There is a link between madness and genius and, in that, a bond between social conformity and less-then inspired thinking. The word madness comes from the Germanic word "gemædde", meaning out of one's mind. But this word comes from the Latin root mei which means to change or move, as in migrare; "to change location". The mad exist in another location in their mind and in that occupy another tier of reality because they have by choice or circumstance migrated into the oddest corners of their neural roadways. But, the link between genius and madness suggests not all of these less popular tiers of thought are less than. More than that, the danger, I believe, is only in the inability of those within these strange zones to communicate their reality or the unwillingness to communicate.
In Sanksrit madness is unmada (uh-n-muh-duh). The word has multiple meanings that also express the volatile worth of madness; drunk, exaltation, furious, extravagant, possession, and my favorite, bloom. The final link is the word genius. Rooted in the concept of being possessed by guardian spirits that bestow the "blooming" of adaptive madness. Genius is the gift of well-integrated madness. Madness is the curse of being alone in that alien world.
Again, the point of this little blog is to express that the adaptiveness of the psychologically eerie is entirely tethered to the ability to communicate the alien perspectives and, of course, that meditation is a process that enriches a sense of genius, and in that integrated-madness. Sanskrit was a language specifically designed to communicate the oddity of the soul. In ancient Bharat (the true name of India) people spoke Vedic. Sanskrit was a scholar's language, the language of spiritual unmada-madness. Because a language was designed, the God-drunk sages had a bridge from which others were tempted to cross. In that, spirituality exploded in the country and for many years Bharat was in a renaissance of God and soul.
Even emotions like anger, jealousy, hatred, and fury become constructive when they are communicated in a way that is understandable and therefore digestible by others and most of all ourselves. For that reason, therapists across the world can put good food on their tables. Perhaps, the madness of the modern world, the death of Earth as we know it, the rise of depression and psychological isolation, the addiction to tech, and the sense of an untouched collective potential are anchored in lost dialogue. We have stopped speaking to each other, our minds, hearts, and the elements and animals of the planet. So, more than just hiring therapists to help us with speaking about our feelings, which should be a baseline ability, to migrare as a species into our genius we must learn to speak the language of all existence. This does not come from simple mindfulness but deep meditative work, and in my opinion, the study of Sanskrit and the embrace of madness.
It was a neon sunset. The sky dripped fluorescent pink and lavenders and of course, the Mexican beach was full of vacationers escaping life. Up and down, well-worked fishing boats wafted alone in the darkening water for tomorrow's work. It was all ordinary enough, until amidst the even distribution of people naturally partitioning the sand, all lounging on the cooling beach perfectly spaced apart; among families, couples, singles, friends, and a myriad of workers selling everything from rugs to glass drink stirs to spiced fruit on wooden sticks and oysters on styrofoam plates; a single woman stood bold and symmetrical. I was seated behind her, noticing her intention. Seen but overlooked, or better ignored as an oddity, she was free from the "quotient of mimicry", as Oscar Wilder says, and in that she was bold and invisible.
Jean shorts, white shirt; all of it soaking wet. She was in her mid 50's with rich, dark, brown skin. She could care less about anything except whatever she was standing in front of, which was not the ocean at sunset, at least not only the ocean at sunset. I could only imagine it was the glory of the infinite, collapsing into time, expressed by the image of a star falling below the horizon. All of it contained in a moment equally infinite but distinctly reachable. It was her and everything, all of it happening nowhere. I relied on my bouts of madness and possession to attempt seeing through her eyes. That's the power, after all, of presence and the value of clawing, smoking, tripping, sitting, or stilling our way into the flow of the "Here and Now." We share the genius of the mad, the bliss of genius, as those who see God know those who see God and those that have tasted it can empathize with those that have found themselves through it or lost themselves to the holy addiction. Either way, we can communicate, and therefore, it's all good.
She stood in a power stance. Her legs like two palm trees sinking in the sand were a hips-width distance apart. Everything else either moved to the evening's oceanic rhythms or slouched tipsy and playful on towels and laughter. She stood as a rebel, erect. Her collarbone wide and her chin lifted as if in competition with the horizon. "Pray with madness," I thought. We should all pray in public. Pray in the sense of being possessed with gratitude, spirit, and connection by the thing in front of us. This woman was teaching the unnoticing beach the alternative bloom. But the students were not ready. So the teacher, while there, did not appear.
