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Madness

''Living continuously with neurotic and psychotic people, you start thinking, in an unconscious way, that this is what humanity is. We become by and by like the people we live with, because nobody is an island. So if you are working with sad people, you will become sad. If you are working with happy people, you will become happy, because everything is infectious. Neurosis is infectious; suicide also is infectious.

If you live around people who are enlightened, very aware, then something in you starts responding to this higher possibility. When you live with people who are very low, in a perverted state, then something morbid in you starts corresponding and relating to them. So to be continuously surrounded by ill people, is in a way dangerous, unless you protect yourself. And there is nothing like meditation to give you protection. Then you can give more than you are giving and yet you will remain unaffected. You can help more than you are helping, because the higher your energy, the more is the possibility to help. Otherwise the psychiatrist, the healer and the healee are almost on the same ground; maybe a little difference of degrees, but the difference of degrees is so small that it is not worth considering.

The psychiatrist can go into madness very easily - just a slight push, some accidental thing, and he can move into the condemned territory. People who are neurotic were not always neurotic. Just two days ago they were normal people, and again they can become normal. So normality and abnormality are not qualitative distinctions, just quantative: ninety-nine degrees, one hundred degrees, one hundred and one degrees - that type of difference.

In fact, in a better world, every psychiatrist should be trained deeply in meditation, otherwise he should not be allowed to practice. This is the only way you can protect yourself and not be vulnerable - and you can really help. ''
Osho