Accepting the Challenge of Maturity: The Courage to Be a Person

 

 

(Transcript by Tob Hawk)

According to the textbooks, maturity is that condition in which a person reaches the full use of their own potential capacities. It means that we are grown up. And that the combination of internal resource and environmental experience have brought with them the sense of adulthood, the power of personal decision, and the incentives and inducements to live in harmony with principles and convictions appropriate to our kind or type of creature.

Maturity, to many persons, is a difficult word because it seems to imply the loss of certain irresponsible attitudes. Most people seem to prefer a state of perpetual adolescence. They hesitate to accept responsibility and would like to hope that they can continue throughout life under some form of parental leadership. As a result of the failure of the individual to accept personal maturity, he becomes more and more dependent upon the conditions under which he lives. His negative relationship to these conditions is one of the reasons why we can have bad government, intolerance, unfortunate social conditions, and be almost constantly exploited by those in authority.

As long as we exercise no basic authority of our own, we turn over to others rights and privileges which we should keep in our own names. Having once made this sacrifice, or having once neglected our own privileges and opportunities, we rapidly fall into negative habits. And by degrees, become victims of the pressures exerted by others who have taken advantage of our weaknesses.

As we go along through life, especially studying important systems of thought and philosophy and religion, we realize that it is perfectly possible for the individual to mature in conditions or situations that are not entirely fortunate. It is not necessary for us to wait until all the rest of the world grows up before we make a desperate effort to reach our own maturity. We must go along from day to day resolved to grow. And for man, growth is the process of accepting personal responsibility for conduct.

To have this responsibility challenges us. To become mature, we must use the instruments necessary for such maturity. Naturally, it would be easier if our society supported us. If the individual was trained from early childhood to value the development of his own character, we would undoubtedly have more individuals, more groups of mature people. As it is, it is for the most part a lonely struggle of the person against the negative situations around him. He finds everywhere that he must deal with immature people. He must try to compete with them in the various activities of life. And as a result, it seems to him that if he becomes like them, he has a better chance of a social adjustment.

In other words, if all the world is in its first or second childhood, perhaps it is best for him to be the same. Actually, this lack of thoughtfulness, this lack of growing up, burdens us with so many difficulties, and pressures, and pains, and miseries that the situation often becomes unendurable. Many of those mentally and emotionally sick are merely persons who have refused to accept the challenge of growth. They want to remain merely children with the advantages and peculiarities which seem to mark the lives of children.

However, you cannot hope to build a good home, have a successful career, or preserve mental, emotional, or physical health without living according to your age potentials. Attitudes which are becoming in-admirable in the 10 year old or the 12 year old, will not sustain the adult in his life program. He must be his years. And he must find in this maturity a real rich and deep personal satisfaction. These mature years must seem to him to be good years, his very best period of life. And until maturity looks attractive, we are not going to have very much of it.

One of the evidences that we have of maturity is emotional stability. We know that the young person, passing through adolescence, goes through a series of emotional crises. His life is not well organized from within himself, he lacks the experience and the maturing influence of years to direct his emotional tensions and pressures.

Consequently we have a right to expect, that the child growing up through the 12th to 16th years, will have personal difficulties and will require kindly but adequate leadership from those around the child. However after this period, the continuance of this irresponsibility on the part of the young person is no longer becoming. And as the same individual reaches 30 or 40, childishness is no longer an asset, it is a debility and a disability.

How then shall we estimate, for a few moments, the maturity requirements of the contemporary individual so that he may face the problems of his time? In the beginning, maturity depends upon some kind of a background, upon a traditional point of view. To be mature we must somewhere discover a standard of maturity. We cannot afford to just drift along, hoping that nature and circumstances will mature us. There has to be some leadership from within the Self.

This leadership is intended by nature, and the means to attain it are available to nearly everyone. We have a natural tendency to grow up. But we can combat this tendency, or ignore it, or misuse the energies which it provides. Some form of traditional or environmental pattern, some standard by which the person estimates his own adjustment with society, is therefore almost essential in a large social pattern such as we have today.

The pattern we seek of maturity must also have a measure of general approval to make things as simple as possible. If we reward maturity, if we regard it as the ultimate status symbol, we are most likely to have young people striving to attain it. If we penalize the person who is immature, in some way, this constitutes a form of parental guidance. The individual who is acting badly should not be rewarded for his misdeeds.

But in our way of life, where nearly everyone is on the verge of nervous collapse for one reason or another, the perpetual adolescent is usually not adequately guided or directed. We take an emotional person, for instance, who is physically 40 and psychologically 15, and this person is subject to innumerable tirades, is exceedingly self-willed, lacks any desire or intention to control or direct their own conduct, and under these motivations, becomes a general nuisance. The rest of the family, or the immediate circle of acquaintances, become so exhausted with this nuisance that they lose all interest in attempting to lead the delinquent into some better pattern of life.

One way in which we react to the immature is simply to leave them alone. We bow out of the situations which they force upon us, or we laugh them off and change the subject. We do not wish to lock horns with an excessive emotional situation. If we try to change these other people, they become hysterical, hateful, and very often actually violent. We do not wish to face such tempest, so we keep quiet and step out of the situation.

Actually this attains very little, except to point out to the perpetual adolescent that the worse his disposition is, the more likely he is to have his own way. This is not a profitable discovery as far as he is concerned. It indicates too often that we can shout, bluster, and bluff our way out of situations which we should face with cool judgment and consideration.

Now, nature, fortunately, is not of the mind of the average person trying to avoid complications. Nature will never for one moment tolerate this perpetual adolescence. And as the person tries to use the negative processes of hysteria, criticism, condemnation, or violence to attain his ends, nature begins to close in on him. Regardless of how adroitly or craftily he attempts to preserve his own mental and emotional immaturity, he comes head on into a situation which he cannot control.

