Osho,
What are the reasons why 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?
Man is freedom, absolute freedom. So spirituality is a choice. There is no force compelling you to be spiritual. There is no cause forcing you to transform. If there is any cause forcing you to transform, then no spirituality is possible.
Causality is materialism. You seek food because hunger is there. It forces you, there is no choice. You cannot choose whether to seek or not – you have to. Spirituality is not that type of seeking. No one is forcing you. You alone have to choose.
Spirituality is a choice. It is not causality. Everything else is causality: there is a cause and the effect follows. The effect has no freedom. It is caused. Spirituality is beyond causality. It is not caused by anything, it is your inner choice. You can choose, you may not choose. For lives together you may not choose it – no one is going to force you.
This has to be understood. And this is a very significant thing, because if everything is caused, then I say there is no spirituality. Then science can cause you to become spiritual. If the cause is present, then the effect will follow. Then a buddha can be caused: we can create the cause and then you will be a buddha.
But we cannot create any situation in which you can become a buddha. And we cannot create any situation in which you can be stopped from becoming a buddha. You are free. Any moment you can choose to be, and you may not choose for lives together.
This has been a long discussion between materialism and spirituality. This is the basic debate, not whether God exists or not. That is not the basic debate, because one can be spiritual without any God. Buddha never believed in any God, Mahavira denies any existence of God, but no one is as spiritual as Mahavira or Buddha.
So God is not the most significant thing, even the soul is not the most significant thing. Buddha says there is no self, no soul, and he is spiritual par excellence. Then what is the basic thing in spirituality? It is the concept of freedom: whether man is free to go beyond humanity or not.
If everything is caused, then there is no freedom for you. You have a certain body because of certain causes: a certain father, a certain mother, a certain country, a certain climate, a certain heredity. You have a certain body; it has been caused. You have a certain mind because of a certain country, a certain culture, a certain education. You have this mind because of certain causes. You speak a particular language because it has been caused. If you were born in China and were never taught to speak any other language than Chinese, it is difficult to conceive that you could speak any other language. Language is caused. Certain factors are needed, then you will speak a certain language.
So there is no freedom in these things. Only spirituality is uncaused. And that is the debate between science and religion, because science says, “Nothing is possible which is uncaused. Everything has a causality. You may know it, you may not know it; that is another thing. The causal factor may be unknown, but everything is caused.” This is the contention of the scientific approach toward life: “Everything is caused. The cause may be known or not known, but everything is caused.”
If everything is caused, then there is no freedom. Then if a buddha is a buddha, it is not any achievement of his. He was caused! And anyone else in his situation, X, Y, Z, will become a buddha. Only the situation has to be there.
So Buddha is replaceable then. Anyone, if put into the same situation, will become a buddha – just like water boils at a particular degree, any water. So the water is irrelevant, which water: from the Ganges or from the Godavari or from anywhere, any water will boil at a particular degree, evaporate at a particular degree. At a hundred degrees water will evaporate, in any country, in any climate, in any age. So which water is irrelevant: at one hundred degrees heat, evaporation is caused. So use any water, A, B, C.
Science says it is the same with Buddha: “Put any man, A, B, C, in the same situation. Given the same situation a buddha will be caused. We don’t know the situation yet; that’s another thing. We will know one day. And it is absurd to teach someone: ‘Be a buddha!’ No one can be. But create the situation. If you say to water, ‘Evaporate!’ water cannot evaporate, but create the situation and the water evaporates.”
Water has no freedom to choose. The situation is the significant factor. If the situation is there, automatically water will evaporate.
Science says, “Man’s situation is very complex. It is not so simple as creating heat for the water to evaporate. It is complex, but still everyone is caused, everything is caused.”
If this is the case, then there is no freedom. Really, in this century, this thought has become very deeply rooted in the human mind. Because of this, now psychologists say, “No criminal is a criminal – he is caused. And no buddha is a buddha – he is caused.” Everyone is just a slave; there is no responsibility. With the concept of freedom gone, there is no responsibility.
