The need to define sanity indicates a desire to prove ourselves sane.
But the whole history of humanity proves that humanity lacks sanity as
much
as it lacks anything. Basically, humanity proves itself insane by fighting
five thousand wars in the last three thousand years. The greed, jealousy,
and selfishness that prevails throughout human social orders indicates the
dominance of something other than sanity.
Sane people exult in doing what comes naturally, in satisfying a
congenital
appetite for the beauty of reason, the thrill of understanding, the
excitement of knowing reality directly.
A wise man once defined sanity as "coming out of the mind into the open,
into the silence, where no thought, no desire disturbs you. In that pool
of
silence, with not a single ripple upon it, sanity abides."
Sanity means to secure your happiness, and by extension, the happiness of
your neighbors, family, friends, and community, since one cannot really
feel
happy when surrounded by misery.
When your means fulfill your ends, if you can manage that -- the harmony
between the means and the end -- then you've got sanity. When your means
don't satisfy your end, and you continue to repeat the same means, never
arriving at a gratifying end, then you've got a neurosis. "Make every act
of
your life dedicated to love and sanity arises out of it," a romantic man
has
said.
When liberated people want to play the game of sanity, they live as sanely
as anyone can live. Then they can outdo Aristotle with logic and reason.
They can follow every rule and regulation. But if they want to play the
lunatic game, then they can become as demagogic, theologic, and ideologic
as
any other maniac.
The perfectly sane brain thinks only when necessary. It reverts to
ecstatic
tranquility (i.e., it allows thought-noise to dissipate, clearing the way
for the emergence of superlative sentience or learning) whenever it can,
for
as long as it can. Conversely, the insane brain cannot stop chattering.
A psychologist asked a psychonomer, "How do you deal with neurotics?"
The psychonomer replied, "We trap them?"
"Oh? And how do you do that?" asked the psychologist.
"By making it impossible for them to ask any more questions," answered the
psychonomer.
Keep smiling,
--J. R.
"Something beckons within the reach of each of us
to save heroic genius. Find it, and do it.
For as goes heroic genius, so goes humankind."
--Alligator Grundy, _Analects of Atman_
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