Madness

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.

Beloved master, my husband is mad, but sometimes what he says is true. Is it possible for a madman to do that? 8

Just help your husband. Maybe it is just because of you that he is pretending to be mad! Neelam, women are dangerous! You should see Aseema.... Aseema is a beautiful sannyasin. I have seen her two ex-husbands -- both have gone crazy! Then I started thinking, what is the matter? And both are beautiful people -- you know both. One is Sarvesh, the ventriloquist. He was perfectly okay before he met Aseema. Now this beautiful sannyasin has driven him mad! Another is Nikunj; Nikunj is mad. The whole credit goes to Aseema! Now, if anybody else is thinking to fall in love with Aseema, think twice! And then stop yourself! A woman goes to a palm reader. "Your husband will die a violent death," she is told. "One more question," she asks. "Will I be acquitted?" A group of hikers passing a hillbilly's cabin smiled as they saw the owner…

Beloved Osho, as society's hold on people's minds begins to disintegrate, in times of social crisis such as now there seems to be a tendency for an increasing number of people to fall below the mind into madness. Also, is it true that this is paralleled by a tendency for people to look at the possibility of going beyond the mind into enlightenment?

Times of crisis are both dangerous and immensely important -- dangerous for those who have no courage to explore new dimensions of life. They are bound to disintegrate into different kinds of madness, because their mind was made by the society. Now the society is disintegrating, the mind cannot remain; its roots are in the society. It is constantly nourished by the society -- now that nourishment is disappearing. Because the society is disintegrating, a great suspicion, a doubt that was never there before, is bound to arise in the individuals. And if they were just obedient people who have never gone beyond any limit that society has decided, who have always been respected, honorable citizens -- in other words, just mediocre -- they will immediately go mad. They will start committing suicide, they will start jumping from high buildings... or even if they live, now they don't have a…