The whole world is divided. You can't find a single man who is clean. Either he is a Christian - he is carrying one kind of dirt - or he is a Hindu; he is carrying another kind of dirt. Now it is possible for me to say exactly and directly even things which may sound bitter.
Sheela has asked why I call my religion the first and perhaps the last religion.
Yes, I call it the first religion because religion is the highest flowering of consciousness. Up to now man was not capable of conceiving it. Even now, only one percent of humanity is barely able to conceive it. The masses are still living in the past, burdened with the past, conditioned with the past.
Barely one percent of mankind is in a state now to conceive religion. All the old religions are based in fear. Now, a real religion destroys fear. It is not based in fear.
The concept of God in all the old religions is nothing but out of fear, a consolation; otherwise there is no validity, no evidence, no proof for the existence of God. The people who believe in God are really people who cannot trust in themselves. They need a father figure, a big daddy. They are still childish. Their mental age is just nearabout twelve years, not more than that. They need somebody to give them courage, to guide them, to protect them. They are simply afraid to be left alone. They are afraid of death which is coming closer every day. They need somebody to protect them from death. It is a projection of your fear. The moment your fear disappears you will find there is no God.
The moment you are able to trust in yourself, to be yourself, there will be no God. You will laugh at the whole concept of God.
Now, Jesus is praying to God, continually raising his hands towards the sky, as if God is there above in the heaven. And not only is he praying, he is receiving answers too - he is hearing voices! Now, these are symptoms of neurosis. To tell you the truth, Jesus is a mental case. He is a nice fellow, he is a good person, but the way he behaves proves many things. He is a fanatic. He carries the same kind of mind as Adolf Hitler. He is a fascist. He thinks that only those who follow him will be saved; anybody else who does not follow him is going to fall into eternal hell. Now, only a simpleton can say such a thing. Who is he to save anybody? But he says he is the only begotten son of God.
And he truly believes it. It is not only that he says it, he truly believes it.
Until the crucifixion, he truly believes it. It is only the crucifixion which brings a little sense to this insane man. Only at the crucifixion he cries, "Why have you forsaken me?" He was certainly waiting for a miracle to happen. He is the only son of God, and God is not coming. And if he is not coming at the crucifixion, then when? And if even Jesus is not being saved, what is the guarantee that those who are going to follow Jesus will be saved? And the fools are still believing that they will be saved if they follow Jesus. Even Jesus is not saved, and he knew it. He waited for a time for the miracle to happen - but it didn't happen.
Miracles don't happen at all. They have never happened. They are only wish fulfillments of people who are dreaming and hallucinating. They are not realities. If you believe in them, they may appear to you almost real, perhaps more than real. It is your belief that creates the hallucination; otherwise there is nothing - no miracle. But Jesus himself believed that he was doing miracles; and he was waiting for the miracle. These are all very childish qualities.
He is a little bit schizophrenic, too. He goes on saying, "Blessed are the meek for theirs is the kingdom of God." But he is not a meek person. He is very arrogant. If you are burdened with Christian conditioning you may not be able to see that he is very arrogant. But once you are clean you can see it clearly. He enters the temple, the great temple of the Jews, and throws out the moneychangers, turns over their tables, hits them, beats them... and he is talking of meekness, humbleness!
He and his followers are hungry and they have been refused food in a village. He is very angry.
They come to a fig tree; it is not the season for figs, so of course there are no figs on the tree. And he becomes so mad at the fig tree and curses it: "You are also against us; you will not provide figs for us." Now, a person cursing a fig tree out of season - what do you call such a person? And it is not only me, his own master... Jesus was a disciple of John the Baptist. John the Baptist was imprisoned, and when he heard these things about Jesus, even he became doubtful about whether he was worthy to be accepted as a disciple or not. He sent a message from the jail to Jesus: "Do you think you are really the messiah for whom the Jews have been waiting?" Because he became suspicious - the things that Jesus is saying and doing are contradictory, and the way he is behaving is not the way of a religious man. He is behaving very irreligiously.
A religious man cannot take the standpoint that, "I am special, the only begotten son of God." A religious man comes to know that he is as ordinary as every ordinary thing. He is just like the blades of grass or the stars or the mountains. He is not special in any way. The idea of specialness, of being extra-ordinary, superior, is nothing but the game of the ego which creates all kinds of arrogance.
The same was the situation with other religions. I have spoken on Mahavira, but I cannot agree with the man's behavior, nor can I agree with the ideology and the guidelines that he gives to his disciples. They are absolutely against nature
- Osho, “From Unconciousness to Consciousness, #1”