Question 2

HOW TO BE PASSIVELY ALERT? HOW TO BE NEITHER EXTROVERT NOR INTROVERT? AL1D HOW TO BE AND YET NOT TO BE?

PLEASE REPLY NOT THROUGH WORDS BUT THROUGH VOID.

Then you will have to ask through void. If you want my silent answer, you will have to ask silently. If you cannot ask silently, I can answer silently, still, but you will not understand it. First you have to learn the language of silence. So if you want to receive something from me in silence, then prepare for yourself -- and ask the question in silence. No need to write it. Because I can give you only as much as you are capable of receiving.

And don't ask crazy questions, because I can answer in a very crazy way.

Let me tell you one anecdote.

A mother thought her little girl should be examined for any possible abnormal tendencies, so she took the tot along to the psychologist. Among other questions the doctor asked were: "Are you a boy or a girl?"

The little girl answered, "A boy."

Somewhat taken aback, the doctor asked, "When you grow up are you going to be a man or a woman?"

"A man," she answered.

Afterwards as they were returning home the mother said, "Why did you give those strange answers to the questions that man asked you?"

The little girl drew herself up with dignity and said, "If he was going to ask me crazy questions, I was going to give him crazy answers -- he could not kid me."

Remember this. If you want to receive an answer in total silence, then learn how to be silent. Then you need not ask, you need not even formulate the question inside you, you need not even come to me because then physical closeness is not needed. Wherever you are you will be able to receive my answer. And that answer is not going to be mine or anybody else's; it will be your own heart's answer.

I have to give you answers because you don't know how to ask. I have to give you answers because you have not yet become capable of receiving the answer from your own being. Once you learn silence, you become tremendously capable. Just be silent and all questions disappear. Not that you receive an answer: simply, questions disappear, you don't have any questions to ask.

Buddha used to say to his disciples, "For one year, just keep quiet and be silent. After one year, whatsoever you want to ask you can ask." But after one year, they will not ask because questions wither away.

The more silent you become, the less questions arise because questions are part of a noisy mind. Questions are not coming out of your life, out of your existence and being. They are coming out of a mad mind. When the maddening drops a little, noise stops a little, and the traffic disappears in the mind  -- along with the traffic and the noise -- questions also disappear. Suddenly there is silence.

Silence is the answer.