Excess Is Illness
Obsession means your life is hypnotized by one thing, you have lost all sense of proportion. Then your life will be ugly, stupid.
Herman loved food, food was his beloved. Food was his religion, food was his God. He would have agreed absolutely with the Indian seers who declared, “ANAM BRAHM – food is God.” Of course. in a totally different sense.
Fearing a future world famine – and he was always afraid of a world famine – Herman hoarded a ten-year supply of canned food.
“Herman,” complained his wife, “what are we going to do? The garage and the house are stacked to the ceiling with canned goods.”
“Don’t worry,” answered Herman. “I know what I am doing.”
“Herman,” wailed his wife, “don’t you get tired of moving these cases of cans each time we go to bed? Our bedroom is like a warehouse!”
“Don’t worry,” Herman assured her. “We will never go hungry.”
But one night Herman had such terrible stomach cramps a doctor had to be summoned. Carrying his kit through a maze of cases, the doctor somehow found the moaning patient.
“Doctor,” cried Herman, “is it possible that eating so much canned food has affected my stomach?”
The doctor examined Herman. “No, it is not the food you ate,” diagnosed the doctor. “It is the food you lifted. You have a hernia.”
And you will find these people everywhere. There are people who think only of money – as if their whole life has only one goal: to leave in the world as big a bank balance as possible. There are people who only want some political power. Their whole life is devoted to only one thing: how to become the president of a country, or the prime minister of a country. These are obsessed people. They have missed their whole lives, they cannot enjoy anything. They are not herenow, they are always focussed on their single idea.
And anything can become an obsession. Cleanliness can become an obsession. I used to live in a house, a friend’s house – his wife was just neurotic about cleanliness, a perfectionist. Now, cleanliness is not bad – this is the trouble that these neurotic people can rationalize. Cleanliness is not bad but one is not here only to be clean.
She was so mad that the whole day she was scrubbing floors and cleaning walls and the furniture. Her house was worth seeing – but only worth seeing, not to be used at all. She would not invite any guest, because if their children came then there would be trouble. Even her husband would not use the furniture, because if something was scratched then there would be trouble. Now cleanliness is one thing, good, but cleanliness is not all.
To remain sane means to remember the golden mean. Excess is illness. Avoid all extremes and remain in the middle. That is Pythagoras’ message to you, the golden mean. Always remain in the middle, never move to the extreme, and you will remain sane and healthy and whole.
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