Jesus was a man of love, of immense love. He loved this earth, he loved the smell of this earth. He loved the trees, he loved the people. He loved the creatures because that is the only way to love the creator. If you cannot praise the painting, how can you praise the painter? If you cannot praise the poetry, how can you praise the poet? Jesus is very affirmative, yea-saying.

And he knows one very significant fact which he brings into his sayings again and again: that God is an abstraction; you cannot stand face to face with God. ‘God’ is as much an abstraction as ‘humanity’ is. Whenever you come across, you come across human beings, never across humanity. You meet THIS human being, THAT human being, but never humanity. You always come across the concrete. You will never come across the abstract God, because he will not have any face. He will be facelessness. You will not be able to recognise him.

Then where to find him? Look into each eye that you come across, look into each being that you come across. This is God in concrete form: God materialised. Everybody here is an incarnation of God — the rocks and the trees and the people and all. Love these people, love these trees, these stars, and through that love you will start feeling the immensity of being. But you will have to go through the small door of a particular being. Jesus has been very much misunderstood. He was misunderstood by the Jews, and he was the climax of their intelligence for which they had waited for ages. And when he came he was rejected. And then he has been even more misunderstood by the Christians. A great yea-sayer has been converted into a no-sayer. Christians have depicted Jesus as very sad, with a long face, in great misery as if he is being tortured. This is false, this is not true about Jesus! It CANNOT be true about Jesus! Otherwise who else will laugh, and who else will love, and who else will celebrate?

Jesus is a celebration of being, and the highest celebration possible.

Remember it, then only will you be able to understand these sutras.

An immensely beautiful anecdote:

Jesus was on the cross and below St. Patrick was praying for his soul, as soon his Master would die.

Jesus called down to St. Patrick, ‘Patrick, come up here. There is something I must tell you.’

Patrick, not looking up, replied ‘Lord, to be sure oi cannot for oi am praying fer yer soul, that oi am.’

Jesus then calls — a little louder, with a hint of urgency.

‘Patrick, for Christ’s sake stop this nonsense and come up, it is very important what I must tell you.’

‘Lord, oi cannot. Have not oi told you oi’m prayin’ fer yer soul, bejabbers!’

Jesus again, almost shouting ‘Patrick, for the last time I say, come up here! It is of utmost urgency, you cannot afford to miss!’

Patrick reluctantly relents, and saying under his breath, ‘Goddammit! This man is a fool! Asking me to go up there when oi am busy praying for his soul!’ goes off to fetch a ladder. He puts up the ladder against the cross and with slow, deliberate reluctance climbs rung after rung till he reaches the top. ‘Well, Master, here oi am. Now will yer tell me what it is that you brought me all the way up here for?’

‘Look, Patrick’ Jesus says ‘over beyond those trees you can see our house.’

Jesus, dying on the Cross… and he says ‘Look beyond those trees. Can you see our house?’ He was immensely in love with this earth. That is the only way to be in love with God; there is no other way. If you deny existence, you are intrinsically denying God. If you say no to life, you have said no to God, because it is God’s life. And always remember God has no lips of his own; he kisses you through somebody else’s lips. He has no hands of his own; he embraces you through somebody else’s hands. He has no eyes of his own, because all eyes are his; he looks at you through somebody’s eyes. He sees you through somebody’s eyes and he is seen by your eyes, and he goes on seeing through your eyes too.

Quakers rightly say that God has nothing else but you; only you — that’s what God has. This insight has to penetrate deeply, only then will you be able to understand the sayings of Jesus; otherwise you will miss — as Christians have been missing down the ages. Let this become the very foundation stone: that life is God. And then things will become very very simple. then you will have the right perspective. Say ‘yes’, and suddenly you feel a kind of prayer arising in you.

Have you tried it? Sitting silently, doing nothing, start swaying in a kind of inner dance and start saying ‘Yes… yes…’ Go into it. Let it come from your very heart. Let it spread over your whole being. Let it throb in your heartbeat, let it pulsate in your blood. Let it electrify you, this ‘yes’, and you will be surprised: for the first time you have tasted what prayer is.

