From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 18. ONE GOD, ONE MESSENGER, ONE BOOK – ONE BIG LIE
So this is a strange situation – Christians calling us a cult! They are a cult. Hindus are calling us a
cult; they are a cult because their religious people died two thousand, three thousand, five thousand
years ago. And nobody actually knows whether there has been any religious person in the beginning
at all or whether it was a fiction from the very beginning.
George Gurdjieff, one of the most penetrating intellects of this century, used to say, ”There has never
been a Jesus Christ. It was only a drama that used to be played; and slowly, slowly, the priests
became aware that this drama can be utilized:’Make it history.’” One thing is certain, that except for
the Christian New Testament, there is no reference to jesus Christ anywhere, in any scripture.
If a man of the caliber of Jesus was there, it is impossible that somewhere in the Jewish scriptures
his name would not have been entered – and particularly when he was crucified. Crucifixion makes
his name the most historical name. In fact, now we know history only according to Jesus: before
Christ, after Christ... that’s how we know history. That man becomes the central point of our whole
history. Such an important person is not even mentioned anywhere: neither in Jewish scriptures –
nor in Roman scriptures, because Judea was under the Roman Empire.
Certainly in the Roman files Jesus must have been referred to. If you crucify a man, at least he
deserves a place somewhere in your bureaucratic files. But nowhere, except those four gospels
which are written by his four disciples... he is simply non-existent. If you just lose those four disciples’
gospels, Jesus becomes only gossip. Gurdjieff was very insistent that he was just gossip, and that
cunning people had used the drama and made history out of it – and a great business of course!
It is bound to be so, that while I am here nobody is going to accept you as a religion.
And you are a religion only while I am here.
The moment I am gone, the best way is to disperse just like a fragrance.
The worst way is to become a cult.
Then these people – Christians and Jews and Hindus and Mohammedans – will accept you also as
a religion. They will accept you as a religion only when you have become a cult. Do you see the
strange logic of the world? When you have lost contact with a living experience, then of course you
are as dead as they are, and of course dead people don’t argue. And one dead person pays respect
to another dead person – it is just courtesy, a simple mannerism.
But how can the dead people be respectful to a living person? They are dead; that hurts. They don’t
know; that hurts. They have only beliefs – and who, knows whether those beliefs are true or not.
There are three hundred religions on the earth, three hundred different dogmas, creeds. Do you
think all three hundred dogmas and creeds can be true?
Truth can only be one.
You may verbalize it differently, but you cannot make two creeds out of it. Your languages may be
different. Your concepts about it may be different, but anybody can see that it is about the same
truth.
From Ignorance to Innocence 252 Osho