So when you ask me why people are not interested in transforming their life, their inner energy, into spiritual light, the why is irrelevant, cannot be asked. With freedom, why disappears. You can ask why this water is not evaporating; then you have to find out, in the situation, why. Go deep down in the situation, and you will find out the answer why this water is not evaporating. Some factor is missing. Bring the factor in and the water will evaporate.
Why is this man ill? Diagnose, and something will be found, and the answer will be there. Why is this man not spiritual? The question is not valid, because with the question why you assume that somewhere in the situation something must be there which is obstructing the process. There is no factor. If you want to be spiritual, you can be. If you don’t want, it is up to you. It is up to you.
Even all the situations given, a buddha cannot be produced, cannot be manufactured. Really, in the life of Buddha, there are many things which will help us.

Buddha was born. He was the only son to his father, and he was born when his father was very old. The father asked the astrologers, “What is going to be the fate of my son?”
The astrologers said, “There are two possibilities: either he will become a great emperor, a chakravartin, emperor of the whole world, or he will become a sannyasin, a renunciate.”
The father asked, “What type of astrology is this? Tell me certainly what he is going to become!”
They said, “This is the only possible thing we can predict. Either he will become a sannyasin, or he will become a chakravartin.”
These are polar opposites: emperor of the whole world and a sannyasin, a monk, a beggar on the street. Everything else comes in between. These are the polar opposites.
So the father was worried and asked the pundits of the court. He called a great meeting of all the wise men of his capital and asked them what to do so that his son would not become a sannyasin, so that he would live in the world and would not leave the world. “What type of situation should be given to him and what type of education so that he never feels any urge toward spirituality?”
This was a great experiment, an experiment in causing a person to be a particular thing: “He must be a great emperor. And both the possibilities are open, so how to close one possibility and how to help only one possibility for his growth?”
They decided. They must have been very scientific. Never was such an experiment done before and never after, a very great experiment in human destiny. So they planned the whole thing. The childhood of Buddha was a planned childhood, absolutely planned. What he should eat, what he should do, with whom he should talk, who should teach him, where he should move, everything was planned.
There were great, wise old men. They said, “He must not see any suffering. He must not see any old man, he must not see any diseased man. He must not see illness, poverty. He must not become aware of the great suffering life is. He must be in a world of dreams, utopia, euphoria. He must live in illusions so real that he never feels the urge to leave the world.”
So three palaces were built for him, one for each season. In his gardens not even a dry leaf was allowed. In the night everything dying would be thrown away. He never saw a flower dying. He would see only flowers that were young and fresh. No old man was allowed to move wherever Buddha was, Gautama was. No old man was allowed to move there, only young, beautiful, healthy men and women.
All the beautiful girls of the capital were brought for his service; they would serve him. And there was music and song, and his whole life was just a singsong, just a dreamy life. Absolute planning was possible because he was a king’s son. When he became young he had not seen any old man, any ill man, any dead man. He didn’t know that death existed. Of course, when there is no death, no old age, no suffering, where is the question of becoming a renunciate? Why renounce the world? The world is as beautiful as you can wish.
He lived in this dreamland…and then suddenly everything shattered. You cannot go on like this. It is such a false thing, you cannot continue in it. One day or another, something will enter in and will shatter the whole thing. And it happened that because of this planning, I say because of this planning, when he came to know the facts of life, it was a great shock. It is not such a great shock to us; we are accustomed. He was not accustomed at all, so when for the first time he saw an old man, he asked, “What has happened to this man?” When he saw for the first time a dead body, the whole dreamworld disappeared.
We see these things every day. We become insensitive, accustomed. But he was not accustomed, so he asked, “What has happened to this man?”
He had to be answered, and death was such a shock, great shock. There was such a big gap between his life and the fact of death, that he is reported to have said, “If this man is dead, then the whole life is meaningless. Then I am also going to be dead? Then everything is useless. If death is the end, then life is meaningless. So I must go and find that which is deathless, if there is such a thing. And if there is not such a thing, then we are living only in dreams, wasting time, wasting energy, wasting ourselves.”
The father had had a plan in his mind. He had been trying to cause, he was trying to force, a particular alternative. But the result was quite the contrary, because when you force a particular thing, the inner freedom begins to rebel. Buddha’s life was a manufactured life, artificial, false, unreal. And because everything was forced upon him, the inner freedom must have revolted. Because of that inner freedom he moved into quite the opposite polarity. Buddha’s father was just unable to understand what had happened. He had done everything in his power, and then the whole plan failed.

