Hortus Conclusus

The Meaning Of Life:

Truly: – you are a riddle to yourself which you cannot yet solve!

You were, it is true, taught from your early youth how others solved the riddle which they found in themselves, but – a day came for you when every answer given by others only awoke new questions in yourself…

You wanted to achieve inner peace and realised more and more that what had once satisfied earlier seekers could scarcely help you…

Now, you have – weary and resigned – stopped searching for the solution to your own life’s riddle…

Now you have arrived at what you think is the recognition that your questions can never receive an answer here on earth: – an answer which would lead to peace…

And yet, my friend, you shall truly have this answer!

I will gladly show you how you yourself can unravel yourself for yourself!

Yet, to get to that stage you must first learn to understand that a right answer can only ever follow on from a right question, so that all those you hear complaining because they never got the answer for which they hoped, should rather bemoan the fact they have never found the right way of putting the question. – –

You are bitter because the answer you have longed for has not yet come to you, – yet you never considered examining: whether you knew to question correctly! –

Granted, you have repeatedly experienced with bitterness that all the answers given by others could not bring you peace, yet – without concern or worry, you have taken over the erroneous way of putting the question of those others…

How could you ever hope to find your answer by putting the question in such a way?! –

How could you get caught up in the delusion that the way of questioning of the others must of necessity awaken in you an answer – different from the answer they had received, yet failing to give you satisfaction?! –

Behold! – it is the sin of your fathers, my friend, which causes you to suffer today, and you alone can become the redeemer of your fathers, – you alone can now wipe away their sin! – –

Those things which once sufficed your forefathers for their own contentment are precisely the things which rob you today of your peace!

Your forefathers too had once become riddles unto themselves and so they sought their solution for themselves: – a solution which would enslave you…

Those things they had once found for themselves became your inheritance and cause for renewed questioning.

But at the same time, you inherited a way of putting the question which can never bring you the answer which would dissolve all your questions like morning mists in the light of the sun…

If you do not wish to remain forever a riddle unto yourself, you will have to renounce an inheritance which can only bring you calamity! –

You will have to create a new way of putting the question for yourself; the answers of your fathers must no longer cause you to ask questions in the way they once did! –

You will not find your inner peace until you have learnt to question in your own way! – –

Therefore, henceforth ask no more after the ‘God of the fathers’, – rather ask after your living God within you! – –

Ask no more after the ‘value of life’ but after the value you can give to your life! – –

Ask no more after the ‘meaning of life’; rather ask yourself how your life could gain meaning through yourself!? –

Ask no more: – “What is man!” – rather ask henceforth yourself the question whether you are yourself what you can be!? –

Ask no more: – “Is there a soul?” – rather ask yourself what is ‘soul’ about yourself, and how you could become conscious of it!? –

Ask no more: – “Is there a life after death?” – – rather ask yourself what you can do in your life on this earth to attain conscious and continuing life in eternity!? –

Ask no more: – “What is truth?” – – rather ask if you are truthful yourself and unwilling to tolerate anything within you which could cast a shadow over your truth!? –

If you formulate your questions in this way, you will surely receive to each of your questions an answer which will bring you the inner peace you ardently desire. –

Already much has been asked for of which knowledge is truly unnecessary…

In this way, the answer was sought which offered only an apparent ‘answer’, and each of these supposed answers was bound to awaken a new question even if this came about in later generations…

If you continue asking questions in this very way, you will not only continually find yourself facing new questions, but also leave posterity so much to ask, especially about what appeared to you to have been answered! –

Therefore take heed that every question which worries you finds the right formulation within you on which then is bound to follow an answer meeting with your satisfaction!

No one else can ever give you your answer! –

It can only be attained within you as experience, and you can experience it only within yourself! – – –

Everything commonly described as an ‘answer’ to ultimate questions, – be it the word of a man whom posterity honours as a ‘God’, – continues to awaken new questions from one generation to the next. – –

Such an answer can, in the best instance, only cause you to find the formulation of the question within yourself which really brings answer through experience! –

But our forefathers believed – and the belief was often held in subsequent ages – that an external answer which had satisfied them was  henceforth an ultimate, incontrovertible answer. They regarded as fools and blasphemers those who could still ask for other answers…

In good faith they may well have thought to bequeath to posterity an inheritance rich in blessings…

But you, my friend, have had to learn fully from your own experience what an evil curse weighs upon this inheritance! – –

It is now your responsibility to rid the world of this curse!

Yet you will only be able to destroy it, if you do not pass on the solution to the riddle your fathers once found for themselves without thinking twice and, if you do not require of those who cling to your words that they recognise what became your answer as their own answer! – –When you find the answer within you which brings you peace, use it only to help others ask in the right way themselves!

Always formulate your question correctly so that answer must come to you which is truly incontrovertible for you, – but do not think that your answer needs only to be accepted by others in order that it might also be their own answer   henceforth! –

Everyone living on earth today with you, and every one who will come later after you, will have to learn to question correctly for himself, and each one will then apprehend his answer to the ultimate questions of his existence within his own experience! – –

Whoever has solved the riddle for himself, let him seek only to warn the others of that error as if ever one mortal man can solve the riddle of another man’s life! – –

Let him only give a warning where he sees the danger that those who seek might be led astray by their fathers’ inheritance! – – –

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