According to Osho, nostalgia is a psychological disease—an escape from the living present into memories—arising because we don’t know how to be totally, passionately, intensely here-now. It reflects non-meditativeness and inner emptiness; the mind compensates by clinging to the past (or fantasizing the future). Nostalgia nourishes no one; it's an old-age tendency, a futile substitute for awareness.
Nostalgia happens when we can’t enjoy this moment, so the mind hides in old memories or daydreams that can’t really feed us.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, can you throw some light on the feeling of nostalgia? Freud called it regressive and a seeking of the womb. This does not satisfy me. Sometimes the perfume of a flower, sounds, a place or an incident from childhood, can evoke a few seconds of feeling and yearning that are so sad and so sweet, it can choke me with its intensity. My childhood was not so happy, nor is the womb so appealing that mere sentimentality for 'the old days' can explain it. Could you help with some indications?
This is somehow very significant for each of you. A part of you fell when you were four years of age and that part has remained there, another part fell somewhere else... you are spread out all over the way. You are not one piece, you are a multiplicity -- multi-psychic many minds. And one part of may be very grown-up and another may be very childish. A scientist may be a very grown-up man as far as his science is concerned. When he goes into his lab he is a very skilful, intelligent person, he works with great acumen, talent, genius, but another part of his life may be very childish, almost stupid. When he is out of his lab he is a totally different person. It is said about Karl Marx that one day he brought many boxes of cigarettes to his home. The wife was a little…
Oh, the religion! The adoration of the past! The beauty and sentimentality af the past!
SINCE I WAS A LITTLE CHILD, I HAVE ALWAYS FELT LIKE THINKING ABOUT THE PAST AND GETTING A FEELING OF SWEET PAIN, THAT THE PAST IS GONE, AND CRYING SWEET AND WARM TEARS AND REALLY ENJOYING THE WHOLE THING VERY MUCH -- THIS WHOLE THING CALLED NOSTALGIA. SOMETIMES I REALLY LOVE MY PAST. HAVING A PAST TO PLAY WITH, I FEEL BLESSED. AM I A FOOL? SO I HEAR YOU AND AGREE WITH YOU, INTELLECTUAL, THAT THE PAST IS NONEXISTENTIAL AND UNREAL, BUT I SEEM TO FEEL DIFFERENT ABOUT IT. WHAT IS GOING ON? IF NOSTALGIA IS JUST A TRICK OF THE EGO, WHICH IT MUST BE, THEN WHY DOES IT COMES AS A GOOD WARM FEELING? HOW CAN THE DEVIL BE SWEET? OR HOW CAN MY FEELINGS BE UNREAL? OR IF MY FEELINGS ARE UNREAL, WHAT IS LEFT? Beauty needs life, because beauty needs heartbeat, beauty needs pulsation, streaming,…
Osho, I keep turning back to look at the past. It’s futile, yet the habit doesn’t drop. What could be the reason?
Even to a dry tree the vine clings. Support! No other support seems visible. Ahead, only darkness; within, only darkness. The one bright thing seems to be the line of the past along which you have come—this path that is over, that will never be again, that has already happened. You sit arranging these preserved blossoms, these dried flowers. You cling to them. The creeper has twined round a lifeless tree— how much the past coddles the unborn It’s all dead, a corpse. Sometimes it happens: a she-monkey goes on carrying her baby pressed to her chest. Even when the baby dies, she keeps carrying it. It takes days—only when it rots and starts to stink does she drop it in a fright. Otherwise she goes on clutching the corpse—old habit. The past is a corpse—gone, done. Dust. Ash; the ember is out. Don’t keep lying on this ash, don’t…
Osho, what insights allow us to drop the past and not repress it?
And that happens to individuals, that happens to countries, to societies, to nations too. For example, a young country like America thinks of the future; its golden age is yet to come. A country like India, very ancient, old, thinks of the past; its golden age has passed. In the days of Rama it has been; it is already a gone thing. It is simply an indication that the country is very very old and cannot conceive any future. In the future is death. But to be a child is to miss; and to be old is to miss. The meditator is exactly in the middle: he has something of eternal youth in him. You will be surprised to know that in the East we have never depicted any enlightened person old; we have always depicted them young. You have not seen any picture of Buddha as old, or Mahavira,…
Beloved Osho, why shouldn't we live in the past? Cannot reliving one's pain make one stronger? Cannot rejoicing one's happy moments bring happiness?
The people who live in the past, who remember the happy moments of the past, are the people who are miserable in the present. If your present is more blissful than all the moments of your past, why should you live in those past moments? They are just memory, they have no reality. Past is past. The real is the present. If you want real bliss, you have to live in the present. Your roots are not in the past. The past is only memory and the future is only imagination -- and roots cannot exist in memories and imagination. Roots are always in the present. Everything real is always in the present. In fact, the very idea of dividing time into three tenses -- past, present and future -- is wrong. Time knows only one tense and that is present. Knowing knows two tenses, past and future. And there…