258
Aptavani-2
The World – A hospital of the mad
One man told me he will come and do my darshan and
everything else, but he did not want liberation. ‘We’ told him,
“That is fine because the liberation ‘we’ give is not cheap and
besides you already have what you want; bondage!”
If you go to visit an asylum and tell the mad people not
to wave their arms about, then they will think you are mad. They
will wonder why you are behaving the way you do. Whom do
they perceive as sane? Other mad people appear sane to them.
They speak the same language as they do and so they believe
the insane as sane and because your language differs from theirs,
they think you are insane. Therefore, only if you can talk in their
language, you should remain in the mental hospital. The entire
world has been converted into a ‘mental hospital’. ‘We’ had
been saying since 1942, that the world was gradually turning into
a mental hospital and that one day it will become one. Today it
appears that way; we begin to wonder whether some people
ought to be in a mental hospital. This is the problem, you say
one thing and there is no telling what they are going to say. We
can never know the exact answer or the question, it has become
just like a mental hospital, so how can we even talk about the
problems in an actual mental hospital. All day long, people
behave as if they are mad. They quarrel even when someone
breaks glassware in the house; that is what you call being mad.
What should human beings be like? They should be humane;
they should be wise. If someone brings up the topic about
broken glass all over again, one should say, “We don’t have to
discuss this anymore. The glass is broken and that is the end of
it.” To keep talking or discussing the past is foolishness; you