The English word ‘yes’ can become a great mantra. It is. The very sound of it is yea-saying, the very SOUND OF it creates an affirmation in the heart. Say no — try the polar opposite sometimes — sitting silently, say ‘no… no…’ Go into it. Let your whole being say no, and you will see the difference. When you say no you will be angry. When you go on saying no you will become enraged. When you go on saying no you will feel that you are cut from existence, separate, isolated, alienated — the bridge has disappeared. And particularly the modern mind is a no-saying mind. Descartes, the French philosopher, has said Cogito ergo sum: I think therefore I am The modern mind says: I say NO therefore I am. It is a no-saying mind, it goes on saying no. ‘No’ creates the ego. You cannot Create the ego without saying no. You can create the ego only by saying no more and more.

Ego separates, ego makes you irreligious, because ego takes you away from the whole, and you start thinking you are a whole unto yourself. You forget that you exist in an immense complexity, that you art part of a vast universe, that you are not an island — ‘No man is an island…’ We are all parts of an infinite continent. Yes-saying bridges you with the continent. Yes-saying bridges you with God. Say yes more and you will become more religious. Let ‘yes’ be your church, your temple. And Jesus is a yes-sayer. Even on the cross, dying, he says ‘Look beyond those trees. Can you see our house?’ and this is his last moment. But his love for existence, for life is still there, radiantly there. In the last moment he prays to God ‘Father, forgive these people because they don’t know what they are doing.’

They knew EXACTLY what they were doing. They knew they were killing. But that is not the point. When Jesus says ‘They don’t know what they are doing’, he is saying ‘They are so asleep, so confined in their egos, they have lost their eyes, Father. They don’t have any consciousness. I can see great darkness in their heart. Forgive them, they are not responsible.’ This is the voice of love. He is not condemning them. Ordinarily he would have prayed ‘Destroy all these people. They are destroying your only begotten son. Kill them immediately, right now! Come like a thunderbolt! Shower like fire, burn them here and now! Show them what they are doing to your son!’ That may have been just, but that was not right for Jesus.

Jesus does not exist at the level of justice, he exists at the level of compassion. Compassion forgives, justice punishes. And when you punish you create in the other’s mind great anger. He will watch for his own time to take revenge, and with a vengeance. Only love creates reconciliation, because love does not create any chain. Anger, fear, violence, aggression, punishment — all create ugly chains. And one thing leads still into deeper darkness, into deeper gloom.  Jesus’ whole message is ‘Yes’. He says yes to his own death, accepts it, welcomes it, because this is the will of his God — ‘Then let it be so.’ He relaxes into it. You are not relaxed even in life, and he relaxes into death too. That was the last test, and he passed through it victoriously.

Death is the only criterion, the only touchstone, where a man is really known — what he is, of what mettle he is made. It is very easy to TALK about love, it is difficult to love — because love is a cross. It is very easy to talk about compassion, but to be committed to compassion one has to lose all.

Source:

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

Discourse Series:

I Say Unto You, Vol 1

Chapter #3
Chapter title: First be Reconciled
23 October 1977 am in Buddha Hall

References:

Osho has spoken on ‘Krishna, Jesus, Buddha, Shiva, Lao Tsu and many other enlightened Masters’ in many of His discourses. More on them can be referred to in the following books/discourse titles:

1. Vigyan Bhairav Tantra
2. The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha
3. Tao: The Three Treasures
4. Zarathustra: The Laughing Prophet
5. The Mustard Seed: My Most Loved Gospel on Jesus
6. The Path of Love
7. Bodhidharma: The Greatest Zen Master
8. When the Shoe Fits
9. Hyakujo: The Everest of Zen, with Basho’s Haikus
10. Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega
11. Sermons in Stones
12. The Book of Wisdom
13. The Divine Melody