I watched curiously and with respect because I know it takes a lot of confidence and a reserve of devotion to be sincerely spiritual in a mass of people that in general, by design, are floating on the surface of mindlessness, in some state of neurologically-comatosed cruise control - the favored mode of thought. Unmad. Safe. Stable. Sterile. In that state, judgment is abundant but also shallow and unthreatening. So she was free to be intoxicated. At this point, I didn't know how intoxicated she was and that it was just devotion and will but more so substances and a multi-year high that compelled her to dance with heaven.
Legendary director, Akira Kurosawa acknowledged the worth of madness as so many artists and deep thinkers do from their comfort zone outside the margins. "In a mad world, only the mad are sane." This woman was mad. That I'd come to find out but all I saw was her sanity, even after the realization of her circumstance and that is why I write this. I am unsure if I believe in madness, anymore. Sanity is only a circumstance of mass adoption. What we agree upon is sanity. Sanity is only a cognitive popularity contest. Sanity is easy. Sanity is the great neutral. But that, rarely, leads us anywhere as Carl Jung states, "Man strives towards reason only so he can make rules for himself." But life operates with its own rules. To break our reason and dance with the irrational is the pivotal unpatterning that leads that brave individual to the dance floor of nature and gods where there are no rules and the only hospitable environment where creativity and genius exist.
Again, the woman turned out to be seriously high. She was not the noble hero, she was the lost soul. But are they exclusive? As she stumbled back towards the street, I watched the waiter glance at her as she mumbled in broken Spanish to the sand, no one, and herself. She dropped to her knees out of nowhere, picked up a handful of sand, and blew it off her hands like a shaman in prayer dusting magic breath into the face of an initiate about to open the dream-box in their mind and body. She spoke to no one. She spoke to something. We, the unmad, endlessly "talk", text, email, and interact through tech but do we communicate? Food for thought.
The waiter shook his head with a bizarre candor. He was disappointed, saddened. Turns out, only a few years ago she was an extremely attractive, vibrant, and put-together local but drugs had gotten to her. Now, she only danced. In India, if this was self-induced, she might've been a sage. Her commitment to the other side, because of how she entered through drugs, ate away at her face and carved a roughness into her body language. There was a fury in her eyes. But, what would you trade for visions of the eternal? What's a face compared to a front-row seat to the stars? What's the company of the mundane when compared to the company of nature itself and the timeless voices that move it forward?
The reality is there doesn't have to be a trade-off when these alternative visions are built from within. Substances will make us mad in the sense of crazy and devolved. But, when the "bloom" of unmada is self-generated the alternative perspective of madness is seamlessly integrated into the psyche that was there previously. It is only a refurbishing of the edifice of the self and mind not a complete breakdown of it. When madness is skillfully self-generated the linchpin that redeems the migration into higher thought remains - an ability to communicate the new vision.
“There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.” - Nietzche
“No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.” - Aristotle
Isaac Newton is a perfect example. He is the father of Newtonian physics and discovered the three laws of motion. He was an influential force in the creation of calculus and provided extensive insights into the nuances of optics. But genius is well-communicated madness.
There is a famous occurrence where Newton locked himself in a dark room for days to achieve maximum ocular dilation. With his pupils as open as they could be, he then opened a window and used a device to stream a beam of sunlight in his eyes. He nearly went blind. To heal he had to, again, return to darkness for a few days. No sane person, no un-mad person, would be willing to investigate the world with such devotion and self-sacrifice. But these un-mad will never discover secret laws of nature. Again, is the sacrifice of our eyes and their ability to see the obvious worth a glimpse of realities' secrets?
To the flock of laughing, happy, sleeping, and slouching tourists (and most of us are only that in the vacation of mortal life)… NO!… the discovery of the unknown is not worth the sweetness of the ordinary. But, some believe otherwise and a fraction of these umada, after trekking into madness, can come back and use language to make sense of insanity. At that point, speaking in magic, they ascend as genius - possessed by the higher to shine a light on the rest of us.
Maybe one day, the dancing, once gorgeous, Mexican woman who spoke to the unknown might come out down from the sky with words that put shape to the infinite. Maybe, we will all come down from the delirium of self-pity, self-righteousness, thought-consumed, ego-driven mundane madness, and learn to communicate to the non-human world. Perhaps, once we embrace our madness we will lift ourselves to genius and fulfill a lost sense of purpose as custodians of the Earth and ambassadors of the Gods and nature.
