No other book starts that way, no other book can start that way. The
Bible is 'the book of the books': that is the exact meaning of the word
'Bible' -- the Book. It is the most precious document that humanity
has. That's why it is called 'The Testament', because Jesus has
witnessed to God in it: Jesus has become the witness to God, a
testament. It is the only proof possible. God cannot be argued, but
only a man like Jesus can become a proof for him.
The Gospel carries all that is beautiful in Jesus' flowering, the
Beatitudes. Those statements are the most beautiful ever made. Not even
Buddha, not even Lao Tzu, have spoken that way. Buddha is very
philosophic, very refined; Jesus is very plain, simple. Jesus speaks
like a villager, a farmer, a fisherman. But because he speaks the way
common people speak, his words have a solidity, a concreteness, a
reality.
Buddha's words are abstract; they are very very high words,
philosophical. Jesus' words are down-to-earth, very earthly. They have
that fragrance of the earth that you come across when the rains have
started and the earth is soaking up the rains and a great fragrance
arises -- the fragrance of the wet earth, the fragrance that you find
on a sea beach, the fragrance of the ocean, the trees. Jesus' words are
very very earthbound, rooted in the earth. He is an earthly man, and
that is his beauty. Nobody else can be compared with that beauty.
The sky is good, but abstract, far away, distant.
So I say to you, no other book starts the way the Gospel starts; no
other book talks the way the Gospel talks.
The word 'gospel' comes originally from a word GODSPEL. God has spoken
through Jesus. Jesus is just a hollow bamboo. The song is of God, and
Jesus' metaphors are very true to life. He is not spinning concepts, he
is simply indicating the truth as it is.
First the beginning: 'The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the
son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat
Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas... And Judas begat Phares... and Phares
begat Esrom; and Esrom begat Aram...' and so it goes, on and on. And
then: '... Jacob begat Joseph. the husband of Mary, of whom was born
Jesus. who is called Christ.'
Then this genealogy stops suddenly. Forty-two generations have passed
from Abraham to Jesus. The Gospel records the forty-two generations,
and then suddenly Jesus is born and the genealogy stops. Suddenly there
comes a full point. because Jesus is the fulfilment; there is no
beyond. Jesus is the culmination -- there is no way to go further on.
So 'Abraham begat Isaac, Isaac begat Jacob...' -- it continues. Then
there is no way to go beyond Jesus: the ultimate has come. Jesus is the
flowering and the fulfilment. That's why the Bible calls Jesus the
PLEROMA, the fulfilment.
Those forty-two generations are fulfilled in Jesus. The whole history
that has preceded Jesus is fulfilled in him. The home has arrived. He
is the fruit, the growth, the evolution of those forty-two generations.
Jesus is the fulfilment, that's why the Gospel does not say anything
further. Jesus did not beget anybody, Jesus begat himself. And that is
the meaning of the word 'Christ'.
There are two kinds of births. One, through others -- from the father,
from the mother -- that is a bodily birth. The other birth you have to
give to yourself, you have to be born out of yourself; you have to
become the womb, the father and the mother and the child. You have to
die as the past and you ate to be born as the future. You have to beget
yourself. That's why I say that the book starts in an incredibly
beautiful way -- very significant: Jesus begat nobody, Jesus begat
himself.
That is the meaning of crucifixion and resurrection. The body is
crucified, you cannot crucify the spirit. You can destroy the body. you
cannot destroy the spirit. The body is gross: the sword can cut it, the
poison can kill it; and even if nothing is going to kill it, death is
going to come and the body will be gone. It has to go, it is meant to
go; it is only there for the time being. Those who are conscious, they
use that time to create spirit in them.
The body is like grapes. The grapes are to go.
You cannot keep grapes for long -- they will go rotten; but you can
create wine out of the grapes, that's why it is also called 'spirit'.
You can create spirit in your being, a wine. Grapes cannot be
accumulated, they are temporary, momentary. But wine can stay forever.
In fact, the older it becomes the more precious and valuable it is. It
has a nontemporal duration, it is something of eternity.
The body is like the grapes, and if you use it rightly you can create
the wine in you. The body is going to disappear, but the wine can
remain, the spirit can remain.
