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Confusion is a great opportunity.

The problem with people who are not confused is great – they think they know, and they know not. The people who believe that they have clarity are really in great trouble; their clarity is very superficial. In fact they know nothing of clarity; what they call clarity is just stupidity.

Idiots are very, very clear – clear in the sense that they do not have the intelligence to feel confusion. To feel confusion needs great intelligence. Only the intelligent ones feel confusion; otherwise the mediocres go on moving in life, smiling, laughing, accumulating money, struggling for more power and fame. If you see them you will feel a little jealous; they look so confident, they even look happy.

If they are succeeding, if their money is increasing and their power is increasing and their fame is growing, you will feel a little jealous. You are so confused and they are so clear about their life; they have a direction, they have a goal, they know how to attain it, and they are managing, they are already achieving, they are climbing the ladder. And you are just standing there, confused about what to do, what not to do, what is right and what is wrong. But this has always been so; the mediocre remains certain. It is only for the more intelligent to feel confusion, chaos.

Confusion is a great opportunity. It simply says that through the mind there is no way. If you are really confused – as you say, [“I am utterly confused”] – if you are really confused, you are blessed. Now something is possible, something immensely valuable; you are on the verge. If you are utterly confused, that means the mind has failed; now the mind can no longer supply any certainty to you. You are coming closer and closer to the death of the mind. And that is the greatest thing that can happen to any man in life, the greatest blessing – because once you see that the mind is confusion and there is no way out through the mind, how long can you go on clinging to the mind? Sooner or later you will have to drop it; even if you don’t drop it, it will drop of its own accord. Confusion will become so much, so heavy, that out of sheer heaviness it will drop. And when the mind drops, confusion disappears.

I cannot say that you attain to certainty, no, because that too is a word applicable only to the mind and the world of the mind. When there is confusion, there can be certainty; when confusion disappears, certainty also disappears. You simply are – clear, neither confused nor certain, just a clarity, a transparency. And that transparency has beauty, that transparency is grace, it is exquisite.

It is the most beautiful moment in one’s life when there is neither confusion nor certainty. One simply is: a mirror reflecting that which is, with no direction, going nowhere, with no idea of doing something, with no future, just utterly in the moment, tremendously in the moment.

When there is no mind there can be no future, there can be no program for the future. Then this moment is all, all in all; this moment is your whole existence. The whole existence starts converging on this moment, and the moment becomes tremendously significant. It has depth, it has height, it has mystery, it has intensity, it has fire, it has immediacy; it grips you, it possesses you, it transforms you.

But I cannot give you certainty; certainty is given by ideology. Certainty is nothing but patching up your confusion. You are confused. Somebody says, “Don’t be worried,” and says it very authoritatively, convinces you with arguments, with scriptures, and patches up your confusion, covers it with a beautiful blanket – with the Bible, with the Koran, with the Gita. And you feel good; but it is temporary, because the confusion is boiling within. You have not got rid of it, it has only been repressed.

That’s why people cling to beliefs, churches, scriptures, doctrines, systems of thought. Why do people invest so much in systems of thought? Why should somebody be a Christian or a Hindu? Why should somebody be a communist – for what?There is a reason, a great reason too. Everybody is confused, and so somebody is needed to supply you with certainty. He can be the pope or he can be Mao Zedong, he can be Karl Marx or he can be Manu or Moses – anybody will do. And whenever there are great times of crisis, any stupid person who has the stubbornness to shout, to argue, who can pretend certainty, will become your leader. That’s how Adolf Hitlers, Josef Stalins and Mussolinis become important people.

People have always been wondering why Adolf Hitler could dominate a great, intelligent race like the Germans. Why? It appears a paradox that a man like Martin Heidegger, one of the greatest thinkers of this age, was a supporter of Adolf Hitler. The great professors of the great German universities supported Adolf Hitler. Why? How was it possible?

And Adolf Hitler was just a stupid person, uneducated, unsophisticated. But he had something in him that the professors were lacking, that intelligent people were lacking, that the Martin Heideggers were lacking. He had something in him that no intelligent person can have: he had absolute certainty. He was idiotic – but he could say things with no ifs and no buts; he could make statements as if he knew. He was a madman, but his madness had great impact. It changed the whole course of human history.

It is not a surprise that the Germans became so interested and impressed by him. They were intelligent people, some of the most intelligent people on the earth, and intelligence always brings confusion. That is the secret of Adolf Hitler’s success. Intelligence brings confusion and confusion brings trembling, fear; one knows not where to go, what to do, and one starts looking for a leader. One starts searching for somebody who can say things with absoluteness, who can assert categorically.

