Osho on Jewish Prophet Moses

Moses is considered one of the most significant prophets in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and other Abrahamic religions. As the tale goes in the Book of Exodus, he fled to Midian from Egypt and encountered God on Mount Sinai, experiencing a fascinating interaction. He returned back to Egypt and with the help of his brother Aaron, he freed the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. Moses was the lawgiver and leader of the Israelites whom he then led across the Red Sea to Mount Sinai where he received the Ten Commandments from Yahweh (God).

Moses’ tale and series of events have comprehensive uncertainty as to their timeline and perspectives. He is believed to have existed sometime during the 13th century BCE and is also credited with authoring the first five books of the Bible, known as Torah or Pentateuch. Moses is a celebrated figure in various faiths and his teachings and stories are prevalent in today’s era as well.

Osho talks about Moses, “The Jews have the beautiful story about Moses going to the mountain, Sinai, and there Moses saw a green bush afire. He was puzzled, he could not believe — because the bush was not burning and the fire was there. And then God spoke to him: “Don’t be afraid, Moses. I am your God, your Lord. This fire is MY fire.” And, of course, how can God’s fire burn a bush? The bush is also God’s fire. Moses saw one bush afire on the mountain, and I would like to tell you: every bush is afire. There is no need to go to Sinai, just look in this garden — every bush is afire with God because all greenery is His fire, all life is His fire, each breath is His fire.

Patience… then suddenly you start feeling He is present. Impatient, and you are rushing madly, and in your mad rush you cannot see. It is almost as if you carry a beautiful camera, and running around you try to take some pictures, and you go on rushing and running. What is going to happen? — you won’t have any pictures, you may have only a few destroyed plates. The whole film will be just a chaos. When you are taking a picture you have to hold the camera absolutely still; it should not be shaky. Then a clearcut picture comes out of it.

When you are not rushing anywhere and your inner being is just still, herenow, God reflects. Then all chaos disappears, all questions disappear. Buddha says: SHANTI, patience, is the third PARMITA.”

Osho Says……

YESTERDAY YOU MENTIONED THAT LAW IS ANTI-LOVE, BUT THAT WITHOUT IT LOVE CANNOT EXIST AND GROW. PLEASE EXPLAIN IN WHICH WAY LAW IS NEEDED FOR LOVE TO GROW.

For every growth the opposite is needed because the opposite creates the tension. Without the opposite, things relax into death. This is one of the most fundamental things in life. Love cannot exist without the law; the law is the opposite. The law is the non-spontaneous, the mechanical; love is the spontaneous, the non-mechanical. Love is uncaused; law is within cause and effect. Love is individual; law is social. Can you exist without the society?

Without the society you will not be born. You need a mother, a father, you need a family to grow in, you need a society to thrive in. Without a society you cannot exist. But remember, if you just become a part of society, you have already moved into non-existence again. Without the society you cannot exist, and you cannot exist just as a member of the society either. Jesus says, “Man cannot live by bread alone.” Do you think it means you can live without bread? Man cannot live by bread alone — true, absolutely true — but can man live without bread? No, that too is not possible. Man needs bread. It is necessary, but not enough. It simply gives you a base, but it doesn’t give you a jump, a flight. It is a jumping board. Don’t get stuck at that.

Jesus says: “The Sabbath is created for man, not man for the Sabbath.”

The law is needed because the society is needed. The law is the bread. But if there is only law — if you exist as a member of the society, a law-abiding member of the society, and nothing else exists in you which is beyond law — then you exist in vain; then you exist “just by bread alone”. Then you eat well, you sleep well, and nothing else happens. It is good to eat well, but not enough — something of the unknown is needed. Something from the invisible is needed to penetrate you; the romance of the unknown is needed. Without it you will be a syllogism of logic but you will not be a poetry. Without it you may be quite right, but just ‘quite right’ — no romance, no poetry, no dance. Love is the mysterious, the law is the non-mysterious. The law helps you to be in the world; love gives you the reason to be. The law gives you the cause to be, and love gives you the reason to be. The law gives you the base; love becomes the home, the house.

And remember one thing: that the base can exist without the house, but the house cannot exist without the base. The lower can exist without the higher, the higher cannot exist without the lower. A man can exist with just bread — he will not have anything worth having, he will not have any reason to exist — but he can exist; he can just vegetate. But even a great lover cannot exist without bread: even Jesus or Buddha cannot exist without bread. They have found the celestial home of love, but they cannot exist without bread. The lower is, in a way, independent of the higher. The higher is dependent, in a way, on the lower. But this is so. And it seems simple, it is easy. You make a temple…. What we call in India the kalash, the golden cap of the temple, cannot exist without the whole temple there. If you remove the temple, the kalash — the golden cap — will fall down. It cannot exist without the temple. Of course, the temple can exist without the cap; there is no problem about it.

