Maturity: The Responsibility of Being Oneself (Osho Insights for a New Way of Living) - Softcover

Osho

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312205619 ISBN 13: 9780312205614

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin, 1999

Synopsis

One of the greatest spiritual leaders of the twentieth century encourages us to embrace the qualities of life our advancing years grant us in Maturity: The Responsibility of Being Oneself.

In a culture infatuated with youth and determined to avoid old age at all costs, this book dares to raise a question that has been all but forgotten in the age of Viagra and cosmetic surgery. What benefits might lie in accepting the aging process as natural, rather than trying to hold on to youth and its pleasures all the way to the grave?

Osho takes us back to the roots of what it means to grow up rather than just to grow old. Both in our relationships with others, and in the fulfillment of our own individual destinies, he reminds us of the pleasures that only true maturity can bring. He outlines the ten major growth cycles in human life, from the self-centered universe of the preschooler to the flowering of wisdom and compassion in old age.

Osho’s sly sense of humor runs like a red thread through the book, along with a profound compassion and understanding of how easy it is to be distracted from the deeper meaning and purpose of our lives―which is, ultimately, to flower into our own individual uniqueness and maturity with an attitude of celebration and joy.

Osho challenges readers to examine and break free of the conditioned belief systems and prejudices that limit their capacity to enjoy life in all its richness. He has been described by the Sunday Times of London as one of the “1000 Makers of the 20th Century” and by Sunday Mid-Day (India) as one of the ten people―along with Gandhi, Nehru, and Buddha―who have changed the destiny of India. Since his death in 1990, the influence of his teachings continues to expand, reaching seekers of all ages in virtually every country of the world.

About this title

About the Author:

