What happens when the mind feels overwhelmed and unable to hold on to thoughts?

A friend has asked: Osho, people often think that only those who are mentally disordered, overly emotional, or tormented by life's difficulties turn toward yoga or spirituality. Madness or frenzy is often assumed to be the starting point of spiritual practice!

Those who think so are right—up to a point. Their mistake is not in seeing that people troubled and tormented by the mind are drawn toward meditation, yoga, and spirituality; that much is true. But those who believe themselves to be mentally untroubled are just as afflicted—and they, too, should bow toward it. To be human is to be afflicted. The very way man is constituted carries pain. Human existence is sorrowful. So the truly foolish one is the person who imagines they will attain bliss without turning toward the spiritual. There is no other way to bliss. And the sooner one bows, the better. It is true that those who incline toward spirituality are mentally troubled. But note the other side: the very moment they bow, their mental pain begins to dissolve. With that bowing, the frenzy begins to disappear. Passing through the process of spirituality, they become healthy,…

Beloved Osho, I feel like my mind is going crazy these days. It is as if it is trying to grasp anything it possibly can, especially during discourse as I sit in silence with you. It feels like it's having less and less to hold on to, less and less to think about, so it's creating the craziest things. Is this part of your work, or am I going mad?

The psychoanalyst tried to manage things in such a way that he wouldn't lose the patient because he was really a treasure, but he didn't want to lose his normalness either because then what would he do with the treasure? Then he would have to give all the money to other psychoanalysts to clean his mind. So he said to the rich man, "Because you need so much time, I cannot look after other patients. And you need that much time so I am not saying to cut it. I have found a way: I will put my tape recorder here so that you can go on talking as long as you want, and in the night when I am free I will listen to the tapes." The rich man said, "That is perfect. For me it makes no problem." The next day as the psychoanalyst was entering his office…

Osho, when a person goes mad, what is his state?

Yes—when a person goes mad, only memory is left of the man. He has no awareness of his own self at all; only memory remains. You will be surprised: from the day he becomes mad, he retains no memory of anything after that day. All the memories from before remain. If a person went mad this morning, whatever he talks about will be from before this morning; he will say nothing of after this morning. No memory of what happens after this morning is being formed. Now only the memories from before this morning are there; he will keep repeating them. He will speak them, babble them, go on with the same things. He has completely lost awareness. And from the very moment he lost awareness, the memories up to that moment will go on repeating. That is why he appears mad to us: he will always be incongruent, out…

Question: STOP WAVERING, MAD MIND! COME WHAT MAY, ALLOW IT! THE SATI IS READY FOR THE FIRE OF DEATH. DANCE IN ECSTASY, BEYOND ALL DOUBTS. DROP GREED, ATTACHMENT, FANCIES. DO THE BRAVE FEAR DEATH? DOES THE SATI CLING TO HER BODY? SOCIETY, SCRIPTURE, FAMILY PRESTIGE -- THE HANGMAN'S NOOSE AT THE NECK. MOVE ON THE PATH AND RETURN MIDWAY -- HA! HA! EVERYONE LAUGHS. THIS WHOLE WORLD'S SO NASTY. ONLY HE WHO PRAYS IS TRUE. SAYS KABIR: NEVER ABANDON THE NAME. FALL DOWN! STAND UP! FLY HIGH! You do things from which nothing but misery results because the mind says, "Make another attempt. This time you might succeed. It may have borne no fruit up to now but you might get some in the future, so keep on. Who can definitely say you won't get it just because you haven't obtained it up to now? So keep on seeking.

The song ends:

THE SUPREME UNDERSTANDING TRANSCENDS ALL THIS AND THAT. THE SUPREME ACTION EMBRACES GREAT RESOURCEFULNESS WITHOUT ATTACHMENT. THE SUPREME ACCOMPLISHMENT IS TO REALIZE IMMANENCE WITHOUT HOPE. AT FIRST A YOGI FEELS HIS MIND IS TUMBLING LIKE A WATERFALL; IN MID-COURSE, LIKE THE GANGES, IT FLOWS ON SLOW AND GENTLE; IN THE END IT IS A GREAT VAST OCEAN WHERE THE LIGHTS OF SON AND MOTHER MERGE IN ONE. Zen masters -- Bodhidharma, Rinzai, Bokuju -- they have been pictured in the first state. That's why they are so ferocious. They look like roaring lions, they look like they will kill you. If you look at their eyes, their eyes are volcanoes, fire jumps at you; they are like shocks. They have been pictured in the first satori state for certain reasons, because Zen people know that the first is the problem; and if you know Bodhidharma in this state, when the…