Prati Prasav: A doorway to past lives

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If you wish to use this recording as a guide for your daily meditation, start video at 39:35 (with Osho quote) or directly at 41:40.

My experience with Prati Prasav

[05:00] I’ve been practising meditation since 1973, doing many different practices [in particular Osho’s Active Meditations, ed.]. All those meditations that we do intensively as a series, become part of our blood, bones and marrow, part of who we are on the deepest level.

I further found out that when we do a special meditation practice, whoever the master is who has developed that meditation, the essence of that master will be delivered through the practice of the meditation. If we are doing meditation methods that Osho has created, his essence will be transmitted in and through us as we are diving into that method.

If we start practising a method that came from another enlightened being, their essence will also come into us. By doing many different methods, including the 112 methods of the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra and methods of other enlightened beings, I feel a multi-dimensional expansion has happened in my being and ever-deepening understanding of the roots of meditation, the essence of meditation, and likewise the essence of Tantra.

It is by practising the meditation that we get transformed. In the case of Prati Prasav, Osho was speaking about this meditation during one of his discourses. I heard him refer to it on a number of occasions, and was really intrigued about it. He said that this was being practised by the disciples of Buddha and also by disciples of Mahavira. It was being used as a method to go back into past lives.

At that time, I didn’t know anything about past lives, and in fact I had no concept about it, because I had been raised in an atheist family. I was raised in California and left when I was 15 to travel [and search for the essence of life, ed.]. I hitchhiked all through North America, Europe, Middle East and to India. I met Osho in India [in 1973]. As part of my upbringing, I had no idea or conception of past lives.

When I started practising Prati Prasav, what I wanted to achieve through that was unwinding all the pain that I had experienced as a child. I wanted to be free of the misery and the suffering that I had accumulated. I was using the Prati Prasav to unwind my personal suffering.

By doing Prati Prasav, I was able to unwind all the way back to my birth. In other words, I was unwinding, reliving, remembering, and releasing traumas, all the way back to my birth trauma. When I reached the birth trauma, I thought, “Okay, that’s it. I’ve done the work.” However, the unwinding process continued and I found myself unwinding back into the time in the womb.

Then the unwinding continued all the way back to my conception. From the conception, the unwinding jumped back into my past life death. From the past life death, it unwound back through that past life, all the way to the birth of that life. In other words, the unwinding of Prati Prasav starts from the present and gradually unwinds backwards in time, taking you all the way back and further back and further back.

Once I had recalled, relived and released one of my past lives, the last one, the process continued. I went on unwinding for five years using Prati Prasav into many, many past lives. Of course, this helped me to rewrite my inner script on the soul level. Through this process I discovered many, many things about myself, but not only about myself, but about the whole of humanity, about all of the ancestors, about the programs that are in place on the soul level, which hold us in bondage.

I’m going to share a little bit about that, just so you have an understanding of what is possible through this method.

Prati Prasav – the method

[10:17] The methodology of Prati Prasav is actually very simple. For example, you will be lying down in your bed at night. You’re ready to go to sleep, but before going to sleep, you start recalling your whole day, starting from the present, working backwards in time. At certain points in the day, there would’ve been some moment which was a highlight, where there was a very powerful energy happening or maybe there was some kind of shock; or maybe there was a very touching moment, something that really touched your heart. When you come to those moments – as you’re unwinding in your memory – instead of just letting it be a mind thing, you actually go into reliving the experience through breath, movement and sound. You literally relive those powerful and potent moments.

You keep jumping backwards, till you reach to when you first woke up in the morning. On day one, as an example, you would do that. Day two, you might allow yourself to unwind three days into the past. You start from the present, you unwind and you go all the way three days backwards, and then you stop.

The next day you continue again, and maybe this time you go a week backwards in time, remembering, reliving. You keep increasing the amount of time that you go back. Maybe from one week, then you jump to one month, and then you jump to three months and then you jump to six months, then you jump to one year. You keep increasing the quantity of time that you unwind backwards.

Once you’ve done a certain number of days of this, your body, mind and soul will all mutually support the unwinding process, and you will find yourself unwinding very naturally. It’s like unwinding a movie. When you want to rewind, you want to catch a scene in the movie that you forgot, “Oh yes. That was so interesting. Let me unwind to that point.” It will gather its own momentum and it will automatically take you backwards to those key moments, key trauma, key tender spaces or whatever it is. Your inner being will help you to unwind and to find the key moments that need to be processed.

One of the things that’s very important to understand is that your whole being would like you to come into wholeness. If there is anything incomplete in you that leads to a fragmentation of your being, your entire being wants to support you to unwind, to release and to heal. To heal means to find wholeness. Prati Prasav is helping you to find wholeness by releasing those things that are incomplete, that are no longer serving you.

