on Maturity
- Maturity means gaining your lost innocence again -
To grow old is not to grow up; to become old is not to become mature. Maturity has nothing to do with old age, nothing to do with age at all. Maturity has something to do with becoming more and more conscious, becoming more and more silent and aware, becoming more and more watchful of what you are doing and why, where you are going and why.
-Osho, "Unio Mystico Volume 2, #6"
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If you can function right now, here in this moment, through your consciousness, through your being aware, putting aside all that you have known — this is what I call functioning through no-knowledge, this is functioning through innocence. And this is maturity. [....]
Maturity has nothing to do with age because it has nothing to do with experience; maturity has something to do with responsiveness, freshness, virginity, innocence. So when I use the word 'mature' I don't mean that when you become more experienced you will be more mature. That's what people usually mean when they use the word -- I don't mean that. The more you gather knowledge, the more your mind will become immature; and by the time you are seventy or eighty, you will be completely immature because you will have a stale past to function through. Watch a small child...knowing nothing, having no experience, he functions here and now. That's why children can learn more than aged people.
-Osho, "Ancient Music in the Pines, #2, Q1"
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Maturity happens when you start living without hope. Hope is childish. You become mature when you don’t project hope into the future. In fact, you are mature when you don’t have any future; you just live in the moment — because that is the only reality there is.
-Osho, "The Beloved Volume 2, #9, Q3"
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Lose the mind and gain consciousness and you are mature. Die to the past and be born to the present and you are mature. Maturity is living in the present, fully alert and aware of all the beauty and the splendour of existence.
-Osho, "The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha Volume 12, #4, Q4"
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To me, maturity is another name for realization: you have come to the fulfillment of your potential, it has become actual. The seed has come on a long journey, and has blossomed. Maturity has a fragrance. It gives a tremendous beauty to the individual. It gives intelligence, the sharpest possible intelligence. It makes him nothing but love. His action is love, his inaction is love; his life is love, his death is love. He is just a flower of love.
-Osho, "Beyond Psychology, #37, Q2"
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When man attains to maturity, he becomes wise; when man comes to fulfillment, then wisdom arises. Wisdom is the essence of man, the fragrance of the lotus flower.
-Osho, "Dang Dang Doko Dang, #9"
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Maturity is of consciousness, not of intellectuality. It is not of knowledge, it is of innocence.
-Osho, "Ah This!, #5"
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Awareness is the method; maturation is the result. Become more aware and you will have more maturity; hence, I teach you awareness and don’t talk about maturity. It is going to happen if you are aware.
-Osho, "From Bondage to Freedom, #3"
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Zen is not concerned with your childish state of mind. Its concern is maturity; it wants you to become mature, it wants you to become ripe. Hence it has no idea of God — no father in the sky. It leaves you totally alone because only in aloneness is maturity possible. It leaves you totally in insecurity. It gives you no security, no guarantee. It gives you all kinds of insecurities to move into. Maturity is freedom, maturity is liberation.
-Osho, "Ah This!, #5"
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Maturity is deep trust in your own consciousness; immaturity is distrust in your own consciousness. When you distrust your consciousness you trust your knowledge, but that is a substitute and a very poor substitute at that.
-Osho, "Ancient Music in the Pines, #2, Q1"
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What is immaturity? Whatsoever you are doing, you are doing almost unconsciously. Yes, I say be spontaneous, but I don’t mean be unconscious. I mean be alert and spontaneous. By ‘being spontaneous’ you immediately understand to become a driftwood; so whatsoever happens, whatsoever and wheresoever the mind leads you, you are led by it. You become accidental. Immaturity makes a man accidental; maturity gives man a direction.
-Osho, "Beloved of My Heart, #9"
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Maturity comes from a Latin root, ‘maturas,’ which means: to be ripe. A fruit is mature when the fruit is ripe, when it has become sweet and is ready to be digested, can be eaten, can become part of anybody’s life. A mature person is one who has come to know what love is, and love has made him sweet.
-Osho, "The Beloved Volume 2, #2"
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A mature person should disconnect himself from anything that is connected with fear. That’s how maturity comes. Just watch all your acts, all your beliefs, and find out whether they are based in reality, in experience, or based in fear. And anything based in fear has to be dropped immediately, without a second thought. It is your armour. I cannot melt it. I can simply show you how you can drop it.
-Osho, "Beyond Psychology"
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Remember the difference between childlike and childish: to be childlike is to be a sage; to be childish is not to be a sage. To be childish means to be immature; it needs much improvement, growth, maturity.
