Osho,
You have said that most of humanity is vegetating, not living. Please explain.
“Man is born to achieve life, but it all depends on him.
“He can miss it. He can go on breathing, he can go on eating, he can go on growing old, he can go on moving towards the grave – but this is not life. This is gradual death from the cradle to the grave, a seventy-year-long gradual death.
“And because millions of people around you are dying in this gradual, slow death, you also start imitating them. Children learn everything from those who are around them, and we are surrounded by the dead.”
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What happens to the child being surrounded by the dead?
“Every child is born a joy, a celebration, a dance, a song; but somewhere he loses it all. That’s why all the poets of all the languages go on remembering how beautiful it was to be a child.
“What was beautiful in being a child? I cannot say that, because I have been becoming more and more blissful; childhood was just the beginning. If an old man says that his childhood was paradise, that means his whole life has been a hell. He has not been growing up, he is going down. Just to grow old is not growing up.
“Growing up is a totally different phenomenon. It means the last moment on the earth for you will be the most precious moment. The departure from this life will be the climax of your joy. Childhood is only a beginning.
“But the religions start distorting the children from the beginning. They create guilt in them, they create unnatural ideals in them. They create their conscience in such a way that they cannot live happily ever. On every point they are at a crossroad, and they will choose the road that suits their conditioning.”
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What is the outcome of this conditioning?
“Man lives in a state of immaturity; he is childish. He goes on growing physiologically but not psychologically. What to say about his spiritual growth – even his psychological growth is retarded, very much retarded.
“Only in the First World War, for the first time in human history, we became aware that the average man’s mental age is not more than thirteen years, because for the first time in the army people were psychologically tested. It was a shock all the world over. People who think about humanity and its progress were really in a great shock: thirteen years is the only average psychological age?
“The person may be seventy years old or eighty years old and his age, psychological age, is only thirteen. What about his soul? Nothing can be said about his spiritual growth because only when the body and the mind grow together in synchronicity, when the chronological age and the psychological age go together simultaneously, only then is there a possibility of spiritual growth, never before it.”
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I have heard you say that only when we have lived life truly do we become really grown up?
“First we have to understand what I mean by `life.’
“It must not be simply growing old. It must be growing up. And these are two different things.
“Growing old, any animal is capable of. Growing up is the prerogative of human beings. Only a few claim the right.
“Growing up means moving every moment deeper into the principle of life; it means going farther away from death – not towards death. The deeper you go into life, the more you understand the immortality within you. You are going away from death; a moment comes when you can see that death is nothing but changing clothes, or changing houses, changing forms – nothing dies, nothing can die.
“Death is the greatest illusion there is.
“For growing up, just watch a tree. As the tree grows up, its roots are growing down, deeper. There is a balance: the higher the tree goes, the deeper the roots will go. You cannot have a tree one hundred and fifty feet high with small roots; they could not support such a huge tree.
“In life, growing up means growing deep within yourself – that’s where your roots are.”
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How can we grow deep within ourselves?
“To me, the first principle of life is meditation. Everything else comes second. And childhood is the best time. As you grow older, it means you are coming closer to death, and it becomes more and more difficult to go into meditation.
“Meditation means going into your immortality, going into your eternity, going into your godliness.
“And the child is the most qualified person because he is still unburdened by knowledge, unburdened by religion, unburdened by education, unburdened by all kinds of rubbish. He is innocent….
“A small child has no ambitions, he has no desires. He is so absorbed in the moment – a bird on the wing catches his eye so totally; just a butterfly, its beautiful colors, and he is enchanted; the rainbow in the sky… and he cannot conceive that there can be anything more significant, richer than this rainbow. And the night full of stars, stars beyond stars….
“Innocence is rich, it is full, it is pure.”
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Is there another principle than meditation?
“The second principle is the pilgrimage. Life must be a seeking – not a desire, but a search; not an ambition to become this, to become that, a president of a country or a prime minister of a country, but a search to find out ‚ ‘Who am I?’
“It is very strange that people who don’t know who they are, are trying to become somebody. They don’t even know who they are right now! They are unacquainted with their being – but they have a goal of becoming.
