Jesus is chained, put into a dark cell in the church. He starts thinking and brooding “There seems to be no difference at all. This is the same way the Jews had acted. But they could have been forgiven because they did not know me. But my people, Christians, they sing to me every day, they think of me every day, they wait for me every day, and I have come, and they can’t even recognize me. They think I am a pretender?”

Now he feels even sorrier than he had felt on the cross, because those were alien people. If they had killed him it was understandable, but are these people going to kill him again?

In the middle of the night he cannot sleep. In the middle of the night comes the priest with a candle, opens the door, locks it again, comes close to Jesus, falls at the feet of Jesus. And Jesus feels relieved, “So, nothing to be worried about. A little late, but he has recognized me.”

The priest says, “I know who you are, but I cannot recognize you in the marketplace. And mind you, you are not needed at all. We are doing perfectly well. And you are the old disturber. If you come you will destroy everything that we have done in eighteen hundred years. It has been a long struggle to establish Christianity – and you have always been against establishment. You are not establishment. We will pray to you, we will sing your name, we will praise you like anything, but please don’t come. And if you insist on being recognized in the marketplace, then be ready: tomorrow morning you will be crucified. We cannot tolerate such things.”

Now Jesus is even more puzzled. This man recognizes him; he says, “I know that you arc the true one, but I cannot recognize you.”

The old priest says, “Listen to me. I am old, older than you, I am more experienced. I know how people live, I know how people behave. Don’t try to be foolish again. Simply escape before the morning – and never come back again.”

This is a beautiful parable.

Yes, I know you are inoculated. That’s why it is so difficult to catch the measles. I am carrying here. It is so difficult to drop your resistance. You find a thousand and one rationalizations how not to surrender. Surrender does not mean anything else: it simply means a state of no resistance, a state of vulnerability, a state of opening. And let me repeat: God cannot be taught, it can only be caught. God is like measles.

You say, “When I was a child I was inoculated against the measles.” Everybody has been inoculated. The society takes every care to make you closed. That’s why the work of a master is so hard. To attain to God is not hard, but because of this inoculation…. First the inoculation has to be undone, and that is the really hard thing. The poison that has been put into you in the name of inoculation has to be driven out of your system. That’s why so many techniques are needed, meditations are needed, so that the poison oozes out of your system. The day your system is free of inoculation, suddenly you find the measles have started happening. And blessed are those who can get these measles.