Osho,
Are you a messiah?

No, absolutely no. The whole idea is fundamentally wrong. It is not only that I am not a messiah, there has never been anyone who was and there will never be anybody who will be. You will have to go deep into the concept of it. The idea of a messiah is a secondary idea. First you have to believe in God as a person, only then you can start thinking of God sending special messengers, messiahs.

To me there is no personal God at all who could send a messiah.

I am reminded of a very beautiful incident about one of the most famous Mohammedans, Caliph Omar. The caliph in Mohammedanism is parallel to the pope in Christianity; he is both the religious head and the temporal head. Omar was a very nice and good man. One day his soldiers brought a man to his court who was claiming to be God’s latest messenger – the Mohammedan word for it is paigambara.

Mohammedans believe Mohammed was the last paigambara, the last word God has sent – now there is no need of any other paigambara. This is a vicious logic, a very strange thing millions of people go on believing without even raising a simple question. The book, the Koran, which Mohammed says is God’s message to him, descended upon him; he is not its writer, just a receiver. And the Koran says that Mohammed is the last paigambara and there will be no more need for any other paigambara. So Mohammedans are very much against anybody saying that he’s a paigambara.

Omar told his soldiers to put the man in jail: “Give him seven days to think and after seven days I will come to the jail. If he still insists on being the paigambara then he will be beheaded immediately. If he takes his words back he will be released.”

After seven days of immense torturing – the man was bound to a pole and beaten continually day and night; very few moments were given to sleep and very little food was given to eat – in just seven days Omar could not recognize that he was the same man, they had tortured him and beaten him so much. And he was chained to a pillar, naked, with blood all over his body because he had been whipped so hard.

Omar asked, “I hope you have come back to your senses.”

The man laughed and said, “What are you talking about? This has proved that I am the latest paigambara, the latest messenger – because when I was leaving God, he said to me, ‘You will be tortured, beaten,’ and it has come true.”