“Becoming is the disease of the soul.
“Being is you.
“And to discover your being is the beginning of life. Then each moment is a new discovery, each moment rings a new joy; a new mystery opens its doors, a new love starts growing in you, a new compassion that you have never felt before, a new sensitivity about beauty, about goodness.
“You become so sensitive that even the smallest blade of grass takes on an immense importance for you. Your sensitivity makes it clear to you that this small blade of grass is as important to existence as the biggest star; without this blade of grass, existence would be less than it is. And this small blade of grass is unique, it is irreplaceable, it has its own individuality.
“And this sensitivity will create new friendships for you – friendships with trees, with birds, with animals, with mountains, with rivers, with oceans, with stars. Life becomes richer as love grows, as friendliness grows….
“We are a vast continent, joined in millions of ways.
“And if our hearts are not full of love for the whole, in the same proportion our life is cut short.”
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Following these principles, we can grow up?
“Everybody grows old; very few people grow up. Growing old is a horizontal process – just moving in a line. You may reach from the cradle to the grave, but you have moved horizontally. You have become old, aged, but your inner being is as deep in darkness as it has always been. Unless you start growing vertically, upwards to the heights of consciousness, you are not growing up.
“Our whole education is absolutely unaware of the fact that growing up is a different process than growing old. Even idiots grow old; only buddhas grow up.
“The process of growing up is going deeper into your roots….
“If you want to grow up you should think of going deeper into your roots, and growing up will be a by-product of your growing more alert, more silent, more peaceful. The deeper you are at the center of your being, a tremendous transformation takes place. You start growing up to the ultimate heights of consciousness. In those heights you are the buddhas. No initiation is needed – you know it.”
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How can we go deeper into our roots?
“Start with meditation, and things will go on growing in you – silence, serenity, blissfulness, sensitivity. And whatever comes out of meditation, try to bring it out in life. Share it, because everything shared grows fast. And when you have reached the point of death, you will know there is no death. You can say goodbye, there is no need for any tears of sadness – maybe tears of joy, but not of sadness.
“But you have to begin from being innocent.
“So first, throw out all crap that you are carrying. And everybody is carrying so much crap – and one wonders, for what? Just because people have been telling you that these are great ideas, principles….
“You have not been intelligent with yourself. Be intelligent with yourself.
“Life is very simple; it is a joyful dance. And the whole earth can be full of joy and dance.”
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Will that innocence naturally happen with meditation?
“Only a meditator becomes adult. Otherwise, your chronological age may be seventy, eighty or ninety, it does not matter – you are only an old child… ninety years old but still immature because still interested in toys, still carrying your teddy bears, still interested in possessing more and more toys. Children can be forgiven, but you cannot be forgiven. Only a meditator comes of age; for the first time he becomes mature, grown-up. All childishness disappears from him.
“And the beauty is, when all childishness disappears from you, you again become childlike but on a different plane. No childishness but absolutely childlike – the same purity, the same innocence, the same wonder, the same awe. Again, existence becomes a mystery.”
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So, we become more childlike as we mature?
“Childlikeness comes only when a person is not only growing in age but is growing up, is becoming integrated inside. It is not only a physiological phenomenon that he is sixty, but psychologically, spiritually, he has become a grown-up person, mature, ripe. Then, in the end, the person becomes childlike, innocent.
“Childishness is not a value, it is a disvalue. Childlikeness is a great value. To be childlike means that the circle is complete: the man has lived life, lived and loved, experienced all that was available and has come to conclude that there is nothing more valuable than innocence. He has known – known that knowledge is futile, so he has dropped knowledge. He has known all the cunning ways of the world – he has been cunning, he has been deceptive, he has been deceived, others have been cunning towards him – he has known all that, but he has grown-up, and he has come to conclude that that is just useless, meaningless. Deceiving, deceived – all is a game; it does not lead you anywhere, it is a dream. He has dropped all those games.
“A really mature person is one who has no more obsessions with any game. He lives simply, innocently, without any pretensions and without any masks.”
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