Deja vu - a small fragment from the past

Question 1:

Prem Anna, the question is easy and natural, but it is impossible to answer it. "Who am I?" has been asked for thousands of years and it has helped thousands of people to discover themselves, but nobody has been able to find the answer, because one"s being is a mystery. You can ask a question about it, you can experience the mystery, but the answer is not possible, because the answer murders the mystery.

An answer is a way of demystifying. You can feel me, you can rejoice with my joy, you can be filled with my song, you can dance to abandon, but these are all making the mystery deeper; they are not answers. One day, you will understand - when you come to know yourself. Knowing is possible, but bringing it to words is impossible.

It is just not in the nature of things to formulate an answer about your innermost being. It is a secret and it is going to remain a secret. In fact, the more you enter into it, the more you are overwhelmed with wonder, not with knowledge - enchanted by its magic, by its silence, by its grandeur, almost breathlessly ... you see the greatest beauty that you have ever imagined. But you cannot find any words to describe it, it defies all description; it negates all explanations.

The question is significant because the question is nothing but a quest. The question takes you closer to yourself, hoping that you will find the answer - that you will find yourself - but you don't find the answer. In fact, you find that the question was fundamentally unanswerable.

One of the most enlightened people of this century, Raman Maharishi, had only a simple meditation .... He was uneducated; he left his home when he was seventeen. Somebody, perhaps his mother or father, had died and the shock was so much that for him, the whole world became meaningless.

Rather than going to the funeral with the others, he simply escaped into the mountains. The fact - that death is going to take you over any day - made him aware, "I have to know myself before death comes." He was just a boy, uneducated - he knew nothing of scriptures, he knew nothing of meditation techniques, but out of his innocence, he simply sat in the hills asking only one question:

Who am I? He wanted to know before death came. He was not willing to die without knowing himself.

WHO AM I? became his only concern, the ultimate concern.

At first it was only a question in the mind. Slowly, slowly, it penetrated his blood, his bones, his marrow. A moment came when it was no longer a question - his whole being became thirsty; it became a thirst, a quest. Even the question went beyond words and he was no longer asking, Who am I? His whole being was transformed into the question: Who am I? It was no longer a mental exercise; it became an existential experience.

And the day it happened, the clouds dispersed and he knew the ultimate glory of his being. He became famous all over the world. People from all over the world started coming, just to sit by his feet. He was not an orator; he had no knowledge as such. All that he could teach was simply one thing that had helped him, and that was, "Sit silently with me and just ask the question - "Who am I?" Go on asking. It automatically comes to a point where words disappear but the question remains - just a feeling, a mood, an overwhelming sense of enquiry. And when it becomes so intense that you can only say that now it is a thirst of every fiber of your being, then, unpredictably, the explosion happens."

The question disappears, but the answer is not found. The question disappears - you become the answer. First you became the question; now you become the answer. But no verbal answer is found.

You don't come to a logical conclusion that "I am A, or I am B, or I am C." You know who you are, but your knowledge is far, far away from being reduced to language. You will sing out of sheer gratitude; you will dance out of sheer thankfulness; you will rejoice because you are blessed - when others are groping in the dark, your sky has become completely without clouds and you have come into the open.

You are tasting your being, you are seeing your being, you are hearing the music of your being, you are full of the fragrance of your being - but nothing of it is possible to express in words.

Prem Anna, you are saying, "Who are you? Somewhere I feel the answer will be there when I realize who am I." No, Prem Anna, there will not be any answer anywhere. When you realize, you will also laugh at the very question. You will be there, a tremendous ecstasy will be there, but no answer.

It is not a question-answer thing. No answer can satisfy you. You can read all the books of religion and philosophy and theology; you can read all the answers that people have been formulating, but nothing is going to satisfy you. Just as the word "water" is not going to quench your thirst ... and if you are very scientific you can change the word "water" into "H2O", but that is not going to help you either. You need real water. And once your thirst is quenched, you cannot express the experience of deep satisfaction. You can just say, "Now there is no longer any thirst!"

That"s what the ultimate experience of oneself comes to: you can say, "Now there is no question at all. All the questions have disappeared - only I am, a light unto itself, a luminosity, a mystery, a wonder, but without any possibility of communicating it to anybody else." Hence, the whole emphasis in the East has been to have a deep, intimate contact with the man who has come to know himself.

