I will speak on Christ, but not on Christianity. Christianity has nothing to do with Christ. In fact Christianity is anti-Christ, just as Buddhism is anti-Buddha and Jainism anti-Mahavira. Christ has something in him which cannot be organized: the very nature of it is rebellion and a rebellion cannot be organized. The moment you organize it, you kill it. Then the dead corpse remains. You can worship it, but you cannot be transformed by it. You can carry the load for centuries and centuries, but it will only burden you, it will not liberate you. That’s why from the beginning, let it be absolutely clear: I am all for Christ, but not even a small part of me is for Christianity. If you want Christ, you have to go beyond Christianity. But if you cling too much to Christianity, you will not be able to understand Christ. Christ is beyond all churches.

Christ is the very principle of religion. In Christ all the aspirations of humanity are fulfilled. He is a rare synthesis. Ordinarily a human being lives in agony, anguish, anxiety, pain, and misery. If you look at Krishna, he has moved to the other polarity: he lives in ecstasy. There is no agony left, the anguish has disappeared. You can love him, you can dance with him for a while, but the bridge will be missing. You are in agony, he is in ecstasy. Where is the bridge?

Buddha has gone even farther away. He is neither in agony nor in ecstasy. He is absolutely quiet and calm. He is so far away that you can look at him, but you cannot believe that he is. It looks like a myth, maybe a wish-fulfillment of humanity. How can such a man walk on this earth so transcendental of all agony and ecstasy? He goes so far away.

Jesus is the culmination of all aspiration. He is in agony as you are, as every human being is born: in agony on the cross. He is in the ecstasy that sometimes a Krishna achieves: he celebrates, he is a song, a dance. And he is also transcendence. There are moments, when you come closer and closer to him, when you will see that his innermost being is neither the cross nor his celebration, but transcendence. That’s the beauty of Christ: there exists a bridge.