, occasionally, a strong feeling comes over me that exactly the situation I am in at that moment has happened before. Others tell me of experiencing the same feeling and that it has been termed, `deja vu'. I have always wondered what this experience was and its connection with meditation. Can you help me to understand it?

Anand Somen, the experience termed deja vu has a reality of its own, because this is not your first time alive; you have seen many lives, many deaths. And naturally in thousands of lives it is simply impossible not to come to the same places, to meet the same faces ... to see a certain tree and feel that you have seen exactly this tree before. The feeling is absolutely certain, without any doubt, you are not imagining it: you have seen a certain person before, or you have been in a situation before, in every smallest detail. It is a very strange feeling; one gets dizzy. But it proves that all the religions that have been born outside of India are very incomplete; they cannot explain the experience of deja vu. Unless you have the idea of reincarnation, deja vu is not explainable. You come into a town and…

So somewhere deep in your unconscious you are carrying all the memories of all the past lives. It is very, very possible that again and again you will come to situations which are alike and suddenly you feel as if it has happened before. And it has happened before! Maybe the actors were different, but how can they be very much different ? Human beings are human beings after all. For example, just listening to me, you can be surrounded by a sense of deja vu: you can start feeling you have listened to me before, the same way. I may not have been with you before but you may have listened to some other master. And they have all the same look in the eyes, the same scent to their being, the same song to sing. Words differ but the rhythm, the constantly running underground rhythm is the same.

Osho, when I listen to you it feels as if I’ve heard you before. When I look at you it feels as if I’ve seen you before. Yet this is my very first time here. It’s the first time I’ve heard you, the first time I’ve seen you. What is happening to me?

Eyes closed, keep advancing—such is the law of the love-mad; Do not bow your head, keep fighting—such is the law of the brave; There is motion in the breath, motion in the heart—here progress alone is the rule; Become motion, and in motion dissolve—such is the law of the motioned ones! I am a challenge—a call! I shake you. I question you. Eyes closed, keep advancing—such is the law of the love-mad; Do not bow your head, keep fighting—such is the law of the brave; There is motion in the breath, motion in the heart—here progress alone is the rule; Become motion, and in motion dissolve—such is the law of the motioned ones! You missed before—do not miss this time. Yes, fear comes. Satsang brings fear. Ah—to see and hear That which truly Is here; Love, in a single instant, effaces its own devotees! Love annihilates. Love burns. But the…

Beloved Osho, when I took sannyas and I first met you, it was like meeting again with an ancient beloved, as if I had known you for a long time. Is it so, or is every meeting with an enlightened being so much a reminder of one's own inner self that it feels as if one has met before?

Purna, the experience of remembering as if you have been with me before in the past lives has two dimensions -- one, which you mention in your question itself. Each meeting with an enlightened person is meeting with a mirror. You see yourself as in reality you are -- not the mask but the original face, not the personality but your universal being. The meeting with the enlightened person creates a resonance, a certain vibration that reaches to the very depths of your being. Because you don't know your self, it seems you have met this enlightened being before -- because you don't know your own enlightenment. It is your self nature. This is one dimension. But there is another dimension also. You have lived many lives, and it is impossible that you have not come across the awakened, the enlightened, the illuminated beings -- perhaps many times. You have…

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…