Jesus has done many miracles. One of the miracles is his miracle of
transforming water into wine. These are metaphors -- don't take them
literally. If you take them literally, you destroy their meaning, their
significance. And if you start proving that they are historical facts,
then you are stupid, and with you Jesus also looks stupid. They are
The inner world cannot be expressed literally, but symbolically -- only
symbolically. Turning water into wine simply means creating the eternal
into time, creating that which remains into that which cannot remain.
If you keep water, sooner or later it will start stinking. But you can
keep wine for ages, for centuries; and the longer it is there the
better it becomes, the more powerful, the more potent it becomes. Wine
is a metaphor for the eternal.
Jesus is transformed through his sacrifice. Nobody is ever transformed
without sacrifice. You have to pay for it: the cross is the price that
you pay for it. You have to DIE to be reborn. you have to lose all to
gain God.
Jesus begat himself. That phenomenon happened on the cross. He
hesitated for a time, he was very much puzzled -- it was natural. For a
single moment he could not see God anywhere. All was lost, he was
losing all; he was going to die and there seemed to be no
possibility... That happens to every seed. When you put the seed into
the earth, one moment comes when the seed is losing itself, and there
must be hesitation -- the same hesitation that happened to Jesus on the
cross. The seed is dying, and the seed must cling to the past. It wants
to survive -- nobody wants to die. And the seed cannot imagine that
this is not death, that soon it will be resurrected in a thousand fold
way, that soon it will start growing as a sprout.
The death of the seed will be the birth of the tree, and there will be
great foliage and flowering and fruits, and birds will come and sit on
the branches and make their nests, and people will sit under the shade
of the tree; and the tree will talk to the clouds and the stars in the
night, and will play with the sky, and will dance in the winds; and
there will be great rejoicing. But how can this be known to the poor
seed which has never been anything else? It is inconceivable. That's
why God is inconceivable.
It cannot be proved to the seed that this is going to happen, because
if the seed asks 'Then let me SEE what you are going to do', you cannot
make it available, you cannot make visible to the seed what is going to
happen. It is going to happen in the future, and when it happens, the
seed will be gone. The seed will never meet the tree. Man never meets
God. When the man is gone, God descends.
Jesus hesitated, was worried, was bewildered. He shouted, almost
shouted against the sky 'Why have you forsaken me? Why? Why this
torture for me? What wrong have I done to you?' A thousand and one
things must have crossed his mind.
The seed is dying, and the seed is completely oblivious to what is
going to happen next. It is not possible for the seed to conceive of
that NEXT step, hence faith, hence trust is needed. The seed has to
trust that the tree will be born. With all the hesitation, with all
kinds of fear, insecurities, with all kinds of anguish, anxiety -- in
spite of all of them -- the seed has to trust that the tree will
happen, that the tree is going to happen. It is a leap into faith.
And that leap happened to Jesus: he relaxed on the cross and he said
'Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done...' His heart was palpitating. It
is natural. Your heart will also palpitate, you will also be afraid
when that moment of death comes to you, when that moment comes when
your self disappears and you are losing yourself into a kind of
nothingness, and there seems to be no way to survive, and you have to
surrender.
You can surrender in two ways: You can surrender reluctantly, then you
will miss the real point of it, then you will simply die and will be
born again. If you can relax in deep acceptance, trust, if you can
surrender without any resistance... That's what Jesus did; that is the
to somebody who was ill, or eyes to somebody who was blind, or cured
the leprosy of somebody; or even helped Lazarus to revive, to come back
to life -- and he had died. No, those are not real miracles to me, they
are all parables, metaphors. Every Master has given eyes to those who
are blind, and ears to those who are deaf. Each Master has brought
people out of their death that they call life, has called them out of
their graves. Those are metaphors.
But the real miracle is when Jesus -- in spite of all of his
hesitations, worries, doubts, suspicions -- relaxes, surrenders, and
says 'Thy will be done,' that moment Jesus disappears, Christ is born.
Teilhard de Chardin calls it CHRISTOGENESIS: Jesus begetting Christ.
