Better Mad Than Stupid

The first question

Question 1

Prem Neeto,

THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE AT ALL - all desires are the same. You can desire money, you can desire meditation, you can long for power, you can long for God, but you remain the same. What you long for cannot change you, the object of longing has no effect on your inner being; it is the same game played again with new words, with new objects of desire.

You long for a person, you desire a person. Why?because you are feeling lonely. In yourself you don't feel sufficient. There is a kind of emptiness in you which you would like to be filled by the presence of the other. You feel meaningless and you want the other to impart meaning to your life.

It never happens; it is only a longing and a hope. It is never fulfilled - it cannot be fulfilled in the very nature of things. It is impossible because the other is desiring you for the same reason; he is also feeling empty. Now two empty persons are hoping to be fulfilled through each other: two meaningless lives are hoping from each other to become meaningful and significant.

This is the utmost absurdity. Sooner or later one becomes aware of the phenomenon because again and again there is frustration, again and again there is failure, again and again the hope evaporates and you are left in a far deeper mess than you were ever in before. Again and again you are disillusioned.

It is because of this that Jean-Paul Sartre used to say: "The other is hell." He is unconsciously groping in the dark and has unknowingly stumbled upon a fact, although the way he expresses it is not exactly what it should be. The other is not hell, your desire for the other is hell - that's what all the Buddhas have said down the ages - not the other, because when Sartre says, "The other is hell,"

it seems as if the other is responsible for your misery, disappointment, disillusionment. The other is not responsible, it is your own expectation that has been shattered. The greater the expectation the more will be the frustration.

Hence wherever arranged marriages have disappeared and love marriages have become prevalent there is more frustration. In an arranged marriage your expectations are not very big; it is not a romantic affair at all, you are not hoping to reach to paradise through it. It is a mundane phenomenon, arranged by your parents, grandparents, arranged by the society, the family, the priest, the astrologer, arranged by others. Your dreams are not very involved in it. Hence the arranged marriage moves on far smoother ground: it has no peaks, no ups and no downs. It is just like a plain superhighway - not even an Indian one but a German superhighway. Nothing grows on it, it is dead; made of asphalt or tarmac or cement - utterly dead, but safe. It is not a hilly track. You are not moving in the unknown. You can have a map and there are milestones everywhere, pointers indicating where you are, where you are moving, how far the destination is, how far you have moved from your place. Everything is clear; that's how the arranged marriage functions.

And if the arranged marriage happens when you are just a small child, with no idea of love, of sex, of romance, then you start taking your wife for granted or your husband for granted, just as you take your brothers and sisters for granted. Nobody ever thinks of changing one's mother. If the marriage happens when you are a child, a small child, then you never think of divorce. You grow together; the husband and the wife grow together just as brothers and sisters grow together. They have lived together so long, as long as they can remember.

When my mother got married she was only seven years old. My father was not more than twelve years old. Now what dreams are possible? What can they hope for? In fact they were enjoying the whole show of marriage, they were enchanted with the music, the bands and all kinds of fireworks - it was a really enjoyable experience - with no idea of what they were getting into. And by the time they became aware they were already rooted; they had become indispensable to each other.

But in a love marriage it is going to be difficult. In America, out of two marriages one is going to be shattered. That is the proportion of divorce: one divorce out of two marriages. And remember, the one marriage that has not shattered is not moving in a joyous world; it is not moving, it is simply because of cowardice, security, safety that people go on clinging. As they become more courageous, the divorce rate is going to become higher and higher, it is going to become bigger and bigger.

Why do love marriages fail? - for the simple reason that there is deep expectation and it cannot be fulfilled. Soon you have to realize that you have been a fool. Soon, even before the honeymoon is over, the marriage is over. It may linger on... it depends how much courage you have. If you are a coward it may linger on your whole life. If you are courageous and if you can see the point you may divorce immediately after your honeymoon is over because the marriage will also be over, because you will have seen that all those illusions that you were carrying were just illusions. You were living in a world of rainbows, you were living in a world of poetry, not of reality.

Sartre is not right when he says that the other is hell, but in an unconscious way he has come very close to the truth.

The Buddhas say: Not the other but the desire for the other is hell. To make the other responsible is a very common characteristic of human beings.

One of Murphy's maxims says: To err is human and to blame the other for it is even far more human.

