According to Osho, what society calls 'craziness' is authentic sanity: creativity, playfulness, and joyfulness are one organic flow of awakened being. In meditation they blossom together, turning work into worship and life into celebration. Only creators are truly sane; treat every act playfully and lovingly, beautifying existence. Ignore labels—live festively, enrich the world, and let your love craft perfection.
When you’re peaceful inside, playing, feeling happy, and creating naturally come together—and that’s the truly sane way to live.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, playfulness, happiness and creativity come together inside myself when I am in this state -- I call it `craziness'. Can you please talk about this?
First, what you call craziness is authentic sanity. When you are not in that state which you call craziness, you are crazy. Creativity, you call craziness. Playfulness, you call craziness. Joyfulness, you call craziness. Then what is sanity? So first, drop that word `craziness'. Only the creators are sane. What they create does not matter. In India, there have been a few great mystics whose creativity cannot even be recognized as creativity. Kabir remained for his whole life spinning, weaving. He was a weaver. He had thousands of disciples, and they would tell him, "You have become old, and you are unnecessarily tiring yourself. We can take care of you; you stop this weaving, and then making clothes, and going to the market and selling them." But Kabir always said, "You do not understand. You think I am just a weaver. I am not just like other weavers -- it…
Question: OOOH OSHO! THE WHOLE LIFE WATERFALLING ON ME! HEAVEN AND EARTH, WORK AND PLAY, EVERYTHING I HAVE EVER BEEN AND DONE, ALL THINGS I HAVE EVER WANTED TO WILL BE, PAST AND FUTURE SWELLING SWELLING IN BALLOON DANCING NOW! THIS ENLIGHTENMENT IS SOME CRAZY BUSINESS! Crazy baby, crazy... absolutely crazy! But don't be afraid. Go into it, and soon you will see the sanity of insanity, soon you will see that it is not crazy. You have been crazy all along before it. It looks crazy compared to your life that has happened up to now. People are living in madness, so when they come closer and closer to some inner light, compared to their life it looks crazy. Once it settles, the whole of life looks crazy, and only this light, this awareness, looks sane.
I hoo my guts out in the dynamic, I laugh with you in the lecture, I dance for you in nataraj, I cry and scream after nadabrahma, I watch my tensions in kundalini, and listen to the birds which come together specially for the meditations with music -- they enjoy tremendously. I provide dinner for the mosquitoes in gourishankar. In and between the meditations it seems I am doing all the groups at once. I feel very very crazy. I know you love it -- how can I love it too?
What is wrong? A man wants to live naked under the sky, with the wind, with the sun; a man wants to be open to nature -- what is wrong in it? Why should a man be forced to wear clothes? If he likes to -- perfectly good. There is no need to force him to remain naked, because then you do the same again. But if somebody likes to be naked, what is wrong in it? Just think of yourself sitting naked in your drawing-room, and a guest comes, and you welcome him -- he will escape! He will not come again. He will go directly to the police station. And you were not doing anything to anybody: just sitting in your drawing-room, naked, enjoying, listening to music. You don't allow even small children to be naked. Such a repressive and violent society! The by-product is craziness, madness. I…
Beloved Osho, a few years ago I asked you a question, with great fear and trembling: "Osho, is it inevitable that I will go crazy?" and now, beloved Osho, at last it has finally happened: I have gone crazy. Thank you, Osho, thank you.
There are all types of people here at different stages of craziness. But don't be satisfied. Rejoice! -- but remember that there are still crazier states. A moment comes when you start talking with the trees, playing with the stones, arguing with the ocean... because your very idea of being separate has disappeared. Now this whole existence is one organic unity. And it is not that when you talk to a tree it does not respond to you; if you are crazy enough, there is a dialogue. Perhaps one time you have to speak from your side; another time you have to speak from the tree's side -- because the tree cannot speak, but you can understand what it wants to say. Just remember the basic criteria -- that your happiness, your blissfulness should go on growing; your intelligence, your clarity should go on growing; your love should go on…
[A sannyasin who is going back to the West said she ran groups in a mental hospital and also privately, but she worries about being too serious.] No, don't do it, because then it becomes almost impossible to live. As humanity is, it needs many lies, many pretensions, many pretexts. If you are talking to a child, you talk in a language that the child understands. Maybe it is not the right thing to say, maybe you can explain it in a more scientific way, but then the child won't understand. When you are talking to a child, you talk in his language, knowing well that whatsoever you are saying is arbitrary and when the child grows he will know that those things were just ways of saying things. He will understand. So what I suggest is, one has to go on playing many games.