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WALKING IN ZEN, SITTING IN ZEN
Chapter 7: Better Mad Than Stupid
Question 3
Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Zen Walking in Zen, Sitting in Zen
The third question
Question 3
OSHO,
SOMETIMES I DO NOT KNOW WHETHER I AM STUPID OR JUST MAD. WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN STUPIDITY AND MADNESS?
Prem Raquibo,
YOU CAN'T BE STUPID because the stupid person cannot ask such a question. The stupid person cannot ask any question at all. The stupid person has no curiosity, has no inquiry. He does not live, he vegetates.
This question arising in you, "What is the difference between stupidity and madness?" shows a clear sign of intelligence.
And certainly you are not mad either because a mad person never thinks that he is mad. That is one of the essential qualities of madness, that a mad person never thinks that he is mad; he thinks the whole world is mad except him. The moment the mad person starts inquiring, questioning, "Am I mad?" that is a good sign. That shows that some sanity is happening, that he is coming back to his senses. To know that "I am mad" is to be free of madness.
You can go to any madhouse, ask people; they don't think that they are mad.
Kahlil Gibran remembers one of his friends who went nuts and was put in a mental asylum. Gibran went to see him. He was sitting underneath a tree enjoying himself, singing a song; he was very happy. Gibran sat by his side and said to him, "You must be feeling worried that you have been put inside these walls?"
The man said, "What are you talking about? Sorry? Sad? Why should I feel sorry and sad? In fact I am feeling very happy. These walls are not around me, these walls are around all the mad people of the world. Only a very few, sane people live here. We have left all the insane outside. Since I have come in I have come across such intelligent people, such beautiful people, and outside everybody is ugly."
Naturally, because everybody was telling him, "You are mad"; now nobody here is telling him he is mad. In fact everybody is enjoying everybody else's madness, accepting it. It's perfectly okay, there is no problem in it.
Raquibo, you are neither stupid -- otherwise the question could not arise -- nor are you mad; you are only asleep. And that is far more dangerous, because a madman can be cured, a stupid man can be helped to become intelligent, but the man who is asleep and is dreaming is really in bad shape because if you try to wake him up he becomes angry -- you are disturbing his dreams. He has invested so much in his dreams; he is seeing such great dreams and you are disturbing him.
Now to tell some president that all power is just a childish desire is to shatter his dream. To tell a rich man that money is nothing but an effort to stuff yourself somehow with things, with junk, so that you can feel that you are not empty, will make him angry at you. To tell people that whatsoever they are doing in their lives is nothing but playing with toys will drive them crazy against you; they will jump upon you. How dare you to call their lives sleep? That's why they cannot forgive the Buddhas.
But, Raquibo, you are my sannyasin and you have to forgive me. There is no problem, you are only asleep. And all that is needed is a clear-cut awareness, consciousness, wakefulness, watchfulness that can bring you out of your sleep. But if you want to remain in your sleep, nobody can pull you out; that is impossible. Only you can bring yourself out of your sleep. Madness can be cured by others, but not sleep. Stupidity can be cured, it can be helped, because no child is born really stupid.
Every child learns stupidity from the stupid people all around. He imitates -- he has to imitate. If you have to live with stupid people you have to behave like them, otherwise you start becoming separate. And they want you to be part of the collective mind; they don't like individuals. So everybody has to become stupid in some way or other -- Catholic stupid or Protestant stupid, Hindu stupid or Mohammedan stupid, but some kind of stupid you have to become. Maybe a communist stupid, an atheist stupid, but you have to bring yourself to some kind of stupidity so that you can belong to a crowd.
But there is a clear-cut difference between madness and stupidity. Mad people are the people who are really more sensitive than others, that's why they go mad. They are more intelligent than others, that's why they go mad. They are so intelligent that they cannot cope with all the stupid masses around and they are so intelligent that they cannot force themselves to behave stupidly. They start functioning like individuals and that creates trouble. They are so intelligent that they can see the futility of many projects that have been imposed upon you.