The same has happened in India; it has happened just now. This is one of the most ancient countries of the world, with the longest tradition of thinking and contemplation, the longest tradition of philosophizing. No other country has philosophized so much. And then this country chooses a man like Morarji Desai as the prime minister – a cabbage! But he has something in him – the stubbornness of a mediocre mind, the absoluteness of stupidity. He has something important to supply.

Whenever people are in confusion they fall prey to third-rate minds. The first-rate minds fall prey to third-rate minds because the third-rate mind has no confusion. The third-rate mind knows that just by drinking your own urine all diseases can be cured – even cancer is curable by drinking your own urine. It is only possible to assert this if you really are utterly unintelligent. The intelligent person hesitates, ponders, wavers.

The unintelligent never wavers, never hesitates. Where the wise will whisper, the fool simply declares from the housetops. Lao Tzu says, “I may be the only muddle-headed man in the world. Everybody seems to be so certain, except me.” He is right; he has such tremendous intelligence that he cannot be certain about anything.

I cannot promise you certainty if you drop the mind. I can promise you only one thing, that you will be clear. There will be clarity, transparency, you will be able to see things as they are. You will be neither confused nor certain. Certainty and confusion are two sides of the same coin.

But you are in a beautiful moment, and the world too is in a beautiful moment. Whenever there is a crisis of identity, whenever people don’t know who they are, whenever the past loses its grip, whenever people are uprooted from the traditional, whenever the past no longer seems relevant, this crisis arises, a great crisis of identity – who are we, what are we supposed to do?

This opportunity can turn into a curse too, if you fall victim to some Adolf Hitler; but this curse can become a great opening into the unknown if you are fortunate enough to be in the vicinity of a buddha. If you are fortunate enough to be in love with a buddha, your life can be transformed.

People who are still rooted in tradition, and who think they know what is right and what is wrong, will never come to a buddha. They will continue to live their life – the routine life, the dull, the dead life. They will go on fulfilling their duties as their forefathers used to do. For centuries they have been following a track and they will go on following that trodden track. Of course, when you follow a trodden track, you feel certain – so many people have walked on it. But when you come to a buddha and you start moving into the unknown, there is no highway, no trodden path. You will have to make your own path by walking; the path will not be found ready-made.

That’s what I want each of my sannyasins to understand. You are not here to depend on me, you are not here to follow me, you are not here simply to accept me and believe in me. You are here to experiment; you have to move on your own. I can give you encouragement to move on your own, I can trigger a process of inquiry in you; but I will not give you a system of thought, I will not give you any certainty. I will only give you a pilgrimage – a pilgrimage which is hazardous, a pilgrimage which has millions and millions of pitfalls, a pilgrimage in which you will have to face more and more dangers every day, a pilgrimage that will take you to the top of human consciousness, to the fourth state.

But the higher you go, the more is the danger of falling.

I can only promise you a great adventure, risky, dangerous, with no promise that you will attain it – because the unknown cannot be guaranteed.

So, if you have come to me to find some remedy for your confusion, then you have come to the wrong person, I am not the right person to be with. But if you have come to drop confusion and certainty, and be free of the mind that can either give you confusion or certainty, if you have come to me to go on the ultimate adventure in search of God, if you have come to me to dare, to accept the challenge of the uncharted sea, the roaring waves, with no possibility of seeing the other shore, then you have come to the right person.

Then much is possible. I only say “possible” – I cannot say it is absolutely certain. It is always a possibility; you may be able to make it, you may not be able to make it, there is no guarantee. It is not a commodity that can be guaranteed; it is a gamble. And if you are ready to gamble, enter into this buddhafield. No need to wait any longer – you have already waited long enough, for many, many lives.

You ask me, [“Please, Bhagwan, give me sannyas.”]

- It is not a question of my giving you sannyas; it is a question of you taking it. Open your heart! I am always giving it. The question is of your receiving it, welcoming it.

You say, [“Good and bad have ceased to exist.”]

- That is good, that’s beautiful. Good and bad are all man-made, sinners and saints are all man-made. And they are not different at all; the difference is only superficial, very superficial, not even skin-deep. Scratch a little, and in your saint you will find the sinner.