The penalties for a lack of growth are numerous: the broken home, the failure in business, isolation from friends, loss of privileges and rights, and finally, loss of control over Self with the ultimate decline of the mental and emotional balance. We become little by little, mentally and emotionally sick as a result of having our own way, or getting away with things which are not proper for us. So there is no reward except suffering. And if there was more determination towards self-discipline along the way of life, there would be fewer mental-emotional breakdowns and the general physical hazards which affect us these days.

Psychology realized long ago that the human being has a certain time swing cycle. The attitudes that are held in the first 15 years of life seemingly become submerged as we take on the various pressures of daily existence. Our attentions are turned in other directions. We are forced at least outwardly to make some adjustments with conditions. We have to learn to control our tongues or we will not have employment. We have to exercise a certain amount of grudging self-discipline in order to survive.

This means that while energies are high, occupations are important, families require almost consistent attention, the individual seemingly matures. But unless this maturity is real it does not hold. By the time he is 50 or 55 years old, he begins to swing back to his earlier childhood pattern. If this pattern is bad, or his adjustments with life have been poor all along the way, the reactions, the law of cause and effect operating, brings these effects into a dynamic pattern in his emotions and thoughts

Thus after 50, the harvest comes. Not only the harvest of our business adjustments, the prosperities we hope will be earned by advancement in profession or business, but the harvest of our own inward moods, our own attitudes toward things. A long time ago, but not perhaps as long as we think, maybe a hundred years ago, man was saved, if we want to call it that, for many of these consequences by the death rate. By the time the man of the 18th or 19th century reached 55, he had reached his life expectancy. It was not assumed that, except in extraordinary cases, he would live beyond 60. That was a long life a hundred years ago.

As a result of that, about the time when the first impact of his own mistakes began to be felt, he dropped out of the picture and was tucked away in some quiet churchyard. In the course of time, science has presented us with this marvelous benefit of extended years. So we now have perhaps 10 or 15 or even 20 additional years beyond the expectancies of the last century. These additional years are opportunities for these cycles to operate to their larger extremities.

The person who died at 55 did not face so many of his own earlier causations. He may have passed on in the active performance of his trade. He might have died before his children reached majority. Under such conditions, he died in the harness. He had very little hope for retirement and less hope for social security.

Today however, the person has been given a longer life span. And the period from 50 to 70 are the years in which the black birds of temperament come home to roost, and proceed to take their abode under the eaves of his psychology. Now, we have many years in which to regret earlier conduct. We have many years in which we are patched up in various ways for perpetuation.

In the process of indiscretions which afflict us all to some degree, our ancestors when they had once worn out the body or its resources, gave it up and that was the end. The doctor could do very little. A serious ailment was likely to be fatal in a short time. Modern man has had not only this extension of years, but we should remember that it is not an extension of his best years, it is a lengthening of the long twilight evening years, which science has bestowed upon him.

To attain this additional years, he has been pretty soundly medicated in most cases. He has been nursed through ailments which 50 or 100 years ago would have been fatal. He has been patched up and held together by a variety of medications, processes, operations and the like. As a result of the fact therefore, that the body is pretty well over medicated, has been laboring under a heavy stress and strain, has rebelled on a few occasions and been forced to continue its functions more or less by artificial means, the individual reaching these older years is likely to also have less body support than he might perhaps like to have.

There are exceptions, but in the majority of instances, the lengthening years carry with them some physical problems, some discouragements, and the individual is also alive long enough to see the ill consequences of the advice he has previously given to those around him. He lives long enough to see how his own early married life is breaking the homes of his children. He is beginning to live long enough to be criticized for his own earlier conduct. If he passed on before this period, decency said that you shouldn't bring up these matters and speak disrespectfully of the dead. But it is now quite fashionable to criticize the half dead while they are still wandering around.

The whole situation, then, demands more maturity in the formative years of life, if we expect to make any profit from these additional years that science has conferred, or sanitation is made possible. We must expect then to live with ourselves. We must expect to abide by the crystallizing influences of our habits. As we get a little older, the mental and emotional defenses which we have had become fatigued and drop away from us. And we begin to experience the emergence from within ourselves of the subjective patterns which have gradually built.

Through the first 50 or 60 years of life, we have been rather headstrong, self-determined persons. We have done much as we pleased whether it was right or not. In the longer twilight years the mistakes we have made begin to become more obvious. They affect our health, they affect every part of our living.

If we have had too small a life up to the time of retirement, we find ourselves cramped in our interests and unable to make good use of these older years. If we have lived too intensively and have had wrong values, we have exhausted so many resources that we have very little energy with which to enjoy even the years of peace that we might have.

It becomes therefore increasingly important to those who have an expectancy for a longer lifespan to be prepared for this. And the only time to plan for those extra years between 60 and 75 that we are likely to have, the only time to plan for them is when we are starting out. We have to include them in the picture. It is as though a man bought an automobile. One man says, I’m going to turn it in at the end of a year, another one hopes to keep it for two years, and a third may say, I’ll try and keep it for five years. Some thrifty souls, possibly of Scottish extraction, will say, I will keep the car as long as it will run and I will take good care of it in order that it may run as long as possible.

Though it is rather obvious that the maintaining of a car for maximum duration involves taking care of it from the beginning, you cannot drive it to death the first year and then expect it to keep going blissfully for the next ten. Or if you try to abuse it up to three or four years, then you have the large mechanical bill. The large mechanical bill is a little bit equivalent to those closing years of life in the 80s and 90s of the last century. For it was at that time that man came, usually, to the end of life. And perhaps the mechanic looking at the car today will say, the way it's been driven you'd better get rid of it. It has no more potential. Any money you expend on it now will be wasted. It will never be a good car again because you have ruined it.

