You can become mature only if you are like a child

Childishness is a kind of sentimental emotional state. That is not needed for you. Every child has to be allowed to be childish, as every adult has to be allowed to be adultish, but an adult can also have the qualities of being a child. Childishness is not needed, that tantrum quality is not needed, that sentimentality is not needed. But maturity can cope perfectly well with the qualities of being like a child. There is no contradiction between them. In fact, you can become mature only if you are like a child.

“One day you emphasize being mature, another day you say ‘be like a child.’ if I adopt a mature attitude, I feel my child is repressed and starved for expression. If I let my child dance, sing, then also childish attitudes come up, like clinging to a love-object. What to do?”

You allow it. Your childishness has remained unfulfilled. Let it come and let it be fulfilled – the sooner the better – otherwise it will go on clinging to you to your very end. Allow it expression and it will be gone. You simply pour it; and this is the place where you can do it easily and nobody will interfere with you.

Just a few days ago there was an old woman sannyasin, Shefali – she must be seventy – and she started feeling like a child, and she was very worried. And when I told her “You need not be worried, you be childish,” she started playing with small children. Even the children were a little embarrassed: “What is the matter?” But soon they accepted. Children are very accepting: soon they forgot her age, and she enjoyed the trip tremendously. She got so much out of it that she came to me and told me, “My whole life has been a wastage!” She became really a child again, full of wonder and awe, singing and dancing and playing, running after butterflies and collecting flowers and colored stones. It was a beautiful experience to see that old woman. Her face was transformed: it suddenly became luminous, a great grace descended on her.

You allow it. Once it is allowed it will have its time and will go, and it will leave you very much fulfilled. It is better to go into it right now than postpone it – because the more you postpone the more difficult it becomes – and then out of it you will find a childlike quality arising. Childishness will disappear. It will be temporarily there, then it will be gone and your child will be fresh and young. And after that child is attained you will start growing. Then you can become mature. You cannot mature with all the lies that you are carrying around yourself. You can mature only when you become truthful, when you become true.

Osho, The Wisdom of the Sands, Vol 1, Ch 3, Q 1 (excerpt)