Question – BELOVED MASTER, MY PREVIOUS LIFE WITH MY MOTHER, FATHER, SISTER AND BROTHER WAS A PERIOD FILLED WITH UNHAPPINESS. WHY DID I CHOOSE TO BE BORN INTO THIS FAMILY?
Osho – Prem Joshua, you have not chosen, because you died unconsciously. How can you choose? If YOU had chosen, you certainly would not have chosen such a family. It was unconscious. You moved into the womb robotlike. That’s how it happens.
Ordinarily whenever a man dies — except the buddhas — he dies in unconsciousness. He lives in unconsciousness, how can he die in consciousness? Death is the culmination of your whole life. If you have lived in unconsciousness, you will die in unconsciousness. It is the condensed moment; your whole life becomes condensed.
If you have lived in unconsciousness, your death is going to be of tremendously condensed unconsciousness. You will die unconscious; then you don’t choose. How can you choose? But millions of stupid people are making love all over the world; millions of wombs are ready to receive you. They are also as unconscious as you are.
They don’t know why they are making love. They don’t know why a certain man is with a certain woman. They don’t know what is happening. Something takes a grip, something drives them towards certain acts. They are making love not out of awareness, they are making love out of unawareness. And if a couple has exactly the same kind of unawareness as you have, then immediately you will enter into that womb. That fits with you.
You say, “My previous life with my mother, father, sister and brother was a period filled with unhappiness.”
You must have deserved them! We only get that which we deserve. It is fair too; it is not unjust. Now you are asking, “Why did I choose to be born into this family?” You could not have done otherwise. And beware! If you don’t become alert you will do the same again. You have done it many times; this is not for the first time. You have not chosen the womb, it is not your choice at all.
A wealthy widower and his daughter were traveling to Europe on the S.S. UNITED STATES. The girl fell overboard. Berman, aged seventy-three, hit the water and saved her. After the two were brought back aboard the ship, the widower threw his arms around Berman.
“You saved my daughter’s life!” he exclaimed. “I am a rich man. I will give you anything. Ask me for whatever you want!”
“Just answer me one question,” said Berman. “Who pushed me?”
It is not your choice. Your whole life must have pushed you into a certain womb. You can choose only when you are aware, and to die in awareness is the greatest experience of life. There is nothing more ecstatic than that.
In life, three things are the most important: birth, love and death. Birth has already happened; now nothing can be done about it. Something can be done about love: you can become a conscious lover, and by becoming a conscious lover you will be preparing for a conscious death, because love and death are very similar. In love also you die in a certain way; your ego dies.
The first experience of death is love. And once you have known the beauty of dying in love you will not be afraid of death at all. In fact, you will wait and you will welcome it when it comes. You will sing a song when it comes. You will dance. Death will not be your enemy but a friend, a great friend, because you knew a small death in love and it was so beautiful. Now it is a big death; it is bound to be a thousandfold more beautiful.
Love prepares a man to die — but only conscious love, because only in conscious love you die; in unconscious love you don’t die. Unconscious lovers quarrel continuously, fight. They try to dominate each other.
Conscious lovers surrender. In fact, surrender is not to each other; surrender is to the god of love. Both the lovers surrender to some unknown energy in which they dissolve their egos, and they experience small deaths. Each time, each orgasm brings a deeper death. As love deepens, death deepens, and they become prepared for the ultimate death. The day the final death comes is a day of rejoicing. They go dancing into death, singing, their hearts full of the thrill of the adventure.
Then they can choose. Then they can move into a certain womb of their own choice. Now they have eyes — where to go, from what door to enter. Love is the beginning of consciousness. Death gives you the great experience — but still only ninety-nine percent, one percent is still left. That one percent is fulfilled by conscious birth. A conscious birth is a hundred percent death. The ego simply disappears, totally disappears. Love is one percent death, death is ninety-nine percent death, birth is a hundred percent death. And once you are born consciously, then there is no more love, no more death, no more birth. This is the goal of all the buddhas: to be free from the wheel of life and death.
Source: from Osho Book “Dhammapada Vol 8”