He cannot communicate it, but his very being is vibrating and if you come close enough in your love, in your openness, you may be infected by him. He cannot answer, but he can help you catch it.

It is not only that you get diseases by infection; you can get health also by infection, by being with a healthy person. You can also get your enlightenment as infection from being with an enlightened man. And this being with the enlightened man is the whole art of disciplehood. Remaining open and available, waiting for the right moment ... neither do you know the right moment nor does the master, but the right moment comes.

When you are utterly silent and your ego is absolutely absent, the two flames of the master and the disciple become one. Then they dance hand in hand, then their eyes see into each other - the same source of life, the same mystery, the same spring, eternal spring; the same flowers, the same mysteries.

This is called communion. You can get the feel of who you are, in communion with someone who has already reached there.

The authentic master does not pretend to be superior to you; all that he can say is, "I am a little ahead of you." Just a little time gap ... which does not make the disciple inferior. You started late; you will reach a little later, but in the eternity of existence nothing is late. It does not matter when you reach. What matters is that you are on the right track. Then the final illumination is going to happen.

And if you have seen a man who is already illuminated, he has given you the evidence of your own future. He has proved everything that you need. This creates a trust.

And remember, I make a great difference between belief, faith and trust. Belief is not trust, it is just to repress your doubts. Faith is the whole system of all your beliefs together. In a very systematic way, logical way, all beliefs are connected together and then it becomes your faith, your religion. Trust is just the opposite. It is not to repress your doubt, it is a spontaneous uprising in you, when there is no doubt. The question of repressing doubt does not arise; you have simply come in contact and you have felt your heart beating in the same tune, in a deep synchronicity with the master.

It is a heartfelt experience; you know reality cannot be otherwise. Although you have not reached yet, you are on the right path. Your hand is in hands which are pouring their warmth and love, and making you courageous enough to take the quantum leap from the question to a no-answer experience. Your question was asking for the answer, but there is no answer as such.

Experience is the answer, you are the answer. Only your transformation of consciousness is going to quench your thirst.

One Sunday morning, a young black woman who needed forgiveness for her sins came to a Baptist church. She got up in front of the congregation and stated, "Last week I slept with a young soldier and I now ask the Lord"s forgiveness."

"Hallelujah!" cried the congregation.

"Two days ago," she continued, "I slept with a young sailor, but now I ask the Lord"s forgiveness."

"Hallelujah!" cried the congregation again.

"But tonight, because I came here and done my penance, I will sleep with the Lord."

But before the congregation could respond, an old drunk yelled out in a clear voice, "That"s right, mama, make love to them all!"

A drunkard will understand in his own way. The poor woman was saying, "I will sleep with the Lord,"

meaning "I will be with the Lord and I am not going to sleep with anybody else. God will be with me."

But the drunkard has, in his drunkenness, understood that she is going to sleep with the Lord. And before the congregation could respond, the drunkard yelled out in a clear voice, "That"s right mama, make love to them all!" Why bother about one Lord? He does not understand that by "Lord" she means God. He is thinking of all the landlords, or perhaps the story happened in England where there are so many Lords - make love to them all!

In communication through words, what is said is not necessarily understood. You are free to understand according to your prejudice, according to your state of mind, according to your consciousness. Hence, realities that go beyond mind cannot be expressed. First they become distorted when you pull them into words; then they become distorted when somebody hears them who has no experience of them.

The man of understanding knows that this is a crime against truth: to distort it first, and then let it be distorted by those who are utterly drunk - some with money, some with power, some with knowledge, some with something else. But these are all ways of becoming unconscious, and in unconsciousness what you hear is not what is being said to you.

When you are conscious and silent and able to understand, then there is no need to utter even a single word.

Two mystics in India had a meeting for two days. The disciples of both were immensely interested to hear them speak with each other, they wanted to know how two enlightened men communicate.

One was a Mohammedan Sufi mystic, Farid; the other was Kabir, one of the greatest mystics India has known. They hugged each other, they laughed with each other; they wept in joy, in ecstasy, with tears in their eyes, but they did not speak a single word for two days.

The departure time came and the disciples of both were really freaking out. Two days of concentrated waiting and they did not utter a single word! But they remained controlled as the mystics departed and Kabir came to lead Farid up to the boundary of his village. Again they hugged, again they laughed, again they cried, but those tears were of immense ecstasy. As they left each other the disciples of both erupted, almost enraged.

