What is our investment in repressing memories of previous deaths?

Question: Maneesha has asked, OUR BELOVED MASTER, WHAT IS OUR INVESTMENT IN REPRESSING OUR MEMORY OF PREVIOUS DEATHS? IS IT NOT TRUE TO SAY THAT IF WE COULD RECALL OUR DEATHS WE MIGHT LOSE OUR FEAR OF DEATH AND THUS BE ABLE TO LIVE A FEARLESS LIFE? Maneesha, this is certainly one of our great investments in forgetting the past, the previous life. Because if you remember it, you will not be able to be so foolish as to repeat the same game again. You have done it so many times; you have fallen in love, you have fallen out of love, so many times ... so many romances! Our great investment is that each time we go to see the same film we forget that we have seen it before. Otherwise you will not go to see the movie, only once is enough.

In this regard a friend has also asked: Osho, can we know our past lives?

Sri Aurobindo undertook another experiment. He did not appear to succeed, and did not succeed outwardly, but his direction was absolutely right. His experiment was this: Is it possible for a few souls to rise so high that their very presence begins to lift and call other souls upward? Is it possible that when one person’s soul rises, the overall level of the soul of humanity rises with it? This is not only possible; today it is the only possibility. Nothing else can work now. Man has fallen so low that if we plan to change people one by one, perhaps the change will never happen. In fact, the one who goes to change them is more likely to be changed by their company—to be corrupted along with them. You can see it: those “servants of the people” who go to serve the people—within a short time it is discovered…

Osho, regarding the mind—as you say it continues from lifetime to lifetime and remains the same—does any subtle memory remain after a person dies?

Yes, the mind remains the same, and after a person dies all the memory remains with them. But layers settle over it. Imagine we don’t clean this room for seven years: today dust will come, and it will keep coming every day for seven years. After seven years, when we return, the top layer will be today’s, and below it the earlier layers will be pressed down. The seven-year-old layer will still be there, but buried very deep. It’s possible the top layer won’t even know that seven years of dust lie underneath. So the mind is traveling, and the journey is progressive. Every day you add something to it. Yesterday gets buried under today; then today will be buried under tomorrow. The previous birth gets buried under this birth, and the one before that under two births, and so on—down into what psychologists call the unconscious. Sometimes it happens…

Osho, the talk of remembering past lives has become a thing of the past.

Yes—of the past, of the past indeed. But if it occurs to you what all you did in the past, how many times you did it, then a fundamental difference will arise in what you are doing today. If it becomes clear that I have earned wealth many times—again and again—and found nothing in it, then today’s race to earn money will at once grow faint. Its force will drain away. The difference will be basic, immediate. If it becomes clear to you that this body has been had many times and each time it perished, then living centered around the body has no meaning—the body will perish again. So the center of my living should not be the body, because the body comes many times and dies, and nothing really changes. For the first time, the center of your living will become the soul, not the body. Yes, it…

Beloved Osho, I heard you say that if a person can remember his birth and being in the womb, then the memory of his last death may come.I have tried to remember, but only imagination is there. I also heard you say that it is not possible to remember beyond three to four years old because the baby has no mind. Is there a remembrance that is not of the mind?

But Hindus have a totally different approach. It is to be remembered that this is the only point on which all the three religions that were born in India agree: about everything else they have their own philosophy, but about reincarnation they all agree. And that is not just an accident, because all three religions were working on the same lines -- looking into the unconscious of man -- and they all found the same results. To call the cow mother... the whole world laughs at it, but I don't think anybody understands why Hindus call the cow mother. If they are right -- the cow has the qualities of a mother, and it is far better to be connected with the cows than with the monkeys. So don't try to remember. It is not a question of remembering. You cannot cross the barrier with the conscious mind; you can…