You cannot cause man to be something. And if you can cause man to be something, then there is no humanity. Man is the uncaused factor in the world. So I cannot say why, because if I can say, “Because of this, man is not spiritual, so provide the factor and man will be spiritual,” then spirituality becomes just part of a great economics. Supply this and the demand will be fulfilled. I create a demand and the supply will be there.
No, no such thing can be done with man. Spirituality is not a commodity. And because of this, because spirituality means freedom, so few people become spiritual – because you never use your freedom. Rather, on the contrary, you go on fettering yourself into slaveries, because slavery is convenient, very convenient. Slavery is convenient, comfortable. Freedom is inconvenient, uncomfortable.
When everyone is a slave, you can exist with everyone if you are a slave. If you begin to act as a free agent, you become maladjusted. The whole world has progressed only through maladjusted individuals. The adjusted ones are always orthodox, traditional. They always do what all the others are doing. They are adjusted.
Freedom means you begin to move in a direction no one is moving in. Fear grips you. You begin to feel uneasy. You cannot be certain because no one is moving there. Because freedom is such a responsibility, and such a dangerous responsibility, you go on deceiving yourself. At the most you choose one slavery over another, you go on substituting slaveries.
One Hindu becomes a Christian, one Christian becomes a Hindu: they change slaveries. One man belongs to this party, and then he leaves it and thinks, “I am free,” and begins to belong to another party. We simply change bondages. A new bondage is not a freedom. Freedom means with no bondage, moving with no bondage. That means moving moment to moment without any certainty, moving into insecurity. We are always interested in securities.
Only two or three days ago, one old lady was here. Her husband is doing meditation, deeply. Now she has become worried because he has become more silent. She came to ask me, “My husband has become more silent, and I fear that if this goes on he may become a sannyasin. He may leave us, he may renounce us, so stop my husband from doing meditation!”
I asked her whether he has become a worse man than he was before. She said, “No, he has become good. He is not angry now as he was before. He is more loving, more compassionate. But the whole family has become disturbed, a fear that he may leave us.”
This fear is not only the fear of the wife. I asked her husband also. He said, “I myself have become uneasy, because the silence is going in and as the silence is going in everything has begun to look different. My family doesn’t look at all as if it is mine – as if it is someone else’s family. I feel more compassion for the children, but now they are not mine. I am doing everything for them, and I will go on doing it, but it is as if I am doing it in a play, in a drama. I am not involved. So I myself have become afraid. If this goes on, then anything can happen. Any day I may leave them.”
This fear of the unknown! A fixed pattern was there, now a new factor has entered in. And that new factor is so alive it will change everything. So he asked me, “If you tell me to, I will stop meditation. And in my family, everyone will be happy if I stop it.”
You are afraid of your freedom. Everyone else is also afraid of your freedom. So we have a society of slaves, and in slavery we have such deep investments. That’s why we don’t move toward freedom.
Every moment you can choose. You can choose spirituality every moment, or you can choose old habits. But to be with old habits is easy. You know them, you have lived them, nothing is new. With the new you are in the unknown, in the dark. You have to learn again. So a person who is moving in freedom has to be a learner every moment. And he cannot rely on the past. The past will not help.
And we are all past-oriented only because the past helps. We are habit-oriented. This is the mechanism of the inner mind. Whenever you know something, you need not bother about it. When you know something as a habit, it is transferred from your consciousness to your robot mechanism inside; to the mechanical part of your being it is transferred. Then you need not bother about it. The mechanical part will go on doing it.
If you are a driver, you go on talking, you go on thinking, you can go on singing, or you can put on your radio, and drive. You are not driving – the robot part, the mechanical part, is driving. You will be needed only when something new happens, some accident, suddenly; then you will be required. Otherwise you are not required at all. You can be at ease somewhere else. You need not be in your car at all.
