Question 2
Osho,
Is Maturation an ongoing process? How is maturation related to Awareness? Please explain.
Yes, maturation is an on-going process. There is no limit to it – not even the sky is the limit. Your consciousness is far bigger than the whole universe. It is infinitely infinite. You cannot come to a point where you can say, ‘Enough.’ There is always more and more. There is always a possibility to go on growing. And growing, maturing is such a beautiful experience, that who wants to stop it?
We are stopped in every way. Even a great scientist like Albert Einstein has used only fifteen percent of his intelligence. What to say about ordinary people? – they never use more than five percent.
Using your intelligence totally means the beginning of maturity.
Awareness is only a methodology. First, become aware of how much intelligence you are using, or are you using it at all? Belief, faith, are not intelligent. It is taking a decision against your intelligence. Awareness is a methodology to watch how much intelligence you are using. And just in that watching you will see that you are not using much. There are many ways awareness will make you alert. You can use it.
Awareness will bring you to your one-hundred-percent intelligence. It will make you almost divine. And awareness does not stop there. Awareness helps you to use your intelligence fully.
Intelligence is your outgoing road, connecting you to the world, to the objects. Intelligence will give you more science, more technology. In fact, there is no need for man to work anymore, if we can use our intelligence. Machines can do almost everything.
Awareness will release your intelligence; it will make you mature. And then maturity goes on growing.
Ordinarily you simply grow old, you don’t grow up. Growing old is one thing, growing up is totally different. All animals grow old: no animal, except man, can grow up.
Growing old simply means you are coming closer to your death – not much of an achievement. Growing up means you are coming to realize the deathless, the eternal, which has no beginning and no end.
All fear disappears. All paranoia disappears. You are not mortals.
Growing old, you are mortals. Growing up, you become immortals. You know you will be changing many houses. You will be changing many forms, but each form will be better than the past one, because you are growing, you are maturing. You deserve better forms, better bodies. And, finally, there comes a moment when you don’t need any body. You can remain just pure consciousness spread all over existence. It is not a loss, it is a gain.
A dewdrop slipping from the lotus leaf into the ocean…. You can think the poor drop is lost, has lost its identity. But just look from a different dimension: the drop has become the ocean. He has not lost anything; he has become vast. He has become oceanic.
Awareness is the method to first wake up your intelligence, then to wake up your being, then to help you become mature, give you the realization of immortality, and ultimately to make you one with the whole.
Osho, "From Bondage to Freedom, #10, Q2"