According to Osho, utter confusion is a blessing: it shows the mind has failed and you are on the verge of its death. Don't patch it with borrowed certainties; let the mind drop. Then confusion and certainty both vanish, leaving simple, mirror-like clarity - presence in the timeless Now - full of grace, depth, intensity, and transformative aliveness.
Feeling totally confused means your thinking can’t help anymore; if you stop grabbing for answers, the noise falls away and you’re just clearly here.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Utter confusion is my part. Good and bad have ceased to exist. I am neither proud nor ashamed and yet I am both. Whatever I have achieved seems lost in a fog, resolved together with my failures. Like smoke I feel, but through the smoke a tremendous sadness arises like a sharp rock with a velvet covering. Osho, I can't perceive the end of it -- or is there no end? Is it ecstasy carrying the weight of impurity? Please, Osho, give me sannyas.
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…
Learn to live with the confusion. Don't be in a hurry to conclude. Confusion is not something necessarily wrong. Don't label it confusion. Labelling is wrong. Sometimes just a wrong label can create so much trouble. It is not really confusion: it is a state of transition, of change. You are uprooted from the old soil and you are searching for the new, and in-between the two there is bound to be this. It is not confusion, it is simply an unsettled, growing state. It is growth, and whenever there is growth one can label it confusion. But by labelling it confusion you have wrongly interpreted it; then you start somehow to solve it. If you call it growth then there is no hurry to solve it. In fact you have to support it: it is growth!
Confusion is natural. If you come to me you are going to pass through a chaos, because all that you have thought before becomes meaningless. All that you have becomes futile. Your whole past is simply nullified... simply washed away. All that belonged to you no more belongs to you. The past is the certainty. When the past is gone, certainty is gone. The past is the certainty because the past is certain -- now nothing can be changed about the past. You say,'Why is the past certain?' It has happened. Good, bad, happy, unhappy -- it has happened. Now there is no way to change it. So when you have the past as your belonging, you are certain -- the future is uncertain. With the future is confusion.
You tell us the paths are of will and surrender. The path of will is certainly not for me, but then surrender also does not seem to be perfect. Now, what to do? Beloved master, I am totally confused. Kindly show me my path.
THE FIRST THING: if you are really totally confused, out of that confusion will come clarity. But you are not totally confused. Once confusion is total, it becomes the path. Then there is no need for any other path. We seek paths out of confusion, because we are confused... but not totally confused, and we think that we can figure things out. Total confusion means now you are totally helpless, now there is no way to go, now you don't know anything about the goal, about yourself, about the Way. You know nothing. You are in a state of blank. If confusion is total, mind becomes blank. But you are never totally confused -- partially, certainly; totally, never. Total confusion is one of the ways to reach God. It means all your knowledge has proved meaningless; and when I say all, I mean all. Not that you say, "I know…
It will take a few days. Once your past experience has been dropped and you are again fresh and new, the magic will arise and explode in you. It is natural -- it happens to many people. Nothing to be worried about. And confusion is part of life. Only dead people are never confused. They are certain -- but their certainty is worthless. Confusion is more valuable. It simply says that you are still alive... you are still growing. There is still possibility in you -- that's what confusion means. You would like to commit suicide. You don't want confusion -- you want certainty. Certainty means committing suicide, so once and forever, one is finished. I am not going to give you any certainty. I am going to give you clarity -- not certainty. And this is the difference: certainty is against confusion, clarity is not against confusion.