The second question:

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

LAST NIGHT YOU SAID THAT WE SHOULD EITHER BELIEVE IN WHATSOEVER YOU SAY AS TRUE, OR WE SHOULD DISBELIEVE YOU TOTALLY, TAKING WHAT YOU SAY AS UNTRUE, AND THAT BOTH WAYS WILL HELP US. BUT WHAT IS TO BE DONE BY THOSE PERSONS WHO ARE NOT CAPABLE OF BEING TOTAL IN EITHER WAY? IS THERE ANY THIRD ALTERNATIVE POSSIBLE IN THIS MATTER?

There is none and there cannot be. The third is already your state. These two are the alternatives to come out of that; the third you are already -- confused. You can only come out of this confusion with any total effort. Why is it difficult to be total either in belief or disbelief? Why is it easy to be in the middle? -- because if you are in the middle, then no change is needed: you are already there. And if you go on thinking about what to believe and what not to believe, your mind remains the same. It is your mind which chooses what to believe and what not to believe. You choose according to your mind.

Then how can this mind change? If your mind is the chooser, it will choose something which can become a food to it. It will go on discarding all that can be destructive to it or that can help it to change. The mind tries to remain in the status quo. It wants to remain static, because with change there is pain, insecurity. You will have to adjust everything again, every arrangement will have to be made again. It will be difficult.

So mind is basically orthodox, even the minds of those who think themselves revolutionary. Mind is orthodox, so every revolution becomes an orthodoxy in the end. All the revolutionaries turn out ultimately to be dogmatists. Every revolution ends in a static society. Why does is happen? -- because the very nature of the mind is to be orthodox, to cling to the old. So if I say something, you can choose: you can choose that which will help you remain as you are. You will say, "This is true." To that which will lead you to a transformation -- to an unknown state, in insecurity, on an uncharted path, on an unknown journey and voyage -- you will say, "This is not true."

So you can go on choosing; this is what you have been doing. So I say to you, "Be total!" Then change is bound to be there, the revolution will happen. When I say, "Believe totally in me," or, "Do not believe at all," I do not say, "Believe in me," I say, "Be total." Half-hearted, you will never move anywhere. And how can you decide what is true and what is untrue? There is more possibility that whatsoever you think is true will be untrue, or vice versa, because if you already know what is true, then there is no need -- no need to come to me or anybody else. There is no need at all! But the mind goes on playing tricks.

One young man was here today to meet me. I told him, "Take a jump -- a jump into sannyas."

He said, "I have been hearing J. Krishnamurti and I cannot be committed to anything." But he is not aware that he is already committed to J. Krishnamurti.

J. Krishnamurti says, "Do not be committed," so he is not committing himself. He has taken the advice; he has already become a follower. His mind is working a trick. It is thinking that now there is no need to follow anybody.

You have already become a follower but this is unconscious. You are not clear about what has happened to you. And this will not be of much help because this is unconscious. Unless it becomes conscious.... I say that if you feel Krishnamurti is right, then be committed to him consciously and totally. But make it conscious because only that which is conscious can be of help in transmutation, in transformation. That which is unconscious cannot be of much help. Or, if you think that you should not commit yourself to anyone, then you will have to safeguard your independence in many ways. Then there is no need to go to J. Krishnamurti or to me or to anyone else because the very effort of going shows that you need help -- that someone else is needed.

But you can go on playing with yourself; you can go on thinking, "I am just listening. I will choose: whatsoever is true I will believe; whatsoever is not true I will not believe" -- as if you have a criterion to judge what is true and what is not true. How will you judge it? Either you know it, then there is no need to go; or you do not know it, then you cannot judge.

Buddha used to say, "Do not ask me questions. Rather, do whatsoever I say, and after a year of doing I will allow you to ask questions. But for one year, do whatsoever I say. For this one year do not be a chooser; follow me totally. And after one year, when you have become clear, conscious, then you can ask, then you can choose because then you will have something like a criterion to judge by -- a touchstone." But it almost always happened that after one year's deep meditation, when Buddha would say, "Now you can ask and now I allow you to choose," the man would say, "Now I have nothing to ask and now I have nothing to choose."

When I say to you, "Take a jump into sannyas," I mean this: for the time being do not be a chooser. This is not going to be for your whole life but for the time being do not be a chooser, so that your mind is not allowed to come in. Do whatsoever I say. After a year of sincere effort of doing, I will allow you to choose. Then you can choose, then you can think. Then you have something by which you can judge. Right now you cannot judge but you go on judging.

