Aging

Why is there such an expression as "the dirty old man"? I am getting on and I suspect people are beginning to think about me in exactly those words.

Once every three seconds sex somehow flashes in the mind. The young man is possessed by such great natural forces that he cannot be free. Ambition is there, and time is running fast, and he has to do something and he has to be something. All those hopes and desires and fantasies of childhood have to be fulfilled; he is in a great rush, in a hurry. The old man knows that those childish desires were really childish. The old man knows that all those days of youth and turmoil are gone. The old man is in the same state as when the storm has gone and silence prevails. That silence can be of tremendous beauty, depth, richness. If the old man is really mature, which is very rarely the case, then he will be beautiful. But people only grow in age, they don't grow up. Hence the problem. Grow…

Why are most people so afraid of getting old?

After a few letters the boy said, "Now, arrange a meeting." I said, "That is difficult." He said, "Why?" I said, "You are such a nervous person. I cannot introduce you to the girl because it will be embarrassing for me too." He said, "I will keep my hands in my pockets." I said, "That won't help because I have seen you. Even in your pockets your hands make your whole pants quiver. I'm not going to do it. First you train yourself." He said, "That means I am never going to meet... just love letters?" I said, "To tell you the truth, this girl does not love you. I have been telling her to write letters to you just as a training." He said, "My God. So you have been befooling both of us?" I said, "I was not befooling either, I was just giving you some satisfaction at…

Beloved Osho, I am also getting old. Would you tell me a few laws for middle age also?

In India, the idea of evolution has never existed, but on the contrary just the opposite idea. The word is not even used in the West -- you may not have even heard of the word -- but in India they have been thinking about involution, not evolution: "We are shrinking, we are falling down." In the second stage of the fall one leg is lost; the table becomes a tripod. It is still balanced, but not as much as it was with four legs. In the third stage it loses another leg; now it is standing only on two legs, absolutely unbalanced. And this is the fourth stage: even two legs are not available; you are standing on one leg -- how long you can stand? The first stage is called satyuga, the age of truth; the second is simply named by the number; treta is the third, because…

Beloved Osho, it is now becoming too much. The gossips are going right and left. Even I have started suspecting whether I am old or just a woman. Please say some words of comfort.

People will become almost like machines -- all alike, coming from the assembly line like Ford cars one by one. They say every minute one car comes out of the Ford factory, similar to another following it -- in one hour, sixty cars... twenty-four hours it goes on. Shifts of workers go on changing, but the assembly line goes on producing the same cars. Do you want humanity also to be streamlined, assembled in a factory exactly like everybody else, that wherever you go you meet Sophia Loren? It will be very boring. ... The way to fight a woman, Devageet, is with your head: grab it and run. ... All would like to live long, but none would like to be old. Why? -- because of the next stage. Nobody is really afraid of old age, but after old age is death and nothing else. So everybody would like…