JESUS SAID:

BUT NOW THEY ARE DRUNK. WHEN THEY HAVE SHAKEN OFF THEIR WINE, THEN THEY WILL REPENT.

 

 

This is about you. Don't think 'they' -- they means you: when you are shaken out of your drunkenness, you will repent. This word repent became very meaningful. The whole of Christianity depends on repentance; no other religion has depended so much on repentance. Repentance is beautiful if it comes through the heart, if you realize that, "Yes, Jesus is right, we have wasted our lives."

 

This wasting is the sin -- not that Adam committed the sin -- this wasting of your life, of the possibility, the potentiality, the opportunity to grow and become God-like or become gods; wasting this time, wasting it with futile things, collecting useless junk. And when you become aware you will repent. And if this repentance comes through the heart it will cleanse you. Nothing cleanses like repentance. And this is one of the most beautiful things in Christianity.

 

In Hinduism there is no secret about repentance. They have not worked out that key at all. This is unique to Christianity. If you repent totally, if it comes from the heart, if you cry and weep, if your whole being feels and repents that you have been wasting God's given opportunity -- you have not been grateful, you have misbehaved, you have mistreated your own being... you feel the sin. This is the sin! -- not that you have murdered somebody or that you have stolen; that is nothing. Those are minor sins which are born out of this original sin: that you have been drunk. You open your eyes, your heart is filled with repentance, and then a scream, a cry, comes out of your being. There is no need for words, you need not say to God, "I repent, forgive me." No need. Your whole being becomes a repentance. Suddenly, you are cleansed of all the past. This is one of the most secret keys Jesus delivered to the world.

 

Jainas say that you have to work it out, it is a long process: whatsoever you have done in the past has to be undone. If you have done a wrong in the past, it has to be undone. It is mathematical: if you have committed a sin, you have to do something to balance it. And Hindus say that you have committed such sin, that you are in such ignorance -- so many actions out of ignorance, and the past is so vast that it is not easy to get out of it. Many more works will be needed, only then can you clean the past.

 

But Jesus has given a beautiful key. He says: "Just repent and the whole past is washed clean!" It seems to be a very unbelievable thing, because how can it happen? And that is the difference between Hindus, Buddhists, Jainas and Christianity. Hindus, Buddhists and Jainas can never believe that can happen just by repentance, because they don't know what repentance is. Jesus worked it out. It is one of the oldest keys.

 

But understand what repentance is. Just saying the words won't do, and saying them halfheartedly won't do. When your whole being repents, your whole being throbs and you feel it in every pore, every fiber, that you have done wrong, and you have done wrong because you have been drunk and now you repent -- suddenly there is a transformation. The past disappears and the projection of the future from the past disappears; you are thrown to here and now, you are thrown to your own being. And for the first time you feel the inner nothingness. It is not empty negatively, it is just that the temple is so vast, like space.... You are forgiven, Jesus says, you are forgiven if you repent.

 

Jesus' master was John the Baptist. His whole teaching was, "Repent, because the day of judgment is near!" This was his whole teaching. He was a very wild man, a great revolutionary, and he went from one corner of his country to another, just with one message: "Repent, because the last judgment is very near!" That is why Christians completely dropped the theory of rebirth. Not that Jesus was not aware of rebirth -- he knew, he knew well that there is a cycle of continuous rebirths. But he completely dropped the idea just to give repentance totality.

 

If there are many lives your repentance cannot be total. You can wait, you can postpone. You can think, "If in this life I have missed, nothing is wrong. The next life...." That's what Hindus have been doing. They are the laziest people in the world, because of this theory. And the theory is right, this is the problem; they can always postpone, there is no hurry. Why be in such a hurry? That's why Hindus have never bothered about time. They never invented watches, and, left to themselves, they would not invent them. So a watch, for a Hindu mind, is really a foreign element: a clock in a Hindu house doesn't suit. The clock is a Christian invention, because time is short, running fast; it is not a clock, it is life running fast out of your hands. This death is going to be the final one, you cannot postpone.

 

Just to avoid postponement Jesus and John the Baptist -- who was his master, who initiated Jesus into the mysteries -- their whole teaching depends on: Repent! For there is no more time left, don't postpone any further, because you will then be lost. They bring the whole thing to an intensity.

 

If I suddenly say that this is going to be the last day, and tomorrow the world is going to disappear, the H-bomb is to be dropped, and then I say: Repent! -- then your total being will be focused, centered, you will be here and now. And then there will come a scream, a cry, a wild scream from your being. It will not be in words -- it will be more existential than that -- it will be from the heart. Not only will your eyes weep, but your heart will be filled with tears, your whole being will be filled with tears: you have missed.