The way to release them is to relive them with awareness, because maybe when that situation happened you were not fully aware, you were not detached enough to be aware. You were so caught up into some kind of drama and maybe there was some cutting-off of your energy, some fear or some stagnation. So, you never got to fully release that issue. And then it stays inside as an incomplete knot of energy. Those incomplete knots of energy are what create different kinds of stagnation in our energy system which can lead to dis-ease. Dis-ease is not being at ease, not being in a state of wholeness.

As we go into Prati Prasav and we start releasing, unwinding, then we will find ourselves coming more and more into an embodied state of wholeness, whether that’s remembering this life or past lives. What I would recommend is that you don’t try to force yourself to go immediately into past life. That is not the point. The point is to locate all those incomplete issues that have formed knots in your being, to let them unwind, easily and naturally.

It’s like instead of taking a helicopter to go where you want to go, you are slowly walking on the path and noticing all the beautiful flowers on the way, seeing the butterflies, feeling the breeze on your skin. You are living through, you are reliving all those moments. And that will have a much more effective result.

One of the things I learned by doing this for five years, and going into multiple past lives, is how important past life research is for our present-day reality and our present-day sense of well-being. Just as you have incomplete issues that happen in this life, there are incomplete issues that happened in your past life. Some people might wonder, “How does that work? How does that function inside of us on the soul level, and also on the physical level?”

Incomplete issues in our past lives – karmic, soul and ancestral patterns

[16:42] Basically, you are having some experience in your past life, and just like in this life there was something incomplete. It forms an energetic knot. Death is coming, and before death your body / mind / soul wants to release as much as possible. That’s why people at the time of death go into a state of forgiveness and opening to love, because their whole being wants them to come into a state of wholeness.

If there’s any incomplete issues left, those will become a bundle of energy. That bundle of energy will transmigrate into a new womb because it is seeking completion. Those incomplete issues will form a match with some parents who are holding a similar resonance.

You will come into that new womb which is in resonance with your incomplete karmic issues. In other words, the ancestral line that you come into is going to, in some way, match your karmic lineage that you are carrying. This is what will happen. You have two lines of energy, one is ancestral, one is karmic. Both of them are running parallel in your being, and both are in some way or other aligned with each other.

There are two jobs that we need to do in our lives. One is to unwind our ancestral pattern. Another is to unwind our soul pattern. The soul pattern is unwound through a method like Prati Prasav. For unwinding our ancestral patterns, Family Constellation is very, very good.

Osho’s Dynamic Meditation covers both of these lines. As you go into Dynamic Meditation, you are unwinding simultaneously your ancestral pattern and your karmic pattern. This is very, very powerful. Osho has given us a tremendous gift through his Dynamic Meditation – on so many levels.

What I’m indicating here is that, of course, all human beings have a lot of homework to do in order to unwind, release, heal and come into wholeness. When we come into wholeness, we are giving optimal ground for the flowers of consciousness to grow. If we don’t do our inner work, if we never unwind, release, heal, come into wholeness and we rely just on meditation alone to do all the work, it is unlikely that we’ll be able to come into a state of wholeness.

We need to release those issues that are not serving us, those conditionings that have been given by others. We need to literally let them go. The letting go process happens through reliving and releasing, using breath, movement and sound. It’s not enough just to realize it inside of our conscious mind, we need to literally release it.

Osho’s Active Meditations are covering all the chakras

[20:18] That’s why Osho’s Active Meditations are so important for seekers on the path. They are so valuable. Another thing about Osho Meditations is that they are covering all the chakras in the body. Some meditation will work predominantly on some chakra, some other Osho Meditation predominantly on another chakra. By practising all those different Osho Meditations, you’ll be opening all your chakra system, including your kundalini energy.

Osho has done a genius work in devising all of his different meditation methods. Of course, he was very compassionate, because he also explained to us about meditation methods coming from other masters and other enlightened beings, their approach and how valuable that is. He really widened our perspective.

He’s not a miserly master just giving his methods. He’s giving us all, the whole spectrum, the full spectrum, the full rainbow of what is possible in our personal development.

Questions and answers

Q: What if the trauma is very intense and we are unable to face an issue which comes up into our memory during the process?

[23:23] If the trauma is very intense, you need to literally stand up. You wouldn’t be just lying down; you may need to stomp around, scream, cry, shout, and express what you couldn’t express then. This is part of reliving it, but this time you are allowing what couldn’t be expressed. Maybe somebody insulted you and that hurt, and you’re carrying this hurt, and then this insult comes up again. As you’re going through Prati Prasav, you allow yourself to do and to say what you couldn’t say then.

