Osho Quotes on Jesus Christ
- If Jesus had been born in India he would not have been crucified, no. That has never been our practice here, because we have known even more dangerous people — Jesus is nothing. We have known Krishna. In fact, there is every possibility that CHRIST is a distorted form of KRISHNA. Jesus must have given something of the quality of Krishna. In Bengali, Krishna is KRISTO; in many European languages Christ is Cristo. CHRIST seems to be a form of KRISHNA; Christ is not Jesus’ name. Jesus Christ means Jesus the Krishna — something of Krishna was in him. Being in love with Mary Magdalene; something like Krishna in love with Radha.
- Love is the message not only of Jesus Christ, but of all the awakened ones of all the ages. It has been so in the past and it is going to be so in the future too because love is the method to transform the lower o you into the higher, the base metal into gold. Love is alchemy. It is the basic methodology of transforming consciousness.
- It is almost impossible to understand Jesus through the priests. The only pure way, the only possible way, is to go in, return inside. There you will meet Christ-consciousness. The only way to understand Christ is to become a Christ. Never be a Christian — be a Christ! Never be a Buddhist — be a Buddha! Never be a Hindu — be a Krishna! And if you want to be a Krishna, Christ or Buddha, then you need not go into the scriptures and you need not ask the scholars: you will have to ask the mystics how to go in.
- Whatsoever you have been hearing about Jesus is not about Jesus, the real man; it is about the Jesus that Christians have invented, decorated to be sold in the market. The Christian Jesus is a commodity to be sold; Christ himself is a revolution. You will have to be transformed through him; he is the baptism of fire. You can be a Christian conveniently… but you can never be a REAL Christian conveniently. If you are REALLY following Jesus, there is bound to be trouble.
- Never be a Christian if you really want to come closer to Christ. Your very Christianity will become a barrier, because the very dogma kills truth, the very creed kills love. Love needs no creed, no dogma, no bibles. Love is simply there, undefined, vulnerable, open… flowing in all directions. Love Jesus, and in that love nothing will be excluded.
- Jesus became Christ on the cross, when he said, “Thy will be done. not mine.” That day he became a tree, he became a big, vast tree. Thousands could take shelter under him now. The tree bloomed, it filled the whole earth with fragrance.
- Don’t be bothered about Christianity. Christianity has nothing to do with Christ. Jesus is available to all. Jesus is for those who are ready to transform themselves; Jesus is an art of inner transformation, of rebirth. Listen to his invitation. He still goes on saying,’Come, follow me.’
- Thou art the Christ. What does this word’Christ’ mean? It has nothing to do with Jesus. Buddha is also a Christ, Krishna is also a Christ. And there is every possibility that the word’Christ’ comes from’Krishna’. In Bengali, Krishna is called’Cristo’. There is every possibility that Christ is a form of the same root, Krishna. What does’Krishna’ mean? The word means ‘that which attracts’. Krishna is one who has become capable of attracting the divine in him. Christ is also the same. It means the drop has become capable of attracting the ocean in him. Christ is a meeting-point of the drop with the ocean, of the finite with the infinite, of the horizontal with the vertical. Where the horizontal and the vertical meet, that point of meeting is Christ.
- One does not become a Christian by becoming a member of a church — one becomes a Christian only by love. Jesus defines god as love, so all those who know what love is are Christians, but they are not followers of Christ. Christ was never a follower of anybody else; if he had been a follower the Jews would not have killed him — he was authentically himself. Buddha was not a follower of anybody; he was authentically himself. Lao Tzu was not a follower of anybody.
- Jesus lived only three years as Christ. For thirty years he was in preparation, in meditation, in search. After thirty years when he attained his satori, he went to the marketplace and started giving the message that he had attained. It took three years for it to become known to people that this man had attained. They killed him immediately.
- Jesus could say from the cross the last words: “Father, forgive these people because they don’t know what they are doing.” This is love, this is trust, and this is what is needed to become a real sannyasin. It is possible for every human being, and the moment it becomes possible you are really born….
- The fools love very much to worship Jesus, but the contemporaries of Jesus crucified him. It is a very strange world. There is not even a mention of the name of Jesus in his contemporary literature. Except for his own disciples, nobody had even taken note of him. It is strange …such a man, whom the contemporaries could not tolerate alive — when he was only thirty-three they crucified him — but they have not even mentioned his name. Yet after two thousand years, half the world is Christian …strange! And if Jesus Christ comes today, the same Christians will crucify him again.