They asked Kabir, "What happened to you? You go on talking to us - it is not that you are silent - why did you remain silent for two days?" And the same question was posed to Farid by his disciples:

"What kind of insanity is this? Hugging, laughing, crying, weeping, but not speaking a single word - and we were waiting with such great expectation and hope, that something would transpire between you which may help us."

The answer of both the mystics was almost the same. Kabir said, "You don't understand. The moment I saw him, within my heart I said, "My God, he has reached where I have reached. There is nothing to say - he knows it all - but we can rejoice in each other"s illumination." And that we did."

And Farid said to his disciples, "You don't understand. Whoever would have spoken a single word would have proved that he knows nothing. The moment I saw Kabir, I said within my heart, "My God, I used to think I was the only one around here. This man has reached long before - so beautiful, so luminous, so mysterious, such a miracle." All that I could do was rejoice with him - with laughter, with tears, with hugging ... but words would have been absolutely out of place."

There are three possibilities: the man who knows can speak to those who don't know; the man who does not know can even speak to the man who knows; two men who do not know, can go on talking till infinity. But the fourth possibility of speaking does not exist: two men who know are bound to fall into silence. Their celebration will be of silence.

So you go on enquiring, "Who am I?" - but transform the question more into flesh and blood rather than leaving it just in words in the mind. The mind is the most superficial thing in you. Let the question become your bones, your marrow; let it beat in your heart, let it be an undercurrent whatever you are doing, awake or asleep - just a silent question mark that follows you like a shadow without making any noise.

And you can be certain - it is my promise to you - that one day suddenly, out of nowhere, you will be standing in absolute awareness, knowing the mystery which is unfathomable.

Your mystery is the mystery of everybody else; your mystery is the mystery of the whole universe.

Question 2:

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 suddenly you feel you have been here before. You know that if you go to the right you will reach the river and if you go to the left you will reach the railway station - and you try it and you find that you reach the river or you reach the railway station! You recognize the trees on the way, you recognize the river; it is as if you have seen it in a film, or perhaps in a dream.

But you have not seen it in a film; neither have you seen it in a dream. You have seen it in another life.

You are full of all the memories of all your past lives. It is just the mercy of existence that it goes on closing each chapter: the moment you die, the memories of that life become a closed chapter. One life is enough to drive you crazy. If you could remember many lives you would not find a single man who is not crazy - because the woman who is your wife was your mother in the past life, or your daughter or the woman that you are in love with was a man who murdered you in the past life, and now you are again getting into the same trap, in a different fashion. And if you remembered all your lives, things would become very complicated.

It happened: I was reaching a place, Katni, and people brought a small girl - she must have been nine years old. And she had been insisting for a few months that she remembered her past life perfectly; she remembered that in her past life she was in a certain family in Jabalpur, where I was a teacher in the university. It was not far away, it was only a hundred miles at the most from Katni to Jabalpur, and by chance I knew the Pathak family. They had a workshop and a petrol pump just four blocks away from my house, and I had to go there almost every day for petrol for my car or for something - air for the tires. So I knew those people perfectly well.

I asked the parents of the girl, "Has she been to Jabalpur?"

They said, "No, and we want somehow that she should forget all this. It is disturbing her studies, it is disturbing our life; she insists that she wants to go to see her old family. We don't know who these people are and how can we just impose ourselves on them, telling them that "This is a member of your family!""

I said, "I know these people, and at least one thing is certain: she is describing the house perfectly right; she is describing their profession perfectly right. She is saying that she had three brothers - there are three brothers. And she says she was the eldest sister and she died as a widow, and I know this much: they had a sister, who was a widow and who died nearabout eight or nine years ago.

And your daughter"s age is nine years." I asked her, "Can you tell me the names of your brothers?"

And she immediately told me the names.

So I told the family, "You come with me; you can stay with me. I will talk to the Pathak brothers and I will bring them, with ten or twelve other people, to the house. And let us see whether she recognizes them or not."

When I told the Pathak brothers, they were immensely interested and excited. A little bit afraid also, but they were perfectly willing to go through the experiment, so they collected all their servants, a few friends, and a group of at least twenty-five people came to my house. The girl immediately ran, clutched the hand of one of the Pathak brothers, and she said, "Have you forgotten me?" And then she looked around and she caught hold of all the three brothers - "It is strange, you don't recognize me? I am your sister, and because I became a widow when I was just thirteen years old and because our mother had died, I was almost a mother to you all. I brought you up, and you have forgotten!"

