According to Osho, a messiah is not a special person or title at all; when the 'I' dissolves like a drop into the ocean, only godliness remains. To be one means to be nobody—pure emptiness beyond categories and duality. People crave labels and crucifixions; the real invitation is your own courageous dissolution into the same presence within you.
Being a messiah means having no ‘me’ left—just the same loving space that lives in everyone.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Question: Second question: Osho, are you a messiah? What do you take yourself to be? You are mumbling in your sleep. These are the words of your dream. And if I say, “Yes, I am a messiah,” then the dreamers will do two things—some will set about destroying the messiah, preparing a cross; and some will set about worshipping the messiah. Both are bent on erasing the messiah—one violently, one nonviolently. The crucifier is erasing him; the worshipper is erasing him too. The worshipper says, “You are so worthy of worship—please, show grace, keep your distance; we’ll offer two flowers, that’s all we can manage. Forgive us, have compassion on us. Take these two flowers and set us free.” The crucifier says the same thing—just in a violent way: “We don’t want you to remain, because your presence hinders us. We want to erase your presence.
Beloved Osho, are you a messiah?
No, Sheela, absolutely no. The whole idea is fundamentally wrong. It is not only that I am not a messiah, there has never been anyone who was and there will never be anybody who will be. You will have to go deep into the concept of it. The idea of a messiah is a secondary idea. First you have to believe in God as a person, then only can you start thinking of God sending special messengers, messiahs. To me there is no personal God at all who can send a messiah. I am reminded of a very beautiful incident of one of the most famous Mohammedans, Caliph Omar. The caliph in Mohammedanism is parallel to the pope in Christianity; he is both the religious head and the temporal head. Omar was a very nice and good man. One day, his soldiers brought a man to his court who was…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, ARE YOU A MESSIAH, A PROPHET, OR A REINCARNATION OF GOD? I have never expected that one of my sannyasins would ask such a bullshit question! I am simply myself. I am not a messiah, because there is no God to send messengers to the world. Moreover, I don't want to be crucified. To prove that you are a messiah of God, crucifixion is absolutely necessary. Not that I am afraid of death, but I would like a comfortable, luxurious death. Not carrying the cross on my own shoulders, not even on your shoulders -- the cross will be carried on a Rolls Royce limousine. I am not a prophet either. I don't know what is going to happen in the next moment. I don't know even what I am going to say in the next moment. The future does not exist for me.
Beloved master, who are you?
I am not a messiah, nor a prophet, nor a savior. I am simply a human being, with a little difference that you are not awake and I am awake. You can call me the awakened one. I emphatically deny the role of the messiah, the prophet, the savior, for specific reasons. My understanding is that nobody can save anybody else -- the very idea is insulting. And if somebody can save somebody, he can also drown him, because both the capacities come together. I am not a prophet, representing God, his message. As far as I am concerned existence is divine, but there is no God as a person. It is a quality of creativity, but not a creator. So the people who are creative are more religious than the people who go on praying in the churches, in the temples, in the synagogues to a God above in…
Beloved Osho, what is the difference between the emptiness of the child before the formation of the ego and the awakened childlikeness of a buddha?
Whether you are for it or against it doesn't matter -- your concern shows where your ego is hanging. And I will include the capitalist in it also: his whole concern is how to gather money, hoard money -- because money has power over matter. You can purchase any material thing through money. You cannot purchase anything spiritual, you cannot purchase anything that has any intrinsic value; you can purchase only things. If you want to purchase love, you cannot purchase; but you can purchase sex. Sex is the material part of love. Through money, matter can be purchased, possessed. Now you will be surprised: I include the communist and the capitalist both in the same category, and they are enemies, just as I include Charvaka and Mahatma Gandhi in the same category, and they are enemies. They are enemies, but their concern is the same. The capitalist is trying…