I am happy with both types of people: those who can say, "I believe totally" -- I can work with them -- and those who say, "I do not believe at all" -- I can leave them to themselves. But for the confused types who go on saying, "Some things I can believe and some things I cannot believe," nothing can be done. And they go on hanging around me -- I cannot help them. They are unnecessarily wasting their time because they cannot take my help. They won't allow it. They are wasting time; they are missing an opportunity. Something would have been possible very easily if they were available but they are not available. And they say they will judge. They can go on thinking but they will never come to any conclusion.

You cannot come to any conclusion because your mind is confused. And if you choose out of confusion, you will be more in confusion. Any conclusion out of confusion will lead you into more confusion. A confused mind cannot choose. That is the meaning of surrender: when you feel you are confused, you go to someone; you feel that he has a clarity. I say, "You feel" -- it is not that you think. If you feel that someone has a clarity that you do not have, then surrender. This is risky, dangerous, but one has to take the risk because without risk there is no possibility.

If you are too wise and clever and you do not want to take the risk, you will miss for your whole life and you will not come to any point of realization. Risk is basic. It is risky -- because you cannot be absolutely certain whether the person to whom you are surrendering is really true or not. It is risky but try it. If he is not true then too you will have gained something because he cannot lead you anywhere. If he is not true and you risk your total being to him, you will become aware of what an untrue master is and you will never fall in the same trap again. But if he is true, then you will come to a new dimension of being. Nothing is lost; the risk is worth taking.

But you are clever -- your cleverness is your barrier. Be a little foolish and take a jump; do not be so clever. You have already missed much by being clever. There are certain points where only fools, madmen, lovers, can enter; there are certain doors. Clever men never go there. It happens that through certain risks fools prove to be wise and the wise prove to be fools because fools can take the risk and the so-called wise cannot take it.

There is no alternative, no third alternative; these are the two possibilities. The third alternative is that which you are already. So if you think that the third is good, remain whatsoever you are; do not think of any change.

If you think that whatsoever you are is too much of a misery, a hell, then take a jump out of that hell. And the jump is always into the unknown, so risk is there; it is implied. Be a little daring, a little foolish.

When Buddha left his palace he was foolish. Even the driver who led him out of his kingdom told him. The name of the driver was Chhanna. Chhanna said to Buddha, "You are committing a foolish act. It is too risky: losing an empire, losing a kingdom, for something which is very vague. No one knows whether any soul really exists. It is foolish to lose that which you have for that which is uncertain."

Buddha would not listen to him. That man was old, more wise, so he said to Buddha, "You are young, and because of your youth you are not yet mature enough to understand what you are doing. Come back! Everyone is trying to get into that palace which you are leaving. And where are you going -- to be a beggar? If beggars could have achieved, then the whole world would have been beggars. And there are beggars on the streets and they have not achieved. Where are you going? You are taking a risk."

Leaving the known for the unknown is always a risk. Buddha said, "I am fed up with the known. I have known it; now there is nothing more to know. So allow me to take the risk. Even if I lose, I lose nothing because I do not have anything. If I gain, I gain everything. The risk is worth taking. I cannot lose anything because I do not have anything. Those palaces and those beautiful wives, I have lived with them, I have known them. Now nothing is there to know. No mystery is there. Now it has become a boredom, a repetition, a habit. I have become a mechanical thing. Now there is nothing to go back to. I will take the risk. If I lose, I lose nothing because I do not have anything."

What have you got that you are so much afraid of surrender? What have you got? You are just like a naked man who is afraid of taking a bath in the river because he is thinking, "Where will I go to dry my clothes?" And he is nude, he has no clothes, but he is not entering the stream to take a bath because he is afraid that there is no place where he can dry his clothes. What have you got to lose? And there is every possibility to gain -- but I say 'possibility': that is the risk.

Religion is not for weaklings, it is only for those who have a strong will to move into the unknown. Weaklings always remain confused because they go on traveling in two boats simultaneously -- in two directions. They cannot move in one boat because they are afraid. And they are very clever, so they think that if one goes wrong at least the other will always be there. So they travel in two boats but they never reach anywhere because you cannot travel in two boats.

There is no third alternative. You will have to decide this or that; only then does a revolution set in. The old will have to die for the new to be born and there can be no compromise.