[An elderly sannyasin says:... I was never really a child when I was one, but these last few days, I often feel like a little child... and I want to tease everybody. I want to do crazy things.]
[chuckling] That's really a miracle, really a miracle! To feel like a child again is a great conversion. Allow it... don't feel shy about it. Tease people! It will be difficult because of your age, your mind and your experience, but don't be bothered. Put your age and mind aside. If you can, you will suddenly feel a new energy arising in your body. Your age will be reduced by at least twenty years. You can become younger immediately and you can live longer. So allow it; it is beautiful. That's what Jesus means when he says, 'Those who are like children, only they will be able to enter my kingdom of God.' One has to become a child again and then life is complete. In childhood we start and in childhood we end. If one dies without becoming a child, his whole life circle is incomplete. He will have to be born again. That is the whole eastern idea of rebirth. If you can be reborn -- reborn in this life -- there is no need to be born again. If you can really become a child in this body, there is no need to be born into the world again. You can live in the heart of God. There is no need then to come back. You have learned the lesson and completed the circle. My whole effort here is this: to help you to be a child again. It is difficult, it is very difficult, because your whole experience, your whole pattern, your whole character resists and says, 'What are you doing? It looks foolish!' But be foolish and let it assert itself.
You will feel so unburdened, so new, and as fresh as a dew drop. That freshness is something of the spirit, because your body is old but your consciousness can be new and young. So it is somewhat of a miracle. If you allow it, it will grow and you will be able to see things again as a small child with no ideas, no verbalisations, with no mind. Then the world is so luminous. Life is like a rainbow -- so many colours, so many sounds. It is a great orchestra -- but only a child can feel it because we have so many ideas. Those ideas act as blinkers. Even when we see the moon, our ideas about the moon are standing between us and the moon. The moon is never really available to you -- so many layers, so many screens. If you allow this child to grow again, it will be a death and a resurrection. The old will disappear by and by and will be replaced by a totally new consciousness and then you will be able to see that a rose is a rose is a rose. You will be able to penetrate into the facticity of things with no words, no verbalisations, no philosophy, no metaphysics, no religion. A child knows none. He simply looks direct. His being is immediate. He is full of presence, available, open. Allow it. This is something very significant, but you can lose it. If you don't help it, it can be lost easily because your whole personality will be against it. You will have to consciously work a way for it, to allow it.
Your whole past will be there like a rock and this new phenomenon will just be like dripping water, a small stream, which can become a river if you help; otherwise the rock is too big. But ultimately, if one goes on helping, the softer, the more water-like, the stronger one is, the more the rocklike things disappear. In the long run the rock is always defeated by the water. The old man is always defeated by the child. Death is always defeated by life. One should remember that, and one should always help the softer, the younger and fresher things.
You are no more a child. And if you decide by this mind, then the teasing will also be useless because now the control remains with the old. Forget all about it ! At the most they can reject you. That is their problem. It has nothing to do with you. Really be a child and let us see what happens. At the most, people can reject you or can think that you have gone crazy. That's what they will think, so let them! It is worth it. Being crazy is worth it. You have remained sane long enough. Now try the other way. For seven days simply forget all consideration. Simply do whatsoever you feel like doing. Just behave like a child -- and a child never asks. So don't ask for seven days. A child never thinks -- just a feeling and he goes and does things. Make friends with children... small children around the ashram. Make friends with them and follow them. Whatsoever they do, you do [laughter]. They will enjoy it and will not reject you at all. Children are very very receptive and they always understand. They will immediately understand that you look old but you are not. Just mix with children and forget about big people.

[Excerpted from A Rose is a Rose is a Rose, Osho]