This guy went to the pope and he said, “Hey pope, fuck you!” The pope could not believe it. He said, “Me? The head of the Catholic Church? Me, the spiritual head of millions and millions? Me, the direct descendant of Jesus Christ? Me, the only representative of God on earth? Fuck me? Fuck you!”

There is not much difference. Just scratch a little, and you will find sinners in the saints and you will find saints in the sinners. All good, all bad, is just arbitrary, man-made.

It’s a beautiful space you are entering. If good and bad have ceased to exist, so far, so good! Now enter another dimension, not man-made, where distinctions are of no relevance, where nothing is good and nothing is bad, where whatsoever is, is, and whatever ain’t, ain’t. There is no question of good and bad; either something is or something is not. Good and bad are nothing but alternatives to be chosen – either choose this, or choose that. They keep you in the division of either/or.

The moment you start seeing the hocus-pocus-ness of all good and bad, when you start seeing that they are socially manufactured things… Of course they are utilitarian, and I am not saying to go into the marketplace and behave as if there is nothing good and nothing wrong. I am not saying to walk in the middle of the road, saying what does it matter whether one walks on the right or the left.

When you are with people, remember, for them good and bad still exist. Be respectful to them and their dreams. It is not for you to disturb anybody’s dream. Who are you? It is not for you to interfere. Be polite to people and their stupidities, be polite to them and their games. But all the time remember, deep down nothing is good, nothing is bad.

Existence is simply there; there is nothing to choose between. And remember, when there is nothing to choose between, you will become undivided. When there is something to choose between, it divides you too. Division is a double-edged sword: it divides reality outside, it divides you inside. If you choose, you choose division, you choose to be split, you choose schizophrenia. If you don’t choose, if you know there is nothing good, nothing bad, you choose sanity.

Not choosing anything is choosing sanity, not choosing is to be sane, because now there is no division outside, how can you be divided inside? The inside and the outside go together. You become indivisible, you become an individual. This is the process of individuation. Nothing is good, nothing is bad. When this dawns in your consciousness, suddenly you are together, all fragments have disappeared into one unity. You are crystallized, you are centered.

This is one of the greatest contributions of Eastern consciousness to the world. The Western religions still go on hanging around the idea of good and bad. That’s why it is so difficult for the Christian to understand the Upanishads, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu; it is impossible for them to understand. They are always looking with the Christian mind, “Where are the commandments?” And there are none! The Upanishads never say what is good and what is wrong, they never say what to do and what not to do, they don’t command. They are poetic assertions, they are poetry. They exult in existence, they are ecstatic, overflowing; they are just ecstatic ejaculations.

The Upanishads say, “God is, and you are that: tattvamasi.” The Upanishads say, “God is, and I am God.” These are assertions arising out of ecstasy. They have no ethics, no morality, no reference even. The Christian mind, the Mohammedan mind, the Jewish mind, cannot understand why these books are thought to be religious. They may be good literature, but why are they thought to be religious?

And if you ask one who has reached the same ecstasy as the Upanishadic seers, he will say the Bible, the Talmud, the Koran, they are ethical, moral, but what do they have to do with religion? They are good, because they make a society move smoothly, but they have nothing religious in them – or maybe only a few statements here and there. The major part is ethical; the religious part seems to be so small that it can be neglected, ignored. And it has been ignored.

To come to know that nothing is good, nothing is bad, is a turning point; it is a conversion. You start looking in; the outside reality loses meaning. The social reality is a fiction, a beautiful drama: you can participate in it, but then you don’t take it seriously. It is just a role to be played; play it as beautifully, as efficiently, as possible. But don’t take it seriously, it has nothing of the ultimate in it.

The ultimate is the inner; the indivisible soul knows it. And, to come to that soul, this is a good turning-point.

You say, [“Good and bad have ceased to exist.”]

- This is the right moment to take sannyas, this is what sannyas is all about. Now there is no need to wait, now there is no need even to ask my permission. Sannyas is already happening. Enter into this buddhafield. You have waited long – too long, really.

I have heard…

An old couple reached the divorce court. They were really ancient, ninety-five years old, and they had been married for seventy-five years. The judge could not believe his eyes. He said, “So you are thinking of divorce now, after seventy-five years of married life? Why now?” They looked at each other, and then the old man said, “Well, we waited till all the children were dead.”

