Corresponding Text Section

Chapter 28: The Two Dreams

5. Pseudo- and Honest Questions and Answers

In the Stillness of Peace are all things answered, and is every problem quietly resolved. In conflict there can be no answer and no resolution. For its purpose is to make resolution impossible, and to ensure that no answer will be plain. A problem set in conflict has no answer, for it is perceived in conflicting ways. And what would be an answer from one point of view is not an answer from another perspective.

In the world of illusions you are in conflict. And so it must be clear that your best approach is not to attempt to answer anything of yourself, for conflict has no limited effects. Yet if the Divine gave an Answer, there must be a way in which your problems are resolved, for what It wills has already been completed. Thus it must be that time is not involved, and that the solution to every problem can be received now. Yet it must also be that in your current conflicted state of mind your acceptance of this solution isn’t dependable. Therefore, the Divine must have given you a way of reaching to another state of mind, in which the Answer has already been accepted.

Such is the Holy Instant. It is here that all your problems should be brought and left. Here they belong, for here their Answer is. Just as it must be pointless to attempt to solve a problem where the answer cannot be, so must a problem surely be resolved if it is brought to where the answer is.

Attempt to solve no problems except within the Holy Instant’s Surety. For there the problem will be answered and resolved. Outside of Spirit’s Surety there will be no solution, for there is no answer there that could be found. For nowhere outside this Surety is a single simple question ever asked. The world of illusions can only ask a pseudo-question, which has many “answers,” none of which will solve the problem. A pseudo-question asks and answers, both attesting the same thing in different form. The world does not ask a question in order to be answered, but only to restate its point of view. All questions asked within this world are but a way of looking, not a true seeking of answers. A question asked in conflict cannot be answered, because it is an answer in itself.

The world in essence asks only one question, one that has many forms: “Of these illusions, which do you prefer? Which appears truer? Which ones establish peace and offer joy? And which can bring escape from all the pain of which this world is made?” Whatever form the question takes, its purpose is the same. It asks only to establish and confirm that illusions, and the belief in separation, are real, and answers what it asks in the form of preference: “The illusion you prefer is the one that you should choose. The others may be discarded. What can the body get that you would want most of all? It is your servant and your friend. Merely tell it what you want, and it will serve you lovingly and well.” And this is not a question, except that what it states takes a question’s form. For it tells you what you want, and where to go to find it. It leaves no room for you to question its beliefs.

A pseudo-question has no answer. It dictates the answer even as it asks. Thus within this world is all questioning a form of promotion for itself. Just as the body’s witnesses are simply the senses from within itself, so are the answers to the questions of the world contained within the questions. Where answers represent the questions, they add nothing new, and nothing has been learned.

An honest question is a learning tool that asks for something that you do not know. It does not set conditions for response, but merely seeks an honest answer. Yet those in a conflicted state of mind do not feel free to ask this kind of question, for they are afraid of an honest answer, one that leads out of conflict to what they fear may be even worse.

Only within the Holy Instant can an honest question honestly be asked. And from the meaning of the question is the meaningfulness of the answer invited. Here is it possible to separate your wishes from the answer so it can be given you, and also be received. The Answer to this world is provided everywhere, but it is only in response to an honest question that It can be heard. An honest answer asks no sacrifice, because it answers questions truly asked.

The questions of the world merely ask of whom sacrifice is demanded, not asking if sacrifice is sane at all. And so, unless the answer tells “of whom,” it will remain unrecognized and unheard in the world, and thus the question will be preserved intact, because it gave the answer to itself.

The Holy Instant is the interval in which the mind is in stillness enough to hear an answer that is not implied within the question asked. It offers an answer that is new and different from the question. How could a question be answered if the answer only repeats the question?

Therefore, attempt to solve no problem in a world from which an honest answer has been barred. But bring the problem to the only place that holds the Answer lovingly for you. Here are the answers that will solve your problems, because they stand apart from the problems, and consider what can be answered given what the question is. Within the world of illusions, the answers merely raise other questions, though they leave the first unanswered. In the Holy Instant, you can bring the question to the Answer, and receive the answer that was made to solve the question for you.