Choices are a sign of confusion || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2013)

Questioner: Sir, it is told to us that options create confusion in one’s life. But wherever we go, whatever we want to do, we have to search for options. Why?

Acharya Prashant: The question, rather this statement has to be clearly understood.

‘Options create confusion.’

What it means is that when you really understand, then there are no options.

When you really understand then there are no options, then there is great clarity of vision.

To have options means that I have still not understood. So options is a penultimate stage.You see, in the process of decision-making what do you do? Do you remain with options forever? No!

Listener: Sir, but you choose the best.

Acharya Prashant : Yes! The penultimate, less than the ultimate. In clear and complete understanding, options disappear. What would you say about a man who constantly, perennially finds himself in the middle of options, always? Confused. Right?

There are three stages :

The lowest stage is of a stone that never sees any option . It is totally option less. You pick it up, you throw it away, and it has no option of where to fall. Wherever your force and gravity takes it, it will drop, that is the lowest stage. Even there, there are no options.

Then there is the state of the confused human mind , which has a lot of options and is always wondering to do this, to do that, to be or not to be. One day he finds that he wants to go this way, the next day he wants to go that way. Someone comes and counsels him that this is not right for you, he becomes confused. One day he wants to write the CAT, the next day he wants to write the GMAT, third day he wants to pick up a job and fourth day his father’s business, and he does not know what to do, forever lost in options. This is the intermediate stage, penultimate as we said.

The third one is a clear and intelligent human being , who knows for himself, who knows. In the essential matters of life, he is totally clear. He does not have to generate options. In that, he is option-less, he is choice-less, totally choice-less.

If you ask many of the entrepreneurs who really love their work, that how did they decide that this is the field in which they must start the business, they will say, ‘*I never decided. This is the only thing I could have done. Success or failure, I would have done this only. Even if I have no money, I will keep doing this. I am option-less. I am in love with this. I can’t do anything else. I won’t do anything else.*‘

This is the option-lessness, which is the joy of life.

Excerpted from a ‘Shabd-Yog’ session. Edited for clarity.

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