Perhaps if you know you are insane then you are not insane. Or you are becoming sane, finally.

What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?

preserve my sanity, for to this I am reduced. Safety and the assurance of safety are things of the past. Whilst I live on here there is but one thing to hope for, that I may not go mad, if, indeed, I be not mad already. If I be sane, then surely it is maddening to think that of all the foul things that lurk in this hateful place.

It would not be too strong to say that I felt sane for the first time in my life. And yet the change in my consciousness seemed entirely straightforward. I was simply talking to my friend — about what, I don’t recall — and realized that I had ceased to be concerned about myself. I was no longer anxious, self-critical, guarded by irony, in competition, avoiding embarrassment, ruminating about the past and future, or making any other gesture of thought or attention that separated me from him. I was no longer watching myself through another person’s eyes.

Watch your thoughts and watch yourself watching the thoughts. The state of freedom from all thoughts will happen suddenly and by the bliss of it you shall recognize it.

Bring the mind into sharp focus and make it alert so that it can immediately intuit truth, which is everywhere. The mind must be emancipated from old habits, prejudices, restrictive thought processes and even ordinary thought itself.

O SANITY

It’s only sane to be insane
Psychotic builds a castle
And neurotic lives in it
I don’t know what to do with my sanity
When the world’s at the verge of calamity
O’ sanity, o’ sanity
What am I to do with you
Drink up, shoot up, anything you please
But you’re always standing behind me
Like a devil in hell
O’ sanity, sanity
Why don’t you let me go?
Let go, let go!
Cut it out!

When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane.

Sanity is viewed as a matter of getting these fluid portions of the self to play well together, without letting them become rigid or too well defined. In human beings, this is best achieved through interaction with other minds — other people — beyond the self. Without the push-back of external beings — outside communities and objective events — the subjective self can get lost in solipsism or fractured delusion.

"For the first time in my life I was being absolutely myself, freed from all inhibitions of body, intellect and training...I seem to remember asking myself if I was insane and answering "Of course I am-sanity is a compromise. Sanity is the thing that keeps one back.

With our limited senses and consciousness, we only glimpse a small portion of reality. Furthermore, everything in the universe is in a state of constant flux. Simple words and thoughts cannot capture this flux or complexity. The only solution for an enlightened person is to let the mind absorb itself in what it experiences, without having to form a judgment on what it all means. The mind must be able to feel doubt and uncertainty for as long as possible. As it remains in this state and probes deeply into the mysteries of the universe, ideas will come that are more dimensional and real than if we had jumped to conclusions and formed judgments early on.

"Generally, in English, one way in which we describe an insane person is like this: "He is out of his mind." See, if you were out of your mind, would you be insane? Insanity is of the mind always, isn't it? Only if you are in the mind you can be insane. If you are out of your mind, you will be perfectly sane; you will become like a Mansur, or a Jesus or someone who is beyond other people's understanding. Others may think they are insane, but they are the only few sane people that have happened on the planet."

Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus, he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also. Thus, he believes that children were indeed the kingdom of heaven, but nevertheless ought to be obedient to the kingdom of earth. He admired youth because it was young and age because it was not. It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of the healthy man. The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid.

The world that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, heal our relationship with our past, and expand our sense of now by releasing the fear in our minds. This changed perception leads to the recognition that we are not separate, but that we have always been joined.