You have been taught to be ambitious. An intelligent person can immediately see that this is nonsense -- it can never give you any joy. Yes, it will destroy many other people's lives -- it is violent, it is ugly, it is destructive -- and it is not going to give you anything in return. The ambitious person is a stupid person. The intelligent person is not ambitious, he simply lives with no hankering to compete with others because he knows everybody is unique. There is no question of competition. He never compares. The really intelligent person never compares himself with anybody. He never thinks himself higher or lower. He never suffers from a superiority complex or an inferiority complex -- which are two sides of the same coin. He simply knows, "I am who I am and you are who you are," and there is no question of comparison. How can you compare a rose with a lotus? All comparison will be wrong from the very beginning. Each individual has such a beauty, and such a unique beauty, that there is no comparison possible.
Then what is the point of becoming ambitious? Ambition means I have to be superior, I have to prove that I am superior to others. Now for this you have to lose your intelligence, you have to become stupid. That's why politicians are utterly stupid people, they can't be otherwise. They are all bananas, and rotten bananas at that!
A man was driving along an outer suburban road and was just passing a hospital for the mentally insane when his car got a flat tire.
He got out of his car, got his tools out of the trunk undid the wheel-nuts and put them in the hubcap in the gutter of the road beside him. Just then there was a burst of thunder and torrents of rain started to fall. In his hurry to change the wheel he knocked over the hubcap and the wheel-nuts were washed down a drain just near him.
Now he was in trouble, but after puzzling for ten minutes or so he heard someone calling to him. Looking up, he saw a head poking over the top of the high wall opposite him. This guy had been watching all that was going on and said, "Why don't you take one nut off each of the other wheels and put the wheel back on and drive to the next garage where you can get some more?"
The driver was pleased and did what had been suggested to him. Then looking over to this man on the wall he said, "Hey, what are you doing inside that place? You're supposed to be mad!"
The guy on the wall yelled back, "Maybe we are mad in here, but we're not stupid!"
A very sensitive person in this stupid world is bound to become mad. He has to learn the art of meditation otherwise he is bound to become mad. Only meditation can save him from becoming mad.
Now even psychologists are becoming aware of the phenomenon that mad people are very sensitive and vulnerable people, intelligent people who cannot cope with the reality that surrounds them. It is too much and they are too fragile for it. They break down under its weight. If they can be helped through meditation their breakdowns can become breakthroughs.
Meditation is the only hope, otherwise as people become more intelligent, more and more people will go mad. And that is happening.
In backward countries fewer people go mad; in advanced countries more people go mad. Why? For example, in a country like India, utterly poor, dying of starvation, illness, disease, not so many people go mad as they do in America. And the Hindu swamis and the Hindu mahatmas brag about it. They go on talking around the world -- the Muktanandas and Maharishi Mahesh Yogis, etcetera -- they go on bragging: "Why don't Indians go mad? -- for the simple reason that they are religious people." It is not so; the fact is something else, something totally different. The fact is that because India is undernourished it can't have that much intelligence with which to go mad.
The Indian mind is undernourished. How many Nobel Prizes does India get? Such a vast country, one-sixth of the whole globe! Out of six people one is an Indian; one out of six Nobel Prizes should go to India, but how many Nobel Prizes...? Why is it not happening? Why can't Indians be great discoverers? -- for the simple reason that their bodies are undernourished; they are lacking the essential ingredients that make intelligence bloom. Intelligence does not grow on an empty stomach. If you want beautiful roses and big roses you have to have a rich soil. You have to give fertilizers and manure and you have to take every kind of care. But in India people are undernourished; what they eat is not sufficient. It does not provide the right vitamins, the right proteins, the right amount of chemicals to their brains. Hence all they can do is stand on their heads and do yoga postures. That does not need any intelligence. All they can do is repeat like parrots scriptures thousands of years old, which are really irrelevant.
One sannyasin has written that he. was in New York and Muktananda was answering questions. All the answers were absolutely patent answers which one can find in the Gita, which one can find in any Hindu book. Only one question was such that the Gita has no answer for it and the Vedas have no reference to it -- they cannot have. The question was: "What do you think about Shree Rajneesh and his Tantra?" Now his mind must have ceased completely! My name functions like a sword. The answer was: "We are doing research on this matter. When the research is complete we will answer."
These are the enlightened people! These are the people who go on trotting around the world initiating people. They are doing research on Tantra, on me. The simple reason why he could not answer is because no patent answer is available. And he goes on asking people about me; that's what he calls "research."
