Breakdown

 

 

In English we have two words, very beautiful, of great significance: one is breakdown, the other is breakthrough. Breakdown is when you don’t know any meditation and your logic becomes irrelevant. You don’t know how to reach to the heart and your head has become absolutely meaningless to you, then there is a breakdown, you go insane. But if you know meditativeness—meditativeness means the art of transforming the opposites into complementaries—then there is a breakthrough: you enter into a new world, a new vision, a new perspective.

 

In a sense you are again mad. That‘s why Jesus is known as mad. Francis used to call himself mad—and for all practical purposes he if mad. Buddha and Mahavira... they are all mad in a sense. They are not sane the way you are sane, either they are below you or above you, but one thing is certain: they are somewhere else. If they are below you it is a breakdown. If they are above you it is a breakthrough. Meditation is the art of transforming madness into buddhahood. Meditation is the art of taking you beyond logic and yet keeping your sanity intact. Meditation is the greatest discovery ever made, and I don‘t think there is ever going to be another discovery which can surpass meditation.

 

-Osho, “Theologia Mystica, #5, Q1“

 

 

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Mind has both the possibilities. Under tension, anxiety, anguish it can break down, but breakdown is not a breakthrough. Breakdown brings you below the mind; it is insanity. Breakthrough comes out of watching the mind in deep silence, in great awareness. Then you go beyond the mind and to go beyond the mind is to attain authentic sanity.

 

-Osho, “Bodhidharma: The Greatest Zen Master, #15“