When you are driving mechanically, you are not there. You may have reached the destination already; only the robot part, the mechanical part, is driving. Your soul can fly to the stars or to the clouds, anywhere…the robot part is doing everything. This gives you a feeling of convenience. So with everything routinized, you feel convenient. With anything new, you have to be conscious, aware. When you are learning to drive, what is the problem? Why do you feel so much discomfort in learning? Because you have to be conscious.
Unconsciousness is such a drug. Consciousness is such an effort. When you learn something, you have to be conscious every moment. That consciousness is felt as strain. It is not, but because we are always finding something mechanical, it appears to be. The person who is thinking of spirituality must think in terms of awareness, more and more awareness. That is the reason. Awareness comes only when you go on facing new factors.
Biologists say that animals live in a world where awareness is not needed, a routine circle. They perform acts that are exactly alike. One animal’s birth is not different in any way from another’s – death not different, sex not different. Everything is similar, because everything is done by instinct. One bird making a nest, another bird making a dam, another bird making something else: they make through instinct. No learning is needed, they never are taught. It is just their robot part, inherent in their cells. They go on doing….
Even if a bird is hatched without its parents there, and no other birds are allowed to meet him, when the time is ripe he will begin to make a nest. And the nest will be the same, exactly the same, as for centuries and centuries his parents have been making. No one has taught him, no awareness is needed. It is just in the cells, instinctive, a mechanical thing. He will do it.
With man, that’s the difficulty. Man has to be taught everything, everything. Now biologists say that soon, after this century, we will have to teach sex, we will have to train, because now even sex is not as instinctive as it was. So you may see an eruption, an explosion, of sex books all over the world. Just as there are books on how to learn driving, now how to love – books entitled How to Love, How to Achieve Perfect Sex.
No animal needs anything to know about sex. Why man? With man everything has to be learned. Why? Because the robot part in man is secondary, and consciousness has come in which has become primary, the central force. You have to learn everything. Then choice comes in. You have to choose what to learn and what not to learn.
Spirituality will be your greatest choice. It is up to you. You may choose to look at the world in a spiritual way, you may choose to look at the world in a materialist way. And no one will tell you, “Don’t choose.” No one can force you. And if you choose the materialist outlook you will have a different life. If you choose the spiritualist outlook, you will have a totally different life. This is freedom.
Biologists say that this consciousness came into human life because long ago, at least ten million years ago, some apes, the forefathers of man, came down from their trees and began to walk on two legs, not on four. Instead of on four, they began to walk on two legs, and the two hands were released.
With these two hands released many things happened, and the greatest that happened was that the factor of awareness came in. Because when apes were on their trees, they were not in any danger. They were secure in their trees. No lion could kill them, no tiger could attack them. They were secured in their trees. They were moving in the trees from one tree to another, and that was a mechanical thing, inherent, hereditary.
Then, it is an unknown factor yet, x, why certain apes came down to earth. Many reasons are possible. It seems either there was a sudden population explosion and they were so many that they had to find somewhere new to live – trees were less and they became more – or suddenly there were no rains for many years and trees died and became dry and they had to come down. But whatsoever may have happened, these are all guesses.
Someone has suggested just now, a great scientist, he has suggested that it seems that humanity was born out of illness. Some apes became so ill because of an attack of a certain virus, a certain illness, these apes became so ill that they could not live by hanging on the trees. They became so weak that they had to come to the earth. It is possible. But whatsoever may have been the basic cause, this much is certain: when apes came down to the earth they had to be more alert. Their mechanical habits wouldn’t do. Their inherited instincts wouldn’t do. They had to walk on an unknown territory. The very walking, the stature, the posture, was so new; their bodies were not accustomed to it. With two legs walking, they became bipeds from quadrupeds. In their cells there was no knowledge about it.
That’s why still, when a man is born, a child is born, he has to learn to walk – still! It is not instinctive. A horse is born, he can run. A calf is born, he can run. No need to learn to walk. But man has to learn to walk. And if you put a small child somewhere where no one walks and he cannot imitate, he will not walk for his whole life.
In certain wolves’ caves, some children have been found who have grown up with wolves. They cannot walk. Just four or five years back, in a forest in U.P., one boy of fourteen was found in a community of wolves. They must have taken him from the village, and then he was brought up by them. Fourteen years old! He couldn’t walk, he was not a biped, he was still a quadruped. He would walk on all fours, and he would walk like a wolf, not like a man.
