The Miracles of Jesus

 

 

 

Question 3:

In the bible, many miracles are recorded. for example, the raising of lazarus from the dead by jesus after the body was already smelling. is it possible for a dead man to be revived?

 

 

It is possible, but it is possible in a very different way - very different. If the person is really dead, if the body is dead, then it is not possible. But it may be that the person only appears to be dead....

 

 

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Question 4:

But it states in the bible that the body was already smelling.

 

 

The body may smell; the person may be in a deep coma and the body can begin to smell. There are other possibilities also, but the Jews of that time could not understand what those other possibilities were. For example, your soul may be out of the body and yet connected to it. Then the body will be in a deep coma, and it has to be preserved or it will begin to deteriorate - it is a problem now. A very strong force is needed to bring the soul which is hovering around the body back to the body. But it can be revived, and a person like Jesus can help it to revive.

 

In India, we have many such events....

 

You may have heard the story about Shankara's great debate with Mandan Mishra, the great Indian scholar of dualism.

 

He came to debate with him, because that was the traditional way in India. It was not a fight but a very friendly discussion, and if one could convince the other, then the other would become his disciple. With this as the condition, the debate continued. Shankara would go from one village to another all over India in order to discuss the issue with Mandan Mishra. But there was a problem:

 

whom could they make the judge?

 

They were both pillars, one of dualism and the other of nondualism. Who would preside over the debate? No one was worthy of presiding. And who would be able to understand what they were saying? Who would know which one had been defeated and which one had won?

 

The only person possible was Mandan Mishra's wife, and it was rare to allow a woman to preside over such a debate. But there was no other alternative, so Mandan Mishra's wife was made the judge.

 

Finally, Mandan Mishra was defeated. But his wife declared that even though he was defeated, he was only half defeated because she was his other half. "So now, Shankara," she said, "you will have to debate with me!" It was a trick! Now Shankara was in great difficulty.

 

It was declared that Mandan Mishra was defeated but only by half because in India we say that a husband is only half a person, his wife is the other half, and it is the two halves which make one whole. So Mandan Mishra was only half defeated; half still remained. "Now Mandan Mishra will preside and I will debate with you," said the wife. And she was really a rare woman - she began to discuss sex!

 

Shankara was at a disadvantage. He was a celibate, so now he felt that he was going to be defeated.

 

He knew nothing about sex; the whole phenomenon was unknown to him. It was a trick and now he was caught, so he said, "First give me six months' leave so that I can learn about sex. Only then can I come and discuss it with you. Otherwise I am already defeated." And the six months' leave was granted.

 

Then there was another problem - the story is beautiful - Shankara had taken a vow of celibacy for the whole of his life and so he could not use his body for any experiments in sex. Therefore he had to leave his body and enter another body, leaving his own body with his disciples to be continuously guarded and preserved, because if anything happened to it, he would not be able to enter it again. For six months a group of twelve disciples kept a constant vigil. They remained with the body continuously.

 

A king had just died, so when Shankara entered the king's body, it was already dead. Then the dead body revived and Shankara lived inside the body for six months, deep in sexual experiments.

 

The king's wife began to feel that something was different, but what could she do? The person was different but the body was the same. After six months, Shankara returned to his own body, the discussion took place, and Bharati, Mandan Mishra's wife, was defeated.

 

This is one possibility: Jesus may have helped to revive Lazarus who was not really dead but only appeared to be. Christianity is unaware of many things. Lazarus may have been in a deep coma, and the body may have begun to deteriorate. And a coma can continue for years. I have seen one woman who was in a coma for nine months. If someone had not preserved the body, she would have died immediately. Everything had to be done for her. She was just lying there as if she were dead. She could not do anything for herself. Had she been forgotten for seven days she would have begun to smell, stink.

 

So Jesus might have helped a person who was in a coma, or a person whose soul, for whatever reason, was out of his body. A dead man cannot become alive again. If he comes alive it only means that he was not really dead. As far as I am concerned, no miracle happens in the world. Something appears to be a miracle because we do not know the whole story, we do not know the whole reason for it.

 

 

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Question 5:

What about the other miracles reported in the bible? for example, the one where jesus fed thousands of people with two loaves of bread and five fish. can you explain it?

