{Seekers after Truth [continued]}[14th April 1987]

[Redbook3:195-196][19870414:1922b]{Seekers after Truth [continued]}[14th April 1987]

1922

[continued]

However,* in the words of xS**: 'The Authority of the Answers is the Answers themselves'. This does not mean that the answers are authoritative just because they there: that would be absurd. What it means, I think, is that each Questioner (i.e. Listener) has to decide for himself what authority to grant to the Answers given to him – whether given externally, or internally. He will, of course, only be able to accept the Answers according to his own disposition and development – which is logical if he is to be provided, among all the many statements of information flying around, only with those Answers appropriate to himself.

The responsibility is on him, therefore, to select his own training according to his understanding – but this will only work if he remains a Seeker after Truth, with Truth as his goal, and keeps an open mind. I think these are probably the two characteristics essential to the Questioner right from the start if he is to ask the right Questions and understand the appropriate Answers:

(1) Seek the Truth.

(2) Keep an open mind.

These roughly correspond to two of the guidelines on the previous page.* The third one, at the early stage, could perhaps be summarised as:

(3) Listen within.

This is bound to be rather incomplete – what do you do if you are Schizophrenic, and hear voices? – but it is the best I can do at the moment.

Setting out the three guidelines for recognition of the authority of the Seeker after Truth makes me realise how far short of the standard I fall. (There is a certain amount of vanity in that statement, and a certain amount of truth.)

*[See last previous entry.]

**[In [2].]

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