Walking is still an effort, so when a child walks parents are so happy. This is the reason, because this is something valuable, an achievement. We have in our language many things which show this attitude. We say someone is standing on his legs: “He is standing on his own legs.” Something valuable, something worthwhile, something to be appreciated. We condemn someone when we say, “You are still not standing on your own legs.”
Because man came into a new situation, from the trees to the earth – everything was new, and the robot would not work, and the instinct would not help – that’s why intelligence came up. He had to be aware, and he had to be aware every moment. There were many dangers all around. He was surrounded by enemies, and he was weak because no instinct would help now. This dangerous situation was the first spurt of alertness. He had to be alert.
Now we have again created a very, very secure state of affairs, so you can be just like a robot. There is no need to be alert. That’s why the sharpness, the alertness, the awareness, has to be chosen again, and you have to put yourself into new dangers. Not that you move into a jungle or you begin to live with wild animals; that is not real danger. You can accustom yourself to it, it can become a robot part. The only danger now for man is to live moment to moment without the help of the past, to live moment to moment in the present, alert, aware, conscious. This is going to be your choice, with no cause.
Look at it in one other way. Science is causal; that means past-oriented. If something is to be found, science will go to the past. If you are ill, science will go to your past history, case history, to see why this illness happened. Science cannot move to the future; it moves always to the past. If you are blind, science will go to your past, to your parents’ past. It moves to the past. It goes to find out the cause, then the effect can be explained.
Religion is future-oriented, not past-oriented, so why cannot be answered in scientific terms. It is future-oriented. Can you understand it? It is difficult. It is not because something is causing you to be spiritual; rather, something is calling you to be spiritual – not causing you but calling you. Spiritual persons have always said, “A certain call has come to me.” The call comes from the future, not from the past. It is end-oriented, not origin-oriented.
The freedom is there to choose. What is going to be your destiny, you can choose it. What you are going to achieve and to be, you can choose it. You feel hungry, you seek food: this is caused. If you feel inner tensions and then choose meditation, this is caused. Then your meditation is a scientific effort. If you say, “I don’t know why, but there is a certain calling, a call to me. I have to move in this direction. I feel an unknown fragrance. It is not coming from my past, but something from the future, inviting me, something unknown inviting me. I will move. It is dangerous, because I don’t know what is going to happen. I cannot be sure what the consequence will be. I move….” It is a jump.
And, remember, this is not so only in this age. This has always been so and this always will be so.
You ask me: “Do you feel that the present generation is capable of creating enlightened ones like Krishna, Lao Tzu and Christ?”
Spirituality is not concerned with time at all, time or age. A Lao Tzu is born not because of a particular time; a buddha is born not because of a particular age. There were so many in Buddha’s age, but only one became the Buddha. The age was the same to all, the time was the same to all.
Time is irrelevant for spirituality, because spirituality exists in eternity, not in time. Any moment is as good as any other. You can be a buddha this very moment. Time is absolutely innocent. Time neither helps nor hinders. It will not say, “What are you are going to do? It cannot happen. This is the twenty-first century. This cannot happen in this century.” Time has no determining capacity for spirituality. For other things it has.
For example, you cannot fly in the sky in an airplane in Buddha’s age. You will have to move in a bullock-cart, because only after a certain evolution is the airplane possible. Now you can move in an airplane, but you cannot go just now to other solar families. Whatsoever you do, you cannot just go now. We have gone to the moon only. It will take at least twenty centuries to go to another solar system; to go beyond the family of this sun, it will take at least twenty centuries. It is a gradual process. Many things will have to be developed, only then. A bullock-cart will become an airplane, but many steps will have to be taken.
So you cannot do certain things in Buddha’s age as far as the outside world is concerned. But as far as the inside world is concerned, any moment, any moment, any time, is as good as any other, because when you move inside time disappears. This has to be understood.
A buddha is meditating, deeply gone inside. There is no time. Time ceases. He is not even aware of time. Time stops. If you move inside, time will stop. Buddha meditating twenty-five centuries ago will drop out of time; you meditating just today, you will also drop out of time. And there will be no difference between you and Buddha, because all differences are time differences.
