I have heard that one day the bishop of New York phoned the pope, a long distance call, and he was really in a very shaky condition. He said to the pope, “A hippie-like man has entered the church and when I asked him, ‘Who are you?’ he said, ‘Can’t you recognize me? I am your Lord Jesus Christ, exactly.’ What am I supposed to do in such a situation?”

The pope said, “You idiot! Just call the police. If he is just a hippie, there is no problem. If he is really Lord Jesus Christ then let him be imprisoned before he creates any disturbance – and get moving. If he is the lord, just get busy and phone the police – and be quick to get him imprisoned.”

The same trouble will be there. Jesus has promised in the Bible, “I will be coming,” but I can tell you authoritatively that he is not going to come – one experience was enough. Who wants to be crucified again? And that time at least there was a consolation: that these were Jews, orthodox, traditional; they could not understand the revolution that he had brought.

This time, even that consolation will not be there. It will be the Christians, his own people, who will crucify him.

Last time, Jesus had prayed to God, “Forgive these people because they don’t know what they are doing.” What is he going to do this time? He will have to pray, “Forgive these people – they know perfectly well what they are doing.” But they will do exactly the same thing.

A cult is a business, a religious kind of business. It has a religious jargon; it has no experience. Yes, once somewhere in the past there may have been a flower, but it is gone. Centuries have passed, and since then the priest goes on pretending that he is the representative of that fragrance. Nobody can represent fragrance: it comes with the flower and goes with the flower. But the priest can create a plastic flower, can even put French perfume on it… And that’s what he has been doing in all the religions.

Religion is rebellious, is bound to be so, because religion starts saying things which the tradition will oppose, because only one of these two can exist: either the mass, unintelligent crowd – mind which makes the tradition, or a man like Jesus or Buddha or Mahavira.

They are alone. And what they are saying can be understood only by the chosen few. What they bring to the world is something so otherworldly, that unless you can have a heart to heart contact with them, there is no way of understanding them – you will misunderstand.

Jesus is misunderstood. Socrates is misunderstood. Al-Hillaj Mansoor is misunderstood. Whenever you find a religious man, it will be simply ascertained that all around him there will be misunderstanding. But once he dies, things settle down. Once he dies the priesthood makes a new business.

Now, Jews have been suffering almost a heart attack for nearly two thousand years, for the simple reason that they missed the business. Christianity is now the biggest business in the world, and they missed. And Jews are not the people to miss when there is a business; they have the eye to see it.