Osho is one of the best-known and most provocative spiritual teachers of the twentieth century. Beginning in the 1970s he captured the attention of young people from the West who wanted to experience meditation and transformation. More than 20 years after his death, the influence of his teachings continues to grow, reaching seekers of all ages in virtually every country of the world.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Maturity
DEFINITIONS FROM IGNORANCE TO INNOCENCE Maturity means the same as innocence, only with one difference: it is innocence reclaimed, it is innocence recaptured. Every child is born innocent, but every society corrupts him. Every society, up to now, has been a corruptive influence on every child. All cultures have depended on exploiting the innocence of the child, on exploiting the child, on making him a slave, on conditioning him for their own purposes, for their own ends--political, social, ideological. Their whole effort has been how to recruit the child as a slave for some purpose. Those purposes are decided by the vested interests. The priests and the politicians have been in a deep conspiracy, they have been working together. The moment the child starts becoming part of your society he starts losing something immensely valuable; he starts losing contact with God. He becomes more and more hung up in the head, he forgets all about the heart--and the heart is the bridge that leads to being. Without the heart you cannot reach your own being--it is impossible. From the head there is no way directly to being; you have to go via the heart, and all societies are destructive to the heart. They are against love, they are against feelings; they condemn feelingsas sentimentality. They condemned all lovers down the ages for the simple reason that love is not of the head, it is of the heart. A man who is capable of love is sooner or later going to discover his being--and once a person discovers his being he is free from all structures, from all patterns. He is free from all bondage. He is pure freedom. 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. From the head there is no way directly to being, you have to go via the heart--and all societies are destructive to the heart. Maturity means gaining your lost innocence again, reclaiming your paradise, becoming a child again. Of course it has a difference--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, 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 longer 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. Jesus says, "Unless you are born again you will not enter into the kingdom of God." He is right, you have to be born again. Once Jesus was standing in a marketplace and somebody asked, "Who is worthy of entering into your kingdom of God?" He looked around. There was a rabbi, and the rabbi must have moved forward a little, thinking that he would be chosen--but he was not chosen. There was the most virtuous man of the town--the moralist, the puritan. He moved forward a little, hoping that he would be chosen, but he was not chosen. Jesus looked around--he saw a small child, who was not expecting to be chosen, who had not moved, not even an inch. There was no idea, there was no question that he would be chosen. He was just enjoying the whole scene--the crowd and Jesus and people talking, and he was listening. Jesus called the child, he took the child up in his arms, and he said to the crowd, "Those who are like this small child, they are the only ones worthy of entering into the kingdom of God." Maturity means gaining your lost innocence again, reclaiming your paradise, becoming a child again. Of course it has a difference--the ordinary child is bound to be corrupted, but when you reclaim your childhood. you become incorruptible. But remember, he said, "Those who are like this smallchild ... ." He didn't say, "Those who are small children." There is a great difference between the two. He did not say, "This child will enter into the kingdom of God," because every child is bound to be corrupted, he has to go astray. Every Adam and every Eve is bound to be expelled from the garden of Eden, they have to go astray. That is the only way to regain real childhood: first you have to lose it. It is very strange, but that's how life is. It is very paradoxical, but life is a paradox. To know the real beauty of your childhood, first you have to lose it; otherwise you will never know it. Every Adam and every Eve is bound to be expelled from the garden of Eden, they have to go astray. That is the only way to regain real childhood: first you have to lose it. The fish never knows where the ocean is--unless you pull the fish out of the ocean and throw it on the sand in the burning sun; then she knows where the ocean is. Now she longs for the ocean, she makes every effort to go back to the ocean, she jumps into the ocean. It is the same fish and yet not the same fish. It is the same ocean yet not the same ocean, because the fish has learned a new lesson. Now she is aware, now she knows, "This is the ocean and this is my life. Without it I am no more--I am part of it." Every child has to lose his innocence and regain it. Losing is only half of the process--many have lost it, but very few have regained it. That is unfortunate, very unfortunate. Everybody loses it, but only once in a while does a Buddha, a Zarathustra, a Krishna,a Jesus regain it. Jesus is nobody else but Adam coming back home. Magdalene is nobody else but Eve coming back home. They have come out of the sea and they have seen the misery and they have seen the stupidity. They have seen that it is not blissful to be out of the ocean. The moment you become aware that to be a part of any society, any religion, any culture is to remain miserable, is to remain a prisoner--that very day you start dropping your chains. Maturity is coming, you are gaining your innocence again. MATURITY AND AGING There is a great difference between maturity and aging, a vast difference, and people always remain confused about it. People think that to age is to become mature--but aging belongs to the body. Everybody is aging, everybody will become old, but not necessarily mature. Maturity is an inner growth. Aging is nothing that you do, aging is something that happens physically. Every child born, when time passes, becomes old. Maturity is something that you bring to your life--it comes out of awareness. When a person ages with full awareness, he becomes mature. Aging plus awareness, experiencing plus awareness, is maturity. You can experience a thing in two ways. You can simply experience it as if you are hypnotized, unaware, not attentive to what is happening; the thing happened but you were not there. It didn't happen in your presence, you were absent. You just passed by, it never struck any note in you. It never left any mark on you, younever learned anything from it. It may have become part of your memory, because in a way you were present, but it never became your wisdom. You never grew through it. Then you are aging. But if you bring the quality of awareness to an experience the same experience becomes maturity. Aging is nothing that you do, aging is something that happens physically. Every child born, when time passes becomes old. Maturity is something that you bring to your life-it comes out of awareness. There are two ways to live: one, to live in a deep sleep--then you age, every moment you become old, every moment you go on dying, that's all. Your whole life consists of a long, slow death. But if you bring awareness to your experiences--whatsoever you do, whatsoever happens to you, you are alert, watchful, mindful, you are savoring the experience from all the corners, you are trying to understand the meaning of it, you are