That's what Sartre has done: you have erred, now you are blaming the other. If you really see the point, then you will see that desire is the cause; if you don't see that, then you will change the other.

Then this other is causing you problems - change him. So after one divorce another marriage, and then another marriage and then another marriage. And it is the same illusion you live again and again! And people are so unintelligent, so unaware that they never see the point: that you can go on changing the whole world, again and again you can change the partner, but it will remain the same story because you are the same. Wherever you go you will remain the same; your heart is in the same state. There is confusion, there is no light inside you, there is only darkness.

When one becomes too fed up with ordinary relationships with people one starts imagining a relationship with God; that is the longing for the divine. Now God is a little better in the sense that you can never be disappointed because you will never meet him; for the simple reason that there is going to be no honeymoon, the honeymoon can never be over; for the simple reason that there is going to be no living together with God, you can go on hoping. Now you are alone: it is a monologue, it is not a dialogue. All human relationships fail because the other is there and you start clashing with each other, you start dominating each other, you start being jealous of each other, you start being possessive of each other. You are afraid that you may lose the other. And then one day you see that there is nothing to lose - the other is as empty as you are. One dream is shattered, then another dream....

That is the beauty of the religious dream: you can go on dreaming, it can't be shattered. The relationship with God can never be on the rocks - it is impossible because you are simply alone.

When you are praying, what are you doing? Talking to yourself! It is like whistling in the dark - there is nobody to listen.

God is not a person with whom you can have any relationship. God is not somebody in particular whom you can address, whom you can long for. But all your frustrations, all your relationships, which have failed, have not made you alert enough to the fact that it is better to drop the whole idea of desiring the other. Now you are trying to desire something which you are never going to get. One thing is good about it: you can go on hoping for lives. There is never going to be any end to it; the journey is unending. The other does not exist at all; now you are living in pure dreams. First you were living in dreams but the other was there, so between the two realities the dreams were bound to be crushed - and they were crushed. But now there is nobody else, you are alone. You can make your God the way you want.

In India people worship God in such ways that one feels sorry for them. Once I was staying with a woman; she was a great lover of Krishna, so much so that she had stopped sleeping with her husband - how can you love two persons? That is a betrayal. She believed that her true husband was Krishna. Her poor husband was really in a very mad state. He could not say that she was wrong because he was also brought up in the same Krishnaite tradition. He could not say it, although he was a doctor, well educated. But in India education makes no difference to people, not at all. Their conditioning is so old and so ancient and so deep rooted that education remains just on the surface.

Scratch any educated Indian and inside you will find the whole rotten past. So intellectually he knew that the wife was crazy but only intellectually; deep down he himself was afraid that she might be right, because Meera used to think the same way: that Krishna is her true husband. She left her own husband.

At least this woman had not left her husband, she simply had stopped sleeping with the husband.

She used to sleep in another room; she would lock the room from inside. She would sleep with Krishna's statue.

When I stayed in their home I watched the whole game. In the morning she would sing songs to wake up Krishna. Now Krishna needs to wake you up! But she would sing songs to wake Krishna up. And then Krishna would be up and then the whole morning routine: he would take a bath, he would be given a bath, and then breakfast... the whole day was devoted to Krishna. And it was just a statue made of silver - there was nobody there! But she used to talk to Krishna. And if you could have seen her you would have been impressed because she would cry tears of joy and she would dance in utter ecstasy - at least on the surface it would look like that.

And the more repressive she became about her sex - because she was not having any sexual relationship with the husband - the more and more obsessed she became with Krishna. Then she started dreaming that Krishna was making love to her in the night. Once she even got falsely pregnant - just hot air in her belly and nothing else.

When I talked to her.... It was really cruel of me, but I am a cruel man - I have to be. I had gone for only three days; I stayed there for seven days just to bring her to her senses. And finally she understood the point - she was an intelligent woman. She presented the statue to me and she said, "Now you take it from here, otherwise I can again get entangled into this stupidity. I have wasted my whole life. And I can see the point that I am just living in my own dream. There is no Krishna, nobody comes to make love to me, it is all my dream. It is just sexual repression." And this whole nonsense of waking him up and giving him a bath and then breakfast and then lunch and then Krishna retires for the afternoon sleep and then tea - and everything, as if she were really serving a real person!

The statue remained with me for many days; I think I gave it to Mukta. Mukta must have it even now.

But the woman was freed, freed from that stupid monologue.