To measure, the same thing happens with the individual. If he gets suddenly a body-mind-soul conscious when he's about 65, it's usually a little late. The damage has been done. The instrument has been abused until it can no longer be adequately repaired. Yes it can be kept going, just as you can keep a car going. If the man wishes to have it completely overhaul and a new motor put in it he can run it a little further, but about the time he gets the front end repaired the rear end goes out again. So there is not too much profit in it.

So when he looks at the bill for a thousand or two thousand dollars for repairing a car that is worth 200, he begins to hesitate. But with his own body, it is a little different. When the doctor's bills begin to come in, and he finds out that it's going to cost him several thousand dollars a year to stay alive for the rest of this period, he begins to wonder whether or not the price is worth it. Or, whether he can afford to pay such a high expense to keep an old vehicle running.

Today then, if he wants to have a fairly economic period in his later years, to enjoy a maximum of health, to have as much pleasure and profit from age as can possibly be the case, he must begin to think from the beginning of life in terms of an extended span of years. Our modern economic, educational, and cultural pattern was largely designed with an expectancy of between 55 and 60 years. The individual expected to wear out. He expected to keep going for this period if he was lucky and war did not remove him in the in the interval.

Today we have to think about the 75 year life cycle. It is a different cycle from the 60-year cycle. It would be entirely another matter if these other years were added at the prime of life. If we could drift along in the charm of maximum efficiency through an additional 15 years, it would be something else. But tacked on where they are, the only way in which they can be anticipated properly is by long-range thinking.

We have to readjust our entire pattern of life to a greater expectancy. This in itself would be a most admirable and useful adjustment. Well the chances are a hundred to one, that if we adjust it correctly to a 75-year life pattern, we would live to be 90, and comparatively in good health. We would discover that the extension of years is not only a personal matter, but a world problem. That it is not only a matter of the individual trying his best to live intelligently, but it is a re-gearing of the entire structure of human society to a longer life pattern with a proper provision for the various stages of living. And particularly, adequate planning for those additional years. If we would do this in the beginning, we would have not only a longer life pattern, but we would be able to use these additional years more constructively and more happily.

All this then, emphasizes the problem of maturity. For it is only the mature person who can make this kind of adjustment. First, he has to realize that it is necessary. He has to pause and remember that he is not expecting to drop dead at 60. He may bring this shorter life upon himself by his excesses, or pressures, or conditions may arise over which he has apparently very little control. But he must plan and build for this additional period. A period which is long enough and important enough to merit a lot of attention.

He must also change his entire sense of focus. He can no longer think of middle age as 35 or 40. He must begin to think of middle age as 50 or 55. He must plan his entire way of life to this longer span, which is becoming essentially more important. Because we are continually eroding into the early part of life by the requirements of our educational theory. The average man went to work, a hundred years ago, he went to work at 14 or 15 years. Many were self-supporting and helping their families at 12 and 13. These records are available. Apprenticeship often began at 14.

Today this is not essentially true. Today the individual can seldom get an education that is adequate to the competitive pressure of our day, under 20 to 25 years of age. If he wants to really build for an executive career, or wishes to make the maximum contribution in his profession, he may not graduate until he is nearly 30. This is quite a problem. For not only does he have the older and longer educational pattern, but he also may be faced with two years of military service. He has to add something, somewhere, to really come out even. And the eight or ten years that have been added to his educational pattern can now be compensated for by the extension of his life expectancy. But only if plans are made.

The human body is an equipment that has restrictions and limitations upon its function. It is not something that can be expected to run indefinitely. We have tried to evade this issue consistently. We have ignored as far as possible the inevitable death rate, and have continued to go along, hoping for the best until emergencies become so heavy that there is no longer anything we can do about them.

Maturity begins, perhaps for us in this generation, with a thoughtful re-evaluation of living itself. Under the pressure of the adolescent way of life in which we live, persons are drifting along, apparently the easy way. We may envy them the fact that they do as they please and not as they should. But after a time, we begin to recognize that their courses of action have too heavy a penalty upon them. They seemingly are getting away with it for a while. But for each person there must be a day of reckoning, and that is what the mature individual hopes to meet more intelligently.

How are we going to build for this type of basic maturity? I think the first thing to do is to realize that life is a process, a scientific process, that the individual has certain resources which can be classified. He has certain probabilities and expectancies which can be reasonably well known. Consequently it is perfectly possible for a person to plan a life without waiting for the accidents and the emergencies to fashion some kind of an existence for him.

Somewhere along the way, education should try to cope with this situation. Education should include what we could term, life planning. It should not meet, or cause the individual merely to meet a condition which occurs. Life planning is not how can we get a happy marriage, or how can we get ahead in business, or how can we make the first million. Life planning is not dealing with incidents. It’s dealing with a broad pattern, the flow of life itself through all of its phases.

There has to be some grand pattern, some complete perspective by which the person can begin to gauge his own responsibilities at his own place in the situation. If he does not have some plan, he will not only shorten his years but burden the ones that he is able to have with unnecessary tribulations.

Perhaps one way we can do this, would be to more or less sit down ourselves and try to find out why we're here, and what it is that we really want to do with living. We have to start where we are, unless we are at a particular stage of a well-planned project. Obviously if we have a building half completed, we want to finish it. But unless we have already a clear view of what we want, what we need, what we must do, it is very wise to begin to think it through rather carefully, rather in detail.