I enquired of them, "What she is saying - is it true? Has your mother died?"

They said, "We don't remember our mother ... and it is true that we were brought up by our sister.

She was almost like a mother to us, and she did not marry again just for our sake, so that she could take care of us; otherwise who would take care of these children? She sacrificed her whole life."

They all touched the feet of the small girl and they said, "We would like to take her home." That became the problem: she became so split. One part of her wanted to remain with the old family - the attachment was deep, of many, many lives - and another part wanted to be with the new family.

But there, the attachment was only for nine years; it was not that strong.

I suggested that for six months she could live with one family, and for six months she could be in the other family ... but I said, "Her whole education will be disturbed, and soon she will have to be married; then she will have three families and this will drive her mad." I suggested to the parents and the Pathak brothers that the best way would be to give her a few hypnotic sessions and to make her forget her past life.

It is just accidental; it rarely happens. By some freak of nature, some small crack has remained open and the memories of the past life go on flooding the present mind. I had to give her nine sessions, just insisting on one thing: to forget everything of the past.

She forgot everything of the past and started asking her father and mother, "What are we doing here? We should go back home." But they asked, "What about the Pathak brothers?" She said, "Who are they?" I took her around to the Pathak brothers" house and their workshop, but she did not give any indication that she recognized anybody.

Deja vu is a small fragment from the past, somehow entering your present. It is a reality. And these are the facts: deja vu, memories of past lives which have been confirmed many, many times, make the theory of reincarnation not just a religious theory but a scientific fact. Any day, when science is of a more open mind ....

The trouble is that the whole of scientific progress is happening in the West, where one life is the accepted concept, so they are all prejudiced with the idea of one life. But the world is becoming smaller every day. Sooner or later, science will have to take note of the phenomenon, because it is so essential for human growth, for meditation, for transforming consciousness - because if you can remember your past lives, it becomes a proof that there is a future after death, too. The remembrance of past lives also proves that after death you will be here in a different form, with a different name.

Also, if it becomes a scientifically proven fact - which I have no doubt it will once science starts moving in that direction and drops the Christian or the Jewish or the Mohammedan idea of only one life ... That is simply stupid, because in existence nothing dies; everything continues, only forms change. Why should it be otherwise as far as life is concerned?

If people become aware that they have lived the same kind of life thousands of times ... and this was the use that the theory of reincarnation was put to - to create a great boredom and a fed-upness, because all these things you have done before. And you have not learned anything, you are again ... for thousands of lives you have been running for power, for money, and you are still doing that. It seems every life"s experience is being erased and you start from ABC again!

If it becomes scientifically supported, you will have great difficulty in repeating the same stupid games. You have played enough - it is time to change, it is time to raise your consciousness; it is time to go beyond this vicious circle of moving from one life into another, again and again like a wheel.

The Hindi word for the world is samsar and the word samsar means "the wheel which goes on moving." This is what I was saying about how difficult it is to communicate. The people who gave the world the name samsar had a certain idea behind it: to remind you so that you don't go on moving like a mechanical wheel. And when they said, "Renounce samsar," they were not saying to renounce the world, they were saying to renounce this wheel-like movement.

But it has been misunderstood, misinterpreted, and people started renouncing the world and going to the mountains and the caves and the monasteries. And perhaps they had gone to the monasteries in their past lives also! It is part of the samsar - those monasteries, those mountains, the marketplace. Whether you live with your wife or you renounce her - these are all part of the wheel.

Renouncing the wheel is a totally different phenomenon. It means, all that you have done up to now has been done out of unconsciousness. Now it is time to be mature and start doing things out of consciousness. Act with awareness; you have acted enough under the influence of unconsciousness.

This wheel of reincarnation is due to unconsciousness. Once you become conscious, you see there is no point: you have achieved success many times, but what is the point? Death comes and erases everything. It is almost like making castles in the sand - a wind comes and the castle is gone. And you start making another castle ... again and again the same thing will happen.

It is of paramount importance for science not to ignore the fact of millions of people"s experience in the East. It is not a superstition. It is one of those mysteries of life of which we remain unaware.

