Boxing is our animal heritage

There are only two kinds of people in the world: normally mad, and abnormally mad. Normally mad means you are mad, but not beyond limits. You are mad just like everybody else.

You can see these normally mad people watching a football match. Now can a sane person watch a football match?

They need some nuts and bolts, because with a few idiots on this side and a few idiots on that side throwing a ball, and millions of idiots so excited in the stadium and at their television sets, glued to their chairs for six hours so they cannot move, as if something immensely valuable is happening because a ball is being thrown from this side to that side… And millions more, who are not so fortunate to be able to see, keep a transistor at their ears, at least listening to the commentary.

You call this world sane?

There are boxing matches: people are hitting each other, and millions of people are so excited.

In California, the University of California has been researching… Whenever a boxing match happens in California the crime rate immediately rises by thirteen percent; and it remains thirteen percent higher for seven to ten days afterwards — rape, murder, suicide. And now it is confirmed by other studies that boxing is simply our animal heritage.

The one who gets excited in you is the animal; it is not you. You also want to kill somebody — many times you have thought of killing somebody — but you are not ready to take the consequences.

In a boxing match there is a psychological consolation; you get identified. Every boxer has his own fans. Those fans are identified with him. If he hits the opponent and the opponent’s nose is dripping blood, they are rejoicing. What they have not been able to do, somebody else is doing on their part, on their behalf.

In any world which is sane, boxing would be a crime.

It is a game, but all your games seem to be primitive — nothing of intelligence, nothing of humanity.

These normally mad people are always just on the boundary line. At any time they can slip. A small accident — the wife dies or goes away with somebody else — and you forget the normal boundary, you cross it. Then you are declared mad, insane, and immediately you have to be taken to the psychiatrist or the psychoanalyst.

And what is his function? His profession is the highest paid profession in the world. Naturally he makes people normal again, he pulls them back, he keeps them from going farther away from the normal line. His whole expertise is how to put you back and make you normally mad.

Naturally the people who are functioning as psychologists, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists are in danger because they are constantly dealing with mad people. Naturally more psychologists go mad than any other profession — the number is twice as many. More psychologists commit suicide than any other profession — the number again is twice as many. And once in a while every psychologist goes to another psychologist to put himself back into the normal world, because he is slipping out.

One would expect that at least the psychologist should be a sane person; he is trying to help other insane people. But this is not the case. They behave more insanely than anybody else, for the simple reason that from morning till night they are constantly coming in contact with all kinds of weird, strange people with weird ideas.

Osho, Beyond Enlightenment, Ch 24

Quote published in The Book: An Introduction to the Teachings of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
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