How can people change after two thousand years of Christianity?

Greek people, as well as millions of people in the rest of the world, grow up as christians. How can they change, after two thousand years of christianity?

The older a conditioning is, the more rotten it is. It is just like an old building. You never say that the building is two thousand years old, so how can we destroy it? It is already used; even without your destroying it, it is finished. There are millions of Christians, but I have never come across a single Christ. A Christian is only a conditioning; you were not born as a Christian. If you were brought up in a Mohammedan home, you would be a Mohammedan. If you were brought up in a Buddhist home, you would be a Buddhist, and you would never remember that you were born as a Christian. No child is born as a Christian, Hindu or Mohammedan. Every child is born clean, fresh, just as a human being, innocent, tabula rasa. Howsoever old the conditioning is, it does not matter. Once you understand that…

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.] (Don't follow and imitate Christ, love and flower as Christ yourself, Osho told Veet Christiane.) Following is something wrong. The follower becomes an imitator. He becomes like a parrot. He starts repeating the master's words without attaining the consciousness that the master had. It is beautiful to be a lover of Christ because love is vast; you can be a lover of Christ and at the same time a lover of Buddha and a lover of Lao Tzu and a lover of Zarathustra and a lover of me. Love is so vast that it can contain all the masters. But following is very narrow. The follower of Christ cannot be a follower of Buddha, the follower of Buddha cannot be a follower of Christ.

Osho, I have a question: Humanity has been conditioned for centuries—how can it free itself from this past? And what kind of measures do you suggest for creating a new education that gives understanding so that people at large can grasp the purpose of life?

Once the thought arises that it is possible, a man turns back and comes out. The difficulty is only this: we keep living in the very delusion that is the cause of our suffering, and we make it the basis of our search for happiness. And that very shoe has a nail that is piercing us, wounding the foot. We keep wearing that shoe because we think, “How will we walk without it?”—and the shoe itself will not let us walk. Its nail is taking our very life. Yet we imagine that without shoes the feet will be unsafe. So we go on wearing the shoe with the nail. It is only a matter of giving this simple reminder. Therefore my work is not the work of a guru. Nor is it the work of a preacher, because I do not want to give a new belief or a new…

Question: BELOVED OSHO, MODERN CHRISTIANS ARE MAKING DESPERATE ATTEMPTS TO SAVE THEIR RELIGION FROM ITS PRIMITIVE, SUPERSTITIOUS PAST -- AND FROM THE FUNDAMENTALISTS! FOR EXAMPLE, A MODERNIST IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND BELIEVES, IT IS SAID, IN A GOD WHO WORKS THROUGH EVOLUTIONARY PROCESSES ONLY, DOES NOT DOUBT THE EXISTENCE OF JESUS CHRIST, BUT WOULD NOT LOSE HIS FAITH IF IT WERE TO BE PROVED THAT JESUS NEVER EXISTED, AND CLAIMS TO BELIEVE IN THE SUPERNATURAL, BUT NOT IN THE MIRACULOUS. HIS JESUS DID NOT PERFORM MIRACLES AND WAS NOT BORN OF A VIRGIN. THE TOMB WAS NOT EMPTY. ETHICS ARE MORE IMPORTANT TO THE MODERNIST THAN DOCTRINE. DOWN THE SAME PATH IS TRAVELING OUR OLD FRIEND, THE BISHOP OF DURHAM, WHO GOT INTO TROUBLE FOR HIS COMMENTS LAST YEAR ABOUT THE VIRGIN BIRTH AND RESURRECTION.

(The real Christian is he or she who has the consciousness of a celebrant, Osho told Kerstin.) Being a Christian has nothing to do with Christianity. It has nothing to do with the church, a creed, a dogma; it has something to do with your own consciousness. If your consciousness becomes blissful you attain to the same state as Christ -- and that is the only way to be a Christian. Being a Christ is the only way to be a Christian. Believing in Christ won't help. Millions of people believe in Christ, millions of others believe in Buddha, and so on, and so forth; neither the Buddhists are Buddhas nor the Christians are Christs -- they are just believers. Belief is cheap; it does not transform you. Transformation needs guts. That's why Jesus says everybody has to carry their cross on their own shoulders. It is a symbolic message.