Growing up

 

 

Osho,

What is it to be “grown up”?

 

 

Maneesha, 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. Have you ever considered the fact: the higher the tree the deeper are the roots. A high tree, perhaps two hundred feet, three hundred feet, cannot be supported by small roots; it will fall down. A three-hundred-foot-high tree needs exactly the same balance: three-hundred-foot-deep roots. As is the height, so should be the depth.

 

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.

 

When you have a migraine, do you need a confirmation from others? Nobody says, "This person is having a self-styled migraine," although the poor person who is suffering from migraine cannot prove it by any argument, cannot prove it with any evidence. But that does not matter. One who is suffering from migraine... even if the whole world says, "Without evidence you cannot suffer from migraine," that is not going to change the situation. The whole world may deny it, but the migraine is there. Only you know it.

 

There are a few things which only you know. When one becomes enlightened, there is no need of any witnesses; it is not a question of anybody else confirming it. Your enlightenment is absolutely your experience, you don't need any argument.

 

Once Ramakrishna was asked, "What is the logical, rational support for your illumination?"

 

He used the word `illumination' instead of enlightenment. It is an absolute freedom, one can choose what word he wants to choose.

 

Ramakrishna said, "I am the argument. If you can understand me, if you can feel me you will know my illumination. It is radiating but your eyes are closed. Now I am not responsible for your eyes. If you want to know me, open your eyes -- and not only the outward eyes but the inward too, because my illumination is of the inner."

 

Maneesha, you are all growing up. And you will know, you will feel every day how you are growing up in your sensitivity, in your awareness, in your love, in your silences of the heart. All these flowers are inner. Even if nobody confirms it, it does not matter. It is nobody's copyright!

 

Once and for all I want the idiots of this earth to know that I don't need anybody's confirmation. I am a man in my own right, and whatever I know of my inner, except me, nobody has any right even to raise a finger about it! If I say I am Zorba The Buddha, you may accept it or you may not accept it, but you cannot question it.

 

-Osho, “No Mind: The Flowers of Eternity, #9, Q1”