Just think: a man is hungry — can he dance? Dance is impossible. The man is starving, he cannot even think. He cannot imagine what dance means. He may have known it in the past, but he will not even be able to believe that he has known it. It seems impossible, it seems almost nonexistential. It cannot exist in a starved body — how can you think of a dance descending? But think of another man who is well fed and without any dance. There is no trouble — you can vegetate. The higher is not a must, it is a freedom. If you want, you grow in it; if you don’t want, there is nobody forcing you to grow in it. The lower is a need, it is not your choice. It has to be fulfilled.

Law is anti-love. If you are too lawful, you will not be able to love anybody — because the very quality of love is spontaneity. It comes from the blue, it can disappear in the blue. It has no reason, no cause here. It happens like a miracle, it is magical. Why it happens, how it happens, nobody knows. It cannot be manipulated: it is anti-law, it is anti-gravitation, it is anti-science, it is anti-logic. It is against all logic and against all law. Love cannot be proved in any lab, and love cannot be proved by any logic. If you try to prove it by logic, you will come to know that there is nothing like love, love is impossible. It cannot exist — but it exists!

Even great scientists fall in love. They cannot prove it in their labs, they cannot argue for it, but they also fall in love. Even an Einstein falls in love. Love makes everybody humble. Even Einstein — so proud of his logic, argument, science — suddenly falls in love one day: an ordinary woman — Frau Einstein. Suddenly his whole science disappeared and he started believing in the impossible. Even in his later life he used to shrug his shoulders: “It happens, but if you ask me as a scientist I cannot vouch for it. But it happens — if you ask me as a man.”

In his last days he said, “If love exists, then God must also exist. If one impossible is possible, then why not the other?” He died as a deeply humble and religious man.

Somebody asked him, “If you are born again, what would you like to be?”

He said, “Not a scientist again. I would rather be a plumber.”

What is he saying? He is saying that he has seen the falsity of all logic and he has seen the futility of all scientific argument. What he is saying that he has seen through and through that cause and effect maybe the base, but they are not the pinnacles. The real temple the real mystery of life, moves through love, prayer, happiness — all impossibles. If you think of them you cannot believe, but if you allow them to happen then a great trust and a great grace arises in you.

Moses is the law. The society cannot exist without Moses, he is a must. The society cannot afford to lose him; the society would be a chaos without a Moses. He is absolutely needed, he is the very foundation. BUT JESUS IS LOVE. Moses is needed, is necessary, but not enough. If Moses alone rules the world, the world will be not worth living. Jesus, a breeze from the unknown -nobody knows from where it comes, nobody knows where it goes. A penetration of eternity into time -the entry of the mysterious into the known. Jesus cannot come without Moses, remember. Moses will be needed. He is the bread, Jesus is the wine. You can live by bread, the bread has nothing of romance in it. The wine -that is the romance, the poetry, the dance, the celebration, the joy, the ecstasy. Yes, Moses can exist without Jesus, Jesus cannot exist without Moses. That’s why Jesus says again and again, “I have come to fulfil, not to destroy.”

Moses was just a foundation. Jesus raises the temple of God in it.

Moses is the absolutely right citizen, the good man. Jesus is not so good. Sometimes one suspects whether he is good or bad; he confuses. He moves with drunkards, he stays with a prostitute. No, never… you cannot conceive of Moses doing that. Moses is an absolutely right man, but that’s where he misses something: the beauty, the freedom. He always moves on the right track, he is a railway line. Jesus is like a river. He changes -sometimes left, sometimes right, sometimes he changes the path completely.

Moses is absolutely believable; Jesus not so. Sometimes one suspects whether this man is right or wrong. That was the problem for the Jews. They had lived on the bread of Moses, they had followed Moses and his Ten Commandments, and now this man comes and says, “I am the fulfillment of all that has preceded me,” and, “I have come not to destroy, but to fulfill.” But what type of fulfillment is this? He does not look like Moses at all. He has no condemnation of the bad. He says, “Judge ye not!” Moses is a great judge, and Jesus says, “Judge ye not, so that ye may not be judged.” Moses says, “Don’t do evil,” and Jesus says, “Resist not the evil” — very confusing. He must have created great chaos. Wherever he moved he must have brought confusion and conflict to people’s minds, he must have created anxiety. That’s why they took revenge and killed him; it is absolutely logical.

