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THE WISDOM OF
OSHO
Seven Year Cycles of Life
In fact there is a seven-year cycle in each life, mm? We change each seven years -- one cycle is complete. And all great changes happen between the end of the one cycle and the beginning of the second cycle.
First, at the age of seven the child is no more a child; a totally different world starts. Up to then he was innocent. Now he starts learning the cunningness of the world, the cleverness, all the deceptions, games; he starts learning to be pseudo, he starts wearing masks. The first layer of falsity starts surrounding him.
At the age of fourteen, sex, which was never a problem up to now, suddenly arises in his being. I am not talking about america where things have become so artificial that even a child of nine years will start thinking of sex -- through TV and the movies and the whole socially-repressed sexuality on the one hand, and on the other hand through all the advertisements and all the exhibition that goes on in the name of a thousand and one things but which deep down is sex.
So in America something is happening, immature sexuality is happening -- but that is an abnormal state. Otherwise at fourteen the child becomes sexual. And his world changes, utterly changes! For the first time he becomes interested in the other sex. A totally new vision of life arises and he starts dreaming and fantasising. And this way it goes on....
At the age of twenty-one, again: now a power trip an ego trip, ambition -- now he is ready to go into some power trip, to attain more money, to become more famous, this and that. That is the age of twenty-one; again a circle is complete.
At the age of twenty-eight, again he becomes settled, starts thinking of security, comfort, bank balance. So hippies are right if they say 'Don't trust anybody beyond thirty.' In fact they should say 'twenty-eight', because that is the time from where a person becomes straight. Up to twenty-eight he can be a hippie or this and that, mm? That's why you don't see old hippies: by twenty-eight they have gone back into the old world; they become part of the establishment.
By the age of thirty-five again a change starts happening, because thirty-five is almost the peak of life. If a man is going to die at seventy, which is normal, then thirty-five seems to be the peak. The bigger circle has come to half and a man starts thinking of death, starts being afraid. Fears arise. This is the age, between thirty-five and forty two, where ulcers and blood pressure, heart attacks and all sorts of things happen, mm? -- because of the fear. Fear creates all these things -- cancer, TB. A man becomes prone to all sorts of accidents because the fear has entered into his being. Now death seems to be coming closer: he has taken the first step towards death the day he passes thirty-five.
At the age of forty-two a person starts becoming religious. Now death is not just an intellectual thing; he becomes more and more alert about it and wants to do something, really do something -- because if he waits any more it will be too late.
Jung said that all his life he was watching thousands of mental patients, and after all that observation he says that at near about forty to forty-two, every person needs god, and if you cannot supply god he becomes mentally ill. That is happening in the west, because religion has become irrelevant -- or people think it is out of date, we are not a religious age, we are scientific and rational people. But the body and its rhythm function in the old way, the same way.
At the age of forty-two a person needs some religion, just as at the age of fourteen he needed a woman or a man to relate to. Sexual relationship was needed; exactly the same happens at forty-two -- now a religious relationship is needed. One needs a god, a master, somewhere to surrender, somewhere to go and unburden oneself. If one cannot find anybody then one will follow Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin and make gods out of them. If you cannot find even them, you will go to the psychoanalyst and go from one therapy to another therapy -- in search of the guru! But the psychotherapist cannot be the guru, he himself is moving through the same problems... And so on and so forth.
At the age of forty-nine a person becomes settled about religion. The search is over; he settles. At the age of fifty-six, if things go naturally and a person follows his rhythm, a person will start attaining a few glimpses of the divine.
At the age of sixty-three, if everything goes naturally, he will have his first satori. And if this happens at the age of sixty-three, that he has his first satori, he will die a beautiful death at the age of seventy. Then death will not be death -- it will be a door to the divine, it will be a meeting with the beloved.
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