T-27.IV:The Quiet Answer

1. 1In quietness are all things answered, and is every problem quietly resolved. 2In conflict there can be no answer and no resolution, for its purpose is to make no resolution possible, and to ensure no answer will be plain. 3A problem set in conflict has no answer, for it is seen in different ways. 4And what would be an answer from one point of view is not an answer in another light. 5You are in conflict. 6Thus it must be clear you cannot answer anything at all, for conflict has no limited effects. 7Yet if God gave an answer there must be a way in which your problems are resolved, for what He wills already has been done.

2. 1Thus it must be that time is not involved and every problem can be answered now. 2Yet it must also be that, in your state of mind, solution is impossible. 3Therefore, God must have given you a way of reaching to another state of mind in which the answer is already there. 4Such is the holy instant. 5It is here that all your problems should be brought and left. 6Here they belong, for here their answer is. 7And where its answer is, a problem must be simple and be easily resolved. 8It must be pointless to attempt to solve a problem where the answer cannot be. 9Yet just as surely it must be resolved, if it is brought to where the answer is.

3. 1Attempt to solve no problems but within the holy instant’s surety. 2For there the problem will be answered and resolved. 3Outside there will be no solution, for there is no answer there that could be found. 4Nowhere outside a single, simple question is ever asked. 5The world can only ask a double question. 6One with many answers can have no answers. 7None of them will do. 8It does not ask a question to be answered, but only to restate its point of view.

4. 1All questions asked within this world are but a way of looking, not a question asked. 2A question asked in hate cannot be answered, because it is an answer in itself. 3A double question asks and answers, both attesting the same thing in different form. 4The world asks but one question. 5It is this: “Of these illusions, which of them is true? 6Which ones establish peace and offer joy? 7And which can bring escape from all the pain of which this world is made?” 8Whatever form the question takes, its purpose is the same. 9It asks but to establish sin is real, and answers in the form of preference. 10“Which sin do you prefer? 11That is the one that you should choose. 12The others are not true. 13What can the body get that you would want the most of all? 14It is your servant and also your friend. 15But tell it what you want, and it will serve you lovingly and well.” 16And this is not a question, for it tells you what you want and where to go for it. 17It leaves no room to question its beliefs, except that what it states takes question’s form.

5. 1A pseudo-question has no answer. 2It dictates the answer even as it asks. 3Thus is all questioning within the world a form of propaganda for itself. 4Just as the body’s witnesses are but the senses from within itself, so are the answers to the questions of the world contained within the questions that are asked. 5Where answers represent the questions, they add nothing new and nothing has been learned. 6An honest question is a learning tool that asks for something that you do not know. 7It does not set conditions for response, but merely asks what the response should be. 8But no one in a conflict state is free to ask this question, for he does not want an honest answer where the conflict ends.

6. 1Only within the holy instant can an honest question honestly be asked. 2And from the meaning of the question does the meaningfulness of the answer come. 3Here is it possible to separate your wishes from the answer, so it can be given you and also be received. 4The answer is provided everywhere. 5Yet it is only here it can be heard. 6An honest answer asks no sacrifice because it answers questions truly asked. 7The questions of the world but ask of whom is sacrifice demanded, asking not if sacrifice is meaningful at all. 8And so, unless the answer tells “of whom,” it will remain unrecognized, unheard, and thus the question is preserved intact because it gave the answer to itself. 9The holy instant is the interval in which the mind is still enough to hear an answer that is not entailed within the question asked. 10It offers something new and different from the question. 11How could it be answered if it but repeats itself?

7. 1Therefore, attempt to solve no problems in a world from which the answer has been barred. 2But bring the problem to the only place that holds the answer lovingly for you. 3Here are the answers that will solve your problems because they stand apart from them, and see what can be answered; what the question is. 4Within the world the answers merely raise another question, though they leave the first unanswered. 5In the holy instant, you can bring the question to the answer, and receive the answer that was made for you.