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had entered into the inner world. Particularly for the West, he was the first explorer who has really reached the innermost core -- and not only reached but brought news back from there. That's what the gospel is. Moses had also reached, but he must not have been a great poet to be able to express it, he must have lacked expression. And it happens to pioneers, those who have entered into some experience for the first time: it is so shocking, shattering.
It is said when Moses asked God, "Let me see your face," God said, "That will be too much for you. You can only see my back." Moses only saw God's back, because God said, 'No one can see my face and yet live. It will be too much for you, unbearable. Sometimes ecstasy can kill you.'
I love this story. It is not history: you don't encounter God in some forest or on some mountain like that, and you don't talk to him. But it is tremendously significant that God says, "You can only see my back." Moses saw God's back; Jesus saw God's face, it was a face-to-face encounter. Moses brought back something very vague, that is the meaning of seeing only the back. It is very difficult to recognize a person just by seeing his back. It remains guesswork: maybe he is the same person or he is somebody else, who knows? -- unless you face him, unless you see him face-to-face, eye-to-eye.
Moses brought a message, but it was vague, it was not clear-cut. Jesus brings the message to its uttermost clarity. He is the first man to see God face-to-face, at least in the West.
In the East there have been many people, hence in India there is not a single person who divides history. India has lived in undivided time, because for so many thousands of years so many people have seen God that we don't remember exactly who was the first. It is almost impossible to decide.
Five hundred years before Jesus, Mahavira entered into that realm, but he said, "I am the twenty-fourth in that chain which I represent." And the chain is very long -- it covers almost ten thousand years -- so the first man in the chain is already twelve thousand years past. And he was not the first either, because in the Vedas that man whom Mahavira
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