Eccentricity

 

 

A crazy person is one who is still resisting. A very very crazy person is one who has surrendered to it. That's the only difference! A crazy person is one who feels that there is something which is going crazy, but he is still fighting it, resisting it, repressing it -- still is against it, not allowing it. If you do that, then one day you will really go crazy. And when I say 'really go crazy', I mean it will not be a spiritual growth -- it will be simply a fall.

 

If you go on repressing craziness... everybody has craziness, because God Himself is crazy. He never creates anybody without a certain streak of craziness in him. And the greater the person is, the more crazy, more eccentric. Buddha, Mahavir, Krishna, Christ -- these are eccentric people. And psychologists are right in a way: they call them abnormal. They are abnormal because they are super-normal. They are abnormal because they are not the common lot.

 

If a Buddha walks on the earth, he is absolutely unique. No precedent, never has it happened before -- and never again is it going to happen! He happens only once. He is unrepeatable, irreplaceable. He is a unique moment in the consciousness of humanity. Of course, eccentric; bound to be a little crazy. People will think that he has gone mad: he was the son of a king; he renounced the palace, his beautiful wife, all comforts -- and became a beggar! Does it seem normal ?

 

The normal is just the reverse: a beggar wants to become the emperor -- that is normal. Every beggar wants to become the emperor. Everybody wants to become the emperor. Ambition is very ordinary. To become rich, to become famous, to become known to the world, to become very powerful, is an ordinary phenomenon, nothing special in it. But an emperor getting down from his throne and moving like a beggar -- it is eccentric, crazy, very very crazy.

 

If you go on suppressing your craziness.... Craziness is your uniqueness. Craziness is simply that element in you which cannot fit with anybody else in the world, which can never become part of the machinery of the society, which can never be a cog in the wheel. That's what craziness is. Your individuality is your craziness.

 

The society does not want your individuality: it wants efficient mechanisms, robots. It does not want crazy people. It does not want Picasso's, it does not want Buddhas, it does not want Wagners, Nietzsches -- no. Once in a while they are good just for a change, but too many of them the world does not need. And they are very disturbing people: they shatter many ideals, they go on pulling humanity ruthlessly towards some unknown goal. They are never for the ordinary. Something extraordinary has to happen, only then can man feel at home. The usual and the ordinary and the common is futile, frustrating.

 

The society does not want them. The society can tolerate a few -- that too society has learnt with much difficulty. Otherwise, why should Jesus be crucified? The society could not tolerate the man. He was risking not only his own life -- he was risking other people's lives. He was opening some crazy door, not only for himself but for others also. The society was afraid.

 

Society wants people almost dead. Only one requirement is needed of living people by the society and that is that they should be efficient. They should work hard, produce more, be obedient, good citizens, live comfortably, and die silently. They should not create any noise in the world. They should not even sing a song. They should not dance on the streets. They should simply live as if they never existed. They should live as numbers not as individuals. They should not assert their individuality in any way. They should not say "I am." They should be slaves. They should not be free people.

 

Society represses all sorts of individuality. And that repressed individuality, if it becomes too much, one day explodes -- then a person is crazy. This is my observation: that the crazy people who are confined in mental asylums are very sensitive people, more sensitive than the ordinary lot. They could not tolerate their inner individuality -- it exploded. They tried hard! They forced it as deep as possible, but they were fragile people, sensitive people; they were not dull.

 

To be crazy, some intelligence is needed. To be just a part of the collective, no intelligence is needed -- any stupid person can become a perfect citizen. In fact, the more stupid you are, the more obedient you will be, the less rebellious you will be. Always you will be ready to fall in line with any fool who comes to command. Anybody who shouts loudly, you will fall into his feet; he will become your leader.

 

But to be an individual you need intelligence, sharp consciousness, because it is very difficult to live an individual life. Surrounded by so many stupid people, surrounded by the crowd, surrounded by the dull and the dead, it is very difficult to remain alive, throbbing, streaming. Then you are very alone.

 

So those who are very sensitive.... And now in the West, modern psychiatrists have become aware of the fact that whomsoever you call crazy are the cream. You ask R. D. Laing. Now they say the crazy people are the cream; they should have been allowed more freedom, they should have been helped to be individuals, and then humanity would have risen higher than ever -- because they are the vanguard.

 

Have you ever heard about any stupid person going mad? I am not talking about retarded people; when I say 'mad', I don't mean the retarded. The retarded person is physically retarded; the problem is not of the mind. A crazy person is one who is not retarded. In fact, crazy people have higher I.Q.'s than ordinary people. Crazy people have higher I.Q.'s than your politicians. A mad Nietzsche has a greater I.Q. than Richard Nixon. A mad Van Gogh has a higher I.Q. than Lenin, Mao, Stalin. A Picasso has greater intelligence than any Adolf Hitler. But they are all crazy people. In fact, they look crazy because the world is very dull.

 

If everybody is allowed individuality, crazy people will not be found anywhere. If everybody is allowed to be rebellious and to be himself, authentically to be himself, there will be no need for mental asylums. Mad people are victims of the society, of a repressive society. First the society forces sensitive people to go crazy and then forces them into mental asylums or forces them into hospitals, gives them electric shocks, insulin shocks, forces them onto the psychiatrist's couch for years together -- a sheer wastage of potential, and of the purest potential.

 

In primitive societies, crazy people don't exist. The more primitive a society is, the less is the possibility of anybody going mad -- because in a primitive society individuality is accepted. In a primitive society craziness is accepted as individuality. Somebody wants to live in this way, somebody else wants to live in some other way. If somebody walks naked in a primitive society, people accept it. It is his choice, nothing is wrong in it! But if you walk naked in London, or in New York, you are mad.

 

Just think of Mahavir: he was very clever -- he chose India to be born in, and he chose a right time. If he had to choose the twentieth century and he was to be born in New York, can you think what would have happened to him? He would have been under psychiatric treatment. Naked! -- they would have given him shocks, electric shocks; they would have dulled his mind. They would not have been able to accept his individuality.

What is wrong? A man wants to live naked under the sky, with the wind, with the sun; a man wants to be open to nature -- what is wrong in it? Why should a man be forced to wear clothes? If he likes to -- perfectly good. There is no need to force him to remain naked, because then you do the same again. But if somebody likes to be naked, what is wrong in it?

Just think of yourself sitting naked in your drawing-room, and a guest comes, and you welcome him -- he will escape! He will not come again. He will go directly to the police station. And you were not doing anything to anybody: just sitting in your drawing-room, naked, enjoying, listening to music.

You don't allow even small children to be naked. Such a repressive and violent society! The by-product is craziness, madness.

I accept you as you are. I have never come across any crazy person, because the very word is meaningless. People are different! -- that's all. And the difference is beautiful. That's what makes life rich. That's what gives life variety. That's what gives life spice. Crazy people are the very salt of the earth. But if you reject it, if you become afraid of it, if you choose the social structure rather than your own individual freedom, then you will go on accumulating your craziness in the basement of your being. One day or other, if you are an intelligent person, a sensitive person, that will explode -- you are sitting on a volcano. And once it explodes, then you will not be capable -- then you will go mad.

The only way not to go mad is to accept your individual forms, individual styles, to accept so totally that you never repress anything -- and you will always remain sane.

 

-Osho, “The Discipline of Transcendence, Vol 3, #3, Q5”