Spiritual reading - Maturity, Being Born Again

Chapter four

 Being born again 

Osho has said,

 “Whenever you understand that you have missed life, the first principle to be brought back is innocence. Drop your knowledge, forget your scriptures, forget your religions, your theologies, your philosophies. Be born again, become innocent—and it is in your hands. Clean your mind of all that is not known by you, of all that is borrowed, all that has come from tradition, convention. All that has been given to you by others—parents,teachers, universities—just get rid of it. Once again be simple, once again be a child. And this miracle is possible by meditation.” 

Osho. Maturity: The Responsibility of Being Oneself (Osho Insights for a New Way of Living) . St. Martin's Press.p.xii

Comments:

Among “born again” Christians, the conversion experience is highly encouraged and supported. This experience seems to mean different things to different people, and other than some sort of altered consciousness brought about by some sort of emotional hypnotic effect, it is unclear what is meant by this term.

 Osho is clear in his description that being born again is an emptying and an opening of oneself to one’s Higher Power. Osho’s description seems to be similar to Jesus’ statement that unless a person become like a little child again, the person cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.

It seems paradoxical in our Western world with its cognitive thought system based on Aristotelian logic, to think that maturity, growing up, comes from a shedding of one’s socialization and conditioning.

In Alcoholics Anonymous this shedding of socialization, conditioning, is known as the third step which is a decision to turn our will over to the care of our Higher Power as we understand It.

It seems counterintuitive for Osho to suggest that the path to maturity is to drop our knowledge and empty ourselves so we can experience the Divine Spark within by meditation. However, this same insight has been taught by the mystics of all major religions and is a key practice encouraged by the perennial psychology.