trying to penetrate the very depth of it, what has happened to you, you are trying to live it intensely and totally--then it is not just a surface phenomenon. Deep down within you something is changing with it. You are becoming more alert. If this is a mistake, this experience, you will never commit it again. A mature person never commits the same mistake again. But a person who is just old goes on committing the same mistakes again and again. He lives in a circle; he never learns anything. You will be angry today, you were angry yesterday and the day before yesterday,and tomorrow you are going to be angry and the day after tomorrow also. Again and again you get angry, again and again you repent, again and again you make a deep decision that you are not going to do it again. But that decision makes no change--whenever you are disturbed the rage takes over, you are possessed; the same mistake is committed. You are aging. If you live an experience of anger totally, never again will you be angry. One experience will be enough to teach that it is foolish, that it is absurd, that it is simply stupid--not that it is a sin, it is simply stupid. You are harming yourself and harming others, for nothing. The thing is not worth it. Then you are getting mature. Tomorrow the situation will be repeated but anger will not be repeated. And a man who is gaining in maturity has not decided that he will not be angry again, no--that is the sign of a man who is not getting mature. A man of maturity never decides for the future; the maturity itself takes care. You live today--that very living will decide how the tomorrow is going to be; it will come out of it. A mature person never commits the same mistake again. But a person who is just old goes on committing the same mistakes again and again. He lives in a circle, he never learns anything. If the anger was painful, poisonous, you suffered hell through it, what is the point of deciding or taking a vow and going to the temple and declaring, "Now I take a vow that I will never be angry again"? All this is childish, there is no point! If you have knownthat anger is poisonous, it is finished! That way is closed, that door no longer exists for you. The situation will be repeated tomorrow but you will not be possessed by the situation. You have learned something--that understanding will be there. You may even laugh, you may even enjoy the whole thing of how people get so foolish. Your understanding is growing through every experience. You can live life as if you are in hypnosis--that's how ninety-nine percent of people live--or you can live with intensity, awareness. If you live with awareness, you mature; otherwise you simply become old. And to become old is not to become wise. If you have been a fool when you were young and now you have become old, you will be just an old fool, that's all. Just becoming old, you cannot become wise. You may be even more foolish because you may have clung to mechanical habits, robotlike. A man of maturity never decides for the future, the maturity itself takes care. You live today--that very living will decide how the tomorrow is going to be, it will come out of it. Life can be lived in two ways. If you live unconsciously you simply die; if you live consciously you attain more and more life. Death will come--but it never comes to a mature man, it comes only to a man who has been aging and getting old. A mature person never dies, because he will learn even through death. Even death is going to be an experience to be intensely lived, and watched, allowed. A mature man never dies. In fact, on the rock of maturity death struggles and shatters itself, commits suicide. Death dies, but nevera mature man. That is the message of all the awakened ones, that you are deathless. They have known it, they have lived their death. They have watched and they have found that it can surround you but you remain aloof, you remain far away. Death happens near you but it never happens to you. Deathless is your being, blissful is your being, divine is your being, but those experiences you cannot cram into the mind and the memory. You have to pass through life and attain them. Much suffering is there, much pain is there. And because of pain and suffering people like to live stupidly--it has to be understood why so many people insist that they should live in hypnosis, why Buddhas and Christs go on telling people to be awake, and nobody listens. There must be some deep involvement in the hypnosis, there must be some deep investment. What is the investment? To become old is not to become wise. If you have been a fool when you were young and now you have become old, you will be just an old fool, that's all. The mechanism has to be understood; otherwise you will listen to me and you will never become aware. You will listen and you will make it a part of your knowledge, that "Yes, this man says be aware and it is good to be aware, and those who attain to awareness become mature ... ." But you yourself will not attain to it, it will remain just knowledge. You may communicate your knowledge to others, but nobody is helped that way. Why? Have you ever asked this question? Why don't you attain to awareness? If it leads to the infinite bliss, to the attainment of satchitananda, to absolute truth--then why not be aware? Why do you insist on being sleepy? There is some investment, and this is the investment: if you become aware, there is suffering. If you become aware, you become aware of pain, and the pain is so much that you would like to take a tranquilizer and be asleep. This sleepiness in life works as a protection against pain. But this is the trouble--if you are asleep against pain, you are asleep against pleasure also. Think of it as if there are two faucets: on one is written "pain" and on the other is written "pleasure." You would like to close the faucet on which pain is written, and you would like to open the faucet on which pleasure is written. But this is the game--if you close the pain faucet the pleasure faucet immediately closes, because behind both there is only one faucet, on which "awareness" is written. Either both remain open or both remain closed, because both are two faces of the same phenomenon, two aspects. A mature person never dies, because he will learn even through death. Even death is going to be an experience to be intensely lived, and watched, allowed. And this is the whole contradiction of mind: mind wants to be more and more happy--happiness is possible if you are aware. And then mind wants to be less and less in pain--but less and less pain is possible only if you are unaware. Now you are in a dilemma. If you want no pain, immediately pleasure disappears from your life, happiness disappears. If you want happiness you open the faucet--immediately there is pain also flowing. If you are aware, you have to be aware of both. Life ispain and pleasure. Life is happiness and unhappiness. Life is day and night, life is life and death. You have to be aware of both. So remember it. If you are afraid of pain you will remain in hypnosis; you will age, become old, and die. You missed an opportunity. If you want to be aware then you have to be aware of both pain and pleasure; they are not separate phenomena. And a man who becomes aware becomes very happy but also becomes capable of deep unhappiness, of which you are not capable. It happened, a Zen Master died and his chief disciple--who was a famous man on his own, even more famous than the Master; in fact the Master had become famous because of the disciple--started crying; sitting on the st...

About this edition

• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0312205619
• ISBN 13: 9780312205614
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208