The first question:

Question 1

OSHO, WHY ARE SO MANY PEOPLE AGAINST YOU?

It is natural. It is not strange. If they were not against me it would be absolutely strange. They have been against people like me forever. They HAVE to be, it is inevitable.

Whatsoever I am doing here is very shattering to their minds. It is cutting their very roots. It is offending them in many ways. It is shocking. It is scandalous. They react, they react just to defend themselves. And the greatest thing that offends them is something that has to be understood.

When Buddha declared that he was enlightened, people were very offended. They could believe that people had been enlightened in the past, but they could not believe that a contemporary, a man just like them, could be enlightened. They could believe that in future there would be enlightened people -- but in the present? A contemporary? It hurts the ego that somebody has become enlightened: "Then what have I been doing here?" It can't be accepted.

And these were the same people who had been reading the Upanishads, reading again and again the great declaration of the seers: AHAM BRAHMASMI -- I am God! If Buddha had simply commented on it, if he had simply said that God is hidden in everybody, God is unmanifest in everybody, they would have loved him. But instead of commenting on it, he became a witness to it. He declared, "I am God! I have attained, I have arrived! I have fulfilled the promise of the seers." That was very offensive.

The same happened with Jesus. What was his crime? Why was he crucified? -- for a very simple reason: he declared, "I have come. I am the one for whom you have been waiting." People were very happy waiting for him, but you should not come, you should leave them alone. They could go on waiting for you for eternity, but when you come, you destroy many things. First, you destroy their hope. Now that you have come they can't hope, they can't wait for something: you have taken away their future. That was their only joy of living: that the Messiah would be coming that soon he would come. They were thrilled with the future. Now suddenly the Messiah is here! And he said, "I have come... for whom you have been waiting!" They were offended. They didn't like this idea; you are destroying their whole future,, you are taking their hope away. Once this hope is gone they will be left simply in misery. They were hiding their misery behind this hope.

What was so outrageous in Jesus' statements that he had to be crucified?

Just the other day I was reading a passage. The Gospel describes the event: And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And he went to the synagogue and he stood up to read. He opened the book of the prophet Isaiah and read: "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recover sight to the blind." In his commentary Jesus spoke one single sentence so explosive that his hearers did not allow him to continue but rushed him outside to kill him. And what did he say that was so outrageous? -- simply, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." That was his comment.

This passage has been commented on by thousands and thousands of rabbis down the ages. Nobody had taken any offense. They were simply commenting on the prophet Isaiah's statement. Jesus did not comment. He declared, "I am here! I have come! The spirit of the Lord is upon me! " He is not a commentator. He himself is the commentary, an alive statement. He said, "The word has become flesh in me. The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach good news!" The statement Jesus made is not in inverted commas. That is the only difference that he has made -- he has removed the inverted commas. If those inverted commas had not been removed, people would not have been offended. If he had simply quoted Isaiah's saying, there would have been no problem. But he said, "The spirit of the Lord is upon me! " -- without inverted commas -- "because he has anointed me to preach good news. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recover sight to the blind." And a small comment at the end: "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." And people were so mad! They simply took him away. They took him on top of a cliff, they wanted to throw him to his death. They were immensely offended.

And Jesus belonged to that place. He was born there, he was brought up there -- and that was the problem. People knew him perfectly well: "He is the son of that carpenter, Joseph, and his wife, Mary. And this carpenter's son... uneducated, unfamiliar with the scriptures, not a learned man at all, is either mad or a hypocrite, has gone insane or is egoistic, declaring that 'Today the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing! I have come. Isaiah was talking about me. It has happened before your eyes. In your hearing the scripture is fulfilled.'"

It was on that day that Jesus made the famous statement: "No prophet is acceptable in his own country."

If he had said. "The day will arrive when this will come to pass", things would have been perfectly okay. But he had not said that. He was saying, "The day has come! I am standing before your eyes, fulfilled. All those prophets were declaring me!" Now this is too much.

In India the Upanishads declare: AHAM BRAHMASMI -- I am God, I am absolute. Talk about it, discuss about it, philosophize about it, speculate about it, go into the metaphysics of the statement, but don't become a witness to it.

And that's why people are against me: I declare I am God, the Upanishads are fulfilled in me. And not only that, I declare you are Gods, and all the prophets and all the seers are waiting just to be fulfilled in you too! But you are so condemnatory about yourself, you are so deadly against yourself. You reject yourself so deeply that you cannot believe that God is possible in you. And if He is not possible in you, how can He be possible in me? Maybe it was possible in Krishna -- he had come from paradise. Maybe it was possible in Buddha -- he was an incarnation of God. But you know I am just as much the body as you are, as fragile as you are, as prone to illness, disease and death as you are. I am human.

Once I am gone people will not be offended by me. Then you can fabricate mythologies around me, you can create fictions. And the same people who are offended will become worshippers. This has always been so. Now they say Buddha was an incarnation of God, but what were they saying in his time? Now they say Jesus was a Messiah, half the earth worships him as God. What were they saying when he was alive?

This has always been so. And it seems, unfortunately, that it is going to always be so.

Man does not trust himself. Man cannot trust this idea that God is possible on earth. Maybe He is there high in the heavens, far away, distant. The closer God comes to you, the more difficult it becomes to accept. And then naturally, there are a thousand and one things that I do and say which go against their prejudices, which go against their settled habits, which go against their concepts. They are always happy with the priests, they are never happy with the prophet, because the priest simply goes on nourishing their prejudices, he helps them. The priest is a prop: whatsoever you believe in, he goes on watering it, he goes on strengthening it. Whenever you start feeling a little suspicion about your belief, you go to the priest and he again gives you support.

Here, I am taking all supports away from you. I am not here to renovate the old rotten house in which you are living. I am dead-set to demolish it -- because only when the old is utterly demolished can the new be created. When you end as the old, as the past, only then will you be born as new.

The prophet, the Messiah, the Christ, the Buddha -- they cannot be accepted by people while they are alive. People can only accept them when they are dead, when they cannot do any harm to them -- harm in their eyes -- because Buddha is not there to do any harm to you. It looks like harm to you. It hurts, because he has to do an operation; it is surgical.

To be with me is to be constantly on the operation table. Only very few courageous ones can be with me. The cowards will be offended. But the cowards cannot accept that they are cowards, so they will react, they will argue, they will create a thousand and one stories just to protect themselves so that they can feel good that they are not wrong. To accept that one is wrong is the beginning of a great revolution. But very few people are that courageous to accept that they are wrong. And my presence makes them feel wrong. Either I'm right or they are right; there is no compromise. Either/or is the question. If I am right they are wrong. If they want to be right, if they want to prove that they are right, then they have to be against me. They have to prove that I am wrong: that is easier. They don't listen to me, they don't come close to me. There is fear -- if they come close, if they listen, there is fear they may be hypnotized by me. Slowly, slowly, they may be convinced, converted, so they don't come.

The people who are against me are absolutely unacquainted with me. Their unacquaintance is a cultivated phenomenon: they don't allow themselves to come here. If they come, it is very difficult not to see the truth, it is almost impossible. Howsoever blind you are, it is impossible not to see the truth. Truth has its own ways of penetrating your heart, of becoming your pulsation. Truth has its own seductive ways: unawares, it enters into you and suddenly you see. And in that seeing is understanding.