-Osho, "Come, Come, Yet Again Come, #14"
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Maturity means gaining your lost innocence again, reclaiming your paradise, becoming a child again. Maturity is a rebirth, a spiritual birth. You are born anew, you are a child again. With fresh eyes you start looking at existence. With love in the heart you approach life. With silence and innocence you penetrate your own innermost core. Going beyond thoughts and feelings and becoming a pure isness is maturity. Maturity is the ultimate flowering of meditation.
-Osho, "The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha Volume 12"
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You should learn how to be free from all father figures. You should learn how to be yourself. You should learn how to be aware and responsible. Then only you start growing. Maturity is always maturity towards freedom. Immaturity is always a sort of dependence and a fear of freedom.
-Osho, "The Discipline of Transcendence Volume 2, #9"
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Every child is born innocent, but every child is made knowledgeable by the society. Hence schools, colleges, universities exist; their function is to destroy you, to corrupt you.
Maturity means gaining your lost innocence again, reclaiming your paradise, becoming a child again. Of course it has a difference, because the ordinary child is bound to be corrupted, but when you reclaim your childhood you become incorruptible. Nobody can corrupt you, you become intelligent enough. Now you know what the society has done to you and you are alert and aware, and you will not allow it to happen again.
Maturity is a rebirth, a spiritual birth. You are born anew, you are a child again. With fresh eyes you start looking at existence. With love in the heart you approach life. With silence and innocence you penetrate your own innermost core. You are no more just the head. Now you use the head, but it is your servant. First you become the heart, and then you transcend even the heart....
Going beyond thoughts and feelings and becoming a pure isness is maturity. Maturity is the ultimate flowering of meditation. [....]
If you can lose your ego you will gain yourself -- what Buddha calls no-self. He calls it no-self for the simple reason that it is not your old ego anymore. It has no shadow of the ego at all; hence he calls it no-self. Lose the ego and gain the self or no-self, and suddenly you are mature. Lose the mind and gain consciousness and you are mature. Die to the past and be born to the present and you are mature.
Maturity is living in the present, fully alert and aware of all the beauty and the splendor of existence.
-Osho, “The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 12, #4”
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The basic problem of love is to first become mature, then you will find a mature partner; then immature people will not attract you at all. It is just like that. If you are twenty-five years of age, you don't fall in love with a baby two years old, you don't fall. Exactly like that. When you are a mature person psychologically, spiritually, you don't fall in love with a baby. It does not happen, it CANNOT happen. You can see that it is going to be meaningless.
In fact a mature person does not fall in love, he rises in love. The word 'fall' is not right. Only immature people fall; they stumble and fall down in love. Somehow they were managing and standing. They cannot manage and they cannot stand -- they find a woman and they are gone, they find a man and they are gone. They were always ready to fall on the ground and to creep. They don't have the backbone, the spine; they don't have that integrity to stand alone.
A mature person has the integrity to be alone. And when a mature person gives love, he gives without any strings attached to it: he simply gives. And when a mature person gives love, he feels grateful that you have accepted his love, not vice versa. He does not expect you to be thankful for it -- no, not at all, he does not even need your thanks. He thanks you for accepting his love. And when two mature persons are in love, one of the greatest paradoxes of life happens, one of the most beautiful phenomena: they are together and yet tremendously alone; they are together so much so that they are almost one. But their oneness does not destroy their individuality, in fact, it enhances it: they become more individual. Two mature persons in love help each other to become more free. There is no politics involved, no diplomacy, no effort to dominate. How can you dominate the person you love?
Just think over it. Domination is a sort of hatred, anger, enmity. How can you think of dominating a person you love? You would love to see the person totally free, independent; you will give him more individuality. That's why I call it the greatest paradox: they are together so much so that they are almost one, but still in that oneness they are individuals. Their individualities are not effaced -- they have become more enhanced. The other has enriched them as far as their freedom is concerned.
Immature people falling in love destroy each other's freedom, create a bondage, make a prison. Mature persons in love help each other to be free; they help each other to destroy all sorts of bondages. And when love flows with freedom there is beauty. When love flows with dependence there is ugliness.
Remember, freedom is a higher value than love. That's why in India, the ultimate we call MOKSHA; MOKSHA means freedom. Freedom is a higher value than love. So if love is destroying freedom, it is not of worth. Love can be dropped; freedom has to be saved: freedom is a higher value. And without freedom you can never be happy -- that is not possible. Freedom is the intrinsic desire of each man, each woman -- utter freedom, absolute freedom. So anything that becomes destructive to freedom -- one starts hating it.
-Osho, “The Tantra Vision, Vol 2, #2”