 

 

Many things are possible. Nothing is a miracle, nothing. Even materialization is not a miracle: it is a science. Materialization is possible. So are many other things. Something can be brought here by an unknown route. You are not aware of the route, but something suddenly appears here. That is not materialization. A Swiss watch can be brought here from a store - spirits can help to bring it here.

 

You will not see the spirits, only the watch. But that is not materialization. It is just a Swiss-made watch coming here via some route that is not known.

 

But materialization is also possible. Something coming out of nothing....

 

 

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Question 6:

How is it possible?

 

 

When you ask how it is possible, that how is difficult to answer. You have to pass through a long, long practice to be able to do it.

 

 

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Question 7:

Can you give an example of this?

 

 

The more capable your mind becomes of concentration, the closer you come to the point where materialization can happen. If you can be in absolute concentration, materialization can happen.

 

But with your mind the way it is, you cannot concentrate even for a single moment. If you can concentrate on something for a single moment, focusing your total mind for even one second, then you can will it to appear and it will appear.

 

But try it first in very easy ways. For example: you can take a glass, fill it with water, and then put some glycerin or oil on the surface of the water. Then float a very thin pin on the surface of oil or glycerin. Then concentrate on the pin. Concentrate! Without blinking, focus both your eyes on the pin for two minutes. After two minutes of concentration, begin to order the pin to go toward the right.

 

Within seven days of practicing it, you will be able to move the pin.

 

Once a pin can follow orders from your mind, you have achieved something that is needed for materialization. It is a long process, but now at least you can feel that mind does have power over matter. Once this power is felt, once you are totally able to concentrate, materialization becomes possible. Then only willing is needed, nothing else. If the mind is totally concentrated on making a rose appear, then a rose will appear.

 

Because of this, Indians have always said that the whole world is just a dream in the mind of the divine. God dreams something, and it appears. When he stops dreaming, it dissolves.

 

 

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Question 8:

Are you yourself able to make things materialize?

 

 

I am able to do it. And I am also able not to do it - because I feel the absurdity of it. And the second ability is better. Buddha could not be persuaded to do it, but Jesus had to do it. Again, the reason is the same: because the Jews could not believe anything unless it was something material. They could not be convinced without a miracle.

 

In India one can conceive of a Buddha who does not perform any miracles. But the Jews began to ask, "Can you do miracles? Only if you do miracles can we believe that what you are saying is meaningful." It was not Jesus who wanted to do the miracles, it was the Jews who compelled him.

 

Without miracles, his thinking, his preaching, would have seemed meaningless to them. We cannot even conceive of Buddha's doing miracles. It is appealing to a much lower state of mind. Why be so concerned with convincing anyone? Why be so concerned?

 

Sometimes a miracle would happen around Buddha, but it was not deliberately done. It would happen in a particular situation.

 

Still, there are layers of meaning to it. All the miracles recorded in The Bible - sometimes bread appears, sometimes disease disappears, or a dead man becomes alive again - are all very material, very ordinary things. They are concerned with the day-to-day problems of the ordinary man: bread, disease, death.

 

Buddha says that the whole of life is a dream. So what does it matter if someone becomes alive again? It is meaningless. It only means that a particular dream has begun to have some reality again.

 

There is one story recorded. Buddha was in a certain village where a child had died. The mother was so obsessed with the child that she was weeping and crying and trying to escape in order to commit suicide. So someone said, "Come to see Buddha. He can do anything. He is an enlightened man; anything is possible. Come! He is the compassionate one. If he begins to feel compassionate toward you, the child may revive."

 

So she came to Buddha with the dead child in her arms and laid the child at Buddha's feet. Imagine what would have happened to Jesus in a similar situation in a Jewish country. If the child had not been brought back to life, Jesus would have been finished completely because this would have proven that he was not the man he claimed to be.

 

But when the child was brought to Buddha, what did he say? He said to the mother, "I will make your child alive again, but first you will have to do one thing. Go to every house in the city and find out if there is any house where no one has ever died. If there is any house in the village where no one has ever died, then in the evening I will revive your child."

 

The woman went and asked everyone. In every house, in every family, someone had died. By the time she returned in the evening she had become aware that death is a reality, death is a part of life.

 

Buddha asked her, "What do you say now? Is there any house, any family, any person who has not suffered due to someone's death?"

 

The woman said, "I have not returned now so that my child can be revived. I have come to be initiated. Death is a reality. The child has gone, I will go, everyone will have to go. Initiate me into that life which never ends."

