According to Osho, an “avatar” is a priestly-political label that sanctifies obedience, violence, and domination rather than signaling true spirituality. He rejects such company, insisting authentic religion is rebellious, individual, and ordinary. Avatara legends (e.g., Parasurama) reveal conditioning—blind obedience and power masked as holiness. Real spirituality needs no titles; it flowers in freedom, love, and personal responsibility.
Being called an avatar is just a power label; real spirituality is being a free, questioning human, not a titled hero.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, what is an avatar?
All are avatars. Every person is an avatar. We begin to worship special avatars and forget the rest. Every person is an avatar. Either God is in everyone, or He is in no one. There cannot be any exclusive monopoly of Rama or Krishna or anyone—that they are avatars while A, B, C are not. Nor is that their claim; it is we who make that claim.
Beloved Osho, yesterday you were speaking to us about various people asking you if you were an avatara, a tirthankara, a paigambara, et cetera. Is there anything more that you wish to say to us?
I cannot do miracles; miracles have never happened. Nature never changes its rules. It is indifferent to you, whether you are Jesus, Moses, Krishna, Buddha. Who you are, it does not matter; nature is impartial, fair, it simply follows its own law. That law I call dharma, tao, logos. And a true religious man falls in harmony with the law of nature. The person who is trying to do the miracle is trying to deceive nature, deceive you. He is not in harmony with nature; he is trying to prove himself above nature, super-natural. There is nothing above nature; nature is all and all. It contains godliness in it. You cannot do anything against it. But you can befool the fools who are waiting to be befooled, who are anxious to be befooled. Because they are so empty, they want to cling to someone who is powerful, so powerful that…
Osho, Buddha says that the religion of the saints never grows decrepit; then how is it that the religions of Krishna, Mahavira, Buddha himself, and Jesus have become so decayed? Kindly shed some light on this.
So Buddha thought: better to say, “Accept whatever falls into your bowl.” A kite will not drop it again; the question will not arise repeatedly; best not to leave a hole in the rule. Buddha said, “Accept it.” And from this small incident all Buddhists became meat-eaters! Man is very dishonest. People then devised a trick: “Buddha did not oppose meat-eating. Had he been opposed, he would have told that monk to discard the meat. Buddha accepted meat!” Thus Buddhists across the world became meat-eaters. That the disciples of the greatest practitioner of nonviolence would become meat-eaters seems inconceivable. But man finds his contrivances. Buddha said: “Let no one kill an animal for food.” He had no idea how clever man is. The line came to mean: if the animal dies by itself, you may eat it! Do not kill for food. So monks began to eat animals that had…
Only if we see this truth rightly will we understand the activity of Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna or Christ. There is a fundamental difference between their activity and ours. They are active even after attaining; we are active before attaining. It may look the same. We and they, walking on the road, may appear alike—but we are not the same. Such beings we have called avatars. So, keep two things in mind about the word avatar. An avatar is one for whom nothing remains to attain, yet he stands among those who are seeking. An avatar is one for whom nothing remains to know, yet he sits in the school of knowers. An avatar is one for whom there is nothing left to take from life, yet he stands in the density of life.
Was he an avatar?
Hindus do not consider him an avatar. But then you can consider anyone an avatar. Gandhi is considered an avatar by Gandhiites, Ramakrishna is considered one by Ramakrishnaites. There are so many avatars -- but that is not the problem. The Hindu religion has twenty-four avatars; twenty-three have happened and one more is still to come. Buddhists and Jainas also have twenty-four buddhas and tirthankaras. All are the sons of kings; none is poor. That is one of the differences between Christianity and Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism: Christianity still remains a poor man's religion. Because of that, Christianity could not achieve higher peaks. If you compare the Hindu scriptures, the Upanishads, with The Bible, The Bible seems poor and childish. The words are the same, the experiences are also the same in a way, but Christianity still remains a religion. Religion -- the organized body -- and mystical experiences are…