You wear certain clothes Buddha cannot wear, you know many things Buddha cannot know. You belong to a different world, different education, different culture; Buddha belongs to a different world. But when you move in, you move outside culture, you move outside society, you move outside education. When you go in, you go into a different world uncreated by the society. Any day you can move.
And this is a human tendency, to think that “Our own age is bad, evil. Our own time is bad.” This is a human tendency. And this is not only so with us: this has always been so. The most ancient record has been found in Babylon. It is at least seven thousand years old. And if you publish it in any of tomorrow morning’s daily newspapers as an editorial, it will do. You need not change anything in it.
It says: This is the age of darkness. This is the age of corruption. This is the age of immorality and sin. Everything good has disappeared, everything wise has disappeared. Youth has become rebellious. The wife will not listen to her husband, the son will not listen to his father. The teachers are no longer respected by their disciples. This is a seven-thousand-year-old document!
Every age thinks that this is the worst one. Why? Because we are only aware of our own age and everything around, and we begin to compare our neighbor with Buddha. You don’t know that the neighbors were always just like these ones. Buddha was not your neighbor; Buddha is one in millions. So we compare the best one of the past with the worst one of the present. That’s the problem. That’s why every age appears to be the age of sin.
We think of Jesus, we don’t think of Judas. We think of Rama, we don’t think of Ravana. We think of Buddha, we don’t think of Devadatta. He was Buddha’s cousin-brother and he tried many times to murder Buddha. He was jealous, simply jealous that “Why should this man be honored and respected so much?” He was just a cousin-brother to him, nothing more.
When he felt that this would not do, he renounced the world. Devadatta renounced the world because “It seems that people honor only that one who has renounced the world.” So he renounced the world, he went into deep austerity. He practiced meditation, yoga, everything, just to get higher than Gautama.
That also won’t do, because you cannot force yourself to be a buddha, you cannot imitate. But Devadatta is forgotten, Buddha remains. The whole age is forgotten, only Buddha remains. Everything has disappeared, only Buddha remains. And then we compare Buddha with our whole age. Because of that this problem arises: whether Buddha or 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 in. 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. His behavior was not that of a respectable man.
And when he was killed, it was a unanimous resolution. Few, very few, were with him, and the whole country was against him. He had only twelve disciples, and they too left. When the moment came and he was to be crucified, they all left. They also were doubtful inside: “When everyone is against him, something must be wrong.”
Jesus was crucified as a hippie, as a vagabond. You may be surprised: he was crucified but there is no record. Jews have not even recorded the incident. It was such a minor incident that no Jew has recorded it in their history. Romans have not recorded it. If you go to find any historical record that Jesus existed, you cannot find one. There is nothing. The Bible recorded by his disciples is the only record.
So there have been certain persons who have doubted the very existence of Jesus. They say he never existed. They say, rather, “This Jesus Christ was a drama which was played in every village. There was only a drama, not a real historical fact.” And later on, by and by, people forgot that this was a drama and it became history.
Because there is no record! – if the Bible is lost, there is no record that Jesus ever existed. If he was a very significant, prominent person, if the age was influenced by him, then this is impossible to conceive why there is no record. He was not. He was unknown, no one knew about him. Later on only, when disciples gathered and created an organization, by and by he became known. Otherwise he was an unknown carpenter’s son.
If Jesus meets you, you will not recognize him. If Buddha meets you somewhere suddenly, and no one introduces you to him, you will not recognize him. Because this inner flowering is such a subtle, such a hidden force, that unless you are also a fellow traveler, unless you are also moving in that dimension, you cannot recognize him.
So when you ask whether it is possible now, in this age, for a Buddha to be or for a Christ to be, you again ask a meaningless question. Any day, in any time, Christ is possible, Buddha is possible, because the possibility belongs to the innermost realm of your being, not to the procession of events which we call history. It doesn’t belong to history, it doesn’t belong to time. It belongs to the innermost realm of being which is eternity, not time. You can be a buddha – take the jump and you will be. And time will not hinder you so that you cannot take the jump.
