“My message for the young is to always remain young. Never become old. Your body will become old, but your mind has no necessity to become old. If your mind remains young and fresh, ready to learn, ready to explore new dimensions of life, you are alive.
“The moment your mind stops exploring, expanding, you are no more alive. You may vegetate, you may drag your body around for twenty, thirty more years.
“My experience is that people die near about thirty but live to near about seventy-five. Those forty-five years they are just hanging around like cabbages, and when there are so many vegetables all around you, there’s no room for young people to live.
“Others want to prescribe everything in your life. You can remain young only if you never accept any conditioning from anybody else. Youngness is something like sharpening your sword; you should inquire into everything on your own. Don’t believe in the holy scriptures, because there is nothing holy in them, they are not even first-rate literature.
Your starting point should not be belief, but a healthy doubt. And remember, doubt does not mean disbelief, doubt simply means, ‘I don’t know and I want to inquire. I have not come to a conclusion to say yes or no.’
“Doubt is youth, belief is old age. The person is tired of inquiry; he has started believing in somebody else. It is better to die as a seeker; at least you will have the contentment that you did everything that was possible, and you will have an originality.
“And this is my experience: to wear your original face is the greatest joy in the world, but everybody is wearing a mask. Somebody is Hindu, that is a mask; somebody is a Mohammedan…. A young man has to fight against all masks; he has to declare to the universe, ‘I am going to remain individual, I am going to remain just myself, I am not going to imitate anybody. And I will do everything that is possible to find the truth.’
“And whenever anybody has made this decision, has had this determination, he has always found. Existence is very compassionate.…
“For centuries, unnecessarily, wealth has been condemned. Wealth should be respected in the same way as we respect any other creativity. Somebody paints, we respect. Somebody makes a statue, we respect. Somebody composes music, we respect. But somebody creates wealth, and we condemn.
“Jesus says, ‘A camel can pass through the eye of a needle, but a rich man cannot pass through the gates of heaven.’ Now this is keeping the world poor. Richness should be respected if you are going to destroy poverty.…
“The young people should change the whole movement. Richness should be respected and richness should be created – it can be created. Just as there are Picassos, there are Fords who can create wealth. You will be surprised to know that Ford started as a poor man, and he became superrich by his own efforts. He told his children that they have to start life the same way he started, polishing people’s boots. He said, ‘I don’t want you to be just inheritors, I want you to be creators.’ And his children remained grateful their whole life, because he gave them a challenge to create on their own. With technology available, to create wealth is the simplest thing.
You just have to inspire young people to create. Rather than wasting their energy in frustration and protests and fighting and throwing stones and destroying buses, the same energy can make the country a paradise.”
Excerpted from Osho, The Last Testament, Vol. 4, Talk #29 (Currently unavailable).