"Either you can function through all the accumulated past, according to it – that's what I mean by functioning through a center, through conclusions, through experience, stale, dead – then whatsoever you do, your response is not going to be a response, it will be a reaction. And to be reactionary is to be immature.

"If you can function right now, here in this moment, through your consciousness, through your being aware, putting aside all that you have known, this is what I call functioning through no-knowledge. This is functioning through innocence. – and this is maturity.

"I was reading one anecdote:

"It seemed to Mr. Smith that now that his son had turned thirteen, it was important to discuss those matters which an adolescent ought to know about life. So he called the boy into the study one evening. shut the door carefully, and said with impressive dignity, 'Son, I would like to discuss the facts of life with you.'

"'Sure thing, Dad,' said the boy. 'What do you want to know?'

"The mind is immature when it is not ready to learn. The ego feels very fulfilled if you need not learn anything from anybody; the ego feels very enhanced if it feels that it already knows. Now the problem is that life goes on changing, it is never the same – it goes on flowing, it is a flux – and your knowledge is always the same. Your knowledge is not evolving with life, it is stuck somewhere in the past. Whenever you react through it you will miss the point, because it will not be exactly the right thing to do. Life has changed but your knowledge remains the same and you act out of this knowledge. That means you face today with your yesterday's knowledge. You will never be able to be alive. The more you function through knowledge the more immature you become.

"Now let me tell you a paradox: every child who is innocent is mature. Maturity has nothing to do with age because it has nothing to do with experience. Maturity has something to do with responsiveness, freshness, virginity, innocence. So when I use the word mature I don't mean that when you become more experienced you will be more mature."