What is the state of a person when they go mad?

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: 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.

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?…

A friend has asked: Osho, is the samadhi attained when consciousness is lost a state of swoon? Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa would lie for days as if near death!

In the West they have invented new ways: even blows are not enough; so they set up many lights, rapidly changing, deafening sound, assorted dances and songs; a completely deranged atmosphere is created. After an hour in that derangement one feels: ah, there is some life, some experience of living! We have died so much that unless the blow is enormous, there is no experience of life. Soft tones we cannot hear at all. Yet the natural tones of life are all soft. We cannot hear the night’s silence, nor the heart’s own beat. Have you ever heard the sound of your blood’s flow? It is very soft; you cannot hear it; but there is a sound. Buckminster Fuller wrote that for the first time he went into a building—a scientific laboratory—completely soundproof, where no sound from outside could enter. Inside he began hearing two kinds of sounds. He asked…

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,…