Maturity must always have purposes. A life without some kind of purpose can never really be properly directed. Nature, in its old pattern of things, fashioned this the shorter patterns of animal living largely for one purpose: procreation. It was the purpose of the organism to mature and reproduce its kind. Man gradually enlarged this pattern. Many forms of life hardly survive the reproduction cycle. Man however has developed another kind of creativity. He not only reproduces his kind, but he makes conscious creative contribution to existence. He has not only physical creativity but mental and emotional. He not only propagates his kind, he writes great music, he creates marvelous art, he builds progress in various ways according to his consciousness. He continues to create on one level or another throughout all of his years.

In the moment however that he ceases to create something, nature then assumes that his cycle is finished. If there are not reasons for living, life is likely to end or become useless, which perhaps is even more tragic than death itself. So patterns give us visions, clear insights, bestow upon us regulations of conduct. These patterns we build ourselves. They're not dictatorially required of us. We have the gracious opportunity to make wise decision. If however we ignore this opportunity long enough, then nature moves in and forces upon us decisions which may be very contrary to our desires.

Let us for a moment assume then, that the point we call middle life or maturity, now comes somewhere between 50 and 60. That in this period of life, we have available to us the greatest amount of internal insight, and the largest possible accumulation of external experience. By this time we are not perfect, we are not all wise, we have not done everything well. But we do have a maximum probability that with intelligence, and thoughtfulness, and integration of effort, we can more or less summarize and directionalize our own lives.

So that being the central point, this is the point to which we must build. We must plan toward the fact that, at that period in life, we will be of the clearest vision of which we are capable. That we shall be of a contemplative mood, ready and willing to examine the whole content of life. Somewhere in those years, we become, or should become natural philosophers. If we do not attain this, it's not likely that we will accomplish it much later, unless we're at least making a good try in that direction.

If we have this larger viewpoint, we then build toward it. Well the final thing that we must attain in our maturity, is insight into value. We must learn what is really important. Youth has not this skill. We must begin to learn not only what we have to have but what we are best off without. We have to begin to appreciate the importance of simplifying existence. We have to have already a plan in force by which we live moderately, live reasonably, neither wasting our resources nor our physical energies in an unwise or unreasonable way.

So if we take this as the middle of life, we can say that before 50 or 55 is the great cycle of man's causation. During the first half of life, he is setting in motion the patterns under which he must later live. He is setting in motion the causes which will ultimately react upon himself. If he has lived reasonably well in the first half of life, or if he is able in the middle part of life to re-estimate the values of the things that he has done, if he can see his mistakes, if he can realize where he has failed, if he can attempt gradually to correct the faults which perhaps have disabled him in earlier years, if he can make some form of mature survey of his own character, he will gain a great deal as a result.

Nature provides one interesting way of working this out. Very often, the completely ambitious, self-centered, irresponsible person experiences in his fifties some form of serious physical ailment. He may have a nervous breakdown. He may have a coronary. He may discover some part of his health badly undermined. If this ailment is very serious, it would probably have been terminal in the last century. Today his chances are probably at least ten to one that he will recover.

But during the period of this serious ailment he does experience a kind of philosophic death. He knows for example, perhaps for the first time, what it means to face an uncertainty concerning survival. He must face the probability, or the possibility, that his life is finishing. He may or may not be able to cope with this situation. I have talked with many persons who are faced with this kind of a condition. Most of them have been reasonably patient, reasonably able to face these changes, but rather unhappy about the whole thing. They feel, many of them, in those emergency weeks or months, the mistakes they have made, the time they have lost, the energy they have wasted.

Many of them have also discovered the vanity of success. I've talked to these persons in the hospitals and they will say very frankly, that if they get out of this condition in one piece they're going to change their ways of life. They're going to live more naturally. They're going to simplify living, they're going to modify ambition, they're going to let the individual, who wants to have this pressure career, have it. It’s no longer for them and they do not want it. When they recover, sometimes they hold the attitude, but very often it is forgotten after a few months.

But these moments of emergency, which very often arise at about that time in living, could be wonderful instructors. And could give us a very clear view of the fact that we have been undermining health, or destroying peace of mind, by poor conduct for a long time. Having some basis upon which to figure, I think we can then begin to direct our efforts towards what we're going to do in these bonus years that have been given to us in the last century.

In my recent trip to Japan, I talked to a number of businessmen and also read a little on the way, (how) they approach this situation. Some of it's very interesting. Nearly all of these men who have suddenly come under the indoctrination of western pressures have only one thought in mind, and that's retirement. They're willing to carry the burden to a certain degree, and for a certain time, but they are mostly of the opinion that stupid materialism is for the young. Until they know better, you can't do much about it. But anyone in his right mind has only one thought in that mind and that is dignified retirement. He wants no part of it. He has 10 or 15 years of high corporate office, he is the manager of this, or the vice president of that, or a member of the board of Mitsubishi or something of this nature. And after 10 or 15 years of that he has had it.

He is not looking with desperate hope that he is going to be able to hang on to some kind of an intensive pattern as long as possible and finally drop in his tracks. This is not attractive to him. He hasn't been, shall we say, civilized long enough to want to fall apart in some kind of a responsibility, that he's going to have to give up anyway, whether he wants to or not. It’s merely a matter of timing. He has decided that he will retire before he drops dead and have a certain amount of pleasure in the interval.

Tradition has helped him to set this pattern. Without 1500 years of tradition behind him, he might not be able to make this rather mature decision. But it has been a customary for centuries, for the head of a family or a businessman, professional man, government official, whatever it might be, to have a pattern for the advancing years of life. One man told me, he said, after all the first sixty years are only preparation. What happens after that depends on what happened before that.