This factor, that time is irrelevant, must be deeply understood and pondered over, because we are very cunning and very self-deceiving. If someone says that in this age it is not possible…and there are religions, and in a way every religion says it, that in this age this is not possible. Any organized religion will say this, that “Jesus was born once. He is the only begotten Son of God, and now you cannot be a Jesus again. You can only be a Christian, not a Christ.”
Jainas say, “You cannot be a tirthankara, you cannot be a Mahavira. The quota is finished. Only twenty-four persons can be tirthankaras. There can be no twenty-fifth.” Mohammedans will not allow you to be a prophet, a paigambara, because “Mohammed is the last paigambara, and he has brought the complete and the final message from God. No alteration is possible now, and there is no need.” Every organized religion will tell you that “Now you need not bother to be a Mohammed or a Mahavira. Just follow Mohammed or Mahavira. You can only be a follower.”
Why? Why do they say this? For two reasons. You like it very much, deep down: then the responsibility is not upon you. “The time is bad. If you are not a Jesus, it is not your responsibility. In this kaliyuga, in this age of sin, no one can be a Christ, so you are not. It is not your responsibility. It is the very time which hinders you; otherwise you would flower as a Jesus at any moment. You are ready, but the time is not helpful.”
Everyone likes this deep down, appreciates it. Then you can be whatsoever you are. There is no burden on you to flower into a buddha. Because of this deep satisfaction and deep cunningness, deception, we are happy. “We can only be criminals, we can only be weak human beings. That’s what the age allows.”
And, secondly, every religion thinks that if buddhas are going to be born again and again, then you cannot have an organized church for Buddha, because every other buddha will disturb the whole thing. Christians cannot allow anyone to be a christ again, because then he will disturb the whole Christian kingdom, because such persons are bound to be nontraditional, such persons are bound to be nonsectarian, such persons are bound to be absolutely free, independent. They will destroy any organization if they are born.
So no religion would like and appreciate Jesus to be there again, in any form. “The pope is the representative and he is enough. Jesus is no longer needed.” So every religion goes on insisting that nothing can be done at this moment. “What can be done is you have to follow – worship and follow. Just be a follower in the crowd. Don’t try to be an individual.”
Buddha was an individual, he was not a Buddhist. He was born a Hindu, and then the organization couldn’t contain him. No organization can contain such a person. See: Jesus was born a Jew, he died a Jew. He was not a Christian. But because the Jews could not contain such a seed, he could not be contained. They threw him out. Because he was thrown, the seed sprouted into Christianity.
Buddha was a Hindu. He lived as a Hindu, he died Hindu. He was not a Buddhist. But Hindus couldn’t absorb him, because if you want to absorb a buddha you will have to transform the whole society. He couldn’t be absorbed, he was thrown out.
If a buddha is born now into a Buddhist society, he will be thrown out. If a Jesus is born now in a Christian society, he will be thrown out. Because it is not that Jews or Hindus are against buddhas and christs: any organization will be against them, even their own organization, because organization lives in traditions, exists because of tradition, and these persons are absolutely anti-traditional, traditionless. They move every moment in freedom. You cannot say what they will do.
That’s why it is very difficult to create a sect with a living enlightened person. It is very difficult. You are never at ease: “What is he going to do? What is he going to say?” When the teacher is dead, a sect can be created. Now you know what the teacher wants, how he behaves. Now you can categorize everything. Now you can separate, divide, analyze. Now you can make a doctrine and principles out of it. Now the creed is possible.
Only a dead teacher will allow a creed to be there. With a living teacher, he is every day growing, changing, transforming, moving into the unknown. You are never certain with him, you are never certain. So only with dead teachers are creeds born. And when creeds are born, you begin to think in high terms of Jesus and Buddha. They were never thought of so highly in their own day.
So remember these two things. Religion is a continuous process; it never stops in any age. Spirituality is an individual phenomenon. If you decide for it, it will happen to you; no one can bar it, but it needs a total decision. And buddhas and christs are not bound to any age. At this very moment there are persons who are enlightened, but you cannot recognize them. It will take hundreds of years for the society to recognize them. When they are long dead then society will come to feel that they were rare, that something unique had happened in the past.
