Osho on Jesus Miracles – The only miracle that I am interested in is pushing you beyond

Question – Are you yourself able to make things Materialize?
Osho – 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.

Source – from Osho Book “The Great Challenge”