According to Osho, the masses resist enlightened beings because they live as a herd, invested in habits, identities, and comforting sleep. A Buddha’s presence exposes their inner bankruptcy, shatters borrowed certainties, and forces a risky choice toward freedom and the unknown. Feeling humiliated and uprooted, people prefer the familiar group and destroy the disturber rather than transform themselves.
People dislike awakened teachers because they shake our comfy illusions and ask us to leave the crowd and change, which feels scary.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
The masses were against jesus, they were against buddha, they are against you. Why?
The masses live in a kind of non-individual existence. They live like sheep. So whenever a man like Jesus or Buddha is there, asserting his individuality, his rebellion, his freedom, he is naturally disliked. The masses become afraid; their foundations are shaken. If Jesus is right, then the whole life pattern of the masses will have to be changed. It is too much work, and people have invested too much in their slavery. The presence of Jesus makes people feel bankrupt. The moment you come across a Buddha, you are reduced to a very ugly kind of inhuman being. You lose all dignity, you feel humiliated. If you are intelligent you will rise to the occasion: you will see the point that up to now you have lived in ignorance, in sleep. And you will feel grateful to the Buddha that his presence has become a ray of light into…
These zen sutras seem to come from a time when there were many enlightened ones in this world. What broke the chain of enlightenment, and left our planet with a single precious and unhidden flame of buddha nature? How is it we have evolved into such an unenlightened planet when we were once blessed with so many masters?
But the magistrate said -- a woman magistrate... For the first time I had a thought that perhaps a woman in power may prove more dangerous than a man. That woman magistrate said, "You have not proved anything, but still I refuse to give him bail. The reason? The reason is that he is an influential man, he has thousands of followers. The maximum bail is only half a million dollars. He can jump bail; there are inexhaustible sources behind him." Not because of any crime, but because of the possibility of my jumping bail, she refused. But the real reason was to drag me through six jails. A journey of six hours was done in twelve days. Only now do we know from poison experts that they were poisoning me in small doses; that's why it took them twelve days. If that amount of poison is given in one…
Beloved master, why are the frauds worshipped by people, and people like jesus, buddha and socrates condemned, stoned and killed?
Saroj, the buddhas have always been condemned by the ordinary masses, but the ordinary masses are not responsible for it. They are unconscious. We cannot make them responsible for it. They can't help it -- they are fast asleep. And the buddhas disturb their sleep; the buddhas make every possible effort to wake them up. Nobody wants to be disturbed in one's sleep, and one may be having beautiful dreams, sweet, nice dreams.... People want to remain unconscious. Consciousness is unknown to them and they are naturally afraid of the unknown. With the known they are secure, safe, and everybody else is just like them. When buddhas happen, they create a great disturbance. They cannot help it, either. When they become awakened they come to know such bliss, such silence, such heights of ecstasy, such orgasmic joy, that it starts overflowing, that great compassion arises in them. They can see…
Osho, why are so many people attracted towards you from all parts of the world?
DON'T know! I am also surprised; it should not be so. The government is against me, the society is against me, all the religions are against me, and still people go on coming. All kinds of barriers are created, still people go on coming. Something mysterious is happening, something which cannot be explained. Something is transpiring which is elusive. That's why those who come as observers or spectators or journalists cannot catch hold of it. So they collect rumors in the town from people who never come here, and they go on reporting. Almost all over the world, in almost all the languages, there are rumors and rumors. This is very strange! The people have not experienced what is happening here, they have not been participants, and yet they think they have understood. There are things which can be understood only when you participate. You cannot know what love is…
Osho, what are the reasons that very few persons in the world are interested in transforming their inner heat into spiritual light? Do you feel that the present generation is capable of creating enlightened ones like krishna, lao tzu and christ?
That also did not do because you cannot force yourself to be a Buddha, you cannot imitate. But Devadatta is forgotten and Buddha remains. The whole age is forgotten; only Buddha remains. Everything has disappeared; only Buddha remains. And then we compare Buddha with our own age. Because of that, this problem arises over whether a Buddha or a Jesus can be born today. It looks impossible. How is it possible in "this age of darkness, corruption, immorality"? How is this possible! Another factor also enters: whenever a person is dead for twenty centuries, we forget how we behaved with him when he was alive. Jesus was crucified not because he was a great Teacher or a great Enlightened One, but only because he was "immoral, undisciplined -- against the code and against the tradition". This behaviour was not that of a respectable man. And when he was killed, it…