Through it, CHRISTOGENESIS, man becomes that which he really is; he
loses that which he is not and becomes that which he is: man becomes
'Christified'. Be 'Christified', never become a Christian. The
Christian is one who follows the Christian dogma. 'Christified' means
one who dies as a seed and becomes a tree. 'Christified' means that you
drop the ego, you disappear as yourself and you start appearing on
another plane in a kind of transfiguration: a resurrection.
'Christified' means you are no more alone: God is in you and you are in
God.
This is the paradox of Christ-consciousness. Christ calls himself many
times Son of man, and many times Son of God. He is both: Son of man as
far as the body is concerned, Son of man as far as mind is concerned;
Son of God as far as spirit is concerned, Son of God as far as
CONSCIOUSNESS IS concerned. Mind is the mechanism of consciousness,
just as the body is the abode of the spirit. Mind belongs to body,
consciousness belongs to spirit. Jesus is the paradox: on the one hand
man, on the other hand God. And when God and man work together, then if
miracles happen there is nothing to be surprised about. Miracles happen
only when God and man function together in cooperation.
Leo Tolstoy has said: Christ is God and man working together, walking
together, dancing together. St. Augustine says: Without God, man
cannot; without man, God will not. Christ is the combined operation --
the meeting of the finite with the infinite, time and eternity meeting
and merging into each other.
An old gardener was digging his plot as the priest came along. 'George'
said the priest 'it is wonderful what God and man working together can
do.' 'Yes sir, but you should have seen this garden last year when he
had it all to himself!'
Yes, that is true. Man alone is impotent. God also cannot work alone.
God alone is potent but has no instrument. Man alone is a hollow bamboo
-- nobody to create a song on it, nobody to fill it with music,
harmony, melody. God alone has the capacity to create a melody but has
no hollow bamboo to create a flute.
Christ is the flute on God's lips. So whatsoever has come from Christ
is GODSPEL, IS gospel.
Fourteen generations... 'So all the generations from Abraham to David
are fourteen generations; and from David until the carrying away into
Babylon are fourteen generations; and from the carrying away into
Babylon unto Christ are fourteen generations.'
That too is very symbolic. Books like the Bible are not written by
ordinary people, they are what George Gurdjieff used to call 'objective
art'. The Bible is one of the representative objective works of art in
the world. It is not like a book written by a Shakespeare or a Kalidas.
These people create subjective art. They write something, they write
beautifully, they have the aesthetic sense, but they are as unconscious
as any other human being. They have a nose for beauty, but they are as
sleepy as anybody else. Their works of art are subjective: they express
themselves.
But books like the Vedas, the Koran, the Bible, the Upanishads -- they
are not written by people who are asleep, they are not written as
beautiful poetry or prose; they are written by people who know what
truth is, who have awakened themselves to truth. Then whatsoever they
write is almost like a map. You have to decipher it, you have to decode
it, otherwise you will go on missing it.
Why fourteen generations? No scholar has asked it, no biblical scholar
has asked it. Why only fourteen? Why not fifteen? Why not thirteen?
This I am giving you as an example of objective art. It is fourteen for
a certain reason. It has to be decoded.
The spirit matures just like the body matures. The body matures in
fourteen years -- it becomes sexually mature, it can reproduce
sexually. At fourteen years the body is ripe as far as sexual
reproduction is concerned: the boy can become a father, the girl can
become a mother; they can reproduce replicas of themselves.
In exactly the same way the spirit also matures. Just as it takes
fourteen years for the body to mature sexually, it takes fourteen
generations for the spirit to mature spiritually. That is the meaning
of fourteen generations: from Abraham to David, from David to the exile
in Babylon, and from the exile in Babylon to Jesus. And when the spirit
has come to its maturity, when the fruit is ripe, it falls from the
tree. Unripe, it clings to the tree. Unripe, it HAS to cling -- if
unripe it falls, then it will never become sweet; it will remain
bitter, sour. It will be useless. To ripen, it needs to cling. Clinging
simply shows that 'I am not yet ready to leave you'.
Whenever somebody is ripe, that very ripeness becomes freedom, then
clinging disappears.
