Question 9 :

In comparing Jesus to Buddha, Jesus seems very active and revolutionary. Why is this?

 

 

There is a reason. But first, some explanation is needed. Yoga divides man into two parts: the sun part and the moon part. The sun is symbolic of inner positivity and the moon is symbolic of inner negativity. Sun does not mean the outer sun nor does moon mean the outer moon. These words are used for the inner universe.

 

There is even one breath that is known as the sun breath and another breath that is known as the moon breath. Every forty to sixty minutes, your breath changes from one nostril to the other. If you need more heat in the body, or if you suddenly grow angry, your sun breath starts functioning. Yoga says that if you use your moon breath when you are angry, then you cannot be angry at all, because the moon breath creates a deep coolness inside.

 

The negative is cool, silent, still. The positive is hot, vibrant with energy, active. The sun is the active part in you and the moon is the inactive part in you. When one first becomes acquainted with the sun, the light is burning hot, like a flame.

 

If you analyze the inner life of Buddha or of Jesus with this distinction in mind, many things which are ordinarily hidden will become apparent. For example, whenever an enlightened one like Buddha is born, his early life will be very revolutionary. The moment one enters the inner dimension, the first experience is of a fiery flame. But the older Buddha grows, the more an inner coolness is felt. The more perfect the moon stage becomes, the more the revolutionary fervor is lost. That is why Buddha's words are not revolutionary.

 

Jesus did not have this opportunity. He was crucified while he was still a revolutionary and he died, as far as Christianity is concerned, at the age of thirty-three. If you compare Buddha's sayings with those of Jesus there is a clearcut difference. Jesus' sayings look like those of a young man -- hot. Buddha's early sayings were also like this, but he was not crucified for them; he lived to be eighty.

 

The reason he was not crucified is that India has always known that this happens. Whenever a person moves within, whenever a buddha enters into himself, his first expression is fiery, revolutionary, rebellious. He bursts open and explodes into fire. But then that phase disappears and ultimately there is only the moon: silent, without any fire, with only light. That is why India has never killed anyone; that is why India has never behaved the way the Greeks behaved with Socrates or the Jews with Jesus.

 

Jesus was crucified early. Christianity still remains incomplete because Christianity is based on the early Jesus, on Jesus when he was just a flame. Buddhism is complete. It has known Buddha in all his stages. It has known Buddha's moon in all the stages of the moon -- from the first day to the full moon light.

 

It has been a misfortune for the West, it has proven itself to be one of the greatest misfortunes in history, that Jesus was crucified when he was just a flame, when he was only thirty-three. The flame would have turned into moonlight, but the opportunity was not given. The reason is that the Jews were not aware of the inner phenomenon.

 

India has known many buddhas, and it is always true that whenever someone enters the inner dimension, he has to feel the fire of the revolutionary side coming up. If one continues going inward, this dissolves, and then there is only silence, a moonlit silence. To change heat into light is the secret science of inner alchemy. To change coal into diamonds, to change baser metals into gold -- these are just symbols.

 

Alchemists were never really concerned with changing baser metals into higher metals, but they had to hide what they were doing. They had to create an esoteric, secret symbology, because it was very difficult in early times to talk about an inner science and not be murdered. Jesus was killed: he was an alchemist. And the Christianity that developed after Jesus went against him. The Christian Church began to kill and murder those who were practicing the alchemy of inner transformation.

 

Christianity could not really flower into a religion; it remained a clerical thing. It could not create sannyasins, it could only create preachers -- trained, dead, disciplined.

 

- Osho, "The Great Challenge, #9, Q9"