Buddha was not killed in India, Mahavira was not killed — sometimes a few stones were thrown or things like that, but they were not killed, crucified. They never confused the mind so much as Jesus. They had something of the Moses in them, and Jesus has nothing of the Moses in him. Mahavira has much of the Moses in him. He has something of the law and something of love, both.

Jesus is pure love. That’s why he was crucified. He had to be crucified — such pure love cannot be tolerated, such pure grace is impossible to bear; the very presence is intolerable because it hurts. The very presence of Jesus throws you in confusion, and the only way to protect yourself and defend yourself is to kill this man, destroy this man. By destroying Jesus the people tried to live with Moses and law alone, and not be bothered by love. The day Jesus was crucified, it was nothing but an indication that the ordinary mind would like to live without love. Love was crucified, not Jesus. He is just symbolic.

There are many complications. Jews have always been puzzled about why this man Jesus influenced the whole world so much and he could not influence the Jews at all. Jews are great scholars, their rabbis are great pundits, and they have been trying to prove that Jesus did not say a single new word, that all that he said is written in Jewish scriptures. Then why has this man become the very axis of humanity? What happened? — it seems unbelievable. They are right in a way: Jesus has not said a single word that cannot be found in the sayings of old rabbis. No, he has not said a single new word. But that is not where he is unique, he is unique in the way he has said it — not the word, but the way he has asserted it. In the Old Testament you come again and again across the expression: “The Lord hath said….” But that is not characteristic of Jesus. Whenever he says this, he says, “I say unto you…”  — not, “The Lord….” He is the Lord. The Old Testament says: “The Lord says this”; Jesus says, “I say unto you.” The old rabbis stammer, Jesus speaks; the old rabbis have a borrowed glory, Jesus has his own. The old rabbis speak FROM authority; Jesus with authority — and that is a great difference.

It is said that once the enemies of Jesus sent a man to catch hold of him and bring him to the temple. He was teaching near the temple and a crowd had gathered. The man went there to catch hold of him, to imprison him, but the crowd was big and he had to enter the crowd to reach the man — it took time. While he was penetrating the crowd, he had to hear what this man was saying. Then he stopped, he forgot that for which he had come. Then it became impossible to imprison this man. He came back.

The enemies asked, “Why have you come back? Why have you not caught hold of him?”

He said, “I was going to, but his words fell in my ear. And I tell you, no man has ever spoken like this man! The very quality, the authority, the power that he speaks with, overpowered me. I was hypnotized: it became impossible to catch hold of this man.”

Jesus is love. Love has authority of its own, it is not borrowed. The old rabbis and the Old Testament people are like the moon — the borrowed light. Jesus is the sun; he has his own light. Love has its own authority; law never has its own authority. The authority is from Moses, Manu, Marx; the authority is from the scripture, the tradition, the convention. The authority is always of the old, it is never fresh and new. Love is anti-law. But if you have love, you can be lawful also; there is no problem in it. But then you are more than the law; you have something of love within you.

You live in the society, you have to follow the rules. They are just like: ‘keep to the left’ or ‘keep to the right’ — nothing ultimate about them; just rules to keep the traffic in control, otherwise it will be almost impossible to move. Good as far as it goes, but don’t think of yourself that because you always keep to the left you have attained something. Of course it is good as far as it goes, but nothing much — what have you attained? The traffic will be convenient, that’s all — but what have you attained? All morality, all law, is good as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough. Love is needed. Love is a sort of madness: illogical, irrational.

Source:

This is an excerpt from the transcript of a public discourse by Osho in Buddha Hall, Shree Rajneesh Ashram, Pune. 

Discourse Series: Come Follow To You, Vol 1

Chapter #2

Chapter title: Gods in Exile

22 October 1975 am in Buddha Hall

References:

Osho has spoken on many Western Mystics like Jesus, Gurdjieff, Magdalen, Rumi, Socrates, Theresa, Zarathustra, St. Francis, Dionysius, Boehme, Eckhart, St. Augustine, Baal Shem and many more in His discourses. Some of these can be referred to in the following books/discourses:

1. Sermons in Stones
2. Come Come Yet Again Come
3. Socrates Poisoned Again After 25 Centuries
4. The New Dawn
5. The Sword and The Lotus
6. Beyond Psychology
7. The Empty Boat
8. I Celebrate Myself: God Is No Where, Life Is Now Here
9. Zarathustra: A God That Can Dance
10. The Perfect Master
11. Sufis: The People of the Path
12. The Diamond Sutra
13. The Ultimate Alchemy, Vol 1