 

This is a greater miracle! But we cannot conceive of it. If the child had been brought back to life, it would have been a miracle. But this is a greater miracle, with deeper compassion. With a particular race it is possible; otherwise, it is not possible. The woman became a sannyasin: the death of the child was not used to satisfy the lust for life, it was used for renunciation.

 

If Buddha's disciples were hungry, he would not perform a miracle and provide them with bread. On the contrary, he would say, "Witness your hunger. Witness the hunger so that you can transcend it, so that you can move away from it. The hunger is not you; it is somewhere on the periphery.

 

Remember that. Use it." Jesus had to supply bread and Buddha had to convince his followers to fast. To give someone bread is not a miracle really, but to make someone ready to fast is a miracle.

 

It depends on how we define things. I am not concerned with miracles because it is all nonsense.

 

This whole life that we are living is absurd, so even if you can create something in it, it is meaningless.

 

The only miracle that I am interested in is pushing you beyond. Even a glimpse of the beyond will be a miracle.

 

As I see it, if Jesus had prevented himself from doing these things, he would have served humanity better - by doing them, he attracted fools. The masses became interested in Jesus only because of his so-called miracles. He tried to help them through his miracles but it was not possible; on the contrary, he himself got into trouble.

 

I do not see that Christ was able to help anyone in this way.

 

If I were to materialize something, it would be bound to happen that fools would gather round me more and more. Soon I would be amongst fools, because only they are interested in such things.

 

If you go to Sai Baba you will see that he is doing certain things. But then only fools are attracted.

 

If a ring appears in my hand, what does it matter? How is it related to any spiritual phenomenon?

 

Even if this whole house disappears and then reappears again, what does it matter? So what? That is why I am not concerned with miracles. And those who are only attract fools.

 

 

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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.

 

 

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Question 10:

If jesus was still in a rebellious and active stage at the time of the crucifixion, does that mean that he had not achieved the total spiritual growth and inner silence of buddha?

 

 

At the time of the crucifixion he had just entered the moon center. But only on that very day! That has to be understood.

 

The Jesus of The Bible is not like Buddha, Mahavira, or Lao Tzu. You cannot conceive of Buddha's going into a temple and beating moneylenders. But Jesus did it.

 

There were many different activities connected with the great temple of Jerusalem. There was a great moneylending business which exploited the whole country. People would come for an annual gathering and for other gatherings during the year, and obtain money at the temple at a high rate of interest. Then it would be impossible to repay and they would lose everything.

 

The temple was becoming richer and richer: it was religious imperialism. The whole country was poor and suffering, but so much money would be automatically coming into the temple. Then Jesus entered one day with a whip in his hand. He overturned the moneylenders' boards and began to beat the moneylenders. He created chaos in the temple.

 

You cannot conceive of Buddha doing this. Impossible! Jesus was the first communist: he was fiery, rebellious. That is why Christianity could give birth to communism. Hinduism could not give birth to it, no other religion could give birth to it; it is impossible. Only Christianity could do it, because with Jesus it has a relevance. The very language he used was totally different. He got so angry at some things that we cannot even believe it. He cursed a fig tree which was not yielding any fruit because he and his disciples were hungry. He destroyed it!

 

He threatened in a type of language that Buddha could not even utter. For example, he said that those who would not believe in him and the kingdom of God would be thrown into the fires of hell, the eternal fires of hell, and they would not be able to come back. Only the Christian hell is eternal.

 

Every other hell is just a temporary punishment: you go there, you suffer, you come back. But Jesus' hell is eternal.

 

This looks unjust, absolutely unjust. Whatsoever the sin, eternal punishment cannot be justified.

 

It cannot be! And what are the sins? Bertrand Russell has written a book, WHY I AM NOT A CHRISTIAN, and one of the reasons he gives is that Jesus seems absurd. Russell says, "If I confess all the sins that I have committed, and all those sins which I have just thought about but never committed, you cannot give me more than five years' imprisonment. But eternal hell?"

 

Jesus speaks the language of a revolutionary when he talks about eternal, nonending punishment - revolutionaries always look to the opposite end, to the extreme. You cannot conceive of Buddha's saying it or Mahavira's saying it, but Jesus says that a camel can pass through the eye of a needle sooner than a rich man can enter the kingdom of God. He cannot pass! This is the seed of communism, the basic seed. Jesus was a revolutionary. He was not only concerned with spirituality but with economics, politics - everything. Had he been only a spiritual man he would not have been crucified, but because he became a danger to the whole social structure, to the status quo, he was crucified.