Jesus disappears into God, Jesus disappears from this tree of life: the
fruit is ripe. That's what we in the East say that whenever a man has
become perfect -- perfect in the sense that he has grown all that he
could grow on this earth, in this situation -- then he will not return
again. Then he crosses to the beyond: he passes beyond the point of no
return. Then he never comes back. We call him a Buddha, or a Jain.
Jews used to call that state 'Christ': one who has gone beyond and will
be here only for a time. The fruit is ripe and waiting to drop any
moment -- any small breeze and the fruit will be gone forever, and it
will disappear into existence. Hence, the tree stops at Jesus: he
remains unmarried, he does not reproduce. That celibacy has nothing to
do with ordinary, repressed celibacy. He is not against love, he is not
against sex, he is not a puritan, he is not a moralist.
I was reading the other night what Dostoevsky has said: that moralists
are always very miserable people. That seems to be an absolutely true
observation. Moralists ARE miserable people. In fact only miserable
people become moralists. They are so miserable that they would like to
make everybody else miserable also. And the best way to make people
feel miserable is to make them feel guilty.
Jesus is not a moralist. His BRAHMACHARYA, his celibacy has a totally
different quality to it. It simply says that he is no more interested
in reproducing on the physical plane, he is interested in reproducing
on the spiritual plane. He does not give birth to children, he gives
birth to disciples. He creates more abodes in the world for God to
descend into. He does not create bodies, he creates SOULS. And he is a
miracle Master: he created many enlightened people on the earth -- he
had that magic touch. And he created them out of nobodies.
Buddha created many enlightened people, but those were very very
grown-up souls. A Sariputta was already a very grown-up soul; the fruit
was ripe. My own feeling is that even if Buddha had not come into the
life of Sariputta, he would have become enlightened sooner or later;
Buddha was not very essential. He helped, he speeded up things, but was
not very essential. If Sariputta had not met him, maybe in one life or
two lives he would have come around the comer by himself; he was
already coming, he was just on the verge. So was Mahakashyap, so was
Moggalyayan, and so were Buddha's other disciples.
But Jesus really did miracles. He touched ordinary stones and
transformed them into diamonds. He moved among very ordinary people. A
fisherman throwing his net... and Jesus comes, stands behind him, puts
his hand on his shoulder and says 'Look in my eyes. How long are you
going to catch fish? I can make you a catcher of men. Look into my
eyes.' And the poor, ordinary fisherman -- uneducated, unsophisticated,
uncultured; has never heard about anything, may not have ever been
interested in spiritual growth; was contented with catching fish and
selling them, and was happy in his day-to-day life -- looks into the
eyes of Jesus, throws his net and follows him. and that fisherman
becomes an enlightened person. Or a farmer, or a tax-collector, or even
a prostitute, Mary Magdalene...
Jesus transforms ordinary metal into gold. He is really the
philosopher's stone. His touch is magical: wherever he touches,
suddenly the spirit arises.
Buddha enlightened many people, but those people were already on the
path. Buddha moved with sophisticated people: learned, virtuous,
special. Jesus moved with very ordinary people: down-trodden,
oppressed, poor. This was one of the crimes against him put by the
priests: that he moves with gamblers, with drunkards, with prostitutes.
He stays with prostitutes, he stays with anybody, he eats with anybody.
He is a fallen man. And on the surface, to all appearances, he looked
like a fallen man. But he was falling only with those people to help
them rise; he was going to the lowest to turn them into the highest.
And there is a reason.
The lowest may be unsophisticated, uncultured, but he has a purity of
heart; he has more love in him.
Now you will be able to understand the difference. Buddha's path is of
intelligence. He cannot go to a fisherman and say 'Come to me and I
will make you enlightened.' That is not possible for him. His path is
that of awareness, intelligence, understanding. The fisherman will not
even understand his language; it is too much above him, it is beyond
his grasp.
The path of Jesus is the path of love, and the poor people have more
love than the rich. Maybe that is why they are poor, because when you
have much love you cannot accumulate much money -- they don't go
together. When you have much love you share. A rich man cannot be a
loving man because love will always be dangerous to his riches. If he
loves people then he will have to share.
(Excerpts from Osho's book 'I Say Unto You, Vol 1')
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