Once science starts discovering ways .... you will find a great change in your attitude towards things and your focus will change; your focus will be how to get out of this wheel. This wheel is your slavery.

And to get out of this slavery has been the only longing of seekers of truth and freedom.

Once you have realized that your being can remain in the universe without any body, any form - it can be formless and still there, spread all over existence - all your efforts will be how to attain that great freedom. In the East we have called the ultimate experience of such people moksha, which means absolute freedom. Freedom from the body, freedom from the mind, freedom from any kind of chains around you, freedom from form - just a pure consciousness. Still it has an individuality, an invisible center which knows, "I am." In fact, "for the first time I am in my true essence."

Anand Somen, deja vu is an authentic experience, but it is only a fragment of a far greater phenomenon - reincarnation.

Little Hymie was taken to a seance by his mother. The medium asked him whom he would like to speak to. "My granddad," said little Hymie. The medium went straight into a trance and soon a spooky voice could be heard in the darkened room: "Hello, Hymie," the voice said, "this is your granddad speaking. What is it you wish to ask me?"

"What are you doing in heaven?" asked little Hymie. "You are not even dead yet!"

The poor boy is asking a truth - "Here everybody is thinking you are dead, and you are not dead yet. What are you doing?" But nobody ever dies. Death is the greatest fallacy that man has created.

It does not exist, it only appears so.

After Paddy had jumped a red light and smashed into another car, he dashed over to the other vehicle to discover that the driver was a priest. "Good God, man," said the badly shaken priest, "you almost killed me!"

"I am really sorry for that," said Paddy, taking a bottle from his pocket. "Drink some of this whiskey for your nerves," offered Paddy.

The grateful priest gulped down some of the whiskey, and then started shouting again, "What do you think you were doing?" he asked. "I am lucky to be alive!"

"Oh, Father," said, Paddy, "I am sorry. You will feel a lot better after you have drunk some more of this."

The priest had a few more stiff shots and then asked, "Why don't you have a drink?"

"I don't drink, thank you Father," said Paddy. "I will just sit here and wait for the police."

That is the difference between a man of awareness and unconsciousness. Now he is in a good position: the police are going to catch the priest for being drunk and driving!

Either you can exist as an unconscious being - you have existed that way from the very beginning - or you can exist as a conscious being. As a conscious being, all your actions are bound to change.

Your life will have a different aroma. Your actions will have different goals. And everything put together, you will have only one dimension: how to get free from unconscious actions, unconscious imprisonment; how to be absolutely conscious and move out of all chains.

Meditation will be nothing then but a methodology to prepare the ground for you to jump from unconsciousness into consciousness. And that is the greatest quantum leap.

Buddha is not dead; neither is Jesus nor Zarathustra nor Lao Tzu nor Nanak. Anybody who has lived with full consciousness goes on living without any form. Because there is no form, there is no disease; because there is no form, there is no death; because there is no form, there is no old age. A consciousness without form is simply always fresh, young, free, and the whole universe is available to it. Its empire is great.

Once Gautam Buddha was asked, "You say again and again that if you become absolutely conscious you will not be born again into the body and your empire will be the whole existence. But what about the many people who become enlightened, have already become enlightened? How can I alone be the master of the whole empire?"

The question seems to be logical, but it is not existential. And Gautam Buddha laughed - he has laughed very rarely; not more than three or four times in his whole life. He said, "I can understand your logic but I will tell you one thing ... I will give you an example, not a counter-argument. In a dark house you can burn one candle, and the whole house will be full of light. You can burn another candle - do you think the light of two candles is going to be in conflict? The second candle will also fill the whole house with its light. You can burn a third candle; you can go on burning candles after candles.

"They will remain individual in their flames, but as far as their radiated light is concerned, they will all possess the whole room. There will be no division. It is not that this is my territory and that is your territory. And the light is not a thing, so a thousand candles can have their light filling the whole house without any conflict."

He was right. There is no way to counter-argue, but his example is perfect. That"s exactly the situation:

Once you are free of form, you will be spread all over the universe. Millions of other enlightened people are filling the whole universe with their light, with their consciousness; at their center they will have a flame of their own. But their radiation will have no boundaries.

The lights don't conflict, they are not things. The same space can be occupied by many lights, without any struggle, without any quarrel. And consciousness is a light.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.