I will tell you a story. Nietzsche has written one of the most wonderful books in the world, Thus Spake Zarathustra. In this book he has given a parable:

A madman comes to the market and asks everyone, stares in everyone’s eyes and asks, “Have you seen God? Where is God? I am searching, I am seeking. Where is God?”
Everyone laughs. Of course, they are all believers, but, as believers are, it is a formality with them. They think that this man has gone mad. “Of course, there is God and he created the world. Now he is finished with us and we are finished with him. Why are you seeking? For what purpose? Are you insane? These things are good to talk and write about – that God is, seek him – but are you really seeking him?”
And that man stares in everyone’s eyes and he says, “Have you heard anything about God? Where is he?”
Then the whole crowd gathers around him and they tell him, “We have not heard about him since long. You go somewhere else. Don’t disturb the market.”
The man says, “I have come to deliver some news to you. I am not seeking him; I have come only to know whether you have heard anything lately about him. Do you know he is dead?”
Now they feel certainly he is mad. “He was mad when he was seeking – he is still mad if he says God is dead. We believe in a dead, alive God – dead so that he may not touch us and alive so that we can worship him on Sundays. But this man is mad. Either he thinks God is so alive that he can be found, or he thinks he is dead.” So they ask, “Who has told you?”
He says, “I have seen it for myself. And the more mysterious thing is this, that you have killed him. But it seems that the news has not yet reached you. It will take time. You yourselves have killed him. He is dead. But it seems the time is not yet ripe and I have come early. The news has not yet reached the marketplace – and you have killed him! So I must go back to the hills. The time is not ripe and I have come early. The news will take time to reach you.”
Even sunrays take time, the stars’ rays take time to reach you. There is thunder and lightning in the clouds. It takes time to reach you even when you have seen it, because there is a gap. Light travels faster than sound. When there is thunder and lightning in the clouds, you have seen the lightning, but you will hear the thunder later on.
So the madman says, “He is dead, and you have killed him, but it seems the news has not reached you yet. It will take time.”

It takes time. To recognize that a buddha is a buddha, it takes time. And it takes so much time that when Buddha is no more you recognize him, when a Jesus is no more you recognize him. And when he is, you not only do not recognize him: if someone says that he is, you will deny it. It takes time. This is one of the most unfortunate tendencies of the human mind, because because of this we miss much.
There are stories…. People would come to ask Buddha, “Someone says that you are an enlightened one. Are you? Really? Have you attained that unattainable?”
If the Buddha says, “Yes, I have attained,” they will go and say that he is an egoist. If he says, “I have not attained,” they will say, “We knew it already.” If he remains silent, they will say he knows nothing.
Hundreds and hundreds of stories… Pilate asks Jesus, “Really, you think that you are the Son of God? Really, you think so?” If Jesus says, “Yes, I am the Son of God,” he is a madman. If he remains silent, he is afraid. If he denies, then they think, “We knew it already that you were not.” So what can a Buddha say? What can a Jesus say?
But if he has been dead for twenty or twenty-five centuries you cannot go to him and ask, “Are you an enlightened one? Really? Don’t you think you are deceived by yourself? Are you not in some self-deception?” You cannot ask. And this long gap…over this long gap you cannot reach him. You begin to recognize it, but then it is useless. Then it is useless, because that recognition will not help. And if Buddha comes amidst you, you will again raise the same questions.
Why is this so? When someone is present amidst you, he looks just like you. He lives like you, he eats like you, he falls ill like you, he dies like you. How can you think that “a person just like me is enlightened and I am not”? It is humiliating. It is deep down hurtful to the ego. Because it hurts the ego, because you feel humiliation, you deny. When you deny, you feel good.
So I will say to you that whenever you are in contact with someone where you begin to feel the tendency of the mind to deny, remember this: because of this tendency you have missed many buddhas, and because of this tendency you will never be able to recognize. And unless you recognize something which has happened in someone, it is not going to happen in you, because when you go on denying that anyone is a buddha, ultimately you will come to believe that you cannot become one yourself. When no one can become, when no one is, how can you become?
When you recognize buddhahood in someone, deep down you have recognized your own buddhahood in the future. To recognize a buddha in the present is to recognize your own future, your own future possibility, your own destiny.

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