- Mind is always a Judas, it can never become a Christ. Judas was the most knowledgeable disciple of Jesus. All the other apostles were illiterate; he was the most cultured. And it is natural, not accidental, that he betrayed Jesus. The heady people are always betrayers: they don’t know the beauty, the grace, of love, of commitment. They are traitors — the head is a traitor.
- If you can create a tremendous longing, that very longing will function as a body for Christ. He will become alive for you! If you really love Christ and you are ready to die for him, he is living for you, because you will become his body. You will start functioning as HIS body. But that is a tremendous work. Very rarely has a person been able to do it: a St. Francis, a Teresa, an Eckhart. Very rarely. Down the centuries, twenty centuries after Jesus, not more than five people have been able to do that. In four centuries, one person only. It is very rare.
- It can happen only through love. That is why Jesus says god is love; he makes them synonymous. Love, and love without any conditions — -that’s the only way to come closer to Christ-consciousness. In the East we call it Buddha-consciousness — it is the same phenomenon.
- Love is the message of all the Christs. I am not using the singular word ‘Christ’, I am using the plural ‘Christ’ because to me Jesus is only one of the Christs. Lao Tzu is also a Christ, Buddha too, Mohammed, Zarathustra, Socrates — these are all Christs. Christ is a state of ultimate consciousness, just as Buddhahood is: Christ is synonymous with Buddhahood. And the message of all the Christs is love. It is through love that reality is revealed. It is through love that we become aware of the tremendous beauty of existence. It is through love, and only through love, that one enters into the temple of god.
- It has not been told to you for centuries, in fact just the opposite has been taught: “Don’t love yourself, it is selfish,” they say. “Love others!” Even Christians who think they are following Christ have misinterpreted his tremendously significant statement. He says: “Love your enemies like yourself.” They have taken only half part of it; they say, “Love your enemies,” but they have forgotten the basic condition. Jesus says, “Love your enemies like yourself ‘ but if you don’t love yourself, in what way you are going to love your enemies? What will be the criterion? First you have to love yourself, then you can even love your enemies — what to say about friends? what to say about lovers?
- If you start living in God you become intolerable to the so-called society. The society lives in hypocrisy. It cannot tolerate truth. Truth has to be crucified. It can love the Church but it cannot love Christ. It can love the Vatican pope but it cannot love Jesus. When Jesus is gone then it is good — you can go on worshipping him. When Mansoor is gone you can go on talking about him. But when he is there he is a fire. Only those who are ready to be consumed by the fire will be ready to fall in love with Mansoor.
- Jesus is a divine fact. God is standing in front of them and they are asking whether he is really the God. What was the trouble that they could not believe in him — because Jesus could not follow all the predictions of the old prophets. Nobody is there to follow anybody else’s predictions. And this is the foolishness: Jews rejected Christ because they thought he didn’t follow all the predictions; Christians go on proving that he followed all the predictions. That’s why they accept him. Look at the foolishness — it is the same. Nobody looks at Jesus directly. Jews reject him, but the argument is the same: that he does not follow all the predictions that the scriptures say a Christ has to follow. Christians say that he does follow them. The argument is the same; the mind is the same. They don’t differ. Both are missing. They may be standing opposite each other, but their attitude is the same. Nobody is looking at Christ; nobody is following the footprints to the Celestial City. They have come back home to continue the fight.
- Jesus is a rebel, but even his followers misunderstood him — they thought he was a revolutionary; they organized. Then Christ disappeared, and Christianity was left behind. Christianity is the corpse, the corpse of Christ.
- With a Christ everything changes, because with a christ, humanity has progressed much. Love becomes more human a quality than anger and violence. And when man begins to think in terms of love, he has to change his god again. Then Jesus says that God is love. Mm? That was the problem between Jesus and Jewish priests, because their god was angry, their god was jealous, their god was violent; and this man was saying that God is love — a different god comes into the world. We go on changing our god, because we go on changing. But our god always remains a perfection of ourselves, nothing else.
- This is what I mean when I say `float’, when I say `flow with the river’. Allow His creativity to flow through you. Don’t impose any pattern on Him; don’t impose your will. If you can allow yourself to be totally possessed, there is no misery and you are no more a human being. The Jesus within you has become Christ the very moment you allow total possession. Then the Jesus disappears and the Christ appears. Christ is the principle; Jesus is the son of the carpenter Joseph. Jesus disappeared at a certain moment and Christ entered. `Christ’ simply means that now the man is no longer man, the man is God-possessed. Just like when somebody goes mad and you say, “The man is maddened,” you can say “The man is ‘goddened’.” Now the man is no more there.