Nirgrantha has come. Muktananda saw Nirgrantha walking on the beach in Miami. He called him -- he must have seen the mala and the locket -- and wanted him to stay with him. Nirgrantha stayed there for two days, and there were long interrogations, three-hour-long interrogations: "Has Rajneesh said this against me?" Nirgrantha said, "They are all openly-said things, they are all published. You need not inquire of me, you can just look in the books." This is the research work that is going on!
They don't have intelligence, they don't even have guts, but they go on telling the whole world that Indians don't go mad, Indians don't commit so many suicides because they are religious. They are not religious -- not at all. They are not mad because to become mad first you need intelligence. Have you ever heard of any stupid person going mad? That is impossible. Have you ever heard of any idiot going mad? How can an idiot go mad? To go mad you need some intelligence in the first place; to lose it you have to have it!
Only very intelligent people can commit suicide -- and these are the same people who can become sannyasins. The same people who can commit suicide can become sannyasins for the simple reason that they have seen that this life is useless. Now either they have to find another life, another way of living, or it is pointless to continue. And they have courage enough, guts enough.
It does not need much intelligence to see that this life is really futile.
Murphy says: If the shoe fits it is ugly. If you like it, they don't have it in your size. If you like it and it is in your size, it doesn't fit anyway. If you like it and it fits, you can't afford it. If you like it, it fits and you can afford it, it falls apart the first time you wear it.
Just a little intelligence and you will be able to see that's what life is! Then if you have guts, either you commit suicide, you simply say to God, "Enough is enough!" or you transform your being -- you become a sannyasin.
Many people ask me, "Why aren't Indians coming to you?" Because they are not religious people, they are not intelligent, they don't have guts and they don't yet have the intelligence to see that life is futile, although they go on repeating like parrots that life is futile, life is illusion, it is all maya. But it is just a way of talking. Just as the English talk about the weather, Indians talk about metaphysics! Neither do the English mean anything....
One Englishman was coming from another town where he had gone to visit some friends. His horse, who was pulling his cart, suddenly said, "It is too hot."
The Englishman could not believe his ears! And there was nobody else there, just his dog was sitting in the cart, so he said to the dog, "Have you heard?" He had to say it to somebody! "Have you heard?"
The dog said, "I have heard it many times. Everybody talks about the weather and nobody does anything about it!"
So English horses and dogs also talk about the weather. Indian horses and dogs talk about metaphysics, God-realization; they recite the Gita and the Vedas. But you don't see any intelligence, you don't see any brilliance, you don't see any light in their eyes, you don't see any response to reality.
It is better to be mad than to be stupid. But ordinarily, Raquibo, people are not mad, they are just on the verge of going mad at any moment. If you don't turn your energies to meditation you will go mad.
And the difference between you and the mad people is only one of degree, remember. Maybe you are at ninety-nine degrees and the madman has crossed the boundary of one hundred degrees. And any small incident, any accident, can push you one degree more. Your wife escapes with somebody and that's enough. Your business fails, the bank goes bankrupt, the government nationalizes -- anything, just one degree, and you can be mad at any moment. But remember, it is better to be mad than to be stupid.
But there is no need to be mad. Why not meditate? And I have created so many mad kinds of meditations that you can be both together -- mad and meditators! Slowly slowly meditation is bound to win over.
Sujata has asked, "Osho, I have three questions to ask you. How did you discover Kundalini meditation?" -the first question. Simple, Sujata: Meditating down by the river upon a hill of red ants!
And second: "And Dynamic?" That is even more simple, Sujata; it was almost impossible not to discover it. I came upon it driving on Indian roads in Indian cars!
And third: "And what about Nadabrahma?" Hm!
Next: Chapter 7: Better Mad Than Stupid, Question 4
Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Zen Walking in Zen, Sitting in Zen
| ENERGY
|
GAIN ENERGY APPRENTICE
LEVEL1
|
THE ENERGY BLOCKAGE REMOVAL
PROCESS
|
THE KARMA CLEARING
PROCESS APPRENTICE LEVEL3
|
MASTERY
OF RELATIONSHIPS TANTRA APPRENTICE LEVEL4
|
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