According to Osho, what we call coincidence is simply the surface appearance of events whose causes we cannot see. Existence is a web of subtle influences—including strong human intention—so outcomes can align astonishingly without being random. We label it chance only from ignorance. In truth, nothing is accidental; hidden causes continuously shape what appears unpredictable.
Coincidences are just results of hidden causes, often moved by strong intention, that we don’t notice.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
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: BELOVED MASTER, WHAT IS "COINCIDENCE"? Your husband was coming here, and you simply followed him just as a dutiful wife. Now there are many children, many kids who are coincidentally here. Their parents are here, so they are here; their being here is not their choice, just a coincidence. Their parents are Christian, they are Christian; their parents are Hindu, so they are Hindu; their parents have become sannyasins, they have become sannyasins. This is just coincidence. All these three things happen. The higher you rise, the higher your consciousness is, the more aware you become of freedom. At the lowest point everything is determined, at the highest point nothing is determined. Buddha renounced his palace and the first day, when he was walking on the bank of a river, he created much confusion in the mind of a great astrologer.
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.…
Osho, ... that in bringing something into being we search out an idea and make a plan, and still there will be one thing we cannot plan for... this is an... accident.
No. I ask because, in fact, any such event only tells us this: what life is, how it unfolds, and how it comes to an end. We do not know it, nor do we seem to have any ultimate authority over it — that is all the event reveals. Only this much — so negative.