That’s part of the reliving. You feel the insult. It’s like, “I feel it. It’s like an arrow in my heart.” Now the response will come, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? You are accusing me wrongfully?” Just say what you couldn’t say then and then this will pop it. It will pop, and then you’ll find, “My God, now I’m free of trauma.”

This is how it works. In order to resolve anything that’s become a stagnation inside, we need to say what we couldn’t say then and that pops it. [25:03]

Mind / Body and Soul Memory

Q: How do I cross the barrier from two years of age and before?

[30:50] For each person the threshold is different. For somebody it is two years of age. For another person it might be four years of age, some people even seven years of age; they remember nothing before age seven. Whatever it is for you, it doesn’t matter.

What matters is that there are certain memories that are pre-conscious, meaning: our intellectual mind has not developed and therefore nothing is retained in the intellectual mind, but is retained as a body memory. That’s why I’m emphasizing: reliving. If you are only remembering with your intellectual mind, then you can’t cross the barrier of two years of age.

For example, if you are reliving through your body, through your emotions, through your feeling sense and through sound, breath, etc…. Where the physicality is involved in that remembering, then, when you come to that barrier of pre-conscious memory, you will naturally keep unwinding and it will come through you as a body memory; because body memory is always going to be there.

What happened in your birth is retained inside of you as a body memory. What happened inside the womb is a body memory. What happened at the time of your conception is also a soul memory. Intellectual memory is the first layer. When we go deeper, we go into body memory. As we keep going deeper, we will go into soul memory.

The soul memory is also written into your body, because your body formed around those incomplete issues that were carried by your soul. Just remember, that bundle of incomplete issues and how your parents are chosen according to that. Your body will develop according to that bundle of memories. It is written into your body, all these memories.

Through the body memory, we will touch into the soul memory as well. It gains a momentum – this is what I said before – because you have been reliving, reliving, reliving, and finally it gains its own momentum and by itself it will keep going back.

There is something very important to understand about creating that momentum. [33:38]

Practising a meditation series – the mechanics of doing sadhana

[33:38] When we do a special practice of meditation, like when we’re doing a series, we give ourselves a time every day where we are doing the practice, and then this becomes ingrained in our being: that this time of day I’m devoting to my own self-development, I’m devoting to my own spiritual practice. This will become an ingrained automatic template.

If you do Dynamic every day at 6am, that will become ingrained and then your body will just start waking up on time and feeling like, “Okay, now I’m ready.” In the same way, if you’re doing Prati Prasav and you’re doing it at a special time every day, at that time in the day – whenever it is – you will automatically start unwinding. It will happen just by itself.

If you’re doing something else at that time, your inner being will feel disrespected and may create havoc at some other time. Like suddenly there will be breakthrough memories coming just any time in the day, because you didn’t honour that commitment you had made to do your practice at such and such time.

It’s important to understand the mechanics of how we do our spiritual practice. We create a safe and sacred space in which we do our practice, where we shouldn’t be interrupted. It’s at the same time every day. We know, “I’m doing 21 times Dynamic, or I’m doing Mahamudra meditation every day for three months,” or whatever it is. We are creating a safe container for our practice to take place.

In that way we can function really well in our daily life. At the time of our practice we can go through massive kundalini awakening, all kind of spiritual expansion, satori, whatever, but it will not leak into our daily life. We will still be able to function. And at the time that we’ve given to ourselves for our practice, automatically things will start moving and processing.

Different levels of dreams

Q: Sometimes in dreams I suddenly see certain faces coming in front of me whom I have never met in real life or ever seen before. Could these be past life experiences or do they suggest imagination or some kind of hallucination?

[36:20] When you have memories of past life coming in dreams, you will know it’s from the past life if they’re wearing different clothes and you’re also wearing different clothes. Those will be clothes from that time. Also the scenery around will be from another time. That’s the way you know this is coming from a past life.

Dreams come from different levels within us. Osho also gave a discourse on this, the seven different levels of dreams, where they come from. This is really, really interesting, because you can have dreams coming from your past, also from past lives; you can have dreams coming from ancestral memory; you might have dreams coming from the future as well. This is very powerful.

You might have dreams where you are having some telepathic communication with somebody. You’re receiving a message from someone. You can have dreams that are giving you messages from somebody who has died, also. They might appear in your dream with a special message.

You can also have dreams that are just coming from indigestion, and that creates a certain reality within you that you are dreaming about. You can have dreams that are releasing repressed emotions.

