Editorial
Overcoming Immaturity
Grown up people behaving like children is an usual sight in this world. The world thrives on immaturity. This is not a recent phenomenon, but is a thing since ancient times. So did Socrates feel when he was ordered to be poisoned. Immaturity has caused immense harm to humanity. All around we see people making silly decisions, giving silly opinions, making blind observatibons, and people in power taking wrong turns. These rash statements and judgements have harmed humanity immensely. Due to devastating policies of the immature people, the world has suffered in the past and suffers now.
Immaturity and ego are interconnected. The greater the immaturity, the stronger is the ego. “I am the boss, I know everything. I am the greatest,” are the self-opinions of the immature. Those who have read history know how immature people, due to their raw egos, led a prospering world towards destruction. Immaturity affects several aspects of the personality. The first is egocentric life, which means all for me and my happiness. Immaturity causes myopia. An immature individual cannot see beyond a few hours or days. Farsightedness is the most essential quality of any leader, which is absent in the petulant child in big body. Satisfying the ego is all that the immature individual thinks and wants. Immaturity makes the individual take wrong decisions which may eventually bring personal and social harm.
The body grows but the brain and mind remain the same.
Why immaturity?
Lack of moral and spiritual training since childhood is one vital and important reason for immaturity. Parents concentrate only on the physical child and care the least for mental development. Mental development isn’t training in the arts, like music, drawing and dancing. It’s training in higher life. You are born, you are trained to speak and read and write, you watch television, you eat and grow. And you follow your desires, and after some years, you are a bundle of problems. Life is not all about having a good physique, knowing to compete and to earn bread, and survive. But that idea of the need to train in higher life is not given in schools or at home. Further modern society is all about the externals. So the child grows without a centre to hold on to, does whatever he or she can, and then, there is only negativity.
So why does one become immature? The simple reason is, the farther we are from the Self or Centre, the more immature we are. The nearer we are with the Centre of our personality, which is the Self, we have more light, knowledge and understanding.
Thus the Hindu child was taught to pray since childhood. Teaching about prayer, Divinity, etc is not “brainwashing”, but “unwashing” the brain. For many people, to teach a child to pray is brainwashing but to give all wrong ideas is preparing the child for the future. Terrible. To train the child in the right way is not brainwashing, just like to train a plant to grow straight isn’t harming it. Training in higher life is not just advice. Children hear from their eyes also. So Hindu parents traditionally prayed, worshipped God, went on pilgrimages, abstained from evil, and thus set examples. At the age of seven, the most powerful mantra, a dynamo of spiritual vibration, Gayatri, is instilled. This will do the work. The holy vibrations of Gayatri awakens Buddhi, the spiritual intellect and vision becomes clear. The awakened personality will be the mature individual, who will not be guided by his or her immature ego but by the higher Self. This is maturity.
A few important qualities of the mature individual are farsightedness, less egotism, thinking before acting, objective view of life’s situations, etc.
Give up all hesitation and train your children to pray, to meditate, to repeat God’s names and let them grow in a spiritual atmosphere. That is the best thing a parent can do.
Swami Sunirmalananda