It is madness. It is the same madness, even a little worse, because when you love a real person there is at least somebody real, good or bad, frustrating or not frustrating. But when you start longing for the divine it is simply living absolutely in the abstract.

Neeto, you ask me: WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LONGING FOR THE DIVINE AND LOVING ANOTHER?

There is no difference at all - longing is longing. Then what will I suggest? Try to understand the nature of longing, the nature of desire. When you understand the nature of desire, in that very understanding the desiring disappears. Then you start enjoying your aloneness, you become utterly joyous with yourself. There is no need for the other, there is no dependence on the other.

I am not saving that you will not be able to love then. In fact you will be able to love then and only then because then love will have a totally different quality, the quality of sharing. You will not be a beggar, you will be an emperor. You will love because you have something to give, not to get something. You will love because you are overflowing with joy and you would like to share it with people. But then it will not be a relationship at all.

I call it relating. You can relate, but there is no need to create any bondage, there is no need to create any marriage. You can relate with somebody, you can relate to the same person your whole life, but tomorrow remains open, it is not closed. Tomorrow is not settled today, you cannot take it for granted; tomorrow you may feel like sharing with the same person, the same person may like sharing or may not like sharing. Even if one of the two decides not to share, then you say good-bye to each other with great gratitude because all that joy and all that has happened before and all that has transpired before one is grateful for. With no grudge, with no complaint, with no quarrel, you simply depart. You know, "Our ways are parting now, we may not meet again," so you depart with a song in the heart, with a smile on the lips; with a hug, with a kiss you depart. You depart in deep friendliness. It is not a divorce because there has not been any marriage at all in the first place. You were not bound to each other so you are not getting free from each other. You had always been free, you had always remained individuals.

Two individuals relating remain individuals; two individuals getting into a relationship lose their individuality. They become a couple, and to be a couple is an ugly thing. That means you have lost your freedom, you are no more yourself; the other is also no more himself or herself. Both have lost their freedom and nobody has gained anything out of it.

That's why Sartre says, "The other is hell." But still I would like to remind you: it is not the other it is the desire for the other. When you have understood the futility of desire, the utter stupidity of desire, then you relate in a totally different way; a qualitative change happens to you. You are happy with yourself; you are not seeking happiness through the other. You are so happy that you would like to share it with somebody, that's why you relate.

Relationship originates in misery, relating originates in bliss.

And when you start relating with people you also start relating with existence. And that's what true religion is: relating with existence. It is not a longing for God. You can call existence God, there is no problem in it, but it is better to call it existence because once you call it God, all the old associations with the word creep in and you start thinking of an old man sitting somewhere on a golden throne above in the sky looking at you, watching you, and then strange ideas happen out of it.

Carl Gustav Jung remembers in his memoirs that throughout his whole childhood he was obsessed with only one idea: that if God sits above and sometimes he pisses, then? - or shits, then? And his father was a priest so he used to ask his father and the father would get very angry. He would say, "Stop! Never ask such questions!" So he had to repress those questions. The more he repressed them the more they were there. He was continuously obsessed with the idea: what happens then?

He must be eating, he must be drinking, and sitting above the head, anytime.... Then he started dreaming that God was urinating and it was falling all over the earth and his shit was falling all over the earth. He himself became very guilty, "What am I...?" See! If you think of him above, this is what is going to happen - any moment!

Then stupid questions arise; out of a stupid idea they are bound to come.

God is not a person at all, God is a quality - godliness, not God. Existence is full of godliness. When you are capable of feeling joyous, fulfilled, contented, then meditating on desires, seeing the futility of desires, desires disappear and you are left without desires. Suddenly a great peace descends on you. In that peace your self-nature starts exploding. That is bliss. That bliss radiates as love, it reaches to people, it reaches to trees, it reaches to animals, it reaches to the clouds and the stars.

It starts reaching finally to the whole existence. That's what relating to existence is. Then you see the sunset and in the very sunset you see God - not Jesus crucified or Krishna playing on his flute; those are all childish ideas. You see godliness.

Have you ever observed a beautiful sunset? What more godliness can there be? You see a rose flower - what more godliness can there be? Or just leaves of grass swaying in the wind.... All this green and the red and the gold! This whole existence is so full, so overfull, overflowing with silence, with peace, with joy, with ecstasy. When you are able to be silent, peaceful, joyous, you start relating with it. That relating is religion.

