madness
construct a superhuman body, which would eventually equate him with
his deity. Ramakrishna (d. 1886) would sit inert for long periods of time,
exhibit wide mood swings, act like a demented person, converse with the
image of Kālī, and feed the image. He performs unorthodox religious
actions, and he is confused about his own identity by dressing, talking,
and behaving like a woman or like Hanuman, a monkey god, by sitting
naked in a tree. Moreover, Ramakrishna hears strange sounds and voices,
experiences visions, and goes suddenly into trance states.
There are also some mad figures to be discovered within the Islamic,
Eastern Orthodox and Latin Christian religious traditions. The Muslim
Abū Yazīd al-Bistāmī (d. 874), for instance, once tells a pilgrim on the
way to Mecca to circle him instead seven times, and he kisses a skull that
he finds and alleges that it symbolizes Sufi annihilation (fanā). An even
more controversial Muslim figure is al-Hallāj (d. 922) who dies as a Sufi
martyr after he claims to be God and fails to recant his assertion. Symeon
of Emesa of the Eastern Orthodox tradition lives on wild herbs and roots,
wanders naked, enters the women’s bath, and relieves himself in public,
and allegedly carries the carcass of a dead dog in public. In addition, St.
Francis of Assisi (1182–1266) is deemed mad by others and often driven
away by stones and mud thrown at him. Obeying a remark made by Pope
Innocent III, he rolls in the mud with a herd of pigs. As a young man,
Francis renounces the world and his father’s wealth to pursue a career of
preaching and a life of poverty.
The Zen Buddhist master Ikkyū Sōjun (1394–1481) is renowned for
his erratic and bizarre behavior even calling himself “Crazy-cloud.” He
acts contrary to the decorum expected of a Zen-enlightened master by
frequently engaging his passion at brothels, where he claims great wis-
dom can be found, drinking wine to the point of intoxication, roaming the
streets of the city with a dead dog tied to a string attached to a long bam-
boo pole, playing the role of a warrior by carrying a fake sword, and
entering into a love affair late in his life with a blind poet.
These various examples of religious madness are very suggestive.
Madness points to the freedom of the figure to act in unpredictable and
tumultuous ways, and he/she is not encumbered by society because the
madness places the person outside of the confining structure of the world
and the social patterns of society. Thus the mad person is a social misfit.
Within the context of the person’s madness, the individual is free to play,
a voluntary activity that is joyful and amusing. By breaking down bound-
aries, the mad figure surprises us, makes us laugh, and provides an oppor-
tunity for us to reflect on the folly of human existence. At the same time,
madness embodies an iconoclastic and irrational spirit. Madness can be
irresistible and contagious for the followers of such figures and unify