We are not really here to be worn out by conditions. We are here to gradually gain a victory over conditions. And if we haven't had the victory by the time we're 60, we probably are not going to make it. If we go into that older period demoralized, lacking any incentives, have nothing to do but sit around because we haven't a desk in front of us anymore, we will draw our pensions for a few years and then disappear. There's nothing, there's no reason for our existence. The wonderful maturity we have worked so hard to attain means nothing. It has achieved nothing because it has never been planned. It has never been made important.

I think that while the Easterner likes the concept of retirement just about as much as we do, his intention while he is working is to have this retirement period the most important in his own life. He is very unhappy at the prospect of his old age being filled in by whatever he can think of at the moment. He doesn't want to retire and then go fishing. He does not want to retire and sit around and play canasta. He does not want to retire and join some old folks dance group as long as he can stay on his feet. He does not want these later activities to be something that just sort of happens. The only thing he can think of at the moment, there's really no reason for his existence, but he's going to try to be comfortable as long as possible. This seems to be the pattern.

To the Oriental, this pattern simply does not hold, it is not worth living for. And as long as we are satisfied with this kind of a pattern, we will not only have very little real enjoyment after 60, but we haven't had much enjoyment before 60 getting ready for this wonderful, marvelous, time of lighter taxes and more leisure. So the Oriental thinks in terms of making these closing years extremely beneficial in some way. And you ask this older person what he really wants to do, and I've read articles on this and talked to some people, and the point of view seems to be rather consistent.

That the real purpose of the years after 60, is, that the individual shall begin to realize that he is a citizen, not only of a nation or of a planet, but of the universe. That just as surely as his first 15, or 20, or 25 years are spent here trying to work out an adjustment with this world. That those closing years have to be dedicated to working out an adjustment with the infinite. That the individual is coming closer and closer to the time when he is going to face a situation for which he is not perhaps fully equipped.

He is going to find that two forces are operating simultaneously. By one force, he is being gradually separated from the intensive industrial, or economic or social patterns of this world. As he gets older he gets tired more easily. He wants to go to bed earlier. He does not want the stress and strain of the heavy social responsibilities. If he is a reasonably normal person, relaxation, quietude, peace of mind become increasingly important to him. He wants to have a little life to fulfill his own personal internal convictions.

At the same time that this world is becoming a little less dominant, or controlling in his thoughts, another world is opening before him. A world that must be reached by this mysterious, one step into the unknown. It is important in these older years to have some kind of a relationship with the future. The Oriental simply will not allow his life pattern to end at the grave. He will not think this way, because he is convinced that the individual who puts death at the end of the road, is going to gradually become more and more over influenced by this boundary which he has set up himself. And as a result will be afraid to live, or afraid to do anything, or will lack the inspiration or motivation to do anything, because of this finality he is set at the end of himself.

Consequently to the Oriental mind in general, death is some kind of an interlude. It is a change. It is a motion from one state to another, but it is not a termination. And the older years are spent in the realization, and the quiet calm realization, that man has to live two lives. He has to live one life in this world and one life in himself. The life he lives in this world will end. The life he lives with himself will probably just about begin when he makes this shift across.

There's no particular value in him trying to make this shift as the richest man who ever died, because he's going to leave it all behind anyway. There's no particular reason why he should struggle all through these years for status, because what does it mean? If the world beyond requires the same status symbolism as the one we're in, it's not worth going to. So he has no particular concern over this. His whole idea is, that some way he must develop a new career, with a new sense of profit and loss. He must build new wealth. He must start new processes within himself. In other words, he must be a success all over again. Perhaps he got to be pretty substantially successful in business. He’s had a career. He has uh gradually stepped aside and let other younger men take over.

But this was only one career. Every individual must have another one. The career that begins when inner values take over within himself. A career in which he has some very wonderful privileges and opportunities. In this new career that he is planning there is no competition. He is not fighting somebody else. He is not toting to the boss. He is not under the tremendous restriction of business policy. He is not cutting throats every day in order to maintain his own existence.

In this new career, he has almost perfect freedom. He is not much interested what other people think of it, because he is not under the obligation to compromise in order to maintain a social position. When he is 61 and in Japan, he gets a little red hat and a red kimono, and is said to be born again, and from then on he can do no wrong. From that time on he lives his own life. He had entered another childhood. We speak of second childhood. But to these people, second childhood is simply a simplification process, in which the individual has the right to live his own convictions. He has made his contribution to society and now it is his turn to have his own life.

So in these years he is building a new career. He studies, he enjoys scholarship, he mingles with a small group of intellectual leaders. It was customary in years gone by for the majority of these older persons to take holy orders, and become lay brothers or sisters of some religious movement. This did not mean that they went into monasteries or convents, but that they took on a kind of semi-religious life. They devoted more time to the study of the great scriptural writings. They were more continuous perhaps in their religious observances. They were not expected to participate so completely in terrestrial affairs.

They were self-dedicated persons, resolved to improve themselves in art, or music, or poetry. To contemplate as elder statesman the famous genrel (?), the problems of the young, to give counsel, which was given consideration because these persons had voluntarily given up ulterior motives. These individuals, having detached themselves from the pressures of daily living, were assumed to be more honest, more real in their attitudes. They've had tried desperately through the years not to develop prejudices. And if they had any, they disregarded them in older years.

So the person planned a new life. A life which sometimes was incredibly extended as the result of this more contemplative way. Several historical personalities, who retired at 60 and told their friends that they were going to take on more cultural pursuits, as they probably did not have an expectancy of more than five or ten more years. These individuals lived to be 90, simply because they had a quiet inner life, they were not fighting, and worrying, and fussing. They were not trying to be young, they were trying to be mature. They were trying to really be themselves.