Religion is not a desire for God, it is an experience of godliness. And the question is not how to find God, the question is how to drop desiring. This has to be remembered, very emphatically remembered: if you start seeking and searching for God you will remain the same person, you will never change. If you start trying to understand the nature of desire you are bound to go through a radical revolution because anybody who is a little bit intelligent is bound to see the utter futility of desire - it leads nowhere. And the moment desire disappears from your being you have arrived.

You have always been there; it was only desire that was distracting you. Sometimes the desire was for money, sometimes for God, sometimes for power, prestige, sometimes for heaven, paradise, but any desire is enough to distract you from your nature. When there is no desire, where can you go?

All desires lead you away from yourself. When there is no desire you are simply centered in your being. That very centeredness is bliss, is ecstasy, is samadhi, is nirvana.

The second question:

Pradeepo,

IT IS ABSOLUTELY NATURAL. If they were not pouring scorn on me, that would have been very unnatural. This is expected, this is how it should be. This is how people have always behaved. They are very predictable; they function like machines. They go on functioning in the same way; their consciousness has not changed at all. Although they are Christians and they are Hindus and they are Mohammedans and they are Jainas and they are Buddhists, these are only words; deep down they are as unconscious as ever. It makes no difference to them what philosophy they believe in, it is only a belief - convenient, comfortable, consolatory - a kind of solace but not a transformation.

They don't want any transformation, they are afraid of transformation. Hence, whenever there is a person with whom transformation is possible, they naturally behave in a very antagonistic way.

Yoka says:

Once you have known yourself, nothing disturbs you, no insult can insult you. The people who go on pouring scorn on me will burn their own fingers, they will suffer, because what they are doing and what they are saying is absolutely untrue. But we cannot expect truth from them - they don't know what truth is.

But, Pradeepo, you need not be worried about them - they are Lying. Everybody lies, but it does not matter since nobody listens. And, remember, a man like me is bound to be punished. Virtue is its own punishment! Virtuous actions will never go unpunished, otherwise why is Jesus crucified?

Why is Socrates poisoned? Why is Mansur murdered? Virtuous actions will never go unpunished.

Why? - for the simple reason that a man like Socrates is a danger to the society, which is rooted in lies. A man of truth is dangerous to all those who are living in lies. A man with eyes living with people who are blind cannot be tolerated because it is this man who has eyes who makes the blind people feel that they are blind. If he were not there they would have never felt themselves blind. Now his presence hurts them; his very presence shows them that something is wrong with them. And of course, there are millions of them and how can millions of people be wrong? Obviously this man must be wrong; the crowds cannot be wrong. The crowds have to defend themselves Pouring scorn on me is nothing but sheer self-defense, but it is a good sign - a good sign in the sense that they have become aware that I am here, that I am a danger to them and to their society and to their structures, to their minds, to their philosophies and ideologies. Now they will find every possible way to distract people from coming to me, to prevent people from reaching me. They will do all that they can do.

But truth, even if crucified, becomes victorious, and lies, even if crowned, are bound to be defeated.

That is the ultimate law. Buddha says: Ais dhammo sanantano, this is the eternal law of existence.

So let them do what they want to do.

Pradeepo, don't be worried about what they say; in fact, be happy that they have started taking note of me. The only thing that can be bad is if they ignore me.

Just think, if they had ignored Jesus, if they had behaved as if he never existed, he would have died by himself; there would have been no need to crucify him. He may have lived a few more years, but he was bound to die. If they had ignored him there would have been no Christianity. Christianity exists because they could not ignore Jesus.

If they had ignored Socrates you would have never heard the name of Socrates. Now we don't know who the people were who insulted him, who the people were who gathered together to kill this beautiful man. But Socrates has become immortal, his message has become immortal, his message still resounds, and wherever someone is searching for truth, he is bound to feel tremendous respect for Socrates. No country, no race, can prevent Socrates from penetrating the heart of a true seeker.

If they had ignored this man - he was already very old when they poisoned him - he would not have survived more than another five to ten years at the most.

What wrong could he have done in five, ten years? But they could not ignore him, and it is good that they became very antagonistic. They created so much fuss about this single individual with no power that twenty-five centuries have passed and thousands of powerful people have been born but nobody has that power over seekers of truth that Socrates has.