People go on waiting and waiting and waiting… Now, what hope! There is no need to wait anymore. You are welcome, you are ready. Even people who are not ready, I welcome them – because those who are not ready today may be ready tomorrow. Those who are not ready when they take sannyas, may be ready after they have taken sannyas. And who am I to refuse you if God accepts you? I am nobody to refuse you. That’s why nobody is refused, no condition is made, nobody is thought to be unworthy. If God thinks you worthy of being alive, that’s enough proof that you are also worthy of becoming a sannyasin.

You say, [“I am neither proud nor ashamed and yet I am both.”]

- That’s the state of confusion. You will find everything like that – neither this nor that, yet both.

[“Whatever I have achieved seems lost in a fog”[ – you are really blessed – [“resolved together with my failures.”]

- Many should feel jealous of you. To know that all has failed is the beginning of a new journey. To know that “All that I have achieved is lost” is the beginning of a new search for something that cannot be lost. When one is utterly disillusioned with the world and all its successes, only then does one become spiritual.

[“Like smoke I feel, but through the smoke a tremendous sadness arises, like a sharp rock with a velvet covering.”]

- It is bound to be so. When life has been lived through illusions and one day one suddenly feels all has been meaningless, useless – “I was chasing shadows” – a great sadness arises. But I can see your perceptiveness. Sadness is there, but [“with a velvet covering.”] Yes, sadness is there because of the past, and the velvet covering is what is possible; it only becomes possible now. Out of all this confusion is sadness; but because of this confusion and its utterness, deep down a new stirring is happening. You may not be aware of it yet, but something is stirring, a new joy is arising behind the curtain of sadness – a joy of a new search, of a new adventure, of a new life, of a new way to be.

[“Bhagwan, I can’t perceive the end of it – or is there no end?”]

- There is a beginning of the mind and there is an end of the mind, there is a beginning of the ego and there is an end of the ego, but there is no beginning to you and no end to you. And there is no beginning to the mystery of existence and no end to you. It is an ongoing process. Mysteries upon mysteries are waiting for you, hence the thrill and the ecstasy.

Feel ecstatic that there is no end to life, that when you have reached one peak, suddenly another peak starts giving you challenges – a higher one, a more arduous climb, a more dangerous reach. And when you have reached the other peak, there will be another peak, peaks upon peaks. It is an eternal Himalayas of life.

Just think of a point where you arrive, and now there is nothing else left. You will be utterly bored then; boredom will be your only fate! And life is not boredom, it is a dance. Life is not boredom, it is exultation, exuberance. Many, many things are going to happen, and many, many things will always remain to happen. The mystery never ends, it cannot end. That’s why it is called a mystery, it cannot even be known. It will never become knowledge, that’s why it is called a mystery; something in it is eternally elusive. And that’s the whole joy of life. The great splendor of life is that it keeps you eternally engaged, searching, exploring. Life is exploration, life is adventure.

You ask, [“Bhagwan, I can’t perceive the end of it or is there no end?”]

- There is an end to you, but there is no end to the real you.

[“Is it ecstasy carrying the weight of impurity?”]

- There is no impurity anywhere. All is pure. Impurity is just a shadow of the confusion that you are feeling right now. When the confusion and the confusing mind are dropped, the shadows will disappear of their own accord. Your innermost core has always been pure; purity is intrinsic to you, it cannot be taken away. Your virginity is eternal; you cannot lose it, there is no way to lose it. You can only forget about it or remember it. If you forget about it, you live in confusion; if you remember it, all is clear. Again, I will not say “certain,” but just “clear.” All is transparent. That transparency is freedom, that transparency is wisdom. This transparency is your birthright; if you are not claiming it, nobody else is responsible except you. Claim it! It is yours. It is yours just for the asking.

Sannyas is an effort to reclaim that which is yours and to drop that which is not yours. Sannyas is an effort to drop that which you really don’t have, and to claim that which you always had with you all along.

Ecstasy is our very nature; not to be ecstatic is simply unnecessary. To be ecstatic is natural, spontaneous. It needs no effort to be ecstatic, it needs great effort to be miserable. That’s why you look so tired, because misery is really hard work; to maintain it is really difficult, because you are doing something against nature. You are going upstream – that’s what misery is.

And what is bliss? Going with the river – so much so that the distinction between you and the river is simply lost. You are the river. How can it be difficult? To go with the river no swimming is needed; you simply float with the river and the river takes you to the ocean. The river is already going to the ocean.

Life is a river. Don’t push it and you will not be miserable. The art of not pushing the river of life is sannyas.

You are ready. This moment of confusion, this moment of chaos in your life, can open a new door, can turn a new leaf. Don’t wait anymore.

Enough for today.