And this is the use that has to be made of these additional years, if they are to mean anything. They should give us the kind of internal maturity which enables us to face the limitations, physical limitations of age, and the inevitability of transition with a grace, and depth, and kindliness, suitable to the occasion. All of these processes were good laws set in operation. And the fact that we use these laws, and that we apply them properly, will have a great effect upon our way of life.

I've read a number of accounts of these persons. Many of the emperors of Japan retired or abdicated around 60, at the height of their careers, and became monks. They'd had enough of it; let somebody else carry on. But then you read in some of these more detailed histories about these older men, and women also, who having retired to a monastery, or to build a beautiful little garden where they lived with their friends and scholars, and you read the final chapters of these various stories. And time after time, these persons who had retired and become poets, had become mystics, had drawn into all of these deeper considerations. When you come to the last few lines of the biography, it says things like, and this ancient scholar went to sleep quietly and just did not wake up one morning. Or another one, surrounded by his friends or his disciples, entered prayer and while in prayer slipped out of this world.

You very seldom find the story that we have of the clanging ambulance, the mass of doctors, the long protracted method of trying to die gracefully. The individual, because he had no longer these pressures, when his time came, he simply did what Plato did, whose life also was much of this kind. One night he read the poets, particularly Sophron, put the manuscript under his head for a pillow, and in the morning, he was gone. He passed in his sleep. Up to the day of his death, he had perfect eyesight, no sickness, and full control of his faculties. Simply because he had tried to learn to use the things we have, instead of constantly abuse them.

Though it would be quite impossible for decisions of this kind to be made on deathbeds. You cannot wait until the bitter end before you decide what you should have done. It’s not necessary. Nature has given to each of us the right to grow up as mature persons. It has made it possible for us in modern times, through communication, transportation, and education, to learn the facts about living. If we do not understand these facts, it is because we are simply indifferent to them. Or because we feel that the facts interfere with the immediate gratifications of our whims.

Modern man seems to prefer to be critical, prefer to be antagonistic. He wants to fight. His idea of aggressiveness and success involves this constant struggle. He expects to fall apart out of the very strain and stress of life. There's very little effort made to build a meaningful existence. And as a result of this lack of effort, there is a vast amount of unnecessary suffering. The individual is greatly pained by things that should be of slight significance.

Now, it is true that we do have a very heavy responsibility load in modern civilization. But that is all the more reason why. The machinery set up for this purpose should be allowed to operate more successfully towards advancing years. We are going to have, most of us will have, more life expectancy than our fathers. Therefore we have more opportunity to achieve universal citizenship. The economic plan even operates this way. It has a tendency to feel that business belongs to the young. And that when we reach a certain age, it is best for us to retire.

Therefore nature has set it up, but it has set it up in a way that seems negative, and dull, and dreary, and deadly to the majority. For the reason that while we have prepared ourselves to take on the responsibilities of activity, we have not prepared ourselves to take on the responsibilities of leisure. And here's where your great maturing civilization comes into play. The value, the wealth, the magnificent contribution of the older person, is the enrichment of the full picture of human life.

Most of our great contributions have been, to a measure, matured by years. And we cannot but admit that the wisdom, and the practical understanding and insight of the intelligent older person, these are tremendous assets in the survival of a cultural system.

So we are there to make these contributions. But not to try to run around at 70 as though we were 30, with the same carelessness and thoughtlessness. There's no reason why the older person should dissolve in gloom, or feel that there is some strange stigma upon intelligence. The purpose is to mature, enrich, and continue to grow, and recognize that in the processes of older years, the greatest patterns of growth are provided.

The individual has the longest perspective upon living. He has also the experiences within himself and their consequences, which he can observe. He is in the best position of all to create a perspective, a philosophy, or a way of life that can serve both the older and the younger person.

So maturity is this building up of our adult life. Just as the person going to school spends these 25 years, perhaps, learning how to fit into a profession or a trade. In other words, these years of schooling are to be the foundation of his physical success in life. Then he has his next 25 or 30 years, a functioning business adjustment. But actually his working years are a second kind of schooling.

So out of these labors which he takes on in self-survival, in the providing for family, and things of this nature, he is going to another kind of school. The school of life. Here he is being taught what is valuable and what is not valuable. What he must do and what he must not do. Here he has to struggle with himself and maintain a certain measure of self-discipline if he is to succeed in life. But this is only a post-graduate course, depending upon earlier education for its success.

When he reaches the third period of life and he comes into this as the result of the educational preparation he has received in the middle part of living. From the time he went to work to the time he retires, he has been in another kind of school. Mostly he has carefully resisted the educational advantages of this second period. He doesn't want to regard it as schooling, he wants to regard this as freedom in the best years of his life. But actually, all of the so-called mature years have their ethical and cultural overtones.

There would be nothing more ridiculous in the universe than to assume that between 25 and 50, the principal object of the human being living in this world is to make money. In the first place, he invented the concept of money which has no place in the universe. He can't hold on to it after he gets it, and he can't do much with it when he's ready to leave this world. The only thing he can have is a little thicker casket wall and a little better view plot in the cemetery.

Actually he is not here to become vice president of widgets incorporated. He is here, and going through all of these experiences for some reason. And this reason is not merely to hope that someday the children can graduate and he can retire. This is not the type of reasoning that nature intended. The entire second period of life is a great post-graduate course in the experiencing of human relationships. It is the individual being introduced, or initiated, into all of the problems which human temperament and human disposition have set up in this world.

