The Structure of Madness

Madness is the belief in what is not. The common image of the madman who is Napoleon is crude, but correct: he affirms nothingness.

Pursue this logic, and all are mad. We are mad in our faith that will originates action, that “if” governs “then.” This is humanity’s primordial error.

The Faith in Contingency

This is the belief in contingency. It appears when we say, “I am this way because of my past,” and, “If things were different, I would be different.”

Here is the core: we treat non-being as being. Only the past that appeared exists. An “alternative” past is nothing. To believe it could have been is to let nothingness appear as “possibility.” This is madness: believing non-being can be.

Regret and guilt are the ghosts born from this: the conviction that we could have acted otherwise.

If the past’s madness is regret for what never was, the future’s is anxiety for what will never be. The same error, opposite directions.

The Future’s Mirage

Belief in an “open future” is belief in nothing. It is the root of modern unease: the fear of choice, the terror of the wrong path. We see crossroads where there are none. The future we fear is not.

This madness deepens. We believe these ghosts come from what we “are now.” But we do not dwell in an instant. We are, eternally. Being does not become; it appears. Our decisions are not choices from becoming, but manifestations of our eternal nature. To believe we could choose against our nature is to believe an oak could become a dolphin.

Practical Madness

We live tormented by pasts that never were and futures that will never be. This is the insidious madness: believing what is could become what is not. Humanity fights a duel with ghosts, trying to correct a necessity that has never erred. In fleeing what is, the mind traps itself in nothingness.

The Dissolution

The way out is not “self-work,” which is just madness in disguise. Liberation comes from truth: there is no separate “I.” The observer, the observed, and the observing are one appearing of Being. What you call “yourself,” your fears, your desire to change, all this is what you are. Nothing is accidental. All is necessary.

Action Without an Actor

When this truth appears, anxiety dissolves because its question is void. The future reveals itself as mirage. Action remains, but becomes transparent: not choice, but manifestation. The inevitable unfolding of the eternal.

One no longer lives in the present; one is the present.

The Eternal Stillness

With the madness of contingency gone, what remains is not emptiness, but a lucid stillness. Movement is now perfect rest, for it does not move toward a future, but is the eternal appearing within time.

And madness ends.
Not because it is cured,
but because the truth of Being cannot be ill.
It is what it is.
There has never been anything else.