To walk on The Razor's Edge, one should not be afraid of madness – the simple reason being that you are already mad! This world is such a vast madhouse. Every child is born sane, but cannot live sane for long; it is impossible. He is brought up by other mad people, taught by other mad people, conditioned by other mad people. He is bound to become mad; just to survive he has to become mad. Only once in a while has there been a sane person – a Buddha, a Zarathustra, a Lao Tzu, a Jesus.
The strangest thing is that these sane people look mad because the so-called mad are not really mad. The really mad are the so-called sane. The people who are put in madhouses are simply very sensitive, vulnerable, delicate people; not as hard as the others who live in the marketplace. They are not so thick-skinned, that’s why they break down. The thick-skinned go on living among all kinds of madness, and go on adjusting. Man has an infinite capacity to adjust himself. Each child learns to adjust to all kinds of things. Just look in your own being. How many superstitions have you adjusted to, how many stupid beliefs are you carrying? It’s not that there are not moments when you become aware of their stupidity, but those sane moments you put aside because they are dangerous moments. Yes, once in a while the window opens, but you immediately close it. You have to close it because you are afraid the neighbors may see that your window is open. You don’t want to show your sanity to anyone.
Jesus says, “Unless you are like small children, you will not enter my Kingdom of God.” What does he mean? – he means, “Unless you become sane again, as sane as every child is, you will not enter my Kingdom of God.” Don’t be afraid of going mad – you cannot, it has already happened. Now if you really want to be afraid of something, it is of becoming sane. That’s what can happen here. If you can go on hanging around here long enough, you can become sane. But that sanity will be looked upon by others as insanity.
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