Killing certainly is a crime.
The death penalty is a crime committed by the society against a single individual, who is helpless.
I cannot call it a penalty, it is a crime.
And you can understand why it is committed: it is a revenge. Society is taking revenge because
the man did not follow the rules of the society; the society is ready to kill him. But nobody bothers
that when somebody murders, it shows that man is psychologically sick. Rather than sending him to
imprisonment or to be executed, he should be sent into a nursing home where he can be taken care
of – physically, psychologically, spiritually. He is sick. He needs all the compassion of the society;
there is no question of penalty, punishment.
Yes, it is true, one man is murdered; but we cannot do anything about it. By murdering this man do
you think the other will come back to life? If that were possible, I would be all in support of this man
being removed – he is not worth being part of the society – and the other should be revived.
But that does not happen. The other is gone forever; there is no way to revive him. Yes, you can do
one thing, you can kill this man too. You are trying to wash blood with blood, mud with mud. You are
not aware of what has happened in history in many cases.
Three hundred years ago, in many cultures the madman was thought to be pretending. In many
other cultures he was thought to be possessed by ghosts. In other cultures he was thought to be
mad, but treatable by punishment. And these were the three ways mad people were taken care of.
They were treated by beatings – strange treatment! – and by taking their blood out. Now you give
blood transfusions; they used to do just the opposite – they used to take the blood out of the man. It
was thought that he had too much energy. Naturally when his blood was taken out he became weak;
he started showing signs of weakness because so much blood was taken out, and it was thought
they had cured him of his madness.
By beating a man, naturally once in a while it used to happen that the man came to his senses. It is
almost as if a man is asleep and you start beating him and he wakes up. A madman has fallen out
of his conscious mind. If you beat him too hard, once in a while it may happen that he wakes up into
his consciousness again. That became a proof that beating is the right treatment. But is used to
happen only once in a while; ninety-nine percent of the cases were unnecessarily beaten. But that
one exception was the rule.
It was thought that he was possessed by spirits, ghosts; then too beat him, because if he is
possessed by ghosts the beating will reach the ghost, not him. You are not beating him, you are
really beating the ghosts who are possessing him, and because of the beating they will escape. And
once in a while, but just once in a while, that is one percent, no more than that ....
I have been in one place – it was very famous for mad people. Hundreds of mad people were
brought to that place. It was on the bank of a river, a temple, and the priest must have been a
butcher for at least a few hundred lives. He looked like a butcher and he gave a good beating. The
mad people were chained, given a good beating, no food, and very strong laxatives. And I have
seen that once in a while a person came to his senses.
Strong laxatives for a few days with no food cleaned his inner system. Beatings brought him back a
little consciousness. No food, hunger – a hungry man cannot afford to be mad because his body is
in such torture. To be mad you need a little bit of comfort in your life situation.
You can see it: the more comfortable a society, the more luxurious, affluent a culture, the more
people go mad. The more poor a society – starving, hungry – the less people go mad. Madness
needs, in the first place, a mind. But a hungry person has no nourishment for the mind. He is
undernourished: his mind is not in a situation to go nuts. For that the mind needs more energy than
ordinarily is involved in life.
No comments:
Post a Comment