The first question:
I come from a family where there are four suicides on the maternal side, including my grandmother. How does this affect one’s death? What helps to overcome this perversion of death which runs as a theme through the family?
The phenomenon of death is one of the most mysterious and so is the phenomenon of suicide. Don’t decide from the surface what suicide is. It can be many things. My own understanding is that people who commit suicide are the most sensitive people in the world, very intelligent. Because of their sensitivity, because of their intelligence, they find it difficult to cope with this neurotic world.
The society is neurotic. It exists on neurotic foundations. Its whole history is a history of madness, of violence, war, destruction. Somebody says, “My country is the greatest country in the world” – now this is neurosis. Somebody says, “My religion is the greatest and the highest religion in the world” – now this is neurosis. And this neurosis has gone to the very blood and to the bones, and people have become very, very dull, insensitive. They had to become, otherwise life would be impossible.
You have to become insensitive to cope with this dull life around you; otherwise you start falling out of tune. If you start falling out of tune with the society, the society declares you mad. The society is mad, but if you are not in adjustment with it, it declares you mad. So either you have to go mad, or you have to find a way out of the society; that’s what suicide is. Life becomes intolerable. It seems impossible to cope with so many people around you – and they are all insane. What will you do if you are thrown into an insane asylum?
It happened to one of my friends; he was in a mental asylum. He was put there by the court for nine months. After six months – he was mad, so he could do it – he found a big bottle of phenol in the bathroom and he drank it. For fifteen days he suffered diarrhea and vomiting, and because of that diarrhea and vomiting he came back into the world. His system was purified, the poison disappeared. He was telling me that those next three months were the most difficult – “The first six months were beautiful because I was mad, and everybody was also mad. Things were going simply beautifully, there was no problem. I was in tune with the whole madness around me.”