— a page out of a book —
On Maturity and Ageing
"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, you never 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.
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.
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 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 tomorrow is going to be; it will come out of it."
Osho —
Maturity - The Responsibility of Being Oneself —
Published by St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 —
Copyright © 1999 by Osho International Foundation —
Maturity - The Responsibility of Being Oneself —
Published by St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 —
Copyright © 1999 by Osho International Foundation —
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