According to Osho, your immaturity persists because you still obey the inner voices of parents, teachers, and leaders; true maturity requires killing these internal authorities, and even the old self, so you can decide for yourself. A mature person stands alone, lives by inner understanding, seeks no approval, and never trades freedom for respectability, whatever the cost.
To grow up, stop letting the voices of mom, dad, and teachers run your head; choose for yourself with courage and freedom.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
What is maturity? How can I be mature?
You will have to understand first what immaturity is. That will give you the idea of what maturity is. Immaturity has a few ingredients in it. One, immaturity is a sort of dependence. A child depends on the parents; he is immature. If you are still depending, you are immature. You may depend on God or you may depend on me, but it is immaturity. You are still seeking your parents. Maybe your parents are gone and lost; now you are projecting your parents. There are many people who come to me and I can see immediately in their eyes they are searching for their father. It is not accidental that the pope is called the pope. "Pope" means "papa". People are looking for a divine daddy, continuously. This is immaturity. When are you going to stand on your own feet? How long are you going to remain a dependent…
I am fifty, but I don't yet feel really mature and fully grown up. What is the matter with me?
This has been found long before psychologists entered into the world. Priests have found it long before -- for thousands of years they have watched, and they have come to know: if you want to repress a child, if you want to make a child a dependent, do it as early as possible -- the earlier, the better. If it can be done before seven, success is far more certain. If it cannot be done before fourteen, then there is no possibility to do it. That's why all kinds of people are interested in children and their education. All religions are interested, they say children should receive religious education. Why? Before they become independent, their minds should be conditioned. So the greatest work for a man who really wants to become free, who really wants to become conscious, who really wants to become de-hypnotized -- who wants to have no…
You told me that my mind is immature. What does it mean to have a mind that is mature?
To think that you know is to be immature. To function from knowledge, from conclusion, is to be immature. To function from no-knowledge, from no conclusion, from no past, is maturity. Maturity is deep trust in your own consciousness; immaturity is a distrust in your own consciousness. When you distrust your consciousness you trust your knowledge, but that is a substitute and a very poor substitute at that. Try to understand this -- it is important. You have been living, you have experienced many things; you have read, you have listened, you have thought. Now all those conclusions are there. When a certain situation arises. you can function in two ways. You can function through all the accumulated past, according to it -- that's what I mean by functioning through a center. through conclusions, through experience, stale, dead -- then whatsoever you do your response is not going to be…
What is maturity?
MATURITY is to know that nothing can be done. Maturity is acceptance of existence as it is: YATHA BHUTAM. Maturity is not to desire things otherwise. Maturity is relaxing with the whole. Immaturity is conflict, struggle. The part fighting with the whole is immaturity. The part come to be in tune with the whole, coming to a harmonious settlement with the whole -- not in defeat but in understanding is maturity. Nothing can be done. To realize that is maturity. And also: Nothing matters. You allow it deep into your heart that nothing matters. All is good as it is, is maturity. Otherwise people remain childish. When you are desiring you are childish. Every desire is a complaint against existence. Every desire is a discontent with the way you are, the being you are. And every desire brings frustration in its wake, because it cannot be fulfilled. Desire brings future…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHAT ARE THE QUALITIES OF A MATURE PERSON? He said, "Now I can never leave you. You have called me your friend, you have called me your partner. Nobody has ever given me any respect. You are the first person who has said that I am a gentleman, a nice person. I am going to sit at your feet and learn how to be like you. From where have you got this maturity, this power, this strength, this seeing of things in a totally different way?" The master said, "Do you know that night how bad I felt? You had gone; it was so cold. Without a blanket sleep was not possible.