Messiah

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 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: Second question: Osho, are you a messiah? What do you take yourself to be? But those footprints were very clear. The astrologer grew anxious—was his scripture wrong? He followed the tracks. In the direction the prints seemed to go, he walked, for it had become necessary to see this man. Walking along, he reached the tree under which Buddha sat—and then he was in deeper trouble. Seeing Buddha’s face, it seemed indeed the face of a chakravarti—his very presence had the aura a world emperor should have: the same halo, the same circle of light, the same fragrance, the same majesty. Yet the man looked like a beggar. A begging bowl lay beside him; not even a mat to sit upon. He was seated on a rock under a bush.

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…