 

If this repentance happens -- this is an intensity of becoming alert -- all the past is cleaned. No need to undo it -- no, because it has never been a reality. It was a dream, no need to undo it -- just become alert. And with the sleep, all the dreams and nightmares disappear. They have never been there in reality in the first place, they have been your thoughts. And don't be lazy about it -- because you have been postponing for many lives. You can postpone for many more: postponement is such an attraction for the mind. The mind always says, "Tomorrow" -- always. Tomorrow is the shelter. Tomorrow is the shelter of all sin, and virtue arises at this moment.

 

I have heard: In a school, a Christian missionary school, but with a few non-Christian boys as well, who were also taught the Bible, the parables and the stories -- and they had to learn.... One day, the inspector of schools came and he asked a small kid, "Who was the first man, and who was the first woman?"

The kid replied, "Adam and Eve."

The inspector was pleased and he said, "To what nationality did they belong?"

And the kid said, "Indian!"

The inspector was a little bit disturbed, but he still asked, "Why do you think they belonged to the Indian nationality? Why do you think they were Indians?"

 

And the kid said, "Easy! They had no shelter over their heads, no clothes to wear, nothing to eat except one apple between the two of them -- and still they believed this was paradise! They were Indians!"

The Indians are at ease with whatsoever is. They are not worried about doing anything, because they think, "Life is such a long affair, why worry? Why get in a hurry? There is no need to run."

 

Christianity created an intensity by the idea that there is only one life. And remember well: Hindus are right, as far as the theory is concerned, and Christians are wrong, as far as the theory is concerned. But theory is never a question for a Jesus. The problem is the human mind and its transformation -- and sometimes truth can be poisonous, sometimes truth can make you lazy.

 

I will give you another example which will be helpful: Gurdjieff used to say that you don't have any eternal soul, remember. You can attain it, but you don't have it -- you can miss. And if you don't attain it you will simply die, nothing is going to survive. And Gurdjieff said that only one in millions attains to the soul, and then the soul goes on moving. The body is left and the soul moves on. But this does not happen for everybody. The soul is not given to you, it has to be worked out, it is a crystallization. When they work it out, then a Mahavira, a Buddha, a Jesus -- they become eternal. Not you! -- Gurdjieff used to say you are just vegetables! You will be eaten, you will dissolve; you don't have any center, so who can survive?

 

He was again using the Jesus tactics. He was not right because you do have a soul, an eternal soul. But the theory is dangerous, because when you hear that you have an eternal soul, that you are the Brahman, you go to sleep. This becomes a hypnotic thing: if you are already that, why worry? What need is there of sadhana? What need is there to meditate? "Aham brahmasmi -- I am God already." So you go to sleep because nothing is left to be done. Theories can kill, even true theories can kill. Gurdjieff is not right, but he is more compassionate. And you are such liars that only lies can help you. Only lies can bring you out of your lies, just as when a thorn is in your flesh, another thorn is needed to bring it out.

 

Jesus knew well, he knew about reincarnation -- nobody else knew so well. But he simply dropped the idea because he had been to India! He looked at the Indian mind, saw that the whole mind had become a postponement because of the theory of reincarnation, and he dropped that theory. Gurdjieff also went to India and Tibet, and he looked at the whole nonsense that has happened because of the belief that you already have within you all that is needed. You are divine already, there is no need to do anything. So beggars think they are emperors -- then why bother?

 

Gurdjieff started teaching on the same lines, the essential note is the same: he said nobody has a soul already; you can create it, you may miss it, so don't take it for granted -- work it out! If you make much effort, only then will a center be born, and that center will live; but not you as you are, because you are just vegetables. And to say that you are just vegetables, he created a new myth. He said, "You are vegetables for the moon, food for the moon." He joked, but it is a very beautiful joke, and very meaningful. He said everything in the world is food for something else: this animal eats that, that animal eats something else.

 

Everything is food for something else, so how can man be an exception? Man must be a food for something and Gurdjieff said, "Man is the food for the moon, and when the moon is very hungry there are wars. When the moon is very hungry, there are wars because many people are needed. But he was joking about the moon, he was not serious. And followers are always blind, so they have taken even this joke as a truth. Gurdjieff's followers go on saying that this is one of the greatest truths he discovered -- if he were to come back he would laugh.

 

He was joking, but when Gurdjieff jokes he jokes meaningfully. And the insistence was, the emphasis was, that you are vegetables -- as you are. Only this much can be done with you: the moon can eat you. Can you find anything more stupid than the moon? Difficult to find! When the astronauts reached it, they thought that they were going to fulfill all the dreams and all the poetry of the world, because man has always been thinking about reaching the moon. But when they reached it, there was nothing. The moon is nothing -- you are food for nothing. The moon is just a dead planet. And you are food for a dead planet, because you are dead!

 

Remember this: Christianity, particularly Jesus, knows well that there is incarnation, reincarnation, rebirth. Life is a long continuity, this death is not going to be the ultimate death. But once this is said, you relax. And the whole method of Jesus depends on friction: you are not allowed to relax, you have to fight, create friction, so that you can become crystallized.

 

- Osho, "The Mustard Seed: My Most Loved Gospel on Jesus, #3"