 

He was not a revolutionary like Lenin or Mao but still, Mao and Lenin and Marx are inconceivable without there having been a Jesus in history. They belong to the same path as Jesus: the early Jesus, the fiery man - rebellious, ready to destroy everything - the Jesus who was crucified.

 

But Jesus was not simply revolutionary, he was also a spiritual man. He was, somehow, a mixture of Mahavira and Mao. The Mao was crucified and only the Mahavira remained in the end. The day Jesus was crucified was not only the day of his crucifixion, it was the day of his inner transformation also.

 

When Jesus remained silent after Pilate asked him, "What is truth?" he was behaving like a Zen master. If you look at the previous life of Jesus, if you look at his whole previous life, this silence was not like Jesus at all. What happened? Why did he not speak? Why was he at a loss? He was one of the greatest orators the world has ever produced; we may even say, without hesitation, the greatest.

 

His words were so penetrating. He was a man of words, not a man of silence. Why did he suddenly remain silent?

 

He was moving toward the cross. Pilate asked him, "What is truth?" Jesus had spent his whole life talking about truth; he was defining only that, that is why Pilate asked him. But he remained silent.

 

What happened in Jesus' inner world has never been reported because it is difficult to report.

 

Christianity has allowed it to remain submerged because what happened in the inner world of Jesus can only be interpreted in India, nowhere else. Only India knows about the inner changes, the inner transformation that happens.

 

What happened was this: Jesus is suddenly on the verge of crucifixion. He is about to be crucified and now his whole revolution is meaningless. Everything that he has been saying is futile, everything that he has been living for is coming to an end. Everything is finished. And because death is so near, he must now move within. No time can be lost, not a single moment can be lost. He must come to the end of his journey now, and before he is crucified he must complete the inner journey.

 

All along he had been on an inner journey. But because he was also entangled with outer problems he could not move to that cool point, the moon point; he remained fiery, hot. But it may be that he did this consciously. Jesus was a disciple of John the Baptist who was a great revolutionary and spiritual leader. John the Baptist had waited for Jesus for many years. Then, on the day he initiated Jesus in the River Jordan, he said to Jesus, "Now take over my work and I will disappear. It is enough." And from that day on, he was rarely seen again; he disappeared. In the words of the inner language, he disappeared from the sun point and moved to the moon point; he became silent. He had done his work and had now given the work to someone who would complete it.

 

On the day of the crucifixion Jesus must have become aware that now his work was finished: "There is no longer any possibility of doing anything more now. I must move within. The opportunity must not be lost." That is why, when Pilate asked him what truth is, he remained silent. Because of this, the miracle happened which has remained an enigma for Christianity. Because of this.

 

As he was moving to his cooler side, to the moon center, he was crucified. When someone comes to the moon center for the first time, his breathing stops because breathing, too, is an activity of the sun point. Now everything becomes silent; everything is as if dead. They thought he was dead, but he was not. He had simply come to the moon center where breathing stops: no outgoing breath, no ingoing breath - the gap.

 

When one remains in the gap, there is such a deep balance that it is a virtual death. But it is not death. The crucifiers, the murderers of Jesus, thought that he was dead so they allowed his disciples to bring the body down. But he was not dead, and when the cave was opened after three days he was not there. The "dead" body had disappeared. After three days, Jesus was seen again by four or five people. But no one would believe them when they went to the villages to say that Jesus was resurrected. No one would believe it.

 

When he escaped from Jerusalem, Jesus went to Kashmir, where he remained. But then his life was not the life of Jesus but the life of Christ. Jesus was the sun point and Christ the moon point. From then on, he remained totally silent. That is why there is no record of him. He would not talk, he would not deliver any message, he would not preach. He remained in Kashmir, not as a revolutionary but as a master, living in his own silence. A few people traveled to be with him. Those who became aware of his presence in Kashmir, without having had any outward information about it, would travel to him. And really, there were not so few - maybe only a few in comparison to the world, but there were many.

 

Christianity is incomplete because it knows only the early, revolutionary Jesus. And because of that, Christianity could give birth to communism. But Jesus himself died as a fully enlightened man - a full moon.

 

-Osho, "The Great Challenge, #9, Q3 ~ Q10“