This is the period of the great object lessons. This is the period in which the individual can observe firsthand the mistakes of others. Which he does and proceeds to copy them. This is the year period in which the individual can see the futility of certain situations. He is in the office perhaps when the president collapses with the coronary, and another man who has been waiting steps into the position. He sees the shallowness of all of the symbolism.

So in the course of business, it is the purpose of his consciousness to outgrow the mysterious fascination that youth perhaps bestowed upon this middle period. Certainly he has to work and keep on with his job and his responsibilities. But the whole end of it is for him to gradually see through it. To see where it is a necessary condition at the moment, but is not a justification for his own existence. That it is only important to him from what it teaches him. That it only is useful if it helps him to reach a state of maturity, in which he is able to judge correctly values, and never be deceived or overwhelmed by the pressures and forces working around him.

If he is able to achieve and sense values, then by the time he is ready for retirement, he approaches this period of life with a different and more enthusiastic relationship. He begins to see now that these older years are provided by nature. Nature which has reduced certain intensities so that he can no longer exhibit them. Nature which has mellowed him, and quietened him, nature which has given him mental release through the very process of physical fatigue.

So nature has provided in him the chance to become the real person that the universe requires. Now, everyone cannot agree as to just what the universe intends to do with this real person, even after it produces it. We do not know just exactly what universal citizenship means. We do not understand entirely what it means to grow up in the universe, to whatever purpose and destiny is intended for us.

But the great philosophies and religions of the world have given us some fairly reasonable interpretation of this mystery. These cultures, and this whole pattern that we see around us, must have a purpose, must have a reason, or it is the most irrational madness conceivable. And most individuals have more the attitude that the power that creates knows what it's doing. Therefore the creation must be purposeful. It is not purposeful if it ends with angina pectoris. It is not purposeful if the entire pattern is terminated by a coronary. This is not the end. There has to be the larger factor, the larger reality involved.

And actually, we have to assume that the entire life pattern we have here is a preparation for something. Or if not in the sense a complete preparation, then it is a phase of a long process of schooling. It is a day in some kind of a great educational system. The graduate from which has some particular goal, some purpose, some achievement, proper to the effort that has been made.

If this is the case, then it is rather obvious that a completely materialistic, self-centered, self-indulging pattern cannot be adequate. That the individual has to develop overtones. Furthermore, man is equipped for these overtones. If we had to practically hew them out of rough rock it would be something else. But man obviously has more faculties, more powers, more propensities, more capacities, than are ever used.

Nature therefore indicates an open door ahead. Nature points out that man can be more than he is at any given time. But he can only be more if he does something about it. If he begins to use these additional faculties, he benefits. History and the records of human progress all indicate that man has tremendous potentials, that if he uses them he advances his own life and the destiny of his world.

So recognizing that there is some kind of a larger pattern, the average person should give it a little more thought. Maturity is taking this larger pattern into consideration, and trying in some way to live more harmoniously with it. Some will say well perhaps this pattern is only a dream, perhaps the whole hope of man rests only in his own psychology. Even if we want to take this negative attitude, we do also realize that the individual who creates a pattern, who builds convictions, who follows constructive positive ideals, and is an idealist himself. This person not only builds for a greater expectancy, but if there is no such fact beyond this expectancy, he lives better right now. He is healthier, he is happier, and even as a materialist, he is a greater success and a greater help to other people.

So regardless of our perspective, the intelligently integrated life with ideals is useful even at this moment. It is the best way to live now. And the other overtones can be regarded as abstract or intangible, but this does not change the essential fact that, in our daily experience, the person who has the deepest insight lives the best life, and has the greatest probability of a reasonably serene career.

So on all these problems, we come to the essential situation of planning and accepting this challenge of maturity. As we get further along the pattern of life therefore, we need to gradually adjust ourselves to this concept of going back to school again. The latter part of life is just another kind of schooling. Every step has been a schooling of some kind.

We do not graduate when we retire, we matriculate into another school. And in this other school, we perhaps come into the presence of the most ideal educational concept we know in this world. We come into a school in which, for example, we go to school now because we realize the importance of it. The child does not. To the child schooling is a burden. To the adult in business, the experiences which constitute schooling there, may be tragic, difficult, and misunderstood.

But to the older person, the importance of insight has been demonstrated. We improve in the older years because we want to. Because we realize that only through this improvement can we fulfill ourselves. We eagerly take on the lessons that the younger are very reluctant to accept. We begin to study, and think, and to develop the quietudes of the inner life.

We want a serene internal, but we have to have something to build it out of. In many instances, older persons, instead of being able to retire into the quiet serenity of their own consciousness, retire into a mass of confused pressures. They are brought out of their earlier lives, very little internal coordination. So instead of having these pleasant years ahead, they are burdened with complexes, and neurotic pressures. They're irritable, discouraged, disillusioned, unwilling to turn their attention to new creative activities, and in most things, downright defeated.

This is because they haven't prepared for these years you cannot be unpleasant at 30 and ideally adjusted at 70. It cannot be. You cannot nurse all your grievances until the day of retirement, and then expect them to evaporate. Nor have we any reason to hope that they will evaporate even at death. The individual who makes no achievement over these problems as he goes along must sometime face them.

We have to build for this older period by the careful integration of character down through the years. Every victory we achieve over itself before 60 will add to our happiness, and our usefulness, and our self-improvement program after 60.

This should be taught, we shouldn't have to discover this by trial and error. This is just as much a part of our education as memorizing our abc’s. We should be taught to realize that a powerful, ethical, moral code, applied to us throughout life, is the beginning of our success in advancing years. And I notice, in line with some of the things I have been looking around and about in the last six weeks, an article in the paper yesterday, stating the effort on the part of the Japanese government to encourage the moral education of children.

