The Process of Questioning

A questioning traveler is a person who asks questions from childhood until he dies. He asks about his needs —mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual —and he asks about the needs of his group and society. Wherever he goes in life, he asks questions. Through his questions he grows and his consciousness expands.

It is very important to observe how people ask questions because their questions reveal what they actually are. By their questions you can fnd where their consciousness is located. If their consciousness is located in their stomach, most of their questions will be about food. If their consciousness is located in their sex center, most — or maybe all — of their questions will be about sex. If their consciousness is located in their emotional nature, they will ask questions mostly related to the emotions. If their consciousness is in the mind, they will ask mostly mental questions. If they are spiritual, they will ask mostly spiritual questions. If a person asks you a question, try to fnd the level of the question and where his consciousness is located.

Once you know the location of the consciousness and its level, you will be able to answer the question exactly on that level. It is very important to answer people’s questions on their level because that is where their need is. People cannot take more than what they are, and they cannot ask more than what they are.

Your questions are equal to what you are. In the future, a great science will be developed which will teach how to observe other people through their questions and answers. You will learn that if you ask someone a spiritual question and he gives you a physical-level answer, then that person is unable to meet you on your level and thus aid your growth. You will learn to fnd the answers that are on the same level as your questions.

Questioning means that you have a need. Questioning also means that somewhere in your heart, you intuitively know there is an answer. Actually, it is the answer within you that stimulates you to organize and formulate your question. If you formulate and ask your question in the right way, it is impossible not to fnd the answer. As Christ said, “Ask and it shall be given.”

All human progress is like step-by-step walking. The questions we ask and the answers we fnd are like the steps, helping us to progress toward higher achievements. A question is one step. Its answer is another step. Every time we understand an answer, that answer turns into a new question within us. And if an answer does not create new questions, we fall into a rut.

Human progress can also be compared to the process of breathing. Asking questions is like inhalation; it is the inspiration. You receive a question from within the depth of your being which evokes the answer, or the exhalation. Questioning is a process of revitalization.

Understanding Answers

There are many kinds of questions. There are questions about the past. There are questions about the future. There are questions that are only related to the present. Old-age people are always busy with questions that are related to the past; their focus of consciousness is anchored in the past. Present-age people ask questions relating only to the present. They are interested only in the satisfaction of their pleasures and their immediate needs. Questions related to the future are more inclusive, more synthesizing, and more beautiful. Ask yourself, what is the level of your questions, and what is the focus of your interest?

It is very important in the process of questioning to understand the answer you receive. There is a very complicated process involved in understanding the answer to your question. Sometimes you ask a question and listen for the answer only with your physical ears. Sometimes you ask a question and listen with your pleasures, glamors, desires, or aspirations. Then when you receive the answer, it is totally mixed with what you have created within your own psychology.

Suppose you are listening to the answer to your question through the mental shadows of your prejudices, your dogmas, and the pride that you know everything. You distort the true answer with these shadows, and you do not see the true light contained in the answer. These shadows interfere with your translation of the answer.

You also have emotional shadows. Both your emotional and mental natures are distorted primarily by the pain and suffering of your past experiences. Tradition is another source of distortion. When all these things are mixed together with the reception of the answer, you lack a clear understanding of the answer you receive.

Another dark shadow which blocks your path is the stagnation of your consciousness. Your body, emotions, and mind are in a groove or rut of crystallized and inflexible habits. You may intellectually understand the answer to your questions but be so conditioned or crystallized that you are unable to see it. When your answer comes when you are in this condition, it is like a seed dropped on a rock instead of in rich soil it does not give fruit because you did not accept it or respond to it.

You must learn to listen. First, clear your mind. Second, when you see that the answer is really right for you, then respond to it.

Sometimes our answers come from other people. Once an elderly man came to visit me. He said, “The doctor told me that my heart is no good and that I must not smoke.”

“Well,” I asked him, “did you understand?”

“Yes, but I still smoke anyway.”

This man did not accept the answer. The doctor gave him the correct answer for his health needs, but he could not respond because he was not at the level to understand properly. The answer was not within him.

You can understand something if that something is already within you or active within you. If it is not within you, it does you no good. My Father used to say, “Take the tail of a dog and iron it two hundred times and it will again return to its usual curl.”

Can We Respond to the Answer?

Whenever you ask a question, something within you must be able to respond. Before you ask the question, you must already feel you know the answer. If the answer is not already within you, prepared and ready to be used, you will be unable to ask the question. And if you should receive an answer by chance, you would not be able to understand it.

It is interesting to know that there is no answer when the question has no logic behind it. There is no answer when the one who questions is not ready for the answer. There is no answer if the one who asks the question is not interested in the answer. There is no answer for one who will not accept the answer.

A truly progressive person must welcome the answers that come to his questions as a fertile ground accepts seeds to sprout, grow, and give fruit. You must have a physical, emotional, and mental nature that welcomes the seeds or the answers of light and accepts them. In this way, the answers can create a transformation in your life.

The vehicles or mechanisms of the personality do create obstacles and distortion, but when you ask a question, you can still hear in that distorted radio the message that is being broadcast. One day I was listening to a presidential address on the radio. Even though there was so much static on the radio, I could still hear what the President was saying. In your mind there is also a president, and no matter what noise is in you — rejection, glamors, illusions, complexes —his message is still there.

St. John said that there is a light that enlightens every person who comes into the world. The light is within us. There is no reason for us not to hear the answers to our questions. To say “I don’t hear any answer” is an escape. You hear it and you know exactly what is needed, but you do not do it. Heed the light within you because that light is the presence of God. That light is both the question and the answer that enables you to progress toward greater achievements of health, success, and enlightenment.

The most important questions you can ask apply to the foundations of life and how life can be transformed. What is the foundation of life and of the future? Our children are both the foundation and the future.

Then your next question will be: How can we raise our children so that they are healthy? If you ask this question, millions of answers will come to your mind. You will realize that their health is intertwined with practically everything — with social and political conditions, traditions, the way they eat, the way they live, pollution, and so on.

Next you might ask: How can we bring up our children so that not only are they healthy, but they also become successful and enlightened? Our children must be healthy, but when they grow up they must also be successful. When they are successful, they will need to be enlightened. Enlightenment means that our children must feel the purpose of life, why they are living on this planet. To be enlightened means that instead of working for your own individual ego, you work for three things: you work to make all the world’s children healthy, successful, and enlightened.

Excerpts taken from Education As Transformation, Vol. 1, by Torkom Saraydarian, pp. 425-430.