The same is true about Buddha: they could not tolerate his existence. Many times attempts were made on his life. They could not succeed in killing him - that is another matter - but they tried their best. Now nobody knows those people, who they were - they must have been just like people you come across everywhere - the crowds, the mob - but Buddha became the greatest star in the whole history of human consciousness; nobody shines so brilliantly as he. If they had ignored him we would have missed him, we would have missed something of tremendous value.

So, Pradeepo, don't be worried about what people say about me. Be happy that they are becoming interested. And not only in this country, all over the world....

One bishop in England has written to one of my sannyasins who is also a priest - he is a chaplain at the University of Cambridge. The bishop has written to him: "We have heard that you have also become involved with this dangerous man, and this is not right for a Christian priest. Please explain." Our sannyasin - Chinmaya is his name - has written a beautiful letter to the bishop saying:

"Listening to this man I became convinced that Jesus was a reality. Coming closer to this man, for the first time I became aware that Jesus is not a myth." Now, from a chaplain at Cambridge University, an important person... the bishop must be feeling very disturbed - "What to do with this man? And now Dynamic Meditation is being done in his church in Cambridge!

The Protestant Church of Germany has circulated an order to all Protestant churches in Germany that my name should not be mentioned in any church. No books, no quotations should be quoted.

That simply shows that they must be being used, people must be quoting me, otherwise why should they get worried? A committee was appointed to investigate and just the other day the West German government published a pamphlet to make people aware of the danger, particularly young people.

The pamphlet says: "Although this man says that you need not leave the marketplace, that you need not renounce your home, your job, still people become so magnetized that they leave their jobs. And so many people are missing from Germany that it is not a small problem; it is taking on epidemic proportions."

When a government becomes worried - and a faraway government.... Seminars are being arranged all over the world, for and against me. I don't even go outside my room, but they cannot even ignore a man who just lives in his room, who never goes outside. I have even stopped walking in the garden - it may be objectionable to somebody! But this is, in a way, a good sign.

Jesus was only criticized in the small vicinity where he lived. Buddha was critized only in the small province where he moved, Bihar. The name comes from his movement - the name Bihar means "where Buddha moved." So just in that small province he was criticized. I may be the first man who is being criticized all over the world; irrespective of race, country, religion - all are agreed about one thing: "This man is dangerous!" This is really something to make one happy! You should rejoice - something great is going to happen out of it. If the criticism of Buddha in only a small province created so much energy, if the ciriticism of Jesus in a small area around Jerusalem created such an impact on history, then there is great promise.

The criticism of me around the world is going to affect the whole of humanity, the whole future of humanity. Right now you cannot visualize it because right now you are in the very birth pains of the whole process. The followers of Jesus could have never conceived.... When he was being crucified they escaped. And there were not many followers, only twelve apostles, and not more than one hundred people who were deeply devoted to him, and not more than one thousand people who were in some way related to him. Everybody was against him. Who would have conceived that this carpenter's son who was being crucified in such a humiliating way, with a thief on either side, just like an ordinary criminal, would have such an impact on history that history would be divided with his name, that his name would become a demarcation line: "Before Christ" and "After Christ"? Who would have conceived it? It would have been impossible.

You cannot conceive right now what is happening, but I can see. All these things are good tidings.

Don't be worried, Pradeepo. Go on continuing in your way, go on living in your suchness, go on living in your meditation, in your celebration. That is the only message that I have given to you: Celebrate life, rejoice in life. Don't be bothered about what others say; that is their business.

The third question:

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!

And the last question:

Yogesh,

IT IS A GOOD SIGN: it means something is on the way. You become afraid of me only when you start coming closer to me; it is natural. To be close to a Master is to be close to a certain kind of death. Only stupid people are not afraid because they can't see what is going to happen: that I am taking you slowly slowly to the cliff. And once you are there and enjoying a joke, I will push you!

Sitting in an armchair at his club, a retired British colonial army officer was recounting one of his heroic adventures to a young captain.

"There I was, me boy, stalking through the jungle, when out jumps this enormous great tiger right in front of me."

"Gosh, golly, sir, what happened?"

"It stood there and went 'ROAR'!"

"Gosh, golly, sir, what happened next?"

"I fouled me breeches."

"Great Scot! That must have been incapacitating - what happened next?"

"No, no, no," stuttered the old colonel, "I fouled me breeches."

"Yes?" said the young captain, watching the old man evidently in some discomfort.

"No, no, no, I fouled me breeches when I went 'ROAR'!"

Get it?