What you naturally love as a kid, played and practiced simply, quietly grows you into who you become.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
[The Tao group is present. A group member says she feels like a child, and should she continue with this. Osho checks her energy.] It is good, mm? It is very good to go back to your childhood, because that is the point at which your life bifurcated -- at five years old. That is where you missed the real life and you started becoming phoney. That is where you went wrong. So once you start being real and authentic, you will go back to the point of bifurcation. But one is not to remain there -- one has to grow from there again. It is good to go back -- but that is only half the journey. The other half still remains. You follow me? A child is born. Up to four years, five years, he grows authentically.
Osho, how can children be made inward-looking?
And secondly, never try—by pressure, by insistence—to lead a child toward any “good” direction. That very thing will become the biggest wall against going in a good direction. It may happen that while he is small he obeys you—because he is weak and you are strong; you can frighten him, threaten him, even do violence to him. And never imagine that parents cannot be violent with their children! Parents have committed such immeasurable violence against children. It simply doesn’t look like violence. Whenever we press someone down, we are being violent. The child’s ego is wounded. But being weak, he bears it. Today or tomorrow, when he grows up and power comes to his hands, by then you will be old and weak—and he will take revenge. The mistreatment of elderly parents by their children has its cause in the parents themselves. What they did to the child in his…
Beloved Osho, what is the right way to help a child grow without interfering in his natural potentiality?
The right way is not to help the child at all. If you have real courage then please don't help the child. Love him, nourish him. Let him do what he wants to do. Let him go where he wants to go. Your mind will be tempted again and again to interfere, and with good excuses. The mind is very clever in rationalizing: "If you don't interfere there may be danger; the child may fall into the well if you don't stop him." But I say to you, it is better to let him fall into the well than to help him and destroy him. It is a very rare possibility that the child falls into the well -- and then too, it does not mean death; he can be taken out of the well. And if you are really so concerned, the well can be covered; but don't help…
Beloved Osho, many times sitting in your presence I am overwhelmed by a very childlike feeling. It seems so familiar, yet from a long time ago. In these moments there feels no gap of you and me. I am like a child playing in your beautiful garden. Beloved Osho, is this significant or am I already moving into my second childhood at the ripe old age of thirty-five? P.s. You can scare me any time.
"Don't be so hard on him," says Mrs. Jones, "all children of his age do that!" "Maybe they do," says Mrs. Meyer, "but not from the diving board." Childhood has its beauties, because it does not know the etiquette, the manners, and all kinds of crap. It is so simple and so innocent and so spontaneous. A man walked into a bar and was amazed to see a dog sitting at a table with three men playing poker. The man went over and asked, "Can that dog really read his cards?" "Sure he can," said one of the men. "But he's not much of a player. Whenever he draws a good hand he wags his tail!" That is absolutely innocent... the poor dog cannot contain his joy. Two cockroaches were munching delicacies on top of a garbage pile when one of them began telling of some new tenants in the…
Beloved Osho, listening to you has changed. I used to remember what you say; the words were important. Now I cannot follow anymore. I feel like a child whose daddy is talking to some visitors in a cozy atmosphere and I am sitting at his side -- contented, at home, no excitement, but everything is as it should be. No needs, no questions. Is this childish, beloved Osho? Am I missing some insight given in your words?
No. You are not missing anything, because I am not in my words. I am just around my words. Go on throwing my words away and collecting the nothingness that surrounds my words. Collect that music. Collect that hum. You will become more and more like a child. The day you have become completely, entirely a child -- that means you don't even remember that you are a child -- you simply are. When innocence has reached its peak, the purpose of existence in you is fulfilled. You were born a child; that's the way God has sent you into the world. You should go back more innocent than you came, more beautiful than you came, more silent, more ecstatic, more divine. Your life is a preparation for meeting the ultimate, and only a child is capable of meeting the ultimate. His truthfulness.... Remember one thing: even qualities are different.…