What is clarity?

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Acharya Prashant: Confused world, a chaotic world, a world that makes no sense. And it’s not that the world is confused or chaotic or nonsensical. It is obviously the looker, the seer of the world who is not able to comprehend it with any clarity.

Lack of clarity is a difficult thing, lack of clarity is a complex thing. Clarity is simplicity. Therefore, it doesn’t require much to have clarity. It requires a lot to not have clarity, and we have a lot.

In fact, that is the only reason the word ‘clarity’ appeals to us. That is why you picked that one question out of the thousand possible queries you could have had, you know, because confusion is suffering. When you know that reality is one, you do not want to tolerate fluctuating versions of it.

I want to get rid of all the various viewpoints, all the competing statements that say, it could be this but it could also be this, it is this but at the same time this. And whenever there is one point of view, one version, there is bound to be something besides it as well, because every version stops somewhere, has its limits. The limits define the version and outside the limits, there would be something else and then something else and then something else, everything limited. One doesn’t like it, it feels a bit stupid to not know.

What is clarity? To be immediately certain. Certain of what? That which is certain, that which is unchangeable. Obviously, without knowing the airline schedule you cannot be immediately certain of that. And why must and why cannot you be immediately certain of things like train schedules? Because they keep fluctuating anyway. Therefore, clarity is not being cocksure about things that are anyway volatile and changeable. Clarity is about being certain of that which ‘is’, that which is unchangeable. Therefore, clarity has a direct relation with faith; you cannot be clear without having faith in the heart.

Having clarity does not mean that you will immediately make sense of whatever you perceive, it simply means that whatever you look at, you are certain of at least the relationship between the seer and the seen. The one with clarity does not walk about full of confidence. He will not say, “I have clarity, so I know…