According to Osho, madness literally means going out of the mind, and it has two directions: falling below the mind through shock and breakdown—irrational, unstable, an escape from pain—and rising above the mind through deep meditation—a ‘divine madness’ (masta, paramhansa) whose paradoxical behavior reflects a higher logic and profound beauty. Both lie outside ordinary mind; one is pathology, the other transcendence.
Madness is leaving your usual thinking: you can fall down after shocks or rise up through meditation into a wise-but-weird freedom.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHAT IS MADNESS? There are two possibilities: Madness literally means going out of the mind; hence the two possibilities. You can go out of the mind either below the mind or above the mind. Ordinarily, people go below the mind because it needs no effort, you don't have to do anything. Any shock can shatter the stability of your mind: somebody you loved died, your business has gone bankrupt -- the shock is so much that you cannot keep your normality. You fall below the mind, your behavior becomes irrational. But you go beyond the misery -- if you had remained in the normal mind the shock would have created immense misery. It is a natural way to avoid the shock. It simply pulls you down; now you don't know what has happened.
Please say something about madness. I have seen that psychiatrists know nothing about it in spite of all their efforts. There seem to be two types of madness. You spoke of madness as a step towards enlightenment, and you also called psychosis a severe form of cowardice in facing the reality of life. Not every madman who claims to be jesus christ seems to have had an experience of god.
The conviction had gone so deep that he was only lying just to convince people, to get rid of these foolish people. He said, "No, I am not," but he knew he was. Madness has a consistency, a togetherness. There is no doubt in it; it is utter belief. And the same is the case with the other madness. A man goes above reason, beyond reason, becomes utterly conscious, superconscious. In the first madness, the one part that was conscious becomes dissolved into the nine parts that were unconscious. In this other madness, the nine parts that were not conscious start moving upwards and all come to the light, above the surface. The whole mind becomes conscious. That is the meaning of the word "Buddha", becoming absolutely conscious. Now this man will also look mad, because he will be consistent, utterly consistent. He will be together, more together than any…
Osho, what is the difference between surrender and blind imitation?
So be careful: the freedom you allow yourself, allow the other too. You have no right to judge another as blindly credulous or as a surrendered being. Drop that concern. You cannot judge anyway—how will you enter another’s heart? How will you know? Think only about yourself. See within whether, up to now, you have lived by blind belief or by surrender. Decide only there; leave worrying about others. Otherwise, all your judgments will be wrong. Jesus said: Judge not; do not set yourself up as a judge in relation to another. To the friend who has asked: if you are asking for yourself, good. Drop worrying about others. Look within and see: whatever I have been clinging to till now—have I ever staked my life to hold it? Have I meditated for it? Have I loved for it? Or am I just clutching what culture, society, civilization handed me?…
SOMEONE HAS SAID THAT THE MEDITATION WE ARE DOING HERE SEEMS TO BE SHEER MADNESS. It is. And it is that way for a purpose. It is madness with a method; it is consciously chosen. Remember, you cannot go mad voluntarily. Madness takes possession of you. Only then can you go mad. If you go mad voluntarily, that's a totally different thing. You are basically in control, and one who can control even his madness will never go mad. You can go mad at any moment because you have accumulated everything that is necessary to become mad. Everyone is just on the verge of madness. I am reminded of one incident: One of the greatest psychologists of this century, William James, once went to visit a madhouse, a mental asylum.
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…