The average mental age of humanity is twelve. It is unbelievable that people get stuck so early. What happens, and why at just nearabout twelve, thirteen, fourteen? — because that is the time when sex ripens in you, and no society wants you to go beyond that point. Every society wants you to remain sexually starved, because a sexually starved person is very useful for the society — for this ill society.
A sexually starved person can be channelized in any direction very easily because he is boiling within. You can make him go after money: then money will be his sex, then his whole sexual energy which is starved will move towards money. Then money will be his beloved, his God, and for his whole life he will run after money. And naturally, sex will haunt him because money cannot satisfy it. You can gather as much money as you want, but how can it satisfy your basic urge? The society has diverted your urge, has given you a diversion; it has given you a toy.
And that's how we start from the very beginning: the child is crying, he wants milk, and he is given a pacifier! And the poor child starts sucking the pacifier and thinks that it is the mother's breast. How mean can we be? This is sheer meanness! You are being very political with the poor child, diplomatic, cunning. The poor child has no understanding yet to make a distinction between the pacifier and the breast; he has been deceived. Now if later on this child one day disrespects his mother, hates his mother, there is no wonder in it.
By the time a child is coming to sexual maturity we start giving him ambitions. We start telling him, "Come first in the university, come first in school — come first! Wherever you are, whatsoever you are doing, you have to be the first." We start a great desire in his mind to be first anywhere he is; this is giving a new direction to his sexual energy.
The society is trying to divert his natural energies. We start telling him, "Unless you have a big car, a big house, much money in the bank, you are a failure." He starts running after big things. He may not need a big house. In fact a smaller house may be far more beautiful because it can be kept more clean, and his needs are not that much that he should have a big house of many, many rooms. But the idea has been implanted in his mind that "Unless you have a big house, very imposing, you are a failure." Now the big house becomes his symbol of fulfillment, money in the bank becomes his symbol of fulfillment — but only symbols, empty. Deep down he is unfulfilled, deep down he is hankering. The deep consciousness is continuously telling him, "Be natural, let your natural energies flow in a natural, spontaneous way."
OSHO