In other words, education is of two kinds, technical and moral. Technical education prepares the individual for a career; moral education prepares him to protect himself and his nation against the demoralization of we might say ethical ignorance. Moral education is of the highest importance. Moral education provides the person with the framework necessary to protect his own life.

Moral education teaches the individual from childhood, and in Asia it has taught him for thousands of years, that it makes no difference what the pressures or circumstances of the moment may be, that no one is predestined and fore-ordained to be bad. No individual has to have a bad temper. No individual has to criticize, or gossip, or tear down the efforts of others. No individual has to be a chronic hater, or a chronic worrier. No individual has to exploit others. No individual has to sell obscene literature or obscene movies in order to make a living. No individual has to prepare advertising that is deceptive or wrong. No firm has to sell dangerous products. No individual has to drive at 70 miles an hour on roads which are not safely driven at such speeds.

There is nothing that the individual does that is wrong that he has to do. The only reason he does it, who does these things, is because he wants to. And the only reason he wants to is the fact that he's never been really and honestly taught to want anything else. He has not received any insight as to the basic patterns of life. He has not been clearly shown the importance of self-discipline. He has now assumed the fact that freedom to do as he pleases is the world's supreme status symbol. When actually, it is the world's supreme indication of failure.

No person in any walk of life has to hurt others. He has to recognize however, the importance of not hurting others. He has to recognize the value of integrity. These things have to be taught in one way or another. The world has to accept these points as elements of education.

In good homes where environments are reasonably good, where young people grow up in decent atmospheres, there is a degree of the acceptance of the ethical overtones of life. But unless these are accepted more generously, and more generally, we are not going to have the kind of maturity that really will protect us.

What we are desperately in need of today, therefore, is the individual who wakes up in himself, and realizes that it is not necessary for him to be part of anything he does not approve of. It is not necessary for him to compromise. He may be penalized if he does not. If he does not follow the general way, he may be subject to certain criticism. He may be subject to certain penalties. But he has to decide in himself, whether these penalties are more important than character. He must decide whether it is better to get along with other people for a few years, than learn to get along with himself for the full duration of life. He must decide whether he wishes to make this compromise and be fashionable for a few years, and pay for it perhaps with 10 years of lingering misery at the end of his life.

He has to decide where his values are, and the mature person makes such decision. And having made it, abides by it. And very few, as a result, go broke. Most of them find that in the long run of things, their fortunes improve. They have a little different approach, but because they are more moderate in their attitudes, they are not bound to these terrible cycles of extravagance, which burden us so heavily today.

The mature person is one who is trying to guard the eternal values of himself. He is also trying to guard these values in others, and for others. He is not forcing upon them, other people, decisions which he should make. He is not burdening their lives with the penalties of his own bad disposition. He is not out to revenge or avenge. He has not as a great hope in life, the possibility of making some adversary unhappy. Having changed his own point of view, and become comparatively harmless, he also finds that many persons, subtly or subconsciously, appreciate this change of attitude. And the rewards are appropriate.

Actually today, with all of our indecisions, our excesses, our pressures, and our false attitudes, we honor most those who did best. We honor those whose virtues are greater than our own. And the gallery of the immortals, whose memories the whole world keeps green, this gallery is made up mostly of persons who were mature. The persons who really tried to make an eternal contribution to the good of others. They were more unselfish, more dedicated, more resolved in themselves, and now the whole world honors them.

So the world does abstractly recognize maturity, and it will continue to do so. And it will finally reward those who achieve it. But this reward will come, not only from their contemporaries, but from the whole universe which requires maturity for survival.

We are growing up in a plan. And it is very important that we adjust ourselves properly to this plan, resolve to keep the rules. And to build according to these rules, and not contrary to them. We will find this is not bondage. That it is not a constant frustration. We will not feel like the adolescent, that every law of society is made to frustrate him.

We will realize that these rules give liberty, that they are the basis of the only freedom man can have. That is, freedom from the excesses of his own nature. The individual who is free of the pressures of himself is truly emancipated. He is the only one who is capable of living a free life. Free from those excesses which bring penalty and punishment to those less intelligent.

So we work for maturity. We work for a realization that we are growing up in space. That we are self-directing, self-governing units of divine consciousness and divine mind. If we exercise these rights we can properly term therefore self-directive action as a form of religion. The individual honors the divine power within him when he uses this power for the common good. He profanes this power when he uses it against the good of his fellow men.

Every lack of self-control is in a certain sense an attack upon religious principles. Every failure of integrity dishonors in some way the divine power within ourselves. To be true to ourselves in the highest sense, is to be true to God, to be true to the universe, to be true to the laws which created and sustain us.

And most of all, by example, we can thus justify these laws. We can show beyond any question of doubt that the great plan under which we live is magnificent. That it does produce the highest possible type of living thing. And that it has within it the provision to provide security, and growth, and happiness for everything which has been created.

We prove this by achieving it, we prove it by demonstrating that by obedience to the great cyclic patterns of things, we attain to the full benefits of life and existence. All these are the problems of maturity, and if we will take them on and think them through, we will certainly be better people, we will be grateful to the universe for what it has bestowed, and our friends will be grateful to us for the marked improvement in our own characters.

All these things pay off. Maturity pays off. It is the only way of life which brings with it reward rather than penalty. It is the only way of life which enables us to face tomorrow, whatever it may be, with full confidence in the integrity of the universe and the immediate availability of the divine presence. Therefore as we mature, we lay the foundations, individually, for the collective survival of civilization.

Well, time is up so we'll have to pause.