Memories

Osho, in a sequence-bound life and in a spontaneous life, will memories come to an end?

No. In a sequence-bound life, your very being will emerge from your memory. In a spontaneous life, your being will use your memory. That is the difference. In a spontaneous life you will be new every moment; if you wish, you will use memory! Memory will remain stored in the treasury of your consciousness—present, not erased; it will remain. But it will be like the basement of your house filled with many things: when needed, you take something out. That is why Buddha gave it a name; he called it agara—an abode. Smriti-agar: a storehouse, the storehouse of consciousness. A repository of consciousness, set aside. When you need it—even your spontaneous existence will need memory—you will use it. If you have to return home, you will need the memory of your home; you will use it.

Questioner: what is the place of memory in what you call a sequential life and in a life of spontaneity?

While a life with sequence follows its memory like a slave, a spontaneous life uses it like a master. This is the difference. If you live a natural life, if you are renewed from moment to moment, it does not mean your memory is wiped out -- it is rightly stored in your mind, and you can use it as you like. It is as if many things are stored in the basement of your house and you can take out anything you need from this store. That is why Buddha has called it an agaar, a storehouse of memories, of consciousness. One who lives spontaneously also needs his memory. If he is in town and wants to return to his house in the evening, it is his memory of the house and the way to it that will enable him to do so. And he will use it rightly.

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…

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…