When we start doing dream work, then we tap into where all these different levels of being are and what the dreams are indicating. We can literally learn to understand the messages coming through the dreams.

This is another area of research which is really, really fascinating. I’ve also gone very deeply into this methodology of understanding dreams. (There’s a very simple method you can do for that. That would be the subject of a different podcast, because that’s a whole subject of its own.) [38:20]

The importance of emotional release

Q: Is Prati Prasav meditation for everyone? Is it safe to go into these past issues?

[38:37] I would say, if you’re called to it then it’s for you. I would also recommend that you have learned some kind of meditation practice, whether that be Osho’s meditations or Vipassana meditation coming from Buddha, Goenka, or whatever.

Also, I think it’s important that you have learned how to do emotional release, whether that’s through breath work or through Osho Dynamic Meditation, Osho Mystic Rose, etc. You will need to have some experience how to let emotions flow, that you have emotional fluidity, because you will need that when you are going into Prati Prasav. You need to be fluid in your ability to express. And then it will become a very effective tool. If you just remain in the intellectual mind all the time and you’re trying to do it, it will not have the same result.

The discipline: from present to past only

Q: If memories don’t come in a sequential form; if they first come from early morning and then from mid-afternoon, is it okay to go that way or does it have to go from now slowly back in time?

[1:02:28] It should be from now slowly back in time. You need to apply that level of discipline to it. If you catch yourself jumping somewhere earlier, you just pause and you create a discipline inside of you, that “Now I’m unwinding from the present towards the past only.”

You’re not jumping here and there. It can create some disturbance, a mental kind of disturbance, if you start jumping all over the place. You need to create a discipline with it. Then that’s going to serve you as your vehicle, to go smoothly and easily backwards all the way into past lives.

Our different sense orientations

Q: During the session I could not visualize any light or a tunnel.

[1:03:45] People have different sense orientations. Some people will see a light, visualize something and some people will feel something. If you’re not able to see something, you might feel something or you might even hear something. You just need to trust your own unique sense orientation. It needs to be a lived experience through the senses. This is why I brought the senses in.

There might be an emotion, there might be a sensation, there might be a visualization. There might be an auditory sense coming in. You just tune into whatever sense is alive in you when you’re having that memory.

This comes up with the issue of reliving. Maybe you’re having the memory of some family member that hurt you and this memory is still very alive in you and you are reliving the experience. The family member is hurting you and now you say what you couldn’t say then or do some action you couldn’t do then. It becomes a stagnant pattern if there’s something bottled up that was not expressed. Of course you can say that into thin air. You can say it to a pillow if you want, but you need to release it, you need to speak it. You need to let it live and be breathed through you.

I always remember Osho describing how to heal from anything that’s stagnating inside of us. I remember him saying that when you have the trauma, it comes in through the front door. That means through your conscious mind. Then it goes into subconscious, it gets buried.

As we go into our healing process, it comes from the subconscious to the conscious mind and from there we need to release it and we need to speak it. We need to say what we couldn’t say then. Then it will be a full release and healing. If we don’t verbalize it, if we don’t speak it or release the emotion connected to it, it will not resolve. It will still remain as an entanglement inside of us.

We need this process of reliving and releasing using emotions, breath, movement, sound.

Fluidity and flow will carry us into the future

[1:07:49] A final word. I really encourage you, if you feel it’s the right moment for you to go on a journey with it, just dive in, go for it! Find this support around you to help you move through that, into and through that. We’re here on this planet actually as a school. In this school we are learning to be full human beings. In order to achieve that, we need to first of all find flow, release ourselves from any stagnation, whether that’s physically, emotionally or on the soul level.

Anytime we do a meditation practice, maybe that’s a silent or an active meditation, or we do a specialized practice like Prati Prasav, we are supporting that fluidity. Ultimately it is fluidity and flow that’s going to bring us into the state of wholeness. We create a flow that is a continuity through all of our past lives, all the way up to the present moment. That same flow will carry us into the future, in a very positive way.

It’s stagnation in the flow that creates problems. Prati Prasav is one of the genius methods that has been brought by some past master to us, and that is going to help us on our path. There are also many other methods. There are so many methods of meditation brought by enlightened beings that if people really practice meditation as a lifestyle, this whole earth will become a paradise, because we will be so awake and will want to create wholeness from so many angles and in so many ways. I really encourage you on this journey.

Interview shortened and slightly edited for print

Osho Niranjana started organising online events during the pandemic. Because of their popularity, talks and meditation events via zoom continue regularly. To receive information about their events, subscribe to their newsletter on oshoniranjana.org. Osho Niranjana is based in San Diego, Southern California – facebook.com

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