According to Osho, yes—childhood “innocence” and adolescent idealism must be shattered. Both are coverings: childhood is layered with social conditioning, and youth’s ideals are a romantic, hormonal hallucination. When these illusions collapse, one can see without borrowed beliefs or biological fever and discover values born of awareness, experience, and meditation—authentic, individuated, and mature rather than utopian, secondhand, or compulsively driven.
Your kid-innocence and teen dreams are mostly borrowed and hormone-made; when they break, you can finally see clearly and choose what truly matters.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, is it necessary that the innocence of childhood and the idealism of adolescence must always be shattered before each individual finds within himself the capacity to search for what he considers the real values of life?
John came to wake me up. As I was getting ready in my bathroom, suddenly I heard sounds as if bombs were being exploded. I could not believe what was happening. Those police people started throwing rocks at the windows, at the glass, at the doors -- they were destroying.... and they had dynamite, and they were threatening, "We will dynamite the house." They could not wait for five minutes for me to put my clothes on, wash my face and come down. They were in such a hurry... five minutes more and Christianity will be destroyed, morality will disappear, no woman will remain a virgin -- just in five minutes; and I am in my bathroom! And then I was sitting unnecessarily in their jail for almost seven hours. They could not wait for five minutes, and I had to sit there unnecessarily for seven hours. These are the…
Osho, Only when life ended did the art of living arrive. When the lamp went out, the gathering filled with color. In old age the body is unwell, yet the mind is sound. I am far from the desire for heaven, moksha, nirvana. But then why—and for what—is there such a strong desire to see here on this earth the Shri Rajneesh Ashram, a picture of heaven, this festival-play?
This is exactly what I want, this is precisely my message. Let there be no desire for heaven and no desire for liberation. Heaven is attained only by those who have no desire for heaven. Eligible for liberation are only those who have no longing for liberation. Because as long as there is desire, there is the world. Desire’s other name is the world. What you desired makes no difference. You desired wealth—world. You desired status—world. You desired liberation—world. You desired samadhi, nirvana—world. In desire is the seed of the world. Desire and world are synonyms. Therefore liberation cannot be desired. When all desire becomes futile and drops, like leaves fall from a tree in autumn—when, in the maturity of a life’s experience, in ripeness, all the leaves of desire fall, in that moment when there is no desire in the mind, samadhi happens. In that moment you are free.…
Osho, is the innocence of small children just ignorance, or has it got any value too?
The innocence of the children is ignorance, it is not true innocence. The true innocence happens only after the second birth. The true innocence happens only after you have reached your very core through awareness; that is the second birth, that is resurrection -- you are born anew. The first innocence of a child when it is born is only ignorance, but that ignorance is far more valuable than the knowledge that your so-called learned people are burdened with. So these things have to be remembered. Real innocence belongs to the Buddhas. They have lost their first childhood in knowledge and then they become aware of what they have lost. They have lost the precious, the essential for the non-essential, so they drop their knowledge. Dropping their knowledge they become innocent again. This is second innocence, second birth. In India we call such a person dwija, twice-born. He is a…
For nine months he tastes something tremendously blissful. And then comes birth and the disruption of his world. Then his whole world is shattered. Then he has to become acquainted with strange things, strange people, strange situations. Slowly slowly he has to be responsible. He starts worrying, anxiety always a question of whether to do this or that. He is always in a state of either/or, and then on and on.... Then he forgets everything of those nine months. But somewhere deep down that memory remains. It cannot be eradicated. It becomes burdened by other things, covered by other things, but it can be easily claimed. Sannyas does not give you anything new -- there is nothing new under the heaven. And nothing is old either because if anything it new it can become old; if there is nothing new nothing can ever become old.
Osho, if an enlightened person cannot lose his buddhahood, how does a baby born as a buddha lose his?
Innocence plus consciousness is equal to Buddhahood. Innocence minus consciousness is equal to childhoodness. And how one can be conscious? The only way -- and let me emphasize -- the ONLY way is to lose it and gain it again. You ask me, Hajo: IF AN ENLIGHTENED PERSON CANNOT LOSE HIS BUDDHAHOOD, HOW DOES A BABY BORN AS A BUDDHA LOSE HIS? The enlightened person has lost it and found it. The baby has not lost it, and has not yet found it; he is born with it, oblivious of it. Hence you will see in the eyes of small children something of the saints, something of the same beauty; but also a deep ignorance. The innocence is there but full of ignorance. The saint is innocent but full of awareness, knowing. His innocence is not mixed with ignorance; it is wisdom. And the children are bound to lose their…